by Carl Barat
My grandfather passing away while I was at the retreat was the catalyst to leaving – the David Niven grandfather, the grandfather whom I idolized. I left the commune not cleansed, not reborn, simply at a loss, and guilty that I hadn’t been able to say goodbye to my grandfather, or to be with him when he died. Until his funeral I was an utter mess, though my family came together in the worst of circumstances, and I tried to help my grandmother out. She’d just lost her partner of sixty-five years, which made the Spanish retreat pale into insignificance.
∗ ∗ ∗
I saw the therapist a few more times after Spain, and the mists began to clear. I began to take stock of things, and to come to terms with the path my performing life had taken me down. My gigging life had started at the age of sixteen and, from that band’s very first gig – we only did three – I was absolutely petrified with stage fright. It was at a pub called the Railway in Winchester, and I wasn’t singing, just concentrating on hiding behind my guitar, using it as a weapon to deflect the gaze of the people – the few there were – staring up at us. Even so, the nerves were just awful. Our second gig was worse, because we’d got rid of the singer – he really couldn’t sing, though he remains a good friend – and I’d taken on vocal duties, pushed up there to the front with my mouth open, thinking, How and why am I here? It was like I’d been scooped up by a tornado and deposited miles away from normality. It might sound ludicrous now, but that’s how alien it all felt. And to this day when I’m on stage I still find myself thinking, What have I done in my life to end up here? Someone once told me how cocky and comfortable I looked up on stage and I thought, You’ve really got no idea.
It was Peter who taught me to stand up on a stage and helped me to master – if not conquer – the fright that still paralyses me when I’m waiting to perform, and I thank him for that. Together, we used to roll around playing all sorts of bits and bobs wherever we could. We’d see a poster outside a pub advertising for performers, for instance, and troop right in there. We’d do open mic nights and I couldn’t enjoy them, mostly because the standard was usually pretty dire; the second reason was the dreaded words ‘Right, you’re up next’. One minute I’d be sitting there finding something to stare at on the floor, my stomach doing loops, filled with the absolute fear of God, thinking of ways to get out of it. The next I’d be bolt upright saying, ‘Oh my guitar’s out of tune’, or ‘I suddenly feel sick’, and then I’d flee. I’d catch Peter’s eye as I was heading out of the door and he’d look at me as if to say, What the fucking hell are you doing? and I’d stand in the street smoking a cigarette, like a condemned man on his final fag. I’ve never got over it, this weird brand of stage terror. I often ask myself why the hell I’ve chosen this life as a performer, but I owe it to Peter: I could never have done it without him. He opened up that bit of me.
I also learnt to forgive those fans who would try and keep me in the past. I did an NME cover with Morrissey once, and Morrissey said, ‘To some people I’ll always be Morrissey from The Smiths, no matter what else I do. And you’ll always be Carl from The Libertines.’ I’ve never minded that, I’m proud of it; what I’ve had trouble with, though, are the ghoulish people who thrive on the darkness they imagine exists between Peter and me, running back and forth trying to make our business their business, carrying poisoned bons mots toward me like apples spiked with razors on Halloween, and inviting me to eat. The strangers who order me to sort it out, faces close to mine, leering, ‘Get back together with Pete.’ I remember visiting Peter once at his flat, after he came to that Dirty Pretty Things gig in Paris, and it was full of people whispering about us, brown tinfoil poking out of their pockets, staring across the room and imagining scenarios between us, hooked on a long-dead idea of The Libertines, an idea that disintegrated when Peter and me did finally speak. Because, when we do, all of that crap becomes totally insignificant. People often used to tell me ‘Pete thinks this …’ and ‘Pete thinks that …’, but, because he was my best mate, my dearest friend, I always had an idea what he was thinking. We’re not going to lose that, though we’ve both moved on. We both had to. And that’s why, I think, I never saw the girls on Brighton Pier’s lack of interest in Dirty Pretty Things as a low point. It was just something to accept. The moment happens, and then it’s gone.
