Article 2004
He's helped me with my demons in the past, and I'd love to help him with his. But he has to let me in. It breaks my heart, all this, every day. Breaks my heart.
Strange time for The Libertines, the London four piece the popular press have taken to calling Britian's “most influential contempory act”. This accolade was handed down at the turn of the year, in appreciation of the thrilling nouveau punk contained on their debut album, 2002's Up the Bracket. Theirs was a very English racket. The Libertines were The Kinks, The Clash (Mick Jones is their producer of choice), the good bits of Britpop and-oh yes-Chas & Dave rolled in to one lyrical, oiky whole. Their future however, is difficult to predict because of the troubled relationship between the two frontmen.
Pete Doherty, 24, is one of the group's intimately intertwined singers and songwriters; Carl Barat, 25, is the other. Doherty has been in the grip of heroin and crack-cocaine addiction for some time now. After failing to turn up for a tour last summer he was kicked out of the band until he cleaned up his act. Doherty then burgled Barat's flat, with the result that he found himself forced to eat porridge for a while. A reunion followed his release from prison, and the band knuckled down to make their second album. But Doherty still found time to flunk three attempts at rehab. On his return to England in June, Doherty was arrested on charges of carrying a flickknife. Again, on the eve of a round of gigs, Dohery was barred.
It'd be funny if it wasn't so tragic. And not just because, somehow, The Libertines' second, self titled album is a work of some genius. Could it be that Britain's great guitar hopes are about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
After three abortive go's at meeting in London, Wiltshire and at T in the Park (scene of the ad hoc Libs' live debut) we finally sat down with Barat in a private garden in the Gramercy park district of New York where he was engaged in international promotion of The Libertines.
Q. Is all this nonesense getting in the way of the music?
A. Certainly is. It's turned in to a soap opera. And besides, all the shit that people are romanticising and embellishing, it's all on the record.
Q. How did you meet Pete?
A. I went to Brunel (University, west London) to study acting. University disappointed me: I was expecting to find people with a passion to learn and who cared about their subjects. And I just found a bunch of idiots who wanted to race and were in to golf. It was heartbreaking. There was no one there who seemed to give a shit about being alive. It did my nut in really. But there was one girl who saved me from all that. She stayed in the same residence block as me. That was Pete's sister. He was a year younger, he was still in their hometown, in Nuneaton near Coventry. But he was really in to coming to London. She'd go home for family things and tell him little stories about how great I was. She thought we were quite like-minded.
Q. Can you remember the first time you met him?
A. It was in the residence block. He was in London for the weekend. There was an audition for the theatre society or something, and I was really rubbish. And he got up and auditioned and got the part! He told them after he wasn't a student and they were really pissed off.
Q. What was your first impression?
A. I couldn't believe this kid had got one over on me! He was intelligent and witty. I felt I had competition, for once. Somebody I could spark off. We just clicked. Then he moved to London and kept hassling me to write songs with him. I didn't have any confidence really, and he had no talent for guitar, he was completely out of tune, but he had all the confidence in the world. It really inspired me.
Q. Was your and Pete's relationship combative from the start?
A. Yeah, absolutely. In silly ways, like getting to the top of the staircase first. I suppose it's partly because we're so alike.
Q:Did that make the songs better?
A: I guess so, yeah. You've got to bounce off someone to work with them, haven't you? Otherwise you'd just do your own thing. It was always quite affable, really, and amicable. But I found myself distanced from Pete as soon as the drugs started. I used to drink too much and come in pissed all the time, and that would wind Pete up 'cause he was in the house sober. Then when he strated doing the brown [heroin], all the brown people used to come around. And being with brown people is no good.
Q. Did it start getting out of control when he didn't turn up for the tour last summer?
A. He didn't turn up for the tour over a misdemeanour, but there was obviously more to it than that. He said it was because I didn't come to a shitty gig he organised on my birthday. I told him I was having a birthday party, he told me to end my birthday party really early. I said, I can't really do that. He was so bullish. Then after a few drinks everyone was like, why are you running off to a crackhouse in the East End on your birthday?
Q. To play a gig to raise money to fund his drug habit?
A. Exactly. So I just kept the drinks coming. And the next day he didn't turn up to the tour bus. His problem had got quite bad by that time. He nicked stuff from your falt, and then in his weblog from The Priory claimed his laptop was the only thing that hadn't deserted him.
Q. How do you feel when he treats your friendship like that?
A. Yeah, he neglected to mention that I'd been to see him on consecutive days in The Priory. He wants to be a victim sometimes.
Q. Who does he take advice fom?
A.. No one really. The “yes” people who are around him when drugs are concerned. Because they happily endorse his denial.
Q. Was it better when he came out of jail last autumn?
A. Yeah. It was very intense. He was much cleaner, and I believed he was clean. The gigs [in London] in December were great.
Q. Alan McGee became your manager last October. He's been in rehab himself and he's had his fair share of messy band. Was the feeling, if anyone can fix this, it's him?
