Rue de Frochot Brian Hooper, May 2006
He left the girls in Gateshead and he set out for a place he knew in Frankfurt,
to clear his head and think about how he could say goodbye and start again.
He made it down to London where he hit the bar too hard,
found himself in Paris sleeping on the boulevard,
and now he tells his story to the tourists in the Hotel Frochot.
In the Rue de Frochot, you can choose your reality,
Where the gentlemen go, with no future or history;
You can really lie low, in the Rue de Frochot.
The working girls are waiting in the Rue de Frochot's dimly-lit bordellos,
and in the side-street doorways from the Place Pigalle up to the Moulin Rouge;
he talks of all the guests he's known and laughed with through the years,
the man he killed by accident with one too many beers,
and the times he's told his story to the tourists in the Hotel Frochot.
In the Rue de Frochot, you can choose your reality,
Where the gentlemen go, with no future or history;
You can really lie low, in the Rue de Frochot.
He knows a chef on Bateaux Mouches, just mention where you're staying for the special; he knows a little restaurant that serves a shark-fish steak a trifle rare.
He's been wherever you've been, but he quickly had to leave,
he's wary of all women, they just flatter to deceive,
and he'll tell the whole sad story to the tourists in the Hotel Frochot.
In the Rue de Frochot, you can choose your reality,
Where the gentlemen go, with no future or history;
You can really lie low, in the Rue de Frochot.
I don’t know why they write music on cows in Paris - they just do!
I sang this song for the first time at Winchester Folk Festival just a week after we got back from Paris, a pretty quick turn-round for me! If you ever stay in this hotel (which you’ll probably avoid now!), give my regards to the Geordie night porter ......