Schoolboy busker shreds for £70 an hour

Shredding: officially better than hanging out on street corners drinking White Lightning
Shredding: officially better than hanging out on street corners drinking White Lightning

13-year-old Calvin Prior is clearly no ordinary busker, earning an impressive £70 ($138) an hour blazing away on Brighton Pier in his summer holidays.

Currently in a band with his father Richard because there is "nobody his age good enough", Calvin has so far spent £2000 of his earnings on a shiny new PRS Custom 24 electric guitar.

Calvin's next purchase looks set to be similarly rock-tastic: "I wanna get this big new Marshall so I can go out and do some gigging." Not before you've finished your homework, young man.

Calvin's skills have been honed by a six-hour daily practice regime, which is certainly a more wholesome activity than what most teenage boys get up to when locked away in their bedrooms.

To hear Calvin's fleet-fingered reworking of Hendrix, check out this YouTube video of him taking on Voodoo Child (Slight Return). If we're nit-picking, the intro is a bit wayward rhythmically, but the rest is impressive by any standards.

(via BBC News)

Chris Vinnicombe worked with us here on the MusicRadar team from the site's initial launch way back in 2007, and also contributed to Guitarist magazine as Features Editor until 2014, as well as Total Guitar magazine, amongst others. These days he can be found at Gibson Guitars, where he is editor-in-chief.