Sunday, August 01, 2004

Pete In The Evening Standard

Pete Still In Tabloid Hell:

'I don't want to turn into Peter Libertine Rehab King'

The flat is a pleasant, airy space in Clerkenwell's Exmouth Market, conspicuously bereft of bloody needles or scenes from Trainspotting. A pale, thin, but relatively healthy Pete Doherty--formerly Libertine and currently Britain's most infamous rock star--is talking, with great articulacy, about how music should mean far more than drugs, while continually smoking crack and smack in front of me.
We are in his bedroom, which contains nothing more sinister than a bed, an electric guitar, a sofa, and two members (guitarist Patrick Walden and drummer Jemma Clarke) of his new band, Babyshambles. Doherty is expounding on his past, his future ad the drug addiction that has had him thrown out of The Libertines by his co-frontman and best friend, Carl Barat.

"All I can do is assure them that, in the past year, I've calmed down a lot. I don't inject any more. But I know the only solution is to knock crack and heroin on the head completely before they knock me on the head. And that's the plan. I'm gonna have a go at Detox Five. They knock you out for a few days so you go through the withdrawal when you're sleeping."

"I don't want to go to America for 10 months to promote the new album. Carl does. Carl wants to sell a million records. Good luck to him. But I can't accept that he's gonna call himself The Libertines and sing my songs."