Threepenny Memoir_ The Lives of a Libertine

by Carl Barat

  Threepenny Memoir_ The Lives of a Libertine

  Carl Barat

  Carl Barat

  Threepenny Memoir_ The Lives of a Libertine

  Publishers; 2010

  CARL BART

  Threepenny Memoir

  The Lives of a Libertine

  FOURTH ESTATE • London

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  ONE: Raising the Colours

  TWO: Plan A

  THREE: There and Back Again

  FOUR: Can’t Stand Me Now

  FIVE: Montmartre

  SIX: Dirty Pretty Things

  SEVEN: Truth Begins

  EIGHT: A Bird in the Hand

  NINE: Songs of Experience

  TEN: Of Kickboxing and Crystals

  ELEVEN: Pushing On

  Epilogue: The Longest Week of My Life

  About the Book

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  ONE

  Raising the Colours

  The room looked like the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album come to life: the great and the good, the infamous, the notorious and the inane all gathered under an opulent domed roof, lit up in blushes of colour, celebrating another year for the NME Awards. A dense bass guitar made the soles of my feet tingle as the room rubbernecked at a Stetson that was cutting a determined swathe towards the plush, red stairs Peter and I were standing on. Diminutive, and lit like she had her own spotlight, the lady beneath the cowboy hat tilted high on her head gave us a winning smile, before leaning towards us.

  ‘Hello, The Strokes,’ she purred warmly before disappearing towards the door behind us.

  It was our first ever NME Awards ceremony and Madonna had just confirmed that it wasn’t our year.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Looking back at The Libertines is like catching flashes of sunlight between buildings as you race by on a train. An old film reel where the spools are weathered and worn, leaving empty frames on the screen. Faces disappear and reappear, sights crackle and fade as we aimlessly walk the streets of an ever-changing London, pub-crawling, minesweeping – secretly topping up our drinks from half-full glasses left unattended by their owners. We dream of Albion and the high skies above the low ceiling of our basement flat.

  Sometimes there’s no noise and sometimes that’s all there is.

  It’s 2003 and we’re about to go on stage. Gary and John are warming up, I can hear the thrum of the bass, the ricochet of the snare. Peter takes my hand and, barely acknowledging the rest of the band: ‘Just you and me, we can do this without them. You have to believe.’ He’s almost in tears as he says it. Gary and John find something to stare at on the floor. My stomach turns over. Peter starts in again: ‘Something’s going to happen tonight’, and I envisage some sort of imminent meltdown on stage. It’s the equivalent of your girlfriend telling you that she needs a serious talk with you that evening: you know it’s never going to be good news. Then, nothing happens. Peter plays a storming set; he’s all over the stage, heralding the crowd, grinning at us three. Bumping chests, we collide at the centre of the stage, and to an onlooker it would seem like there was nowhere else we’d rather be.

  When we were performing, I used to worry about being found out, that I didn’t deserve to be on that stage. I’d swap glances with John and Gary and we’d get on with it, we’d buckle down as we always did. But then there was this other part of me that knew how lucky we were, that knew we gelled, and how lucky we were that, without trying, me and Peter had a chemistry; we fitted together completely – which made it all the more difficult when he tried to wrench it all apart. I can see those lights, feel the sweat gather at the small of my back. I’ve never been happier, I’ve never been more angry, never more fulfilled or let down. The Libertines heightened my insecurities, made me feel like I was king of the world, realized my dreams and dashed my hopes. We were that kind of band.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Before The Libertines, before the madness and the money, before the room started filling up with people we didn’t know, Peter and I would romanticize about Albion. I don’t even know when we first started saying it. It was something that, many years ago, Peter and I, if we were trying to motivate the other to do something, we’d say: ‘Do it for the Albion’, and it would work. It would spur us into action even if it did sound as if we were talking about West Brom. Most people wouldn’t even have bothered to dress it up: they’d just have told you they had goals, but we imagined ourselves on a voyage sailing through choppy waters, on a ship called the Albion looking for Arcadia. That might sound vaguely nonsensical or highfalutin to other people, but as far as I’m concerned that’s the voyage I’m on. If you are going to set sail, then you have to give your vessel a name, and my good ship’s called the Albion. For the sake of home and hope and glory, let’s sail to Arcadia, an unfettered place with no constraints and infinite hope. That’s the destination. We held Albion and Arcadia close, twisted it into our own philosophy; we changed and mutated it along the way. It was our own personal mythology, our idiosyncratic, romantic ideal. It was the Greek myths with England at their heart: Homer and Blake.

  The whole idea of Albion has got tangled up over the years, but the important thing was that Peter and I met in the middle with it; we chimed with that ideal. I truly believe that we’re still on that boat – at the very opposite ends of it right now, but still stuck on the same fucking sea.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  I’ve lived in London since the summer of 1996, when I moved up to study drama at Brunel University. I wasn’t particularly popular in Whitchurch, near Basingstoke, where I grew up. I was something of a ghost, felt straitjacketed there, and had to move away. Some people pick their point of the compass and stick to it; all I ever wanted to be was at the heart of the action.