∗ ∗ ∗
It’s late at night again, and I’m half a bottle of wine down. Maybe it’s that, or maybe it’s looking back at what I’ve left behind, but I’ve started to notice certain things. The realization that, although you can still stomach twelve pints, and then some, the first bit of alcohol in the evening does change you. Hands getting older, tiredness edges around the eyes; and you realize that’s mortality talking. Also, in truth, my family-to-be has provoked a certain reassessment.
I still go back to those early days in north London, down those back alleys of my mind, to when we were ambitious, bright, undaunted – or that’s how I see The Libertines as we walk through Kentish Town, on our way to rehearse down on Patshull Road, where John’s mum lives, walking up from there to the swimming ponds at Hampstead Heath, where Peter would always insist on wearing his seventies-style, brightly coloured flannel Speedos. I’ve left Camden now, but I’m not too far away. I visit often, and my heart’s still there. I’m not such an idiot as to romanticize Camden and Kentish Town, or even London, out of all proportion, but sometimes I’ll sit out in the sunshine and sip a coffee, and I’ll see Peter go by in his pornographic swimming trunks, Natasha ducking into a cab on the Holloway Road with the light hurting her eyes, Max lamping some students, Rock Paul drinking his cancer away, or me and Johnny clambering over a gate to get to the South Bank and watch the new millennium arrive. Then, suddenly, there I am, fifteen and stepping off the train at Waterloo looking up at London’s skyline with wide eyes. I hope I never stop seeing it like that.
ELEVEN
Pushing On
It’s a common desire, perhaps, but all I ever wanted was to be a singer in a band. Unlike many, I was lucky enough to achieve that desire, but I was also doomed to destroy it for myself: everything within these pages, everything I’ve discovered about myself and the way I work best are proof positive that it’s best I work alone. It makes me sad that I’m not part of a band: I never wanted to do this on my own. It doesn’t take the keenest analytical mind to assess my childhood, divided between bricks and mortar, and canvas beneath the stars, and realize that all I ever wanted was to belong. And, given that I lost a twin brother, no surprise that I was looking for a band of brothers, or that I bonded so closely with Peter in The Libertines or with Anthony in Dirty Pretty Things. My lack of confidence in myself is clear now for me to see, but I think it was the final album sessions with Dirty Pretty Things that made me realize how much I lacked confidence in my own songwriting abilities, too. I deliberately distract myself in case I can’t manage the job at hand, and after The Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things I realized that when I’ve got someone to hide behind I tend not to do anything. Procrastination is the thief of time, said Edward Young. That should be my next tattoo. Sometimes I think I need a metaphorical Peter running in to my imaginary Old Vic and screaming in my face ‘We’re meant to be writing!’ every time I get the urge to go and do something else instead. Okay, maybe not that, but you get the picture. Little by little, I’ve learnt to deal with the self-sabotage, but going it alone, which I realized was what I had to do, is still terrifying.
∗ ∗ ∗
When you jump overboard, or your ship sinks, you either go under or you strike out for shore. In January 2009, I found myself coming in to land at LAX, determined to make it to dry land cleansed of my sins rather than lose myself in the choppy waters. I’d arranged some low-key solo gigs supporting Glasvegas on their US tour, my first time performing before an audience since the breakdown of Dirty Pretty Things. Frogmarching myself over there to face down my demons did, however, seem increasingly foolish as the itchy fingers of fear clutched at me in the immigration line. I had no visa, a suppo
rt tour to complete and a complicated story to tell the stony-faced official awaiting me, something vague about a road trip to visit multiple friends on the West Coast. I’d made up names and locations on the aeroplane, filled in forms in the airport and felt sweat forming on my neck even in the icy, air-conditioned interior of the arrivals hall. Finally, I handed them in, to be waved through, without realizing they’d been marked to make sure I was checked out. I was pulled aside and left in a room and, even though I’d sent my guitar on ahead, grilled about my luggage. I think my line about visiting Joshua Tree National Park, which somewhere over the Atlantic had occurred to me as a nice conversational aside, simply caused them to furrow their brows and jot something down in their notebooks. I was scared stiff, waiting for one of them to disappear from the room and come back with a page he’d Googled and printed off, my grinning face peering out from a darkened stage somewhere, my fate sealed, my seat on the next plane home booked.
