Ode to Robert Mitchum: Red-light, Moonlight and Highlights from a night spent skulking in Montmartre Paris
I was in Paris on business, but I was surrounded by pleasure. My hotel was right next door to the Museum of Erotica. Across the street, bright neon signs blazed on about “Porn Shops”, “XXX Store”, “Sex Toys”. Up the road on the way to the Moulin Rouge were handfulls of cat houses and skin joints where front door pimps lured hard-up locals and hopped-up tourists looking to trade cash for dry-humps and weak drinks.
It was near eleven pm and I had been skulking around Paris’ red-light district in Montmartre for close to two hours. Its easy to skulk in this area of Paris. There are many skulkers and many places to skulk in Montmartre, especially nearby the Moulin Rouge. I was skulking not because I need to hide or hide something. I was skulking because it seemed like the right thing to do.
“Paris was a place you could hide away
if you felt you didn’t fit in”
- Rod Stewart, “Every Picture Tells a Story“
I ignored all of the invites from the pussy-pushers and dope-dealers. It wasn’t a decision, it was a reaction; I looked, but I didn’t touch. I was on the hunt for something else. I strayed the main drag to skulk the side streets. I was looking for a scene…some place that I could prop up on a stool, pull back pints and, hopefully, find good tunes on the box (a “place I could hide away“).
As my luck would have it, I found my Paris hideaway half way down a dark street that was well lit from the bright full moon. I found it because of the music. I had my antennae up as it was, but I didn’t expect to get much reception. I was looking for the blues…not jazz, as there are many clubs there for that…I was looking for some blues and maybe, just maybe a bit of country. Shit, if I could find something close to either it would have been perfect.
I got as close to perfect as possible that night as a Paris street skulker could.
This one little bar on the corner had about a twenty people sitting outside. Near three quarters of them were singing along to the heavy, cock-sure sounds of the Howlin’ Wolf that were rumbling out of the open-front bar. I near shit myself: The Wolf was out on a night where the full moon’s beams were shining bright. Hot damn!
I walked inside and pulled up a stool, rested an elbow on the bar and called out for a pint of the local. The barkeep was in control and not just from behind the taps. He was spinning the tunes, too. He had that box humming with all sorts of rockabilly, country, soul, blues and hyped-up Gene Vincent/Link Wray slashing guitar.
I was in shock. This guy had some real-deal taste. He wasn’t fucking around…you could tell just by looking at him. He looked like a cross between the first Rocky movie Balboa, Clark Gable and rivet pounder from the 1920′s. He had bold tattoos up and down each of his arms: skulls, roses, knives and a massive (early) Elvis portrait on his right bicep (It was, bad-ass).
He could see that I was on to him…that I was a pro. When another gunslinger comes into town, there’s usually a showdown out on main street where pine boxes are propped up on fences waiting for the man with the slow hand. Not this time though. There would be no showdown on this night. We weren’t fighters; no, we were lovers…lovers of those early American sounds.
We did a bit of talking between songs. He’d play something and I would try and guess the artists (I got stumped a few times). It wasn’t until I called out, unprompted, one of the craziest, “how the hell did you know that” rabbits out of my ass of all time: Robert Mitchum’s, “The Ballad of Thunder Road”.
I love this song…always have. It came from the movie of the same name and Mitchum played the lead role. I’ve never seen the movie, but I sure as hell know the song. My throw-back bar tending buddy was as appreciative of the fact I knew his songs as he was surprised. I could see by the look on his face that I made his night with that call. You can guess that my beers for the next little while came free of charge.
Mind you, the barkeep didn’t speak a lot of English and my French sucks…as in I can’t speak the language. There was hardly any English speaking patrons in there…French, German, Dutch, Italian. No matter…we all spoke the same language: music.
Within twenty minutes of that song, the place had turned into a sing along (about 20-30 people in there at 12:30 am). I recorded a bit of it and attached it here. It makes me laugh when I listen to it. I’m a transient in Paris, sitting in bar after midnight, back slapping and singing along to 1950′s country tunes with people who can’t speak English and me not able to speak French. Shit, yeah…that’s my kinda fun. Life is coolest when it is unplanned.
It is only a minute or so long. Have a listen and sing along if you like.
The lure of going around had worked it’s magic once again. I left that bar walking tall and feeling like a proud peacock: a skulker no more. Rave on…