  Richmond, though, seemed very far from that. It’s where I lived for most of my two short years at Brunel, hunkered down in the student halls on campus. I met Peter there, which was important in itself, but campus life also allowed me to plug into London’s social scene and student life meant I had money in my pocket – a ludicrous notion for most students now – as well as all the time in the world to spend it. I was always annoyed that my Richmond halls didn’t have a London postcode – they were in TW1, on the other side of the river – so I ended up moving with a friend to Sheen, in the first of many moves towards the heart of London. Sheen was SW14, I think, and we had a little old house next to Richmond Park, into which we used to creep at night and steal wood to burn in our fireplace, ambling back through the darkness weighed down with piles of wood. We’d cycle into Richmond together on my bike, the two of us careering along, one of us on the crossbar like the scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, ‘Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head’ running through my head, going way too fast, two miles there and two miles back. We thrived on the bright lights of central London, and every trip home from town was spent on the number 9 bus, which would inevitably see us waking up in Kingston, the end of the line, bodies contorted and mouths drooling, faces pressed up against the glass, Richmond some miles back. Kingston’s a very unforgiving place at seven in the morning. The driver would never let us stay on board the bus, even though there were never any other buses there and it would always be the next to depart. We’d stand for twenty minutes, bleary-eyed in the freezing cold, until he allowed us back on for the return journey – at which point we’d fall asleep again and wake up in fucking town. Sometimes it felt endless.

  Peter’s sister Amy-Jo Doherty was the only person at Brunel I really felt a connection with during my short time studying there. From my vantage point in Whitchurch I’d i
magined that, when going to London to university, I’d take rooms, and there’d be a succession of characters who’d process through my digs wearing bottle-green tweeds and carrying armfuls of leather-bound books tied with packing string – I think in my head I was going to Oxford circa 1930 in an Evelyn Waugh novel. What I actually found were people with golf clubs and Best of 1994 dance CDs. Amy-Jo was the one person I met there who seemed engaged with the sort of things I was looking for. We became best friends and she’d often tell me fantastic stories about Peter, an aspiring poet who was a year younger than her and still lived in the sticks. When he finally came up to visit, she asked me to look after him while she went to an evening class. He wasn’t really as I expected: very tall and wearing a kind of plastic jacket, looking quite ‘street’ – but then he’s always courageous with his outfits. The family resemblance was more than incredible. I’d heard a lot of good things about him, and he was interested in me because his big sister used to come home and talk about the new world of university, and particularly about this friend she’d met.

  Straight away we began to talk about music. He was a massive Morrissey and Smiths fan, and his sister had asked me to write down the tablature to ‘This Charming Man’, but I didn’t know anything about The Smiths, and I’d transcribed ‘Charmless Man’ by Blur, instead. He didn’t play guitar very well, so I showed him a few things, and he played me his one song, ‘The Long Song’, which lived up to its name. I had some songs with terrible lyrics, and we started doing musical things together; we bonded over music very quickly. That first night, too, we had an argument over the meaning of a word. I can’t even remember what the word was now, but, finally, it felt as if I was getting the intellectual stimulation I’d been searching for and had been expecting from university. For me, it was a joyful moment.

  We began to meet up every time he came to town. He lived and breathed London – he’d go to charity shops and buy massive shoes and corduroy trousers, kitsch tea sets and Chris Barber vinyls, and he had a certificate to show he’d climbed the Monument – and just loved to draw it all in, for all the right reasons. I found that very charming. I was learning things from him, too, although I wouldn’t have readily admitted it. I was performing the role of the older, experienced guy, and I’d try to play it like he was the little’un nipping at my feet. But in reality Peter knew a lot about the world I wanted to know. He’d read and read, and searched for authors to inspire him, and, by helping this passion come alive in me, helped me become more the person I wanted to be. He only made the trip to London every once in a while, so things progressed slowly. We’d said from the very beginning that we wanted to start a band, and kept on repeating it but to little effect. Amy would get him on the phone when we were out at night, drunk, and he’d say, ‘What about this band, then?’ That was all it was for a while – good intentions and drunken promises. It must have been a couple of years after we first met that we finally sat down properly, at my house. We wrote a song that became ‘The Good Old Days’ that first night, along with quite a few others, and I remember us sitting there, staring at each other in silence as the clock ticked towards dawn, searching for the right words. We were trying to find a line for the middle eight, and he’d tell you differently but I’m absolutely sure it was me who came up with it. Finally, we had: ‘A list of things we said we’d do tomorrow.’ We’ve argued since about whose line it was, but that seemed to be a moment when everything slotted into place, and it was quite a forerunner of things to come.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  London, its streets and neighbourhoods, litter my lyrics, and I can always find some part of it to suit my mood. I first felt plugged in to the city at a place called the Foundry on Old Street. They’re knocking it down now to build a grand hotel or something, to cash in on the area’s cool – Shoreditch surgically removing its own heart – but Peter used to run a night there called Arcadia, a performance poetry thing, which he used to revel in. I’d come along and play the piano very badly, but it was art so the quality of the performance didn’t really matter. We’d get free Guinness and we’d host a raffle to make money. I think the most auspicious prize we gave away was half a gram of speed and a Charles Manson record, but it always made us a couple of bob for a few beers and a fine breakfast.

