Pete Doherty & Babyshambles interview

Babyshambles

By Alex Hannaford

(first published in The Big Issue, July 2006)

It's a peculiar prospect interviewing Pete Doherty. Not only has he become the tabloids' favourite folk devil, but I have spent the past 11 months writing about him, almost non-stop. Last August I began writing a biography for Ebury Press - a division of Random House - which was published in February. For the book I interviewed his old school friends, producers and musicians who had worked with him. I also became friends with his mother, Jackie, and for the past three months have helped her write her own book - entitled My Prodigal Son - published by Headline in September. During this time I stayed with Jackie and her husband - also called Peter - at their home on an army base in the West Country.

So the prospect of finally meeting a man I felt I knew so well but hadn't spoken to in person was both daunting and exciting. Although he had been clean for 16 days, his Babyshambles bandmates told me shortly before his arrival that he had fallen 'off the wagon' again and was in a bit of a state. They said I should keep the fact I had written a book with his mother to myself - that he becomes emotional at any mention of his parents. (the following day I would email Pete and 'come clean')

Whatever the papers say about him, Pete Doherty is a commanding presence. He waltzes into the small basement recording studio at Farringdon's Turmills club (where Babyshambles are currently recording an album), flanked by friends. Drummer Adam Ficek is already here, swivelling in an office chair awaiting his frontman's arrival; Drew McConnell, the bassist, is late. Guitarist Patrick Walden has gone AWOL and has temporarily been replaced by one of Pete's oldest mates Mick Whitnall (formerly with Kill City)

Pete shakes my hand limply after we're introduced and removes his jacket revealing a shirtless torso. He is wearing tight black jeans, and I notice he has grubby fingernails. I can't help but think of Jackie - she hates it when she sees Pete's dirty fingers on television.

He introduces his friend, 'Purple', to everyone in the room. Pete says he is a songwriting partner. Purple nods, smiles, then sits in the corner and skins up. As the smell of marijuana fills the room Pete asks me to go into the corridor with him and tells me he has a confession to make. "I'll be totally honest with you," he says, "I succumbed again. I flew out to Portugal to get a heroin implant but customs cut the packets open at the airport and they were tainted. I had been clean for 16 days but as soon as I got back to London ... it was a set back and I feel like I let down the boys, but it's the first time in 16 days. I haven't got a habit back yet."

Although he has been awake for two days, Pete is coherent and polite, if incredibly tired. Before the interview can begin he wants to listen to a song he recorded last week called Beg, Steal or Borrow (a song he'd play acoustically on the Jonathan Ross show a few days after this interview)

He picks up an acoustic guitar and sits himself down in another swivel chair opposite Adam, but he can't keep his eyes open. Pete is literally falling asleep talking.

"Come on mate let's have the acoustic before you fall asleep," Adam says.
"I'm not falling asleep."
Pete regains consciousness and shuts himself in the vocal booth to record a new track. He plays through a song a couple of times but is finding it hard to hit the right notes. "Oh if I sang in tune," he sings. "We'd finish this by the end of June."

Babyshambles wouldn't be Babyshambles without the drama. The latest shenanigans saw the band questioned by police in Sweden shortly after landing for an appearance at the country's Hultsfred festival. An hour late on stage, they played one of their best sets for a long time, but armed police were there to escort them away as soon as the last chord was struck.
Understandably the band were more than a little peeved.

"I really thought we had it bad in this country with 48 arrests in four months," Pete says, "but then bam, I'm arrested at gun point coming off stage at a Swedish festival."

Drew, who has now arrived, says there was no warning. "Twelve guys in full riot gear piled out of this van, picked Peter up and dragged him into this meat wagon," he explains. "It was a blatant sting. A show of power."

Mick Whitnall's Swedish story is no less brutal: "I was trussed by the ankles and the wrists and bounced across this field on my face."

Pete laughs. "I thought he'd done a Michael Jackson in reverse - it looked like he'd changed his skin colour because he'd been dragged through the mud on his face."

Believe it or not, despite the latest in a long line of brushes with the law, things really are starting to look up for Pete Doherty and Babyshambles. When the NME heard the band had been busy recording new material their headline read: 'Babyshambles line up shock release'. It flew in the face of comments made last month by editor Conor McNicholas who told The Independent: "It's more likely that he will record on an ad hoc basis, using money from friends, release over the internet free and make his money from touring."

If Babyshambles are to be believed they have had no end of offers from record companies for their follow-up record to last year's Down in Albion. They say they have also been approached by former managers of Elton John and Roger Daltrey.

Earlier Adam had told me Pete refuses to commit to a manager at the moment. "It's as if Pete is afraid," he said. "If we don't have a record deal or management then if we fail it's not our fault, whereas if we have management and a deal we've got no excuse."

I ask Pete whether the future is looking brighter.

