by Carl Barat
All of a sudden, we were recording our first single for Rough Trade with Bernard Butler. Initially, Peter was in thrall to Bernard: he placed him on a pedestal in many ways. As a young man Peter was an NME boy, a letter writer, and Bernard was the cover star, someone who, as part of Suede, helped change the musical landscape for a while. I remember Rough Trade brought him along and he was wearing his Converse and had a big parka on; he was looking very Bernard Butler, which endeared him to me. I sometimes want people to look and act like my perception of them, like the picture I hold of them in my head. When I meet people, fans who stop me for a photo in the street or people who just want to say hello, I always hope that I come away and leave with them the impression they’d hoped for. So, in one way, Bernard was the man we hoped he’d be, quite a player, amazing style. He was also very, very methodical and slightly schoolmasterly in his production approach, which I also found charming. He was like some cool, floppy-haired teacher whose lesson you always secretly looked forward to. And we needed it at first, that hands-on approach, making sure all the boxes were ticked.
Later on, we also worked with Bernard to record ‘Don’t Look Back Into The Sun’ and he and Peter got on less well. I think Peter was getting tired of the prescriptive approach: it was only when Peter felt that he’d outgrown that way of doing things that it all turned a bit nasty. Strangely enough, that was exactly the same time as all the crack and the brown business started happening. The constant niggling of my nerves ensured that I never fully enjoyed the studio, as I was always so nervous as to what the results of our labours might be. Somehow, in that second session, we managed to pull it all together, and get everything done with Bernard that we were meant to, thanks mainly to Bernard playing guitar parts and doing backing on the songs that Peter hadn’t showed up to finish. We were having to edit together one or two particularly bad vocal takes, stitching things together and doctoring it afterwards, putting in more work than we really should have had to. But what could we do? During those sessions, Peter wasn’t playing ball at all really. At one point he stopped coming to the studio altogether. We’d show up at two in the afternoon and stay until about two in the morning and our eyes would occasionally drift towards the door, but he rarely walked through it during that fortnight we spent there.
Mick Jones, who produced Up The Bracket, and also our second album, The Libertines, was instantly one of the boys when he worked with us, much more a part of the gang. Everyone took to him. He was a musical hero to the other guys, but I genuinely didn’t know that much about the music he’d made. I mean, I’m the guy who told him to think about changing the mix on ‘Guns Of Brixton’ because I thought it was his new stuff and needed tweaking. I suggested he get rid of the ‘poing’ noise. To his credit he let it go, but I thought the rest of the band might jump me. At the end of each day’s session, he’d give us a crash course in The Clash. We’d all put our feet up after recording, someone would nip out to the supermarket and grab some beers and they’d talk me through the catalogue, a few punk pointers here and there. I really enjoyed it. My enduring memory of a lot of those sessions is looking through the glass and Mick taking it all very seriously sitting there with his pen and pad and a huge joint on the go – either that, or doing his famous dance. Both are reassuring images to me.
