Less than two years before he played for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee Concert at Buckingham Palace, Ed Sheeran often resorted to sleeping in a warm spot outside the landmark’s gates.
“There was an arch outside Buckingham Palace that has a heating duct and I spent a couple of nights there,” Ed said in his new book, Ed Sheeran: A Visual Journey, which was excerpted by The Daily Mail. “That’s where I wrote the song ‘Homeless’ and the lines ‘It’s not a homeless night for me, I’m just home less than I’d like to be.’”
Explaining he was homeless for “much of 2008 and the whole of 2009 and 2010,” the British singer said he always “made it work.”
“I knew where I could get a bed at a certain time of night and I knew who I could call at any time to get a floor to sleep on,” said Ed, now 23. “Being sociable helped. Drinking helped.”
When no one was able to lend their couch or floor, Ed slept on London’s Underground.
“I’d go out and play a gig, wait until 5am when the Underground opened, sleep on the Circle Line until 12, go to a session — and then repeat. It wasn’t that bad,” he said, adding his personal hygiene was the thing that suffered the most. “It was just: sleep on the train, session, sweat on stage, drink, sleep on the train. I had 23 dreads on one side of my head from not washing my hair.”
That all changed in January 2011 when he released his independent EP, No. 5 Collaborations Project. In the time since, he’s become one of the best-selling active British singers and now has two homes.
