Peter Doherty
Frontman and songwriter for the band Babyshambles, and formerly co-frontman and songwriter of Britrock band, The Libertines.
It's that mysterious thing called hype. I've looked under every rock, and I couldn't find out what it means. Certain people hear a certain melody, and they're attracted to it. I'm in love with that feeling. We're looking for fun and adventure and a bit of redemption and somewhere to live. Everything else is a blind venture into the unknown.
"We've had death threats", Pete says, "saying, 'You're evil and your days are numbered." What was it, "Don't panic but be scared". Someone shat on our doorstep once and nailed a sparrow to our basement door. I don't mind, me. I'll out-weird any stalker.
Nooooooah. No, that was a big joke in the family. When I was 16, 17, I started drifting away from everything else and picking up a guitar, and it was like, "What are you doing? You can't sing and you can't play a guitar", right up to the day we got signed by Rough Trade. And then it was like, "Go on play us a song", whereas before it was, "Shut up, fucking racket."
I'd say exercising self-control is very important for a dissolute life. You don't need to control your drug intake to lead a free life. Whether you take no drugs at all or everything you can get your hands on, a free life is separated from that.
The red-faced president took afternoon tea
With her majesty The Queen
And they watched old films flicker
Across the old palace movie screen
Crying, "What a shame!"
As she slipped in the rain
Poor dancing girl
Well, she won't dance again...
I mean you look in the paper and you see the bodies of mutilated people, and that's controversy. Controversy isn't saying something like 'Oh I've fucked Noel Gallagher' or something. Which I have.
The Thames and the Mersey, the Tyne and the Wear and the Clyde
They spew slums like gravy on the banks of the poisonous tide
They washed up a pale thin girl
Alone in her ivory tower
Scratching her skin with the thorns that grow
On the stems of the wild flowers
What became of the love we knew?
We beat the swine black and blue
You and I
Me and you
What became of the love we knew?
What became of the working class?
Nike, Reebok, Adidas
Scratchcards, pitbulls, ecstasy
Hooray for the 21st Century
Drugs don’t work. They don’t even make you forget – only momentarily, because if something’s that painful, nothing’s going to make you forget it. You think they’ll fill the hole, but the hole just gets deeper… It’s like trying to fill in a hole without a spade.
I’m vain because I’m imperfect.
Peter is a gifted poet, writer and thinker. Please be considerate with him; I feel he's very vulnerable. He has a sensitive soul and he has many good points. He has helped so many people, in spite of, perhaps, your first impression of him he is actually trying to address his problems.
The story of The Libertines starts for me when it was me, Carl Barât and Steve Bedlow sat on the side of a canal, throwing stones at a bottle and we had a game where whoever hit the bottle first with the stone got to choose the name of the band - I can't even remember who it was that hit the bottle but, yeah, from that night onwards we became The Libertines. We ended up throwing ourselves into eternity, as we called it at the time
I know the basic facts cause they’ve been repeated again and again across various duty desk counters at police stations over the past months and years: I’m 6ft 2in, green-brown eyes. Distinguishing features: moles. Tattoos: loads. Got a wolf, a mermaid, a heart with a K in it. They don’t go through your personality traits.
They've been around me since day one, but so has corduroy. Know what I mean? Drugs don't create the sound - they might just change the pitch slightly. Or make you spell a word wrong.
I think I felt a bit trapped before I met Pete. Have you seen The Lavender Hill Mob? Alec Guinness plays this wonderful, colourful person who locks it all up and goes through the motions. I always felt a bit like that. But then I met the Pigman and he said, 'You can actually knock that on the head and get out.' So we threw ourselves into eternity. And it worked.
If I want drugs, I don't have to do a gig to get them. I do a gig when I feel shit, because I need to be playing. There's no drug in the world that can compare with playing music
It's not people in bands, is it? Why do people who take drugs, why are they in bands? 'Cos they're trying to prove themselves. To make themselves blank and numb and not able to communicate with other people.
If you've lost your faith in love and music
The end won't be long
But if it's gone for you I too may lose it
And that would be wrong...
I think it's woken me up to a few things, and you do become complacent. As well as being anti something, you've got to be pro something. So you're anti racism, so what are you pro? You're pro community. I would put my hand on my heart and I'd attach myself to socialist ideas. Because I believe in society. And it's bollocks that black people have any less worth in society than white people, which is basically what people like the BNP say.
"I think two years ago, if you thought Pete Doherty, he was kind of untouchable. Now when you think of Pete Doherty you think of that guy who's always in the background of that picture with Kate Moss. And if he wants to go out like that, then each to their own, and I'm sure he's having a great time but, y'know, are you gonna be remembered as Kate Moss's boyfriend or a f**king artist? In six months, if he's not put a record out, it's gonna smack of the emperor's new clothes, all of it. My opinion of him hasn't changed. His heart's in the right place but the people he's around are not that good for him,"
I'm not going to be hardened by these people, to these things, I'm not going to let them destroy my feelings or my emotions.