Peter Doherty
Frontman and songwriter for the band Babyshambles, and formerly co-frontman and songwriter of Britrock band, The Libertines.
After years of entrenched drug abuse, you have a mourning period. I know it’s a bit sad, but I’m in mourning. I’m in mourning for an armful.
I immediately fell for him; not only as a musician and poet - he has a rare grace, as well.
You can't get that feeling anywhere else. It's communion. It's like being washed away in the ocean, carried aloft on a wave.
Arcadia? The realm of the infinite? It's a poet's corner... It's not a cult or a religion – it's an awareness of your surroundings; you're not going to force yourself on anyone and, equally, no one's going to force themselves on you. And it's about community and pleasure. It came from a whisper through the trees. It came from a crack in the pavement. It can also come when you open a bag of crisps, or when you kick a football against a goalpost. Even if I was winding you up, it would still be true, because Arcadia and the Arcadian Dream is so deep, is so true to our hearts... It can be as powerful as your imagination can allow it to be. But, it can also be as dark and twisted as your soul... Arcadia encompasses the infinite, and that's why it comforts me.
The more you read and the more you teach yourself, the less you rely on something like drugs to take you to a better place.
I realise it’s proved to people that I don’t love them. It’s dawning on me now that if I say I love someone… it’s like lying, really. As long as I’m taking it, the lie continues. I’ve got a lot of proving myself to do.
That’s right, but I’m not sure it’s my place to talk about drugs. I’d rather take them or not take them - but not talk about them.
"Each man kills the things he loves". I recognise that in myself, in relationships, even with guitars, beautiful things that I've had and wilfully destroyed.
And he's crossing the road,
He's picking up his Daily...Star
Broken glass. It's just like glitter, isn't it?
Basically, too many other people made important decisions for us and we just wrote songs and worried about clothes and girls. In the early days he came round once with this girl who had convinced him that I was just a weirdo and that we had an unhealthy relationship. He sat me down and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t see so much of each other? Maybe we should knock the band on the head? It’s not really going anywhere, is it?" I was desperate for us to stick together and see it through because I never stopped believing. When we got signed, Carl was shocked. I had prepared myself and had been reading the NME since I was 16. Carl wasn’t like that.
‘You can only be so thick-skinned. You can only pretend not to care for so long before you have to admit that you hate being made to look like an idiot. I hate seeing myself misquoted. I hate being linked romantically with girls I’ve been close to for years but never slept with. It’s just upsetting, isn’t it? My nan reads and believes these things. I say, “Hiya Nan, how are you getting on?” and she’ll say, “Are you all right? What about that cat you injected with crack?”’
There's a man who came to stay
The boy he replaced, disappeared without a trace.
Stole all my songs and my style away
No-one would say what they wanted to say
So he was king for a day.
If you sail into the sun
Beware the eyes of green
And if the whole world tells you 'you are the one'
I defy you not to believe them, my son...
What did I dream? Oh, what did I dream?
No one can keep me from my...
No one could keep me from my...
No fucker gonna keep me from my...
Oh, what did I dream?
Yes, it was riveting. Despite everything, you knew there was goodness there. Something to believe in. Something which is good, pure and untainted by anything.
I do have utopian fantasies. A lot of them are more - I wouldn't say spiritual, but they relate more to the imagination and the individual. But for me socialism is a way of trying to put far-fetched ideas into everyday use, trying to find a way to bridge the gap between that fantasy and reality, and reaching out across that gap to the people who can actually do something to make the change.
What are you thinking when you see Pete Doherty self-destruct? - He's such an intelligent man. I completely understand, I just understand.
Once upon a time...
When the cold wind that blows,
when the cold wind that blows in my heart,
it was a summer breeze and she would meet me in Chinatown,
for opium and tea
and she always brought me flowers
but I spared you those old ballads
All those songs I couldn’t play
But every giro day she’d dress me like a lady boy
And take me high out of the way
Don’t let the horse chase the new deal away, no
If we make love in the morning
I see your eyes look like two marbles in your head
Doff your cap and raise your glasses,
Make a toast to the boring classes
I'm burning your secrets to keep me warm.
"I actually like Pete as a person a lot. He is very funny, warm and charming. He has rough press and not surprisingly so. He is also very impressionable, quite vulnerable, rather too trusting and needlessly gets himself into some difficulties - basically and unfortunately for him, he is a scumbag magnet.