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But I’m getting ahead of myself. That first single, the double A side of ‘What A Waster’ and ‘I Get Along’, came out in June 2002, and in August we played the Reading Festival for the first time. We were the opening band on the Evening Session Stage, and it felt like a dream, a bad dream, the ones where you’re naked in front of a crowd and there’s nothing you can do about it. It was the wrong place at the wrong time, around midday and swelteringly hot, and even from the wings you could see that the tent was packed. We were in our ascendancy and the drunk blokes and the girls on their shoulders chanting our name only served to confirm that. It was the first time that my family had come en masse to see me, too, so I was jumpy, doubly on edge with the pressure of the show and my mum and dad being among the expectant faces out front. So we started, and, as in most cases when we were a bit on edge, we just threw ourselves into it, and suddenly it all felt like it was clicking into place and I began to enjoy the fact that it was summer time and here we were on the Reading stage and it was packed out for us. And then without warning our backline went down. I’m not sure if my amp blew up or not, but it gave up the ghost with something that sounded like a sigh. We were two songs in, I’d just started windmilling the arms, giving it some oomph, and then nothing. So we just had to stop and wait while this tech called Barry changed the amp for the spare that didn’t really work. And I literally didn’t know what to do. It was one of my biggest nightmares, standing there silently in front of the crowd. They were looking at us and I was looking right back at them, pacing around like an expectant father. We didn’t really have the confidence, and hadn’t learnt that level of professional showmanship to start a singalong, or make a joke. That was something we’d all learn later on. The seconds ticked by like hours. A terrible cliché, but true, when there are thousands of disgruntled punters staring at you, and you know your dad’s out in the middle of them, quite probably tut-tutting to himself. In reality, we only stopped for about five minutes, but that’s still a chunk of a forty-minute set and, to make up for it, we came back on with added vigour, which led to extra buffeting between me and Peter. We were really running at each other, crashing into each other mid-stage, giving the mic stand hell. Anything was allowed, really, but the main thing was to avoid the heads of the guitar. We were thundering through ‘I Get Along’, buoyed up by our collective energy, giving it everything we had, colliding like particles, launching ourselves into orbit and banging into each other in the middle. Peter would come charging in, and I’d sort of brace myself, but not too much, because you didn’t want it to be too staged, you wanted to keep the genuine beauty and flow going and John, sensibly, stayed out of the way while all this was going on. Stoic and still and very handsome, that’s what you need in a bass player, I think. Towards the song’s climax, we ran into each other at the side of the stage, bounced together against what had previously appeared to be a wall, and then disappeared through it out of sight as the canvas gave way. And that was it, goodnight and good luck. Peter managed to haul himself back onto the lip of the stage, which made my father angry – I think he suspected some kind of bullying in the band, but in reality it was just part of our thing. I’m surprised we didn’t fall off stage more, now that I think about it. But the fall felt like redemption. We’d managed to pull it back from the brink, to get past the potential humiliation, nerves and the confusion and to overcome, to conquer the audience in our own special way.
Now the events of that day seem fatefully funny, almost like a Marx Brothers’ sketch, though I won’t deny that falling off the side of the stage was a little bit embarrassing, especially as I was sort of semi-throttled by a guitar lead around my neck as I rolled over the edge, like a condemned man swinging down through the trapdoor. The audience didn’t get to see that bit, thankfully; they just saw this rather extraordinary stage exit. We’d fired them up and they were riotous by all accounts.
The next gig didn’t go so well. We’d travelled up to Leeds to play the second leg of the festival. Peter kicked me up the arse on stage and we ended up coming to blows over it. His comedy kick wasn’t a new thing, and it always wound me up. It wasn’t the physical pain – there wasn’t really any – it was more the humiliation. When you’re giving your heart to a melody and you believe you’re really connecting with something spiritual, tuning into something higher … then you hear the crowd laugh and you turn around to see Peter doing a Charlie Chaplin kick up your bum, it’s a little bit insulting.