  London really began for me, though, in Camden and Soho. I have such a strong image of Camden from those days, entrancing but horrific, edgy and dark and hilarious, at least partly thanks to some of the characters who made up the Camden contingent. Irish Paul was in a band called The Samaritans and was the kind of legend that my Camden was made of. He was part of our schooling, older than us, as was Essex Tom and another guy called Max. They were the big boys, the older brothers, and when they spoke you pricked up your ears and listened. I was always a bit cautious around them, though, as they’d drink, fuck and fight whoever or whatever they could find. We’d be walking down the street and Max would have this really demonic look in his eye, then pause, apologize, and leg it up Parkway to knock seven bells out of a couple of students who were being lairy and drunk. Then he’d come back again and resume the conversation as if nothing had happened. Essex Tom I remember from his run-in with John Hassall’s girlfriend, a girl called Jenny who’d had a boob job and therefore instantly became known as Jenny with the Big Knackers on Holloway Road. It wasn’t always poetry and lofty ideals with The Libertines. Anyway, one day we were all sat around in a pub and Tom took John’s camera from the table and went to the toilets to film his dick – a dick, moreover, with a notorious kink in it. John took the camera home without realizing and, later, Jenny with the Big Knackers on Holloway Road stumbled across it and recognized Tom from the footage. I think her relationship with John was doomed from thereon in.

  Irish Paul, on the other hand, had a Dickensian air about him, and I remember when he invited all of his mates to a celebratory dinner one night at the Mango Room in Camden just after it had opened. ‘My ship’s come in,’ he told the assembled company. ‘You’ve stuck with me through the lean times, each sorted me out when I’ve needed it, so now it’s your turn. I’m going to treat you all to a night out. Tuck in, fill your boots.’

  I felt touched, a real part of his gang, the inner circle, and we had a great evening. Then, at the end of an incredible meal, just as the bill was presented, Irish Paul got up: ‘I hope you’ve got your running shoes on, you boys,’ he said, then he ran straight out of the restaurant and away down the street into the night. There was a significant pause and then all hell broke loose as we all bolted for the door. It was like the rush to get on the last helicopter out of Saigon.

  There was another Paul, Rock Paul, an American, who’d been a fixture at the Good Mixer through all the different crowds and bands who came and went. He just sat up at the bar, watched them come and watched them go, and drank. One night, we were all in there, about to embark on a session, and Rock Paul walked in looking utterly stricken. ‘I’ve had some really bad news,’ he said, and it fell very quiet, the only noise the clicking of balls on the pool table behind us. ‘I’m terminally ill with cancer.’ We were shattered. All I could think about was an empty stool, another face fading from the scene, and the Mixer, Camden, London, everywhere being the poorer for it. It got very sad, and slow, and we started to exchange stories, buy drinks for the fellow, reminisce about the good times we’d had and the good times we’d dedicate to his memory when he’d gone. At the end of the night, we were all mellow and drunk, giving hugs and saying goodbyes, and Rock Paul, on his way out, admitted he’d made the whole thing up. That he just wanted us to buy drinks for him. We were horrified and dumbfounded, but slightly in awe that he’d play the cancer card just to get free drinks. Passing him in the doorway, Welsh Paul gave him a level look that suggested he’d best not try that again, but I think that even he admired the gall of it. Cancer in exchange for a few drinks: how do you meter that out?

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  That was the Camden that made us, formed The Libertines, but the centre of my world, the
heart of Albion, was undoubtedly Waterloo. It was where the city first came into sharp relief for me when I was fifteen, where, with a few friends, I came blinking into the light as we descended from the train for the first time. We were country bumpkins at their most inoffensive and wide-eyed, innocence personified in Jim Morrison T-shirts and old German army boots. It felt like the whole world was watching us as we slunk into dodgy bars in Soho, tentatively asking for that first drink then suddenly cocksure when they served us. We trawled the illegal twenty-four-hour joints along the back of Archer Street and felt as if we were in a film, though the magic waned briefly for me when I walked into a toilet and saw someone jacking up as he leant against a tiled wall. I was equally freaked out and awed. From a distance, London had always been faded glamour and drinking underage; coming face to face with hard drugs in a sleazy bar was all I could have hoped for, a ridiculous notion that really does lend weight to the phrase ‘Be careful what you wish for’. At fifteen the rush was almost physical. The three of us then went to a peep show in Soho with about three quid between us, and squeezed into a single booth, the smell of cleaning fluid making our noses wrinkle and our eyes red. Then, as our tingling anticipation built, the screen slid up to reveal an empty room with an old bike propped up against the wall. The emptiness was almost a relief … and then something moved in the corner, a woman you could best describe as tatty, reading a paperback, with part of Spider-Man tattooed across her face. She stood up, her book still hanging from one hand, and gyrated momentarily before us. Then the screen came down, and I think we were all secretly pleased it did. Strangely, I was glad the moment wasn’t sexy. My dream of London was of decaying beauty and a brittle, tawdry sheen of glamour. I had wanted to see the workings beneath the surface and that afternoon in Soho they couldn’t have been more visible.