Pete Doherty: Likeness

“The more you read and the more you teach yourself, the less you rely on something like drugs to take you to a better place.”

Pete Doherty

Definitions and objects

Reading

“No, because it's not like they're the only songs we have. They're like children; you shouldn't really have a favourite. Unless one of your kids develops into a pervert.”

Pete Doherty

February 2005, Guitar and Bass, on whether publishing Babyshambles songs online would cause legal problems when they were released on an album.
Miscellaneous

Children

“She was getting pally with a scally in the alley
Giving head for gear
She called a spade a spade
Got slit from ear to ear
I showed no decorum
Spilled my heart out on the forum
Like a snapshot of the most tragic day
Carl is kept sedated, for the frontman elevated
While McGee does all he can to ruin my band and keep me out the way
In this industry of fools, musclemen and ghouls
If you're not a puppet or a muppet then you might as well call it a day
The truth gets so distorted
The wall scrapings get snorted
I'm welcome back if I give up crack
But you gave me my first pipe anyway”

Pete Doherty

"Gang of Gin" (never released owing to threats of legal action by pop mogul Alan McGee)
Lyrics and poetry

Truth , Fools , Way , Heart

“There's a slow train rumbling east of a place called Eden
Feeling wind-blown and proud as the trees upon the plain
And a stranger's voice talked to me of liberty and freedom
Yeah, it seems like he done gone wrong again
And he wears that hat like shame
Well he tasted the fruit of another
And when his Margie, when she discovered
Said she's gonna love him ten times more
Ain't nobody's business if she do”

Pete Doherty

"East of Eden"
Lyrics and poetry

Love , Feeling , Business , Tree

“Mental-stability, I would say. I’d like to achieve a fluidity, where everything stays consistent – always doing shows, always with the chance to release records, meeting new people.”

Pete Doherty

Rockfeedback.com (around 2002), when asked about his goals for the future.
Miscellaneous

People , Chance

“There's a point you reach before you're perverted and tainted by all the things that drag you into the music business, like avarice or a lust for fame. The original reason why I started was some feeling of community, equality, wanting to fight for things you believe in. Any kid who's gone to a state school knows what it's all about - bullying, racism. And you've just got to make a stand.”

Pete Doherty

2004, The Socialist Review; on why it was important to do the Love Music, Hate Racism gig
Music and politics

School , Music , Feeling , Communication

“I got bitten last night actually. Just some bloke bit me. I wasn't doing anything and he just bit me. I was in a public telephone box in the centre of London and some fella came up and started biting me. Nah, I didn't bite him back. I hit him with a telephone, right on the hooter and it exploded like a ripe tomato”

Pete Doherty

July, 2003
Miscellaneous

Night , Box

“Once upon a time…
When the cold wind that blows,
when the cold wind that blows in my heart,
it was a summer breeze and she would meet me in Chinatown,
for opium and tea
and she always brought me flowers
but I spared you those old ballads
All those songs I couldn’t play
But every giro day she’d dress me like a lady boy
And take me high out of the way
Don’t let the horse chase the new deal away, no
If we make love in the morning
I see your eyes look like two marbles in your head”

Pete Doherty

"Lady Don't Fall Backwards"
Lyrics and poetry

Love , Making love , Way , Boy

“Drugs don’t work. They don’t even make you forget – only momentarily, because if something’s that painful, nothing’s going to make you forget it. You think they’ll fill the hole, but the hole just gets deeper… It’s like trying to fill in a hole without a spade.”

Pete Doherty

The Sunday Times, May 14, 2006
Drugs

Pain , Thinking , Forgetting

“You can't get that feeling anywhere else. It's communion. It's like being washed away in the ocean, carried aloft on a wave.”

Pete Doherty

On performing, interview by Neil McCormick, March 2003
Music and politics

Feeling

“‘You can only be so thick-skinned. You can only pretend not to care for so long before you have to admit that you hate being made to look like an idiot. I hate seeing myself misquoted. I hate being linked romantically with girls I’ve been close to for years but never slept with. It’s just upsetting, isn’t it? My nan reads and believes these things. I say, “Hiya Nan, how are you getting on?””

Pete Doherty

and she’ll say, “Are you all right? What about that cat you injected with crack?”’
Mail On Sunday, September 2008

Hate , Girl , Cats , Reading

“Broken glass. It's just like glitter, isn't it?”

Pete Doherty

NME (New Musical Express), November 2005
Definitions and objects

“The main instinct a lot of the time is to masquerade and hide the truth at all times. Whereas in reality what happens in songs is laying bare the truth. So a lot of time it's fighting that instinct, and the songs become almost confessional. They can also be quite condescending to myself, almost like I'm putting myself down.”

Pete Doherty

Definitions and objects

Truth , Reality , Time , Fight

“Carl's all right. It's just like EastEnders really. He's still my kid.”

Pete Doherty

NME (New Musical Express), December 15, 2006, when asked if the Libertines were a perfect vehicle for his early dreams.
Carl Barat

“Just when you get really wound up, you turn a corner and you're somewhere else completely. You find an Arcadian glade - a glimpse of paradise in the middle of it all. And that's why you persevere. That's why you don't chuck yourself off a building or shoot yourself at the same time as someone else, like he [Carl] wanted us to.”

Pete Doherty

The Guardian, January 10, 2003.
Arcadia

Time , Perseverance

“Basically, too many other people made important decisions for us and we just wrote songs and worried about clothes and girls. In the early days he came round once with this girl who had convinced him that I was just a weirdo and that we had an unhealthy relationship. He sat me down and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t see so much of each other? Maybe we should knock the band on the head? It’s not really going anywhere, is it?" I was desperate for us to stick together and see it through because I never stopped believing. When we got signed, Carl was shocked. I had prepared myself and had been reading the NME since I was 16. Carl wasn’t like that.”

Pete Doherty

Mail On Sunday, September 2008
Carl Barat

People , Girl , Decision , Reading

“Make no mistake
She sheds her skin like a snake
On the dirty road to fame.”

Pete Doherty

"There She Goes (A Little Heartache)"
Lyrics and poetry

“Has there ever been a musician of cultural significance who's been aware they're significant? Maybe it's a generation whose parents came from a working class environment and because they were rootless in a way, like me and him, they latched onto that as an identity. Maybe we romanticise what our parents wanted to escape from. We're, like, fantasising out a living.”

Pete Doherty

NME (New Musical Express), March 13, 2004
Music and politics

Way , Parent

“The Thames and the Mersey, the Tyne and the Wear and the Clyde
They spew slums like gravy on the banks of the poisonous tide
They washed up a pale thin girl
Alone in her ivory tower
Scratching her skin with the thorns that grow
On the stems of the wild flowers
What became of the love we knew?
We beat the swine black and blue
You and I
Me and you
What became of the love we knew?
What became of the working class?
Nike, Reebok, Adidas
Scratchcards, pitbulls, ecstasy
Hooray for the 21st Century”

Pete Doherty

"Hooray for the 21st Century"
Lyrics and poetry

Love , Girl , Flowers , Swine

“When she wakes up in the morning
She writes down all her dreams
Reads like the Book of Revelations
Or the Beano or the unabridged Ulysses
Oh, I really wanna know
So tell me, Where does all the money go?
Where does all the money go?
Straight, straight up her nose”

Pete Doherty

"What a Waster"(with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Money , Books , Dreams , Reading