Now, I firmly believe there is a time and a place for Charlie Chaplin, but it’s not on the stage at Leeds in the middle of a Libertines set. Charlie Chaplin has always been one of my heroes. I had a copy of Modern Times on video when I w
as nineteen, but I really fell in love with him a few years later. I was on tour and Rotterdam had offered up its usual vices and found me wanting. I stood next to the local promoter and he held my gaze as he detailed precisely how, between them, the Luftwaffe and the RAF had levelled the city during the Second World War. I imagined the bombs falling, the plumes of steaming water rising up in the bay, wood cracking in the heat, shots being exchanged. Later, I was rolling drunkenly around the town with this at the back of my mind when I spotted an innocuous looking door in an alleyway. I wish I could tell you that it led me to Narnia, but, to me, it was better than meeting a talking lion. The blackboard above the door simply said ‘Chaplin’ and, as I pushed my way into the darkness, the room fell back to reveal a cinema screen, a full orchestra and Modern Times about to start. I sat there in the blackness as Rotterdam disappeared from my thoughts and Chaplin wove his unique magic, the rising swell of the orchestra’s strings and brass carrying me away. I was instantly and absolutely hooked, floating happily in another universe, another time. Charlie Chaplin was the first Englishman to conquer the world and he did it with love. I heard a story that in Cuba in the 1960s they erected a screen in a backwater town square and showed Modern Times to people who had never seen a moving image before. They had no idea who he was and everyone, different generations together, was dumbfounded by it, by him. I once made a girlfriend watch The Great Dictator and she resisted at first, but was soon drawn in, inching towards the edge of the sofa as if she were going to reach out and touch the screen. It’s simple beauty reaching out across the years and the final speech echoing down the ages. Even Hitler got Chaplin; even he was entranced by Chaplin’s innate goodness – and, by coincidence, they were born only days apart. It means a lot to me that one generation of my family lived in Lambeth the same time as Chaplin did, though I’m sure they never passed in the street or saw each other in the shops. It’s enough for me to know they shared the same space. They’re funny things, heroes. I have very few. I guess the only one still alive is Lou Reed, now that Beryl Reid and Oliver Reed have shuffled off their mortal coils …
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But I digress. I think that day in Leeds, after Reading’s triumphant exit stage left, I was coming down from a mountain of coke and what amounted to a great victory for us, one of the first. Peter was elated about what a fine show we’d done, but I felt angry, aggrieved and down. Maybe Peter hadn’t meant any harm, and it is likely I was volatile and oversensitive that afternoon and that I was letting the hangover and the comedown get the better of me. I didn’t let go of my anger about the kick, probably hammed it up a bit for the onlookers’ benefit, in fact, and he began to get upset that I wasn’t enjoying it all like I should have been until, without thinking, we lunged for each other, and Gary grabbed my hair and pulled my head backwards. Peter piled in with fists flailing: I got quite the clout thanks to Gary’s kind intervention. So, rather childishly, I ran away and cried a little, but it was the kind of crying you do when you’re waiting for someone to find you and ask what you’re crying about. It was just like being a kid all over again. We then had to get the same bus back to London and, after a little while, we were all friends again, but it was my fault for tainting that really. I did and I do take the blame for that.
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It’s funny that, even though the band was becoming all-consuming and starting to get out of control, we could still carry on in our same old ways. One moment that particularly stands out is an ill-considered trip to France, a fool’s errand into the night. The Formule 1 chain of hotels is, I think I can say without fear of a lawyer landing on me, less than salubrious. If you’ve yet to experience the delights of this ever-expanding chain, the rooms are moulded out of one big plastic frame, the sink and the beds an integral part of the actual wall. I imagine that, once you’ve taken the bedding out, you can clean the whole thing in one go with a high-powered hose, like a festival toilet. Innovative, yes, but it felt to me as if we’d been banged up again. The bunk beds came with plastic mattresses that scratched at your skin with every turn. I looked across at Peter and his friend La. I wasn’t sure what we were doing there, and even less certain about La’s part in things. La liked brown, too; he was one of Peter’s shadier companions, and his being there made me feel even itchier than the mattress did. A white hotel room made of plastic, and two heroin smokers in a restricted space: who doesn’t love a road trip?
We were on our way to record a session in Nantes for two French guys we’d met in a bar in London. Our first album was out and making some waves, so I suppose we can blame the booze we’d been drinking for agreeing to work with two Frenchman we’d never set eyes on before. They were quite provocative as I recall, telling us that we thought we were really big news but that we should go to France and record something real with them, for a small label they owned. Peter and I kept saying yes to everything – it’s like we wanted to star in our own unbelievable sitcom or farce – so we ended up in a freezing barn on the outskirts of Nantes that was supposedly doubling as a studio. La, it transpired, was meant to be producing the sessions – the same La who’d never produced a record in his life; but there was always a job for someone who’s carrying brown around.