It got little better when they let me through: I felt like a man heading for the gallows as I walked on stage at LA’s Troubadour that night. I was convinced I was going to be found out. I had a set list of songs that I’d been playing for years, songs for which, even in my blurriest states, my fingers had reliably found the complicated patterns on the fretboard and my mouth the requisite shapes to sing the words. Still a question hung over me: what the fuck was I doing there? There was an element of preaching to the converted, which was welcome, but I had something to prove to myself – because if I don’t feel challenged then I go the other way and all hell breaks loose. I felt alternately ashamed, hopeful and scared. It goes back to Michael Gambon’s question: ‘What is your purpose?’
What was my purpose? Glasvegas dropped me off in LA and we parted on good terms, even though I’d perhaps thrown one too many parties on their bus. I was at a loose end. Glasvegas had gone home and I didn’t really care for that idea, and, besides, I had a few meetings that my dear friend Chris McCormack had set up. Chris knew people: in fact, he seemed to know everyone. He is the ex-guitarist from 3 Colours Red, a band that were Camden icons in the late nineties. We met in Japan towards the end of a Libertines tour, and we’ve been friends ever since. With his spiky hair and leather jacket, Geordie accent, plethora of tattoos and unrivaled tolerance to narcotics and alcohol, it was safe to say that we instantly got on well. I’d been looking in to writing songs for commercials – I needed the money, but mostly I needed something to do. I needed guidelines. Chris had some meetings organized, why didn’t I attend those meetings, too? He made his way to town and all hell broke loose. In California, you can stay out on the streets at night and not get cold. That thought occurred to me on the Strip one boozy, boozy night. It wasn’t profound and it certainly wasn’t clear-headed, but after roughing it in both London and Paris it seemed important to know that, if the unthinkable happened or if I simply got lost and couldn’t find my way back to our apartment, I wouldn’t freeze. In the middle of the mayhem we did some pitches, which I doubt we impressed in, and then Har Mar Superstar came round. We greeted him like an old friend, primarily because he is an old friend; he set up his video camera and said he wanted to make a show. There are many things to see and do on the internet, so I won’t be offended if you don’t take the time to track down Two British Dudes. It’s pretty crap: just me off my head playing myself twice in a little sketch. The only possible point of interest is that you can gauge how intense our partying had become. I’d been awake for two nights at that point, I’m ghostly white and have disastrously dirty teeth. God only knows what the two women who were meant to be taking us to our appointments from our villa on Sunset thought when they came to get us each morning, if we were even there at all.
We didn’t pick up any advertising work in LA as far as I remember, and flew out of the city, two sloppy Englishmen on the last scheduled flight out, asleep before take-off, only coming to, dry-mouthed, over Manhattan, with barely time for a drink before we landed. The snow clung to our coats and hair as we queued for a cab, the wind pushing us around a bit. We were here for yet more meetings, but I didn’t care. It was just a convenient excuse not to go home and face up to whatever was next. We were staying up in Harlem, where we instantly slid into a bar, to beat the New York gales and to watch Barack Obama’s inauguration. I sat and watched him trip up over his lines, and was glad to see he was human like the rest of us, even if I was feeling anything but. I looked around the bar and wondered what the people sitting there must have thought, if they really believed he could save them, if he could clean the tarnish left by the Bush years.