A. He's had a lot of effect. He got interested before Peter want to prison. McGee cared. He's got nothing to prove. He's got his accolades under his belt, he's got his money and his house. And he's got all this experience and he wanted to use it. He said “I'm no' trying to manage your band; I want you to be back with your pal. And you'll be the greatest rocn 'n' roll band.” And he want to see Pete, and got Pete to go into rehab. We knew it wasn't going to work but it was the first intervention. But it was a really positive step.
Q. When you were recording the second album, you were each assigned a bouncer in the studio. What was their job?
A. To get us there, to stop fighting, to stop drugs coming in, and to stop the hard hitting pipe posse turning up. To stop unpaid drug debt people turning up.
Q. Is it true that you and Pete had a fist fight in the studio?
A. More or less. I don't really like to go into that. Yeah...see, when all of this past and all of this chaos is out of the way, and we sit down together, there's still a truth there, in our connection and in what was there on the day we first met. That's why it's so sad. In all this chaos, what took us two moths, we could have done in two days, and so so much more.
Q. Are you proud of the album?
A. I don't know yet. I've been running around the world trying to give it a decent birth. I've not had time to look at what it is. There's far too much other bananas.
Q. Are you OK with airing your dirty laundry in public?
A. There's no other option right now. In a way, that kinda makes it easier. I really felt like that people thought I was a villian last year when I was doing the gigs, [as if] I'd sneakily ripped them off, kicked Pete out and abandoned my mate. But now, everyone's involved. And the fans do have a part in it. There's always been an intimacy with our band.
Q. Will you tour in the autumn without Pete?
A. I might have to. There's no right decision. To quote a Stanley Kubrick film, it's one big shit sandwich and we've all to to take a bite. But I can't be around that and be made to feel this bad every day of my life forever. Otherwise I'd be dead myself. There was one point where I very very nearly, just to be close to him, started taking full on heroin. It was actually Alan that saw it and nipped it in the bud.
Q Really?
A. In a stupid, stupid way, in a kinda giving up way. It's the kinda stupid thing that comes to you in a moment of weakness. Alan talked to me. He was like a visionary, he told me that he could see it in me. I denied it, but he was absoluetly right, that's what I was thinking of doing.
Q. If Pete's problems strangle this album at birth, is that forgivable?
A. Maybe it's poetic justice. Not for me, no. Yeah, I'd be pissed off. If Peter really truly wants to go [out of the band], I can't see myself - in his honour as much as anything else -recording and touring another album as The Libertines. I'll freeze The Libertines in time maybe until such time as he wants to come back.
Q. Does he want to come back?
A. I know he doesn't want to go. But he needs to be stronger. And there's no one else in the world who can help him do that but him. He's helped me with my demons in the past, and I'd love to help him with his. But he has to let me in. It breaks my heart, all this, every day. Breaks my heart.
Strange time for The Libertines, the London four piece the popular press have taken to calling Britian's “most influential contempory act”. This accolade was handed down at the turn of the year, in appreciation of the thrilling nouveau punk contained on their debut album, 2002's Up the Bracket. Theirs was a very English racket. The Libertines were The Kinks, The Clash (Mick Jones is their producer of choice), the good bits of Britpop and-oh yes-Chas & Dave rolled in to one lyrical, oiky whole. Their future however, is difficult to predict because of the troubled relationship between the two frontmen.
Pete Doherty, 24, is one of the group's intimately intertwined singers and songwriters; Carl Barat, 25, is the other. Doherty has been in the grip of heroin and crack-cocaine addiction for some time now. After failing to turn up for a tour last summer he was kicked out of the band until he cleaned up his act. Doherty then burgled Barat's flat, with the result that he found himself forced to eat porridge for a while. A reunion followed his release from prison, and the band knuckled down to make their second album. But Doherty still found time to flunk three attempts at rehab. On his return to England in June, Doherty was arrested on charges of carrying a flickknife. Again, on the eve of a round of gigs, Dohery was barred.
It'd be funny if it wasn't so tragic. And not just because, somehow, The Libertines' second, self titled album is a work of some genius. Could it be that Britain's great guitar hopes are about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?
After three abortive go's at meeting in London, Wiltshire and at T in the Park (scene of the ad hoc Libs' live debut) we finally sat down with Barat in a private garden in the Gramercy park district of New York where he was engaged in international promotion of The Libertines.
Q. Is all this nonesense getting in the way of the music?
A. Certainly is. It's turned in to a soap opera. And besides, all the shit that people are romanticising and embellishing, it's all on the record.
Q. How did you meet Pete?
A. I went to Brunel (University, west London) to study acting. University disappointed me: I was expecting to find people with a passion to learn and who cared about their subjects. And I just found a bunch of idiots who wanted to race and were in to golf. It was heartbreaking. There was no one there who seemed to give a shit about being alive. It did my nut in really. But there was one girl who saved me from all that. She stayed in the same residence block as me. That was Pete's sister. He was a year younger, he was still in their hometown, in Nuneaton near Coventry. But he was really in to coming to London. She'd go home for family things and tell him little stories about how great I was. She thought we were quite like-minded.
Q. Can you remember the first time you met him?
A. It was in the residence block. He was in London for the weekend. There was an audition for the theatre society or something, and I was really rubbish. And he got up and auditioned and got the part! He told them after he wasn't a student and they were really pissed off.
