Arcadian Fire

he last time Hot Press met Pete Doherty for a proper sit-down chat, he greeted us with a tourniquet round his arm and a polite, but firm request to wait next door while he took care of junkie business.

In the four years since then, he’s become intimately acquainted with the segregation unit at Wormwood Scrubs, royally fucked up at Live8, been in and out of rehab on an almost monthly basis, proved too chemically-inclined for even Kate Moss, had his affairs handled by a gentleman called Johnny Headlock – we’ll leave you to extrapolate on that one – and generally kept the tabloids supplied with faux-moralistic shock horror stories.
None of which has us inclined to believe that Doherty will show up on time and compos mentis for today’s chinwag, which is taking place in the hallowed halls of Dublin’s Trinity College. The university’s Philosophical Society want to add the 30-year-old to a list of Honorary Patrons that already includes Al Pacino, Salman Rushdie, Desmond Tutu, Johnny Marr, Chris Blackwell, Naomi Campbell and Helen Mirren, and yours truly has copped for public interview duties.
Doherty is two hours late, but it’s delays at Heathrow rather than his own tardiness that are to blame. Chain-smoking and wearing his trademark Fedora, Pete looks fitter than he probably has since the early days of The Libertines. He’s put on a stone or two, which actually suits him, and seems genuinely thrilled about receiving his Phil Soc award.
“I don’t get to phone my mum with good news too often,” he notes sanguinely before using a Jack Daniel’s emblazoned guitar he’s borrowed from his pal The Wolfman to launch into a dressing-room warm-up version of ‘Ticket To Ride’. A quick glug of Chardonnay later, and it’s off to meet the 250 students and outside interlopers who’ve queued all afternoon to guarantee their place in the Graduate’s Memorial Building.
It’s not the first time Doherty’s visited the College, with Babyshambles second on the bill to Ian Brown at the 2005 Trinity Ball.
“It was a bit of a disaster that one,” he laughs good-naturedly. “My guitarist got the fear half-way through the third song – he said I was looking at him funny, ran off and started fighting the bouncers. It was a terrible night.”
Pete was spotted around town before the gig with Shane MacGowan who’s become a good mate. How did their paths first cross?
“Honestly? It was on the floor at a party. He said, ‘Congratulations, you’re now the most obnoxious man in pop.’ Those were his first words to me. We’ve done some music – it tends to be ‘Dirty Old Town’ – together. It’s hard to understand what he says a lot of the time, but when you do work it out it’s generally quite insightful and, yeah, he’s taught me a lot. He’s quite into his history as well.”
Pete ended 2008 by decamping to Paris where the finishing touches were applied to his new Grace/Wastelands album, which is by far and away the best music he’s produced since leaving The Libertines.
“Yeah, it’s a magical place. I was there for about a month in self-imposed exile. You tend to get left alone there more than you do in London. There’s half-an-hour of chaos every day when the schools get out, but otherwise you’re free to walk around.”
During his Paris sojourn, there was a tired and emotional encounter with Carl Barat, which up to this point has gone unreported.
“He was doing a gig there with Dirty Pretty Things, so I went along,” Pete reveals. “I’d never seen ‘em before. Every time I’d tried to, I got nicked! Anyway, he had the fucking indecency to turn up at my flat afterwards with Anthony Rossomando. He was quite drunk at the door saying, ‘How about a hug for your old buddy?’ It was all-good, and then in the shadows there was this dark fear – ‘You’re the cunt who took my place in The Libertines!’ It was a bit off, so I said, ‘Be gone!’ We didn’t part on very good terms the last time we met, which was maybe a bit childish, but…”
Responding to a shout of “Dirty Pretty Things are a bit naff, aren’t they?” from the crowd, Pete resumes: “I wouldn’t say naff… not in public! It was quite monotonous. I’m not bitching, but everything was a bit the same.”
So, he’s not among those mourning Dirty Pretty Things’ recent decision to split?
“It’s a publicity stunt, I think. They keep having their last gig, have you noticed that? They’ve had a last gig in Paris, a last gig in Wales, a last gig in Nicaragua.”
Within days of returning to Blighty, Pete got a call from Roger Daltrey inviting him to play at a Teenage Cancer Trust gig he was organising in Bristol – a major turnaround given The Who singer’s earlier branding of Pete as “feeble minded. What he does has nothing to do with rock ‘n’ roll. He’s severely dependent and needs urgent help.”
“A couple of years ago he said I was a waste of space, it wasn’t big or clever and it had all been done before, which was quite hurtful,” Doherty reflects. “Then he phoned me up after I’d been to the funeral of a young man who died of cancer and went, ‘Yeah, well, Pete, I don’t take back what I said but you’ve proved yourself now in my eyes, what sort of man you are. If you need anything – anything – just call me.”
Kid in a sweetshop-style, Doherty got to trade vocals with Daltrey on 10 Who classics including ‘Magic Bus’, ‘I Can’t Explain’, ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ and ‘My Generation’.
“I won’t lie – we did wing it a little bit, but some of them songs were the first ones I ever learned.”
