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It was the kind of summer's day that makes you resolve to go abroad next year – spots of rain coming down from an overcast sky that was threatening worse to come. I came away from the Swanage beach-side promenade into a road where holiday-makers were passing to and fro, paying little attention to the busker who was singing and strumming on the pavement. I wandered up and saw painted on his drum the name 'Don Partridge'. |
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years playing it a hundred times a day and he doesn't play it any more. Within a couple of minutes two more passers-by had made the same request and received the same answer. When he took a break I said to him that the Sixties was a great time to be growing up in, and he said 'Yes, even the criminals went around with smiles on their faces'. Did that mean he was an East-Ender? 'No, but I played in the West |
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End, outside the stations, outside the Raymond Revue Bar, and I saw them all there. I made a lot of money then. I used to get chased by the police, but the fine was only two pounds. They used to say that the funniest sight in London was if I hadn't packed all my gear up and still had the drum strapped to my back, running down the street being chased by the police'. I asked him if he had consciously turned his back on the paths followed by most pop stars. He said 'After a time I came to realise that anonymity is something you don't value until you lose it. I hated going down the |
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road with everyone knowing who I was but me not knowing who they were'. And then he went back to playing his wonderful music, as now and then a few children dropped coppers into his cap; a man who chose not to win the world if that meant losing himself. |
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