Peter Doherty - Story of a Libertine

What became of the likely lad?

Albion

Nonetheless, Babyshambles still managed to follow up their debut LP, and in 2007 Shotter's Nation was released. If Down In Albion is the emblem of rediscovered inspiration, its successor represents a decidedly more considered step forward: with Mick Jones replaced by Stephen Street and the band having moved to major label Parlophone, far more care went into the production, and what emerges is a sound that, while still sticking to the "it's only rock'n'roll, baby" ethos, comes across cleaner than ever. Credit is also due to Street for managing to rein in the compositional sprawl found on Albion: Shotter's Nation is a far more cohesive, linear record, and yet it doesn't quite convince. The reason is simple enough: once the initial spark of the opening trio "Carry On Up The Morning", "Delivery" and "You Talk" — brimming with crooked Libertines echoes and nods to the Kinks — burns out, the remaining songs are weak and rather monotonous, with the pleasant exception of the closing ballad "The Lost Art Of Murder", enriched by Bert Jansch's guitar work.

The rest can only be filed under bland poetry: nice words scattered here and there, a few half-hearted winks at the 60s, but nothing truly memorable, nothing that sticks in the mind for longer than the time it takes to listen to it.

Doherty's private and personal life during this period is, as ever, marked by the usual drug problems and, as a consequence, trouble with the law: in 2008 he is arrested again for violating his probation and serves 14 weeks in prison. Despite this, Babyshambles successfully embark on their first arena tour, and Doherty also delivers a well-received solo show at the Royal Albert Hall, a prelude to an album that would see the light of day the following year.

Grace/Wastelands comes out, in fact, in March 2009, and alongside the now guardian-angel figure of Stephen Street, joining the ex-Libertine on his first solo venture is the guitar (and mind) of Graham Coxon. Once again, the main source of inspiration for the Hexham-born singer-songwriter is the search for his own freedom and artistic identity, now found after relocating from London to Paris. It's not hard to pick up on the mood of the French capital across the twelve tracks that make up the record, a combination of songs written at different points in Doherty's career, from his days with the Libertines ("A Little Death Around The Eyes" is also co-written by Carl Barât) to longstanding partnerships, such as the one with controversial poet and songwriter Wolfman — with whom he had released the splendid single "For Lovers" back in 2004. It's a fairly introspective album, in which new musical influences merge with the musician's typical references to British history and culture: from the war stories of "1939 Returning" to the nod to "John, Paul, George and Ringo" in "Broken Love Songs", right through to the ever-present Arcadia, to which the album's opening track is dedicated: a long-yearned-for paradise, the seed from which the English songwriter's career blossomed, but which, in the existential arc of Doherty's life, now seems utterly lost.

The following year brings what many fans had long been waiting for: Doherty and Barât back together on stage for a Libertines reunion at Reading & Leeds Festival, spurred on too by a fee reportedly reaching one million pounds. The pre-festival press conference turns into the usual guerrilla gig, and alongside the two official festival dates, there are also two exclusive shows at the Hmv Forum. The dates prove a huge success, but despite constant rumours suggesting a new world tour was imminent, the Libertines never follow up on their reunion, even if they don't entirely rule out future possibilities.

In 2011, Babyshambles are a band in disarray: Drew McConnell at risk of paralysis after a nasty accident, Mik Whitnall lost in the haze of drugs, and Doherty relocated to France following the loss of his friend Amy Winehouse. A situation that would have spelled the end for plenty of bands. It will take two years to piece everything back together, and above all it requires a genuine call to arms from bassist McConnell, who, having recovered from his long convalescence, decides to drag the 'Shambles out of the attic and bring the troublesome frontman back from his Parisian exile. Thus is born Sequel To The Prequel, held together once again by Stephen Street, one of the few people capable of keeping the ex-Libertine in line and getting the best out of him in the studio. The way all these situations play out means the album comes across as the most open and positive record in the band's entire discography, with the big new development being McConnell co-writing the songs on equal footing with longtime leader Doherty.