This being the cue for Pete to belt out a wicked acoustic cover of ‘Substitute’ which, needless to say, has since taken up residence on YouTube. Once you’ve done with that, there’s also a great clip of Doherty’s little lad Astile meeting La’s mainman Lee Mavers.
“I said, ‘Astile, this is God!’ Out of everyone I’ve ever been influenced by, he’s the one man whose songs I pretend I’ve written when I’m trying to impress someone who’s ignorant of The La’s!”
I thought Astile’s windmill guitar technique was up there with Pete Townshend’s.
“Lee sat there playing (the Free song) ‘All Right Now’ with my son dancing around in the background… how great is that?”
My observation that Pete seems to be enjoying fatherhood is met with a painful silence and an even more painful look.
“It’s quite a difficult subject, really. I don’t know if I am so much a father. I don’t think I spend enough time with him to warrant being called that, which is probably why I got his name put on my neck. I see so little of him and do so little for him that that’s my feeble way of saying to him, ‘I love you.’ To be honest, I don’t think I should talk about it because it’s so fucked up.”
It’s only afterwards chatting to Pete’s co-manager Andy Boyd that I realise Astile is usually a no-go area in interviews. He’s also been reluctant in the past to talk about his estranged ex-British Army father who he spent a chunk of his childhood living with in Northern Ireland.
“It was in Lisburn when I was six or seven. At that age you’re not really involved. You get up in the morning, have your Rice Krispies, check under the car for a bomb, and then go to school. It was quite natural really. I had to pretend dad was working for the post office.”
Another person who Doherty was close to, but only sees on the telly nowadays, is Johnny Borrell.
“I was good to that boy! I helped him out when he was getting chucked out of school… and he turned into a white jeans-wearing ponce,” he deadpans. “The last time I saw him properly, I asked, ‘Johnny, what you been doing?’ and he said, ‘Going down the gym, you know.’ I’m hoping one day he’ll come back to what he used to be. He’s actually an amazing Dylan-y, bluesy guitar player, and you never see that in Razorlight. But one day I think he’ll go back to that and you’ll see a different Johnny Borrell. He’s actually an amazing songwriter.”
Roger Daltrey isn’t the only member of rock royalty Pete’s met, with the Observer Music Monthly getting him to interview Paul McCartney for them in 2007.
“My mum had given me this chip fork to give him ‘cause she’s from Liverpool and was like, ‘What are you going to give to a Scouser who’s got everything – a silver chip fork!’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s a great idea, mum!’ So I gave it to him all expectant and he just put it in his pocket and looked at me a bit strange. They let me out of rehab actually to do that interview, so to be honest I didn’t even recognise him with the medication I was on. I ended up asking his assistant all the questions and he nearly stormed out… no, that’s a bad lie! They cut a lot of it – some of the questions were maybe a bit personal and they left them out in the end. I was asking him about some of the things they used to get up to on tour with The Beatles. You hear about the Rolling Stones and the total decadent rock bands, but really The Beatles were the baddest of all, but it was all kept quiet. They were bumming everything in sight!”
Er, alledgedly. Included on one of Grace/Wasteland’s standouts, ‘Broken Love Song’, is the line, “By the Westway/Inside the Scrubs/How long must we wait?/For they’re killing us”, which is a nod to both Doherty’s latest stint behind bars and original Westway warriors The Clash. I happened to be with Mick Jones in Nashville last year when word of Pete’s incarceration came through, and he got very, very emotional. He also told me the catalyst for him starting his new band, Carbon/Silicon, was seeing a Libertines gig in Brighton that reminded him of the camaraderie he used to have with Joe, Paul and Topper.
“Is that right? Wow, he never said that to me,” Doherty says looking genuinely stunned. “Mick’s quite a knowledgeable man. He can see through things and he can see what you are. He was like a father figure who’d take us aside and go, ‘Why are you fighting boys, you’re brothers, you’re on the same side. Stop it, you know? Don’t let something beautiful die.’ And we split up the next month!”
Jonesy also described Pete and Carl as the rock ‘n’ roll Morecambe & Wise.
“Nice!” he enthuses. “‘To me, to you…’ You’ve got to remember it was the first album we’d ever made. It was dead exciting for us being in a proper studio with somebody whose songs we’d grown up on. It was like a dream really.”
Mick and Shane MacGowan aside, is there anyone who’s given Pete sage-like advice?
“No one really, I’ve done it all on my own. I’m quite a lonely character. Most of my friends are dead and have been for hundreds of years. I quite like cats… do you know what, I don’t actually like cats so much!? It started off fine, but now they’ve taken over, they’ve just expanded. Do you remember that computer game, Lemmings? It’s like that.
“I’m trying to keep their population under control,” he says referring to the commune of moggies he’s currently sharing his rented country pile with. “It’s about 12 now. But I mean, they’re so smelly, it’s disgusting. I’ve bought a book about the psychology of cats, trying to get inside their heads, but they just piss on the duvet. They don’t care.”
