Embarking on a life journey can lead to unexpected adventures and unique experiences. In this further chapter, we return to the heart of Paris, where my growing aspirations resounded to the beat of a bustling city life.
To recap from where we left off, if you need a review then here is a link to the edition published right near the end of last year:
So there I was set up alone in a small room up seven flights of stairs in a cheap hotel. The location was ideal, near Metro Poissonnière in the North of Paris between Gare du Nord and the Galleries LaFayette. This was wonderful because I now had a steady roof over my head, food and warmth, and most important of all my independence! Nobody could tell me what to do, where to go, what to wear or how to speak.
Faces come out of the Rain
All my basic needs were being satisfied and I could genuinely savour the moment before anything else needed to happen. It took around six months of that before I became aware of some of the symptoms of solitude. Just occasionally when out on one of my Sunday walks above ground, I would be briefly startled by a face in the crowd, thinking I’d recognised someone from my past. It’s just a mild kind of illusion, and one which you, dear reader, may even have experienced, perhaps in recent years after many months of self-isolation and pandemic lockdowns. Of course wild coincidences do happen, and I’ve bumped into someone from home amongst the millions in Paris and London on more than one occasion. But this was a growing need for some form of socialising, to replace the missing school-friends, parties and underage drinking activities in rural pubs. So I was open to suggestions and opportunities, as long as they didn’t interfere with making a living every morning.
People who stop
I took my new profession as a busker very seriously and showed up early every day of the week in the same spot. Thousands of commuters poured past every morning and it became apparent that some of them were regular or intermittent tippers. When you watch thousands of faces close together trailing past slowly, only those with some particularly noticeable appearance or behaviour become recognisable and eventually, familiar. Seldom did anybody stop and try to talk to me under those conditions but once the rush hour subsided, that was when I relaxed and started to enjoy myself.
Eros
I'd try out new tunes I was learning, improvise by playing the same tune at a different tempo or in a new key. 🎶 I felt my way around my slowly expanding repertoire, mostly by grouping songs according to capo position. I still do that now. Move the capo two frets up and it suggests a handful of songs. You really don't want to move the capo on a 12 string guitar unless you have to. When you do make a capo change, you want to make the most of it. I played that Eros 12 for many months on end. It suited the material I played, but gradually I became aware of the limitations, mainly volume. Some other guitarists had found a way of double strumming on dreadnought Yamaha FG140s and FG180s, echoing further through the brightly tiled labyrinths of foot tunnels that made up the Metro line interconnections 🚇. I determined to save up for one.
“En Francais!”
On a daily basis, I rarely encountered other buskers, mostly keeping to my own little stomping ground between St Lazare and Opera. Lost tourists might take my photo with an instamatic camera or similar. Maybe an old patriotic frenchman who disapproved of the way modern life was going would cast a derogatory remark. “Why in English? Sing in French! Are you American?” A few months later I’d have an irrefutable response to that courtesy of Maxime Le Forestier.
Pitches
If another busker stopped to talk to me, it would be for one reason only. That would be to ask how much longer I would be playing that pitch, and to book it for them if they come back at the end of my hour. That’s not always true, one guy with a guitar asked me if I ever go to the Latin Quarter. ☕ The Cafe des Arts was where all the buskers hang out, but he tried to keep away from there. I wondered why, then resolved to find out one day, but that’s jumping ahead to another part of this extended story.
Music Industry
Back in the long Metro tunnel several times people purporting to be from the music industry 🎶 would drop me a card and tell me to call them. Out of curiosity, if I could track down an address I might try and find them but after a couple of wild goose chases I became convinced that they were all bullshitters, every single one of them. Until there was one who managed to entice me along. An Italian guy called Tony Amaraggi had an apartment near Porte d’Orleans where he lived with his Italian mum and had a deluxe Revox reel to reel tape recorder with equaliser, reverb and everything. Once a week or so I’d go round there, drink tea and eat his mother’s cookies then record one of my songs into the Revox.
Contract
There was a long involved contract where I signed away half my rights to everything for five years, there were student photographer photoshoots, and later, a big studio in a record company where Tony had blagged his way into a job as a producer. I was still skeptical and badly behaved. We went to a party at his friends’ appartment to see what would happen if I played my songs to that kind of audience. I agreed because it’s a free meal. All that happened was they gave me far too much red wine, slept on the couch and in the morning ate all the meatballs out of the huge pot of spaghetti bolognaise.
Red Lights
I used to catch the Metro to Tony’s house, but one day he got himself a small car. We drove up the wide boulevards at night looking out for a trendy bar. 🚦Tony explained that in Paris, all the traffic lights are connected so it’s a really bad idea to stop at a red light, because then you’ll end up stopping at all the next ones which will also be red, whereas if you drive straight through the red, the next ones will all be green.🚦 That was his theory and he put it into practice. We ended up at the Pub St Germain, a place I could seldom afford to visit, with six floors of posh restaurants serving Guinness and some kind of bitter, possibly Watneys. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but Tony was somewhat fascinated by things British. Now French beer is typically served in small 250ml glasses called “un demi" - less than an English half pint. I explained to Tony that in England, beer is darker, less chilled, and served in full one pint glasses (568ml). The Pub St. Germain did offer true English-style jug handled pint glasses, but charged around six times the usual Parisian price! It would have been nostalgic for me to have a good old fashioned session, but Tony was slightly outraged and didn’t want to buy a second one, so that was that.
Lost Tapes
As my life moved along, I’d go for weeks without visiting the little studio. I moved house, bought a new guitar, and still Tony’s mother insisted that he would make a breakthrough with me one day soon. Work on the Revox album progressed slowly but it became apparent that Tony was patiently waiting for me to write a ‘hit’ single one day, whilst I was wanting to finish the 33rpm album of tracks with just acoustic instruments, no string section, trumpets or electric slide guitar. The long gaps grew longer and petered out. I wonder if that Revox tape ever got saved? Never mind, that was why I hastened to get most of the songs down onto chrome dioxide cassette a few years later in 1980, just before John Lennon got shot.