Q. What was your first impression?
A. I couldn't believe this kid had got one over on me! He was intelligent and witty. I felt I had competition, for once. Somebody I could spark off. We just clicked. Then he moved to London and kept hassling me to write songs with him. I didn't have any confidence really, and he had no talent for guitar, he was completely out of tune, but he had all the confidence in the world. It really inspired me.
Q. Was your and Pete's relationship combative from the start?
A. Yeah, absolutely. In silly ways, like getting to the top of the staircase first. I suppose it's partly because we're so alike.
Q:Did that make the songs better?
A: I guess so, yeah. You've got to bounce off someone to work with them, haven't you? Otherwise you'd just do your own thing. It was always quite affable, really, and amicable. But I found myself distanced from Pete as soon as the drugs started. I used to drink too much and come in pissed all the time, and that would wind Pete up 'cause he was in the house sober. Then when he strated doing the brown [heroin], all the brown people used to come around. And being with brown people is no good.
Q. Did it start getting out of control when he didn't turn up for the tour last summer?
A. He didn't turn up for the tour over a misdemeanour, but there was obviously more to it than that. He said it was because I didn't come to a shitty gig he organised on my birthday. I told him I was having a birthday party, he told me to end my birthday party really early. I said, I can't really do that. He was so bullish. Then after a few drinks everyone was like, why are you running off to a crackhouse in the East End on your birthday?
Q. To play a gig to raise money to fund his drug habit?
A. Exactly. So I just kept the drinks coming. And the next day he didn't turn up to the tour bus. His problem had got quite bad by that time. He nicked stuff from your falt, and then in his weblog from The Priory claimed his laptop was the only thing that hadn't deserted him.
Q. How do you feel when he treats your friendship like that?
A. Yeah, he neglected to mention that I'd been to see him on consecutive days in The Priory. He wants to be a victim sometimes.
Q. Who does he take advice fom?
A.. No one really. The “yes” people who are around him when drugs are concerned. Because they happily endorse his denial.
Q. Was it better when he came out of jail last autumn?
A. Yeah. It was very intense. He was much cleaner, and I believed he was clean. The gigs [in London] in December were great.
Q. Alan McGee became your manager last October. He's been in rehab himself and he's had his fair share of messy band. Was the feeling, if anyone can fix this, it's him?
A. He's had a lot of effect. He got interested before Peter want to prison. McGee cared. He's got nothing to prove. He's got his accolades under his belt, he's got his money and his house. And he's got all this experience and he wanted to use it. He said “I'm no' trying to manage your band; I want you to be back with your pal. And you'll be the greatest rocn 'n' roll band.” And he want to see Pete, and got Pete to go into rehab. We knew it wasn't going to work but it was the first intervention. But it was a really positive step.
Q. When you were recording the second album, you were each assigned a bouncer in the studio. What was their job?
A. To get us there, to stop fighting, to stop drugs coming in, and to stop the hard hitting pipe posse turning up. To stop unpaid drug debt people turning up.
Q. Is it true that you and Pete had a fist fight in the studio?
A. More or less. I don't really like to go into that. Yeah...see, when all of this past and all of this chaos is out of the way, and we sit down together, there's still a truth there, in our connection and in what was there on the day we first met. That's why it's so sad. In all this chaos, what took us two moths, we could have done in two days, and so so much more.
Q. Are you proud of the album?
A. I don't know yet. I've been running around the world trying to give it a decent birth. I've not had time to look at what it is. There's far too much other bananas.
Q. Are you OK with airing your dirty laundry in public?
A. There's no other option right now. In a way, that kinda makes it easier. I really felt like that people thought I was a villian last year when I was doing the gigs, [as if] I'd sneakily ripped them off, kicked Pete out and abandoned my mate. But now, everyone's involved. And the fans do have a part in it. There's always been an intimacy with our band.
Q. Will you tour in the autumn without Pete?
A. I might have to. There's no right decision. To quote a Stanley Kubrick film, it's one big shit sandwich and we've all to to take a bite. But I can't be around that and be made to feel this bad every day of my life forever. Otherwise I'd be dead myself. There was one point where I very very nearly, just to be close to him, started taking full on heroin. It was actually Alan that saw it and nipped it in the bud.
Q Really?
A. In a stupid, stupid way, in a kinda giving up way. It's the kinda stupid thing that comes to you in a moment of weakness. Alan talked to me. He was like a visionary, he told me that he could see it in me. I denied it, but he was absoluetly right, that's what I was thinking of doing.
Q. If Pete's problems strangle this album at birth, is that forgivable?
A. Maybe it's poetic justice. Not for me, no. Yeah, I'd be pissed off. If Peter really truly wants to go [out of the band], I can't see myself - in his honour as much as anything else -recording and touring another album as The Libertines. I'll freeze The Libertines in time maybe until such time as he wants to come back.
Q. Does he want to come back?
A. I know he doesn't want to go. But he needs to be stronger. And there's no one else in the world who can help him do that but him. He's helped me with my demons in the past, and I'd love to help him with his. But he has to let me in. It breaks my heart, all this, every day. Breaks my heart.