Going back to ‘Broken Love Song’ – did being in the Scrubs inspire him to write, or did he have to mentally anaesthetise himself to get through his sentence?
“You try to make the best of a bad situation, y’know? To be honest, most of what I wrote in there makes for pretty depressing reading – just self-pity and wallowing in it, sat on that bed all day, every day. If you’re lucky you get a strip search after dinner, and that’s the highlight of the day really. I was down the block in solitary confinement… anyway I don’t talk about it.”
Did reading – I know he’s a big fan of Trinity old boy Oscar Wilde – provide him with any sort of escape?
“There was a so-called library down the block, which was basically two-and-a-half shelves. I think there was the Gazza autobiography, Teach Yourself To Paint and a cooking book.”
Would Doherty be a master of the culinary arts?
“No, I need to get one of them toasting machines.”
Otherwise known as a toaster. Does he have any domestic skills?
“I can shake ‘n’ vac and put the freshness back, but otherwise no…”
Grace/Wastelands’ cohesion has much to do with the enlistment of legendary Smiths producer Stephen Street, whose pre-condition for doing the album was that Doherty get his professional shit together.
“He a man who gets things done,” Pete mock jive talks. “He doesn’t fuck about all day and then wipe everything you’ve created, which is what I tend to do. There are some glorious songs that have been lost forever. I’d turn up at eleven o’clock on the dot, do my vocal takes and then generally he’d say, ‘Off you go, I’ve enough to play with.’ I’d come back, and voilà!
“I’ve reverted back to where I came from when I started out. Songs like ‘Albion’ and ‘Music When The Lights Go Out’, they were quite ballad-y and slow. Then The Strokes came along and our manager said, ‘Look, you’re going to have to speed everything up if you want to get signed.’ So we did that. When we first got into the limelight, we were so deranged and angry and a bit twisted, that we’d just turn it up, whack it out and get off stage as quickly as we could. There was a lot of frantic, nervous energy and it was all a bit more aggressive and chaotic. Then we just calmed down a little bit, sadly.”
How, with the Blur reunion brewing and his own solo record to worry about, did Graham Coxon end up on Grace/Wastelands?
“We share the same birthday and the same birthday cake. No, I’m talking shit. We do share the same birthday, but it was really down to Stephen who produced Parklife and a lot of Graham’s solo stuff. He wanted an amazing player, and someone who he also thought could provide a calming, steadying, professional influence on me. He’s a grand fellow. Quite modest, shy and a fucking demon on the guitar. It was a joy to work with him.”
When he’s sat at home with the cats mulling over his life, what are the three or four things he’s most proud of?
“The rehearsal for the Elton John duet at Live8 was really good,” he enthuses. “It was a beautiful sunny day in Watford and it all went beautifully and sounded amazing and the band were really good. Then on the actual day they changed key and I got hammered in the press for it. So actually forget that, it wasn’t a really good one!
“The best three or four things then were probably Up The Bracket, The Libertines, Down In Albion and Shotter’s Nation – all the records.”
Given that he’s here tonight at the Trinity Philosophical Society’s behest, does Pete have any chin-stroking insights of his own he’d like to share with us?
“One thing I’ve kept in my heart through everything and truly believe in is the Arcadian dream. A place of liberty and freedom where no one infringes on you. Unfortunately the dream can fall apart and things become bitter when you take it off the page or out of a song and into society. Even when the shittest things happen to you, and you’re in the darkest place, you have to believe in goodness or otherwise you’d chuck it in.”
I had planned on asking Doherty what the extent of his drug-taking is nowadays, but given how together Grace/Wastelands sounds and he’s looking, the question seems somewhat moot.
Does it piss him off that music is usually bottom of the agenda when he’s talking to journalists (and Friday night TV chat show hosts)?
“People often say you’re so open letting people into your life, but actually I don’t,” he concludes. “It’s always distorted, it’s like an evil twin this character you’re creating.”
It’s taken him quite a few bumps and bruises to get to this point, but finally it’s time to judge Pete Doherty on his music.

London Calling
Grace/Wastelands is an album that’s steeped in the lore and history of London, a city that Pete Doherty professes to loving and hating in equal measures. If people want a non-touristy taste of the capital, where should they head?
“Make sure you take your passport if you want to visit south London, first of all,” Pete advises. “That’s a different country completely. You might find yourself around in Brick Lane. They’re knocking everything down. It’s not like it used to be, but there’s still some essence of what was great about that area. But the thing is, I tend to romanticise things that aren’t necessarily worth romanticising. First of all, you can’t romanticise poverty, but a lot of the areas I’ve lived in and the areas my family are from are less than picturesque. I don’t know, I just love lonely tenement yards and getting a linen sheet in the face as the wind blows the washing. And someone rides over your foot on a bicycle and you throw a half-eaten bagel at them!”
Doherty also recommends a trip to his old manor, Bethnal Green.
“It's weird because all the little alleyways where Jack The Ripper committed his crimes are still there like King’s Passage,” he enthuses. “It was a good shortcut for me to get home, but it was really scary to walk on your own.”