Ed Sheeran Youtube Guitar

'Here's a ginger kid who raps with a guitar. That's not good a start': Ed Sheeran reveals how he became one the music industry's biggest names

His YouTube videos have been viewed more than 63 million times; he has over 1.3 million Twitter followers and 930, 000 Facebook fans

'Writing songs and playing live is like turning on a tap in an old house; first you'll get the mud and dirty water, but the more you get it out, the quicker the good water starts flowing, ' said Ed Sheeran

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But whatever you think you know about Ed Sheeran – the 20-year-old singer with more Brit nominations this year than Adele, Coldplay or Jessie J – don’t make the mistake of describing him as an overnight sensation.

‘They are tools that help, 100 per cent. There are websites like TuneCore where you can pay $60 and distribute your online CD all over the world via iTunes, and YouTube is a brilliant way to get yourself out there. There are definitely ways to use the internet. But to rely on it is not a good idea.’

In fact, his is a remarkable story of a young man who set off for London at 16 to hone his talent, went to Hollywood and ended up befriending a superstar, impressed Elton John so much that the ‘Rocket Man’ became his mentor and last year had three top five singles, sold more than two million records and shifted over 100, 000 tickets for his live shows.

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Teetotal, modest and extravagant only to the extent that he celebrates his hits by splashing out on Lego kits, Sheeran is the folk star every kid would want their parents to like, and the rapper every parent would want their kids to listen to.

‘I was a hard sell for the major labels, ’ he says of the years he struggled to make an impact. ‘Here’s a ginger kid who raps with a guitar. That’s not a good start.’

How times have changed. It’s five days on from the second of Sheeran’s sell-out shows at Brixton Academy, and nearly five years since he left Thomas Mills High School, in the sleepy Suffolk town of Framlingham, bound for London with his guitar, a loop pedal used to create his own backing tracks and a head full of songs.

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'I'd go to gigs and afterwards I'd go up to these rappers, this chubby teenage ginger kid with wild hair, and say I wanted to put this project together. The hair helps, because people don't forget you. It's my trademark'

Now he’s the toast of British music. Harry Potter star Rupert Grint can be seen playing a crazed fan in the video for his single Lego House, Rio Ferdinand and James Corden tweet about him, and stars such as Tinie Tempah and Jessie J were at his Brixton shows.

As he sits on a dressing-room sofa ahead of his appearance on The Graham Norton Show, Sheeran’s decidedly un-rock-’n’-roll rider demand of Robinsons Peach Fruit & Barley squash belies a strikingly mature outlook.

Ed Sheeran: 'here's A Ginger Kid Who Raps With A Guitar. That's Not Good A Start'

‘I wrote and gigged loads when I was younger, ’ he says. ‘None of it was very good but it got it all out of me to the point where I was experienced enough to move to London and start on the circuit.

'Writing songs and playing live is like turning on a tap in an old house; first you’ll get the mud and dirty water, but the more you get it out, the quicker the good water starts flowing.’

In 2009, at 18, he played more than 300 shows at venues ranging from pubs and open-mic nights to schools and homeless shelters, fine-tuning a style he describes as ‘acoustic soul’.

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‘I gigged pretty much every day. My dad cut this article out about James Morrison. He said, “Look, this dude did 200 gigs in a year. He got the experience and then he got signed.” My dad’s attitude is to take someone you admire and not so much copy them as take their work ethic and do it twice as much.’

By the spring of 2010, however, he’d become so disillusioned with the constant grind that he dropped everything and flew to Los Angeles.

‘I was there on my own, ’ he says. ‘The first gig I played there was in a place called Inglewood, which is not one of the most savoury areas of LA. It was an open-mic night. I was the only white face in the room.

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'I started off the set with You Need Me, I Don’t Need You and dropped in some Snoop Dogg, who’s from around there, and then some 50 Cent. You have to have a unique selling point. If I’m the only singer-songwriter with a guitar who goes into clubs in Inglewood and plays a gig, that’s good. I’d rather be the only one who does it than be one of 200.’

'I wrote and gigged loads when I was younger. None of it was very good but it got it all out of me to the point where I was experienced enough to move to London and start on the circuit, ' said Ed

He got more gigs during his month on the West Coast, including a spot at The Foxxhole, a music night run by Hollywood actor Jamie Foxx.

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‘His manager saw me and booked me to play on Jamie’s radio show. I did that and Jamie said, “Just come to my house and jam.”’

Sheeran took Foxx up on his offer and ended up staying for a week, sleeping on the sofa and recording new material in Foxx’s palatial home studio. He even attended a family birthday party with a fancy-dress theme.

‘So I went as myself in a Fenchurch T-shirt. Looking back on it, it was really surreal, although at the time it felt quite normal.’

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After his return to the UK, You Need Me, I Don’t Need You became a hit on the YouTube channel SB.TV. It led to the ‘geek’ from Suffolk forging unlikely alliances with the stars of Britain’s underground urban music scene.

‘I’d go to gigs and afterwards I’d go up to these rappers, this chubby teenage ginger kid with wild hair, and say I wanted to put this project together. The hair helps, because people don’t forget you. It’s my trademark. ’

Released in January 2011, his EP No 5 Collaborations Project went to No 2 in the iTunes album chart. It prompted a surge in his online popularity and an unexpected phone call.

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‘I was in a car coming back from the studio and I got a call: “Hi, it’s Elton.” It was just mad, because I grew up listening to his music. He buys every new single release and knows about everyone.

'He was telling me how fantastic he thinks Dot Rotten is and how Devlin is such a fine lyricist. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, “Elton John knows about all these grime artists I’ve been working with.”’

After signing with Rocket Music and being snapped up by Atlantic Records, Sheeran now says he speaks to his mentor at least once a week, and was recently loaned one of the singer’s houses for a few well-earned days off.

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‘Elton has done it all. He’s been there, done that and got the T-shirt. He’s done not just the good stuff, but the bad stuff as well, so he’s really experienced life. He advises me on which single to release next and how the album should play.

'Now he’s giving me advice on how to break America, which is amazing, as he’s someone who knows what it is to break America.’

Born in Halifax, Sheeran grew up in Suffolk, where he sang in a choir with his mother, a jewellery maker, from the age of four. It was his father, an art lecturer, who nurtured his son’s passion for music, taking him to gigs all over the country.

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‘He was a cool dad, ’ says Sheeran. ‘The first live gig I went to was Green Day at Wembley, though I thought seeing people like Paul McCartney and Bob Dylan was even cooler.’

‘Afterwards, we stuck around and Damien and his band came into the pub next door. I didn’t have much to say – I was too young – but it was inspiring seeing him on stage for two hours with just an acoustic guitar and his voice. Being able to command a crowd like that made me think, “Wow, it can be done.”

He recorded them onto a CD and sent them to Lisa Hannigan, the Irish singer-songwriter who was a member of Rice’s band at the time.

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‘I wouldn’t want that CD to crop up now, ’ smiles Sheeran. ‘I wrote loads of songs when I was young. They weren’t very good.’

‘I was 11 and it was at my school’s charity rock concert; I played Layla by Eric Clapton on an acoustic guitar. I was new at the school, a short little ginger kid with those blue plastic NHS glasses. I didn’t want to go on stage, but I did and it was fun. No one could have said a bad word, because I

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