The Mad Musician

I know a man who plays the piano.  The piano, as you know, is quite a heavy instrument. Musicians may carry flutes, trombones, even full size cellos to their musical events but pianos, as a rule, stay in a room and the musicians come to them.

Not this man.  To make a hard thing sound easy, he popped wheels on his piano, popped the wheeled piano in a trailer, and trundled off to busk with his piano in random places like Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, and anywhere in between that seemed like a good place to play the piano.  Along the way he got minor musical players to sign his piano, like some dude called Bruce Springsteen and a bunch of other bands.

Speaking of bands, a fancy-pants performer by the name of Elton John was due in Australia on his farewell tour.  "Hmm" thought the slightly mad man.  "EJ's autograph would make a nice addition to my piano signature collection."  So he popped the piano into the trailer and trundled the approximately 700km to Melbourne where EJ was booked to play two concerts.

He made a sign too.

His plan was slightly complicated by a) not knowing where EJ was staying and b) EJ having a pesky thing called security, which meant that random strange men couldn't just willy nilly roll up with a piano and ask EJ to sign it.  So the mad man channelled his inner stalker and did stalkery kind of things like playing his piano outside tour companies and airport gates and really anywhere that someone who could persuade EJ to sign a piano, or EJ's band/crew/etc, or EJ himself, might wander by.  In the midst of doing that he also went busking at Melbourne's South Bank so off we went to catch up with him because he's related to Roger so he's our mad man.

We hung around being groupies and taking photos and talking to all the Elton fans who wanted to say that they were in town to go to the farewell concert/s. A surprising number of people who knew the mad man from Adelaide came to say hello, proving that Adelaide is but a small town and everyone who lives in it goes elsewhere to meet other Adelaideans.

Bring groupies had the unexpected benefit of watching a pretty sunset over the Yarra River, and seeing all the lights of the city flicker on while bats fluttered overhead on their nightly commute to feed.

 

 

The next day we met the mad man again ,for a quick spin around the Queen Vic markets after he had finished a morning of fruitless EJ-stalking around the city and airport. He was kind of excited because EJ waved to him and his piano (and his sign) as he exited the airport via a rear gate.  Mind you, one wave from a moving car does not a signed piano make, but t'was a start.

 

We wandered past the shot tower in Melbourne Central,

 

...and had lunch in one of Melbourne's alleyways, which we're told is a very Melbourne thing to do.

 

As luck would have it, EJ preoccupied himself with minor distractions such as farewell concerts and never did put pen to the back of anyone's piano. He got in his private jet and zoomed back to EJ land with nary a thought for a tired, well-travelled stalker who had pushed a full-size piano around Melbourne City for two whole days and now had to put his piano back in it's trailer and drive the 700km home again.

 

If any of you out there know Elton John, could you please ask him very kindly to fly back to Australia where he can make a mad man's day very happy just by signing a piano, which isn't very hard to do.

Thank you, and goodnight.