"To answer that we just need to play you the tunes," he says. "We've got 13 or 14 pure Doherty jems, there's Doherty Whitnall numbers and there's four or five Doherty / Purple numbers too. No shortage of ammunition. It's just a little bit difficult working out who's in the secret police and who's not.

"It's the equivalent of being at the stage in your life where you're looking for somewhere to live. I live in a supermodel's hat box," he says. "In between crashing with superfans in Homerton. Babyshambles continues apace."

Even though I am talking specifically about the music, Pete can't seem to help referring to his private life - it's become so public.

"Even now, people are telling me I've got to get my own gaff, that I've got to settle down," he tells me, unprompted, "but I still don't believe in the private ownership of property. It's quite strange given that I've been crashing at country mansions here and there and luxury hotels. It's quite confusing for a young lad. In the end I'm going to end up with my own gaff and it's not going to be a Peabody cottage."

I want to know how persistent arrests and court cases affect a band trying to focus on a new album and tour their songs.

"It's getting harder for us to focus on the music," Drew admits. "At the end of the day we're a band and it's our dying belief in what we've achieved so far despite everything that keeps us going."

"We're like an old man, full of fire but completely impotent," Pete adds. "Unable to fight. But hopefully we can make this new opportunity work for us; it's come out of nowhere and it's come like a miracle. It's a chance to record our music and it really is that simple."

The new opportunity Pete is talking about came along when Danny Newman - owner of Turnmills and brother of DJ Tall Paul - booked Babyshambles to headline the Get Loaded in the Park festival at Clapham Common on August 27. So thrilled was he to have secured the band a slot, he invited them to use his studio at their leisure. They took him up on the offer and began recording an album and a one-off single - Beg, Steal or Borrow - to be given away free with festival tickets.

"Danny, if I hadn't lost all my porkpie hats by now I'd lift it to ya," Pete says, genuinely grateful.

"Musically we haven't reached our potential yet," Adam says. "I think we've got a lot more ready to go."

Drew elaborates: "Imagine Rembrandt in his studio painting one of his masterpieces and someone keeps coming in and punching him in the face whilst he is doing it. The end result wouldn't be as pristine and that's kind of like how it's been with us."

It's a thinly-veiled reference to not just the hounding they all get from the 'authorities' but also the constant (and unwanted) tabloid attention.

"I've had a pipe with an off-duty police officer before," Pete says. "I've had a spliff with a fireman. Do you know what I mean? I'd never grass on anyone, but I will point out that there are people working for tabloid newspapers - scum - who are very hypocritical.

"Like taking the tax disc off your car and photographing it and saying 'look, Pete Doherty's got no tax'. Or finding a gig where you've been sober the entire time, just waiting for that one snap where you look remotely out of it. It's heartbreaking.

"If you read the press then check the weather, check the horoscopes, maybe have a look at the sport, but please, please don't read anything with my name in it and expect it to be even half true."

Possibly precisely because he wants to set the record straight, Pete has just signed a £150,000 book deal with Orion to publish his personal diaries. The launch party was last night but Pete didn't attend. "I didn't know I was supposed to," he says, innocently. "I signed the contract last week."

He describes the diaries - due out in February 2007 - as 'just a young man's journey over the last six or seven years - in and out of consciousness, in and out of Pentonville, in and out of several hearts, homes and hostels."

I ask if he's proud. "I think I am really," he says. "I was always a candid sort of fellow when it came to putting ink onto paper. There's a lot of honesty in there ... I feel that I'm a very open young man. And if my dad's still too ashamed to face me and look me in the eye after what's happened maybe there's a few surprises for him as well, because there's a few gems of the old Irish philosophy in there too."

"Is it an attempt at reconciliation?" I wonder.

"There's a lot of sadness in there. A few attempts at thinly-disguised fiction. Definitely an attempt at reconciliation."

As for the next album, Pete and the band are convinced it's a winner. "This album's not only going to knock every other album out, it's going to knock itself out," he laughs. "I mentioned my father. And a certain young lady. But also for my own self respect."

I switch off the tape recorder and pick up my bag to leave as the band enter into a full-on impromptu acoustic version of Up the Morning from their debut album.

While Drew carries on strumming Pete tells me: "That song meant so much to me I had it tattooed on my arm."

The band were on tour when Pete and Patrick wrote the song. They spent four hours in the dressing room writing and practicing it before recording it on Pete's Dictaphone, but three hours down the motorway to their next gig, he realised he had lost his machine. Nobody could remember how to play the song and when they stopped at a service station Drew found Pete walking around a shop in floods of tears. That's how much music means to him.

"Luckily a friend of ours was filming everything that day," Pete says. "Like some miracle, Up the Morning survived."

For some people - the tabloids particularly - it's probably a miracle Pete has survived. Suffice to say the odds are currently in his favour. Maybe it is a miracle. Or maybe it's just the music that's kept him going all along. It is, after all, the only thing that ever really mattered.