The New York ad agencies were worse than in LA. I understood there’d be financial benefits to the job, but within an hour of being in those offices I thought, I can’t do this. This is horrible. I mean no offence to people who actually make adverts for a living. It takes a lot of discipline. It just wasn’t me. Writing to spec, composing music to which an actor-model could be seen miming some horrific jingle … I loathed myself enough as it was. I couldn’t have done that – and that was when I assumed it was easy money at which I could turn my nose up. It turned out that it wasn’t easy money at all. The ad pitches we did were endless, arduous work and, at the end of it – nothing. Not even a call-back. The pitch was for Lincoln Town Cars, as far as I can recall, the sort of car we’d often have picking us up at the airport when we travelled as a band. They’re big old things, with room enough for two or three bodies in the trunk even after you’ve put your suitcases in. And that was it for New York. Bodies in the trunk, rejection by Lincoln Town Cars and the wind cutting through you on the avenues. I remember thinking it would be no place to grow old. All the cocaine and whisky had affected my mood.
I lurched through the spring like a drunk lurching through a pub door, looking a bit like Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend – ironic, as I’d left New York by then. It was still cold in London: not New York cold, but enough of an excuse to go from home to the pub and then back again. As the thaw came I began to feel ill and empty, and the house was ghoulish and abandoned in the stark spring light. It looked like I felt on the inside: clutter and crap everywhere, no care taken. I began to put the dirty dishes in the cupboards where they’d once been stored clean, obsessively hiding things in pizza boxes, and barely ventured out of the front door. I was becoming reclusive, like Howard Hughes, but unlike Hughes I wasn’t even close to being a millionaire, and didn’t seem to mind the dirt at all.
∗ ∗ ∗
I had to set about challenging myself again, and this time I found myself on an industrial estate in South Wimbledon, learning how to lasso and to speak with an American accent. I was to star in a new production of Fool for Love, a Sam Shepard play, opposite Sadie Frost. I was hoping that my training as an actor, the bit after the drama exam on LSD but before meeting Peter and forming The Libertines, would stand me in good stead.
I’d been introduced to Sadie Frost back when I was still sofa-surfing around London, by Danny Goffey of Supergrass. I remember the first evening, when Danny, now an old friend, and I had walked from the Dublin Castle back to the house Sadie shared with Jude Law, Guinness and black in hand, and I’d made myself comfortable at the upright piano that was set against one wall, out of the way of the rest of the party. I was a little intimidated as it was my first contact with that ‘celebrity’ circle. I placed my drink down on top of it, only to discover that the lid was up. The glass disappeared out of sight with a crunching sound, and purply black liquid started oozing through the keys. I quickly checked that no one was watching, quietly closed the lid and moved across the room to prepare myself another drink.
Danny and I sat up all that night back at his, playing the guitar and watching Supergrass videos until the sun came up – something that never fails to surprise me – and we walked out into the diluted sunshine looking for an off-licence where we bought some champagne. We didn’t have a plan – actually, there was the usual plan: keep on drinking – but I loped along, the champagne clinking softly in the bag, until I tripp
ed and fell, and a bottle shattered. We didn’t have a clue what to do, so we went back to the shop and tried to persuade the shopkeeper that the bottle had exploded of its own volition, convinced that he’d buy our story until he threatened to throw us out of the shop, so we stood in the street, the morning dreamlike and soft around the edges, wondering whether to buy more or simply to go home. Then Danny leant forward, one hand placed gently on my cheek, and pulled a long shard of glass out of my head in one sharp motion. I forget whether or not it hurt.
I always quite fancied myself as a trained actor, and, after a few drinks, wasn’t shy about telling people just that. I also have a purist’s, and a possibly misplaced, idea that everyone’s got an actor in them, so, when Sadie called out of the blue to ask me about the play I thought, Well, I’ve always talked the talk and I usually try and punish myself at least once a year. Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love seemed as good a way to crucify myself as any. We travelled together down to rehearsals, probably the first time Sadie had used the Tube for twenty years. She turned up, the first day, in a big hat and sunglasses. I think she assumed everyone in the carriage was going to pounce on her. Nobody batted an eyelid. We were on the Tube together again the day the Evening Standard published a piece on the play, accompanied by a photo of the pair of us spread across two pages; there we were, sitting together, and no one even looked up. You have to admire London commuters’ dedication to getting from A to B while steadfastly ignoring everything around them.