We did four songs out there. I remember really not wanting to go, as I didn’t have a passport at the time and I was happy in London with my then girlfriend, quietly enjoying the first real fruits of our labour with our debut album. But Peter really laid it on, saying that if I didn’t go along then he’d leave the band and that would be it. I was forced to cross the Channel using my sister’s passport, so I had to sit in the back of the car with my hair in my face pretending to be asleep as we got on the ferry, just so that we could go to a derelict barn to record songs for two men we didn’t even know. We arrived on the Continent and snow was falling thickly. It was blowing a miserable gale and it didn’t even feel like an adventure. It just felt dumb. A few years down the line, the song ‘Narcissist’ from those sessions surfaced on our second album, but that could quite have easily been recorded at home in London, in a room where the windows worked and the snow didn’t get in. The other songs have since been posted online, but they were never really released. We never made things easy for ourselves. I’ve been told since that’s part of our charm.
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In the grand scheme of things, a band’s a speck. It’s nothing. But it’s also chaos, excitement and expectation. We were on an upward trajectory, but you can’t properly feel it at the time. In a way, I wish we had experienced that thrill, the thrill of the booster rockets falling away, knowing that this was the upside and the downside was coming. You’re getting more popular, more and more people are coming to the shows, but you’ve no idea when you might level out, what that feels like, when you reach the apex of your flight and the only way to go is back down. I feel pressure oppressively and, even then, I was beginning to feel a bit like Atlas with the world on his shoulders, trying to keep my dreams alive.
THREE
There and Back Again
Before The Libertines, I hadn’t really travelled. I didn’t board an aeroplane until I was twenty-two and didn’t taste hummus until twenty-five. I’ll qualify that: I didn’t even know what hummus was until I was twenty-five. We didn’t have the money to travel, and the communes and camps with my mother felt like small holidays in themselves – though that was the thinking of a kid who’d never even been on a package trip. My grandparents took it on themselves to take my sister and me away when they could. I remember one listless summer when I was seven years old at the Lakeside Holiday Camp on Hayling Island on the Hampshire coast. I was floating in a canoe, my grandparents close by on the shore, the plastic paddle flashing against the sun shining on the water and my hand just breaking the surface when it brushed up against a jellyfish and got stung. I remember the swelling and the tears and my sister’s gentle words shushing and comforting me. In the ballroom at night I’d squirm as the adults passed balloons between their knees or sat on the f
loor and pretended to row a boat. They’d try to get me to do the hokey cokey and I’d run and hide behind my grandparents and cry, horrified to be trapped in a Hi-de-Hi! universe.
Later, my stepmum and Dad took us up to a lonely house they’d rented in Scotland, which I remember for the moors, the different shades of green and lone, dark clouds at the horizon. Then we tried Cornwall. There were four of us by then, me, my sister and our step-siblings, another boy and girl. We played Enid Blyton: four go mad in Cornwall, making up mysteries that didn’t exist, imagining smugglers and criminals hidden down among the coves.
There was another holiday camp after that, a fleeting visit with my grandparents to France by car and ferry to a place called Saint-Jean-de-Monts in the Vendée, which I realize now isn’t actually that far from the miserable barn I visited with Peter and La near Nantes. When I was little, though, the journey seemed endless, mile after rolling mile of countryside. They were of the generation, my grandparents, who liked a holiday camp, everything laid on. On the upside, the French weren’t so big on balloon-dancing: no wonder I fell in love with France, though I do remember a theme park near there called Pepita Park, which looked as if it could have been conceived by David Lynch, or lifted straight out of Stephen King’s It. I remember it being very empty, and that night had set in. The rides looked skeletal, very rickety, there was a half-moon rising and the air was muggy, then these face painters came loping out of nowhere. I ran, and I remember them chasing me, their faces painted like lions, actors coming out of the darkness and trying to make us jump. That was a lot for a ten-year-old to stomach. Where were the other people? It was like being stuck in a dream.