The result is that Sequel To Prequel is an exquisitely immediate album, pleasant to listen to and buoyed by the magnetic presence of all the personalities involved in making it. It's not hard to spot the Hexham songwriter's stylistic trademarks across the record's 12 tracks, just as it's easy to catch the transformation at play: starting with the opener, "Fireman", which has its roots in the early Libertines of "The Boy Looked At Johnny" but sounds like Blur's "Bank Holiday"; or "Fall From Grace", the first in a series of folk episodes on the record, whose opening section can't help but evoke "La Belle et la Bete", which opened Down In Albion, sharing its rhythmic framework if not quite its atmosphere; right through to "Dr. No", which carries Babyshambles from the street reggae of "Pentonville" to the polished British reggae vibe of UB40's "Food For Thought", and to "Farmer's Daughter", on which Doherty pushes himself into proper singing, something never heard from him before.

If there's one man for whom half-measures simply don't exist, it's Peter Daniell Doherty.

My Waterloo

Halfway through the new decade, plenty of people were asking what had become of the likely lads. To be honest, they'd rather lost track of them. The side projects of the two most prominent members, Pete and Carl, had managed, with varying degrees of quality, to keep them afloat for a while, during which the talented Doherty ended up on the pages of the tabloids far more often than those of the music press. With even that spotlight eventually dimmed, and after a couple of years in total obscurity, the two must have decided that burying the hatchet was the wisest move. After all, the money on offer for those handfuls of reunion shows was too much to turn down. But let's be honest, none of us believed a new record was coming. And yet something must have happened during those fleeting get-togethers to convince Doherty that yes, maybe this time it really was worth getting serious and finally getting clean for good.

Thailand was the country of Doherty's personal rebirth and of the Libertines' rebirth as a band. There the group signed a new deal with Virgin and recorded the new album, designed to help Pete through his tortuous path to getting clean. It was also where the video for "Gunga Din" was shot, marking the official return of the former enfants terribles. It was precisely this song, with its reggae gait worthy of the Brixton glory days, Doherty's trademark yelps and the two-voice chorus, that had raised hopes for the best on the new LP, Anthems For Doomed Youth, at least in terms of attitude. And indeed the opening track, "Barbarians", pushes in the same direction, that of a dirty, direct Libertines eager to celebrate a comeback that even they hadn't quite expected. But what seems like the best of premises vanishes almost immediately, giving way to a decidedly cleaner version of the English quartet. Even in the more turbulent, arguably more aggressive (musically speaking) moments, there's the impression that the four of them are keeping the handbrake on. Or that they simply can't manage it anymore.

The urgency, the frenzy, the fury of the 2000s are missing, but not the melodic flair that defined the historic Barât-Doherty songwriting partnership, with the title track putting itself forward as the new "Music When the Lights Go Out" and, especially towards the end, "Dead For Love": tracks that feel as if they'd been left hanging since "Up the Bracket" and picked back up with ten more years of experience under their belt. Whether that amounts to maturity or weariness, though, is hard to say.

Nostalgia looms large listening to Anthem For The Doomed Youth: it's impossible not to compare the new songs with those on the two previous Libertines albums, spotting the same imprint and the same style in the new material, while ruefully noticing just how faded and watered-down a version of it these new recordings turn out to be.

In a year of major comebacks, the return of the likely lads falls right in line with the trend: the unexpected rentrée of a band that has rightfully entered the history books (and remained trapped in its own past) with an album that, as it plays, proves all too easy to forget: the anthems for today's "doomed youth" are, by now, something else entirely.

In 2016 Doherty's new solo album, Hamburg Demonstrations, is released. It's a record that sets sail very slowly with the multilingual "Kolly Kibber" and "Down For The Outing", which sound familiar but drag a little. The duet with Suzie Martin suddenly lifts the album's mood, "Birdcage" is a gorgeous ballad, probably quite autobiographical, which shows how even Doherty's punk voice can work with a melody. The first version of "I Don't Love Anyone (But You're Not Just Anyone)" shifts the record's sound, and right in the middle of the listen more pronounced folk incursions begin to appear. The track, also chosen as a single, is built around a few notes and the chorus of the traditional song "When Johnny Come Marching Home" (itself inspired by the Irish "Johnny I Hardly Knew Ya") and clearly outshines the other tracks.

Both the Dylan-esque "Oily Boker" and the vintage-sounding "The Whole World Is Our Playground" reinforce this emerging folk streak. Also worth mentioning is the lyric of "Hell To Pay At The Gates Of Heaven", a sonnet that directly addresses a religiously fanatical terrorist with sarcastic tones and a few cutting lines, fitting given Doherty's own performance at the Bataclan in Paris, where he had the burden and the honour of reopening the concert season at a venue so marked by history and blood.

Hamburg Demonstrations remains stuck in the same creative rut as its predecessor. By the end of the album, you're left uncertain about what you've just heard, and Doherty's punk immediacy gets lost along the way. Still, a certain seriousness of purpose shines through, offering hope for a stretch of time devoted more to music than to appearing on the covers of British tabloids.

Even in 2019, Doherty tries to reinvent himself without inventing anything at all. Peter Doherty And The Puta Madres is an album whose impertinence is already condensed in the title. For the rest, our man throws into the same pot the ever-stimulating celtic-blues lessons of Dexys ("All At Sea", "Someone Else To Be"), the never-quite-past of the drug addicted ("Punk Buck Bonafide"), new-wave leftovers ("Who's Been Having You Over"), indie-rock cunning ("Shoreleave") and exoticisms of indefinable origin ("The Stream"), with the same conviction an influencer brings to snapping their latest selfie.

Skilled at drawing media attention to his personal tales of dissolution and excess, which are supposedly meant to cement his pop-star status, Peter Doherty once again neglects the very essence of rock'n'roll, namely the ability to write a decent set of songs. The Libertines, in truth, had plenty of those in their arsenal, but back then Carl Barat was around to hold the whole circus together, and there's nothing remotely clever about namedropping first Lou Reed and then Oasis within the same song (the aforementioned "Someone Else To Be"), nor is the soporific, overreaching arrangement of "Travelling Tinker" convincing.

"Peter Doherty And The Puta Madres" is a record that, behind its redundant theatrics, conceals a creative void, along with Doherty's inability to carry a single melody without tripping over himself. It's a record so pointless that it will no doubt be hailed as a return to form (Peter even roped in Trampolene's fine guitarist, Jack Jones), earning itself the award for most confused and muddled work of the year.

All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade marks the return of the celebrated (and reconciled) Doherty-Barât partnership nearly ten years after "Anthems For Doomed Youth", getting back to grips with the classic indie-rock sound they'd made us familiar with, dotted with the odd (now rare) garage flare-up and intricate chamber-pop-inflected ballads. Produced by Dimitri Tikovoï (Placebo, Horrors, Black Honey) and recorded at the band's hotel/studio The Albion Rooms in Margate, the album splits its time between cynical, veiled invectives against the system and a strong yearning for escape wrapped in nostalgic airs.

The curtain rises on a desire to flee in search of new horizons over the dynamic and catchy "Run Run Run", a sly anthem that grabs you from the very first listen, leaning on power-pop influences à-la Squeeze's "Cool For Cats". The summery mood continues with the choruses of "Mustangs", which glances back at the Velvet Underground's "Loaded", before the tone shifts with "I Have A Friend", whose energetic riffs circle around the delicate subject of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The grandiose stride and strings of "Merry Old England" frame another topical subject, namely immigration, voicing a wish for a world without walls or rigid borders, and above all without the hostility directed at those arriving from afar in search of a better life. The subtle, melancholy ballad "Man With The Melody", carried by acoustic guitar, piano and strings, is sung in four-part harmony by the whole band, while the following carefree "Oh Shit" brings back the jangly guitars (with a veiled nod to the Sex Pistols in its finale), catchy rhythms and sing-alongs. A real highlight midway through is the dark, decadent ballad "Night Of The Hunter", inspired by Davis Grubb's novel of the same name, whose melodies repeatedly echo a passage from Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake".

The album's final stretch loses a little shine compared to its opening promise, though it still holds a reasonably steady course with the bluesy strides reminiscent of the Doors on "Baron's Claw", where a horn section and piano stand out; the placid, political pop of "Shiver", whose lyrics deal with the death of Queen Elizabeth II; the quick lashes of "Be Young"; and the closing, Beatles-esque "Songs They Never Play On The Radio", a reworked version of an old Pete Doherty song, into which Carl Barât has woven some lyrical contributions of his own.

Everything flows remarkably smoothly on "All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade": marked by a notable balance and a newfound overall harmony that allowed The Libertines to fully share every single step in crafting all the tracks, it's the first record to officially credit bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell as songwriters as well. That cooperation proved to be the key to pulling the record together, putting every piece in its rightful place. No earth-shattering invention, to be sure, just a perspective glimpse of today's merry old England, warts and all.

Contributions by Gabriele Senatore ("Hamburg Demonstrations"), Gianfranco Marmoro ("Pete Doherty & The Puta Madres") and Martina Vetrugno ("All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade")