Episode 290 - Pete Doherty

Welcome everyone to So the Jerker on Songwriting. This is Simon, accompanied by Brian, and with us for episode 290 is an English singer songwriter, considered by many to be one of the finest wordsmiths of his generation. He first found fame in the early two thousands as a founder member and principal songwriter of The Libertines.

And as this episode lands in your feeds, he's just released his fifth solo album, Felt Better Alive, via his own strap originals label. We're delighted to welcome the brilliant Pete Doherty to the show. Pete was born in Hexham, Northumberland in nineteen seventy nine, to a military family. His dad Peter was a major, and his mum Jackie, who hails from our neck of the woods, by the way, was a Lance Corporal in the nursing corps.

His was an itinerant childhood, the family moving around Britain and Europe and living at various army barracks wherever his parents were stationed. Legend has it he first picked up the guitar around the age of eleven to win the favour of a female classmate. An intelligent and literate child, he excelled at school and at sixteen won a poetry competition.

In nineteen ninety seven, after completing his A levels, he moved to London, where he lived with his grandmother, brushed up on his guitar playing and studied English literature at Queen Mary and Westfield College. This same period marked the beginnings of Pete's close friendship with Carl Barat, then a drama student at Brunel University who'd been sharing a flat with Pete's elder sister, Amy Joe.

Pete and Carl later moved into their own flat in North London, which they christened the Albion Rooms, where they wrote songs together, founded the Libertines, and even played some of their first gigs. After a few years hard graft, the band eventually signed to Rough Trade towards the end of 2001, with bassist John Hassell and drummer Gary Powell completing the lineup.

Their debut album, Up the Bracket, produced by Mick Jones of the Clash, arrived the following year. Throughout two thousand three, however, Pete's ongoing substance abuse issues caused friction with the rest of the band, and he was temporarily dismissed.

during which time he put together another group, Baby Shambles. He returned briefly to the Libertines Fold, but the group disbanded indefinitely in two thousand and four, following the release of their eponymous second album, which shot straight to number one in the UK chart. There have been sporadic reunions over the years, one of which led to a third Libertines LP, 2015's Anthems for Doomed Youth.

A fourth studio efforts, All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, dropped last year, earned them another UK number one and showed they'd lost none of their dynamism as a band. Outside of the Libertines, Pete has issued three top ten albums with Baby Shambles, including 2005's Down in Albion and 2013's Sequel to the Prequel, while his solo works include 2009's Grace Wastelands.

twenty sixteen's Hamburg Demonstrations and a fascinating and rather charming twenty twenty two collaboration with French composer arranger Frederic Lowe called The Fantasy Life of Poetry and Crime. Pete's also a prolific painter whose work has been displayed internationally. He published the memoir, A Likely Lad, in twenty twenty-two, and a collection of his writing, The Books of Albion, in two thousand and seven.

If you're not already doing so, follow us wherever you get your pods and feel free to explore our archive of songwriter interviews. Support this Indian ad-free endeavour if you can at Sodajerka.com slash donate. Just before we hear from our guest, our thanks to Michael for his help setting this up. Okay, here we are talking song rating with the one Thanks for joining us.

Congratulations on the new album. Thanks very much. Yeah, I'm really, really proud of uh most of it. I love it. Yeah. Yeah, there's a real sense of playfulness and poetry on it, we thought. You've made a a lot of records over the years. How does this one feel now that it's ready to arrive? To me in my head it feels like it's already out there because

It's been written and recorded now for a good six months, ten months already, you know? It's like you gotta get it out. You gotta get it out. Let's just put it out, whack it out. And I thought that was the whole point of having our own label was that you could just do these things. But the powers that be, my friend and long suffering manager, he decided he wanted to do some some marketing planning and blah blah and obviously get the Libertines thing.

done because we've been promoting the Libs album. But this was written a lot of these songs were written around the time I was writing songs for the Libertines album. I don't think it's that they weren't good enough for that. It's just that they were my songs rather than collaborations with Carl and so they didn't, you know What tends to define Libyan song is that it's me and him done it together. Whereas a lot of these songs I think he felt there was nothing to add and

So they sat there. I did put a few in the forward. I mean obviously Baron's claw is on both records. But things like Calvados, Pot of Gold, Fot Better Alive. thingy I would have loved to have seen him go on the Libyan's album, but they just weren't they didn't want it. So

I've just s gathered them together and because they're mostly written and recorded around the same time, I think they work well as a bunch of songs. I feel like it's a complete collection and it's a bit of a cliche, but a good snapshot of that time. Folky bluesy. pastoral some of it and then as you say a bit of playfulness and silliness

with Fingy and Outer Tune Balloon. That's probably one of the songs on that is a bit older. I've been trying to finish that song for years and you have had one verse for it. And then with Mike Moore, who's produced this album and co written a few of the tunes as well, like, you know, added middle eights and choruses and things here and there. Yeah, he helped me finish out a chimballoon and And a few of the others, yeah.

Yeah. And the title, Felt Better Alive, is very striking. What does that mean to you, that phrase? When I'm doing a follow-up called FelBadDead Yeah. That might answer the question. I don't know no, I'm not really. I might do it under a pseudonym though, do you know what I mean? Just like singing a different accent like yeah.

I don't really know what it means. It doesn't really make any grammatical sense, does it? Felt better alive? Because if you feel better alive then by definition that means you must know what it is to be to be dead. Now if I don't quite know what it is to be dead, I think I definitely know what it is to be close to that. Mm. Without what you might call a conventional take on what it is to be alive and and free and happy, innovative commerce.

Yeah, I like that line. Uh I'd always plan to sing in a sweet and soulful way as only cowboys can. I'd always planned to sing in a sweet and soapful way as only the cowboys can but yes. Yeah. Do you envisage yourself as a kind of cowboy troubadour on this record?

In my most picturesque reveries I think I do, do you know what I mean? I can see myself on a worn saddle like in a trekking round the outskirts of Butfuck, Arizona, trying to evade the sheriff and make it out to the mountain shack where the boys are waiting with some moonshine and shoot some old Coca-Cola bottles off the fence and get round the fire and tell exaggerated stories about your pioneer ancestors and

I think so. I don't know. I mean, in my wildest fantasies I think this you know, songs like Pancho and Lefty by Townsman Sant. Or Tanged Up in Blue by Bob Dylan, you know, those real stories from Americana, they're the songs I would probably most like to have written, you know. I mean you me like the Beatles did it really well as well. You think of songs like Rocky Raccoon. You know? That sort of old old West tale of betrayal and revenge and you know, gunslingers hired guns and

Yeah, I think that's in me. I think you know, I've got that Robert Mitchum, John Wayne thing. I'll sit in front of Turner Classic movies, do an eight hour stint, watching old westerns and come away talking in a talking in a very strange accent and stuff. Video tornado is nine in all four.

And it seems like the album was largely written in Normandy, where you live. Do you feel like that setting influenced the music and lyrics in any way? two or three of the songs completely. And we've even got the sound of the sea on there in the Pret de la Mer. And when Mike Moore first came out, it was just me and him sat in the room downstairs, which is on the cliff edge, looking over the sea, and I had my dictaphone. which had some of the rough ideas on like a song uh empty room

was just me going round a few chords and he said, Well, what what's that? I said, Oh, it's just an unfinished idea so we put that together and that was really the birth of the album. I mean that dictaphone's got hundreds of ideas on from over the years and

I'd always wanted to find the right person to start mining it. And he was only ended up getting a a few songs in it and then the album was born, but they're still all there, all those half formed ideas, you know, when in the middle of the night when you just

You've got an idea and you say you you press record on your dictaphone or your phone or your laptop and you'll just put something down and then it will sit there for and you'll come back to it and you've just got this you know there's something there, like a snatch of a lyric or a snatch of a melody. That's how the album was born really, with the empty room, which is the empty room.

downstairs on the on the cliffs of Normandy, but coming away from the cliffs, you got the fields and the forests and there's a lot of wildlife around I still got wild pigs in in France, you know what I mean? I spend a lot of time walking the dogs in the forests and

And they're talking about introducing wild pigs actually back into England. But the farmers are an uproar about it'cause, you know, obviously they eat the crops and that. But um we ain't got enough wild spaces left. There are a few areas still left near us where

you do feel like you're somehow still in touch with with something ancient and, you know, if you walk there at night there's no street lamps or lights or motorways and you can see the stars. I mean, I love London. I love coming in like doing this promo and that but No, you can see the moon, but you can never see the stars'cause of all the light, you know what I mean? Yeah, the opening track Calvados Stack paints an incredibly vivid picture of of sort of rural French life, doesn't it?

Yeah, well that is where I'm in my head now, where I'm thinking about where I walk, there are a few cider farms, you know what I mean? And there's one fella in particular who still uses his horse and cart. So he's in the song Yeah. I love the little details in there, like the the horse's wiry mane or or the farmer's wife in the kitchen picking her teeth with a pocket knife and spitting in the fire. Things like that really bring a song to life for me.

Well, a nice one then. Yeah. Well that is about the specific a specific fella and his and his kitchen and his missus. I mean at first I was thinking like, you know, in these times I was thinking about is it a bit not out of order but, you know, to say about the fella at work and the wife back home in the kitchen but That's just how it was and how it is, you know what I mean. It could have been the other way around but

She's a fucking good cook, but anyway is missing so. And this Calvados stuff interests me. It really is a product of the region. You know, it's the equivalent of something like Scouse to Liverpool, you know, it's like specific just to

It's just to Normandy. I mean, Calvados is actually an area of Normandy. It's actually a region. And after the First World War, when the w the soldiers came home, there was obviously rebellion in the air in in Europe. There was, you know, communism taking over in in Russia.

Rosa Luxembourg and all that mold. They nearly created a communist state in pre Weimar Germany. And France was having trouble. So the government bought off a lot of these radicals by giving them land and did a deal with them saying you are like you can make this stuff and you can sell it yourself and we won't tax you if you just, you know, stay there and calm down, which is how Normandy was formed as well, in a way, when William the Conqueror's grandad, Rollo,

He was a Viking who the kings of France gave Normandy to Norman, Norman, the Northmen, the Vikings, on the condition that he just stayed away from Paris and the rest of France. And that's how Normandy was created. So it's always had this strong sense of identity, Normandy, you know what I mean? And without wanting to appear just like, you know, a a tourist

I really was sort of sold hook line and sinker on the mythology of the place. I mean it's everything, you know, from the Second World War, the history of the the beach landings and the the British Army and the resistance and the Nazi occupation right back through to the Vikings then the Romans So this one particular drink being

so strongly identify the people and aside from that, it tastes delicious as well. And the way it's made it's just it's all about time. There is no there's no magic recipe. You just have to wait. You know what I mean? It's time and it's the seasons and it's the apples. and then the apples they turn into the apple juice and then you just wait and eventually that apple juice will become the cider. And then this huge Jules Verne

type contraption, like the iambic distiller thing where it is, comes round. It's like something out chitty chitty bang bang costs with Mad Max. it come round, they still got the same machines because you know I mean there's only one bloke that has the actual engineering plans for him and he goes from farm to farm, cider farm to cider farm, turning the cider into the Calvados, you know?

So all these cider farms, they've got all these underground caverns and barns with the barrels in of all this Calvados and each barrel tells a story, you know, from a different summer and Yeah, it's interesting stuff. So I was I went on a the guy who's got the bottle shop in town sells the ciders and the cowidos.

I'd pop in there and he he ended up taking me in his van round visiting the different producers who he he knows them all and then we talked about launching our own Calvados, like doing like a Pete Dockey Calvados, and he said, Oh, you should write a song for it and that's how it came along, so I wrote it and it was just it was the poem basically about the farmer and his wife and I put it to a little melody and I just had a recording on Medic the phone with the acoustic guitar and

And he wasn't really he was like yeah yeah, he wasn't really that into it. He couldn't hear the but last week when he heard the the Mike Moore version with the strings and the drums, he was like this. This is more like it, Black and I said, It's the same song, you just couldn't see it, could you? You couldn't hear it He said, No, no, but this is great, you see And I said, No, look, it's just like the apples, you know. It was there all along, you just gonna

Wait and let it grow and there it is. And they're all buzzing, all the cider farmers now, they're all arguing about whose wife it's about and Yeah. I'm getting loads of quakes of Calvados left on the doorstop.

We love how you build in all that kind of storytelling into your music. You're obviously really interested in the fine details of things, aren't you, and the experiences that you have and history and that sort of thing. Yeah, we all are, aren't we? I think that's Just as human beings.

as men, as people, as women, we just that's what we are, isn't it? We we live and we make things and we we build memories and If you can wrap a beautiful melody around a beautiful story, then that's the ultimate, really.

Yeah,'cause we come across all kinds of storytelling approaches from the people that we interview. You know, some people talk about trying to tell authentic stories about themselves in songs and other people create kind of heightened versions of things or people create entire fantasy worlds in their songs. Gwych chi'n gwych chi'n gwych chi'n gwych chi? Gwych chi'n gwych chi'n gwych chi?

In an ideal world. It probably would be. In an ideal world, I call it like the idea of of writing character driven songs, you know, like uh something like Big Black Smoke by The kinks, you know? The tale of the country girl who gets led astray in a big city and

A lot of pulp songs do that as well. You think of something like common people. It's like a novella, you know, or a small kitchen suit drama. But I always tend to make it about if not about myself, about an idealised or romanticized version of myself. But

With Ed Belly though, I really tried to write a song about a character. Ed Belly is the ballad of Ed Belly is a song on the album. Mm-hmm. But it started off as a well, it is an unfinished book, a fiction book about a lad from Coventry who's obsessed with the blues and He doesn't fancy like going into the family business of like scrapyard and drug dealing, so he manages to get into America via Canada or Mexico and work that weird shit. And he just goes round America, hitchhiking and on buses.

writing songs with his guitar on his back and and that's hopefully the first instalment of hopefully you'll be seeing more of Ed Belly, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the day the Baron died has a captivating story as well. That line about um the Baron's claw being made of silver and gold and bits of iron ore. That feels like something out of folklore, that where did that image come from? That came from me and Mike me and Mike Moore. Do you know Mike Moore? Not personally.

He's a lad, he's some mercy size. Plays guitar for Liam Gallagher. Yeah. He was the lad that was telling you about he was going through the the dictophone of me. That was th those chords, so those three chords, the A minor and then the the diminished shape button. Up a bit and then the E back to the way we just go around like that and it was just going do.

Sounds like you're saying sounds like you're singing the bottom's claw and I went, I wasn't, but I fucking am now. And we built it from that. It just went on from there and then where the melody changes though and it goes da da da da da da da da da And then the second bit where it comes in like du

It's almost like a Coronation Street Emma Daily elegant, but there is something eerie about it as well and the whole thing is just suggestive of as you say this the story of a a folklore and tale of a baron and Yeah. We had f I think we had that was all done in a day and I think the vocal take and the guitar take that were on the album were done that day that we wrote it. For the day of the morning we he picked that melody up for an addict of we g we had at it.

We wrote the song and recorded the vocal and guitar acoustic guitar take that day. He's obviously taken away and put strings on it and the mad instant karma drums and all that. But yeah, that was a beautiful creative creative day. It just happened really fast and

It's pretty magical actually how that happened. Yeah. We had enormous family. I think there originally there were twelve verses all like telling this story of the baron and it got a bit silly. We had to take some of it out. It's a bit rude.

And then obviously took it to Carl and he loved it and the lyrics changed slightly but Yeah, there's so much evocative imagery on the album from the titles, you know, like Star Docean or Ed Belly or Pokemon or whatever it is, down to the the phrases and the details of the lyrics that we've been talking about.

How do you kind of capture that stuff? Is that stuff that you're writing down? And then maybe drawing on them, going back to your notebooks or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean that's really my my way of working is I have a typewriter and have my my dictaphone and I mean journals, notebooks, journals.

writing and and reading as much as I can. It is hard with the baby now these days to sit down but That's my joy really, is just get lost in lost in scraps of paper of ideas and and then juggle them about and shuffle them about and you know, put together mad collages, whether it be on the on the canvas or or in a song. These songs really perfectly sum up what it is I've been doing on my own, what I get off on.

I'm really excited actually that I've managed to get Mike in and get it together to get these songs finished off, you know, things like Pokemony. I always had a strong idea for it and I could just never I just never find that finishing bit. I could never like there was always something missing. There's a chord missing, there was a a verse missing and finally it just all it all came together. Yeah.

And those lovely little bits of word play like dropping a clanger and writing a banger from How was a tune balloon, are they things that you've you've got sort of written down somewhere that you pull into the song?

No, that was an ad lib, that one. I think that that outchin balloon one, that was the one I was struggling to with some of the lyrics for and I wasn't sure about those lines, dropped a clanger out a bang. It's funny you mention it'cause I was listening to that the other day and I thought exact

Fuck it, it's alright. It's it's just the sort of thing people say, isn't it, you know, drop a clanger. But it is it's funny'cause it's kind of thing that an English person would would know. It's just an everyday thing to say, but it's also the kind of thing that my wife who speaks to the English but She didn't have a fucking clue what I meant by drop the clanger, you know. I quite like that and I think I lo it's you'd be amazed how many people from all round the world, South America, Spain

Asia who who listen to British music with this kind of thing this is the kind of thing that delights them, do you know what I mean? Being able to learn you know, it's not the sort of thing you can find on Google Google Translate, do you know what I mean? Yeah.

these days, I don't know, but y you see what I'm saying? The Welsh probably haven't even gotten to it yet. No, they have they're always dropping clangers, aren't they? Yeah, dropped the clanger. I wonder where that comes from. Must have an origin somewhere. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

There's a nice mix of humour and and melancholy across these songs. Do you find it easier to write in one mode or the other? It's in us, isn't it? Humor and melancholy. For better or for worse, it's just who I feel I am, I think. I quite like that though. It's a very poignant analysis you've done there. Thank you for that observation. That's quite uh that's quite sweet. Humour and melancholy. I take that. That's nice.

You're very welcome. And you've written about kind of Albion and Arcadia and this imagined vision of Britain for years. Do you still see that as a as a central theme in your work? Yeah, well it's it's something who um i it's just the thing that that in that interests me. You know what I mean? Not all not just in my work but in my everyday life and the sort of thing that I s the things that I still watch and enjoy. I mean I'm still I still think some of the best writing in modern culture

has come from people like Goldener Simpson, you know, going from from from Tony Hancock uh the radio shows, the T V and his couple of films which were like they weren't that successful at the time, but they really stood they really stood the test of time I think. Things like Punch of Judy Man

that's captured a certain well what y as as you just said, the melancholy but also tragic comedy of life, you know, for your average your average Englishman. Like, you know, that scene where he's on the train and he's all in the bowl in the bowl of hat. and he's having this attack of existential angst and he really wants to go to Paris and become an artist, but he's trapped in this r mundane job. He's going, What's it all about? Where are we going? And the bloke next to him goes, Walterloo.

And then what they did with Steptoe and Son as well and that. I mean, the the humour, the glorious humour in that is only matched by the sadness and tragedy, you know. I mean

black comedy, a lot of it. You know, the same with things like porridge as well, you know? Only falls on horses, porridge, rise and damp, these things, you know, it it just it's in England that I still I still see as well. You know what I mean? It's like okay, there's no iPhones or digital technology, but that England is still there, you know what I mean? Yeah. I think Dredge in the Mouth of the Humber is a is a Hancock reference, isn't it?

Absolutely, yeah. He's eating his cornflakes or his Tony the Tiger things in the morning. And he's going, Wait, where's my Tony the Tiger badge? He was ah I've got that one. And he's eating and he goes, Hey Tab, which ones do you want? You want the sugared ones or the ones you put sugar on yourself? He goes, Oh, the already sugared ones, please. Otherwise it'll clecks at the bottom. Those last few mouthfuls are like dredging the mouth of the humber. Ha ha ha.

I I always had that excerpt, you know, like in between songs when you're fucking about trying to tune up and that. I used to get the sound man to play clips like that. It's just little tidbits and tastes, you know, for people who you know, I know there are people out there who love that stuff, who love Hancock and any references to that I think is just magical for me if it's the sort of thing that I you know.

I think they call them Easter eggs, I don't know. Yeah. I forget, but Carl's always talking about them. I think he hides them too well though. Carl Barat I mean No. He loves everything like that. Yeah, we love looking for little things like that and like on Felt Better Alive for example, you've got those kind of references to Hancock, but then you jump from like London to Toledo to a lay by north of Telford.

You draw in a whole range of things, don't you? You don't just stick to the kind of the one idea. Yeah, there's a baby shit anble song as well. Called Utalk. Doesn't mention Toledo, as it goes, so Utah. You talk a good gooe. Utah. Yeah, it mentions Utah. And it was weird. I got a real uh I made a real connection with people in Utah who Rice. Presumably was a reason for me mentioning Utah and sounds a little bit like Utah and it was a bit of a corny

a corny line really, a silly rhyme, but it was amazing the effect it had. It had like a I was actually gonna do this one off festival thing in Utah and then I got I wasn't allowed in, I got stopped at the airport and they sent me back to London but Yeah, that's gonna make a fortune as well, just from that one corny rhyme.

But the lay by North Telford, yeah. I love singing that line. It's a bit yeah, it's that's quite Hancockyan as well, you know what I mean? Dreamt of gunfighting Toledo. But when I open my eyes I was in a lay by north of Telford and a row lay by Yeah, I love the extra detail of it being an A road. That's great. Yeah. I like the idea of some kid in Buenos Aires going, What is this Delford? you know?

And Googling A Road in Telford and then I just I like the idea. The number of times as well. I've s I'm spending a lot of time on a road at the moment with the lib stuff we've done and now with this new album and So I'm spending a lot of time in bunks as well, you know. I don't know if you know that feeling when you wake up on a tour bus and for th those fur few seconds you don't really know who you are, where you are, where you've been or you know.

I loved that moment. It's then it's like open the curtains at the bunk and then step out into the world and it could be Telford. It could be Toledo. It's not very often Toledo and it hasn't ever been but but one day, you know what I mean? Yeah.

And you've spoken in the past about having kind of bursts of creativity. When you write it, is that usually because you feel a a sense of urgency to do it? There is. In an ideal world the urgency would be there because it's always seems to me that you need the solitude. to write. Well I do, you need the sology to write.

And uh something that can seem like tranquility, but actually I think there's an anxiety to my getting things done. I think that the uh urgency and anxiety is what fuels a lot of actually getting things finished. Do you know what I mean? I feel a real sense of relief actually at getting these songs finished because we really wanna sell some records. You know what I mean? We wanna sell some physical copies. That's why we've done the label.

You know what I mean? We don't wanna just get downloads. We wanna sell records. We wanna sell vinyl. We wanna make people records and sell'em. So I gotta get out there and flog it, which means a lot of time moving around and playing gigs and not a lot of time writing. So I feel like I'm armed with these songs and ready to go. And if anything else comes along in the meantime, I it'll be a it'll be a blessing and it'll be joyous but I don't feel that urgency now.

to have to write anything, at least not for the next six months, you know what I mean? Which is a good place to be in for me because in the past I've never had that completion. I've always had to just get on with the next thing straight away and you know, to be in a mindset where I can just go out and say, Right, I'm gonna play these songs and enjoy playing'em rather than I've gotta write a new song, I've gotta do a new song tonight, which is how I always felt in the past, like

Maybe it's just that's what's come with age, I don't know. Maybe some some people they always maybe have that fire where they have to be doing something new but I feel like I'm hit a a sweet spot at the moment. I'm gonna try and ride it out. You know, it might last a couple of days, but hopefully it'll last till the record comes out and then Who knows? I got number one in the Welsh indie charts with my last solo album, so if I could do that again I'd be well happy.

Lovely. Yeah, we were listening to uh your work with um Frederick Lowe on the fantasy life of poetry and crime. That's a quite a compelling mix we thought of two different sensibilities. We wondered if uh that kind of collaboration is something that also stimulates ya. Yeah.

Yeah, I saw him recently. He came to to Normandy recently. Right. Similar to what he did last time. He came basically last time with these melodies with no lyrics. He came with these songs and I just wrote the lyrics and he he came with three more. Actually I mentioned Rosa Luxemburg earlier in the conversation. One of the songs is called Rosa Luxemburg and I think it's up there with Out of the stuff I did with him, in my heart I think there's one song called The Ballad of

dot dot dot which I always thought was a beautiful lyric. I was like longing to write lyrics for it and managed to get There's three we've done. Don't know what's gonna happen if we're gonna get another record done, but but it was a very specific way of working with Fred. He's he just comes with with with quite strong finished ideas, you know what I mean? We don't hammer out songs together really back and forth. Nice.

the chords, a lot of them are quite deceptively simple sounding, you know what I mean? I have to get him to show me what he's doing and it's beautiful songs, beautiful melodies and but I don't know when I'm gonna get the time to finish that off. He's doing some interesting things. He's doing some spoken word thing with Michel Wellbeck, you know, the French writer. Right.

Controversial figure actually at the moment, France. Quite a divisive figure. I was really surprised when Fred said he'd he was doing a track with him because the last album he did, he'd done a track with Michelle Wellbeck and the record company wouldn't release the album if it had the track on Michelle Wellbeck. That's how, you know, some of his political opinions have upset people then Understandably, some of them but

So yeah, he's doing lots of stuff on his own. But as I say, three songs we've done. Rosa Luxemburg, The Sea Will Find You And another one called Kaleidoscope, and they're three quite similar to Balladov, they're very melodic, sweeping, film soundtracky melodies that he just for me, I'm a sucker for the, you know.

Yeah. The epidemiologist is a favourite of mine from that record. I mean it's just musically there's something so touching about that music, but that couplets heads that are shrunken still can be clever. Ships that are sunken can still hold treasure. That's one of your finest, that one. Oh nice you know, it m I think there was a there's a Stone Roses lyric where he said I can't think what song it is it's it Elephant Stone where he goes Yah shrunken head.

looking down on me above. Send me home like I always like that. I always like the image of shrunken heads as well, you know, the voodoo voodoo thing that you know. I think I've heard you say you don't really see yourself as a craftsman per se, but when you're talking about those kind of lines and how kind of refined they seem, is there a lot of graph? Yeah, I'm gonna change my change my stance on that. I feel like I am a craftsman actually, yeah. Fuck it.

Yeah. I was gonna say'cause I wondered whether you were just being modest because you there must be a lot of graft that goes into refining those things in the way that you do. No, absolutely there is. I think maybe that was in a different context. I can't think what. Or sometimes you say things in an interview in you'll say it in an accent or something c in reference to something else and it'll be a German interview and you won't

he won't realise you're you're copying someone, you know. Like you might do an impression of Donald Trump Talking about migrants and then he'll he'll just quote it word for word. But it's not the sort of thing around saying, I am a craftsman. But fuck it, I am, yeah. Yeah. Yeah,'cause the song like, you know, Calvados, which we've talked about, that's a I mean, it's a that's a beautifully crafted song, you know what I mean? It hits in all the right places, you know, the way the chorus arrives.

It is a sort of an old fashioned crafted song, you know what I mean? But hopefully without being too much by numbers. It's a folk song, isn't it? You know what I mean? It's got a fucking car hos in it for Christ's sake. It's like you know, it's got apples in it. It's like what Is it primarily lyrics first when you're working on these things? No. Songs like that, it has to be both. It doesn't work

I find if I concentrate too much on the lyrics then I'll lose the I'll lose the song, you know? I lose the melody and I have to when it just comes out all at once. That's the that's the magical thing, you know, just going round and round trying different things. Obviously you're you're jotting it down, but I think somewhere there's a few pages of variations on the

the Calvados one because it is so short and so it's quite snappy like that. There's three or four or five pages of and all the different variations and trying to work out where the horse goes and to different descriptions of the horse and the trees and what the farm was doing and the you know, putting the dung in the orchard and are you not gonna mention the dung in the

in the orchard in the song it doesn't work to just say tend in the orchard rather than'cause what they do is they let the cow's shit in the orchards and it gives the the nutrients of the apple trees a certain flavour and blah blah blah.

but just tending the orchard rather than scattering the cow shit in the orchard. But it was interesting watching a it's a right jumble as well, you know what I mean? It's like a code, it's some sort of cipher looking back in it where I've you know, I've had to maybe write it down in my left hand because I'm stretching over the table and Does that the Rock is it the Rock'n'Roll Museum in Liverpool? You know you got that museum with the Beatles drum kits in and the suede and blur.

Yeah, the British Music Experience it's called That's I I quite like the in there you've got the lyrics. I think they had the lyrics to the original handwritten lyrics to I think it was an Oasis song and a Suede song and It was lovely to see that. Do you know what I mean? Actually to see it there the moment it came out. Yeah. I like that with the Paul McCartney book as well, you know, with the lyrics.

Yeah, I mean as well as writing songs, you know, you've written sort of poetry and you've published your diaries and stuff. I take it you approach lyrics quite differently to to poetry or prose because obviously with the latter two you're not you're not thinking in terms of of the musical elements of things.

Yeah, I'm quite nervous really about my about my poetry, but I have knocked together recently a a little magazine which is something I've been trying to do for a while. It's basically a prototype this one. Banging'em out for ten quid. So it's called Onstrap.

It's kind of a fanzine, there's the reviews of bands on the label, Real Farmer, I don't know if you've heard them, Dutch punk band. Uh but the short stories in uh there's lyrics. Actually look, that's the my titanium mast tripping between heavy rolls. I'm a little honeybee and you you drip with the sweetest melody. Wonderful is the old breathless swampy, full gushing, the push and pull of the tired, low highs, tides cough up plastic waste.

on a million waves, And the oceans have place for a billion graves. A man of Kent met a Kentish man, and they hatched a damnedest plan. Devious scam, an artful blagger with mockney swagger, Quick as a flash, old life passed, and now comes the final fall, the last gas crawl to the old river at the bottom of the knoll, and then out to sea, and we'll see Saint Jacques and Cockle Shells.

Now it had a sea through a trillion dollar telescope and all the world Oh yeah, so that's look, that's me and Fred. And that's the lyrics to that song we're working on recently, the um Anna Wands saw the world through a small plastic kaleidoscope. so in that for example that would be what i would call one of my poems mostly stream of consciousness, but from that I'll maybe pull two or three lines that I'll put in a song. Do you know what I mean? Because

I love it. I love poetry. You know, it's my thing. But I know a lot of people, I just don't. they don't connect with it. But you can sometimes they say it's like better to trap a fly with honey than than a swatter, do you know what I mean? You can sometimes lure people in. We have a we have a beautiful line and

And then hopefully they'll have a spare tenor to buy the fanzine. But there's some good you know what, if I do say so myself, there's some good writing here. It's not all mine. I mean, I left the typewriter on the tour bus and Carl, you know, the set list some artwork. And then there was a time for a few weeks where we wanted to keep the tour going, but we weren't really talking, me and Carl, so we were only communicating by by typewritten notes.

When I put them in there, they're quite funny. He's not that happy about it,'cause it's a bit rude, but it's quite funny. I thought, Uh set the Saturnath controls of the soul for the only place you ever called home. The place they couldn't gentrify where the rents don't climb'cause you can't sublet the mind, you can't evict me from my own memory.

Yeah. etau where anyone who's got any crap poetry, decent poetry, short stories, reviews, political manifestos, send them to their hotel La Ray en Ver Rue General Leclerc, seven six seven, nine oh we paid two P a word for every article published, so Right. No, it's uh really nice to hear the way that kind of stuff enriches your work.

And, you know, we've interviewed hundreds of songwriters at this point, but very few people think the way you do about language and about lyrics and stuff. And I wonder can you can you kind of point to the things in your in your upbringing maybe or in your life that kind of led you to that point? Is it is it about a lot of reading when you're very young or what brought you to that place of understanding language in this way?

hard to say really, I don't know. But if I sat down and thought about it, I might be I'll give you a half bait answer, but I really can't say. Just the love and the joy of of words and language, I think we all we all have it though, don't we? We all have it. I think I was My mum always used to like sh my mum actually always to print her own photocopied little poetry collection, Time f Time for a Rhyme with Jackie Doty, and she'd sell'em to the neighbour for ten P.

It's mostly poems about housework and stuff like that, but it was or there's one poem she had about she's walking down the street and thought all the blokes were looking at her whisper, but it was'cause she had her skirt tucked into the back of her knickers by mistake and

I sp thinking about it now actually, uh that that must have influenced me, you know what I mean, as a kid mm seeing my m writing and and reading, you know, testing the poems I mean, but singing as well, I think, singing and uh she told me the first my first words were I was quite young, you know, I was I was maybe like ten, eleven months, and I went head and bed. Head and bed.

It's like Ooh He rhymed You know what I mean? So I think yeah, maybe it's in your in you from an inf infant infancy and maybe if I was a kid and did that and my mum had shown delight and joy in a child saying this, then I would have felt that probably joy and delight. you know, felt it myself, from her, rather than just shut up and get to sleep or You know. Yeah. Shut up, little shit. Um yeah, may it does make it but I don't know. I don't know. What's it? Nurture and nature and

But I think we always when you think about language and how it's formed and what it is and how we communicate, it's impossible not really to be fascinated with it and mesmerized with it, you know. Language, accents uh social history. linguistic, you don't even have to get into semantics or, you know, the importance of spelling or

or grammar, it's all magic. Give me it all. I've always regretted no I mean obviously I'm picking up French a lot more now with the babies. The first language is gonna be French but It is something I I think I could have worked on more with languag is is, you know, foreign languages. I think the gift of having another tongue other than, you know,

your mother's is for me, speak Spanish, French, Portuguese, you know. I know a few people who can who can do I mean my my my granddad, he was he was from Liverpool. He was a taxi driver in Liverpool and he spoke He's weird, he spoke about four or five languages, but he never used him or anything. It was just because when he grew up in the thirties in Liverpool, it was a very multicultural community, do you know what I mean? Right. His dad was French.

His mother was a Russian Jew. Obviously he married a he married a Scout girl, you know, so he and he had all these languages but he never he never used them, but he used to always just like burst into song or swearing in all different languages and

And I think the Smiths were a big influence on you growing up Wendy. Massive. I was I was when I got to fifteen, sixteen discovered the Smiths. Yeah, I fell for'em hard. I was just everything about them, the guitars and the the lyrics, it's it's to this day I think that they reach places yeah, incredible heights of accomplishment. And his solo stuff as well, you know what I mean? Well that you know, you are the quarry or is it we are the quarry? One of the two. You are the quarry, I think, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Amazing songs. He hasn't written many bad songs mostly, I mean. Yeah. We were saying earlier we could imagine Morrissey singing one of your lines like, Um, We will die in the class we were born, but that's a class of our own, my love, from Time for Heroes. أرلت أرلت أرلت أرلت أرلت أرلت أرلت أرلت

Yeah, we're trying to get him on our label. I don't know what the uh what the odds are. I actually wrote him a letter I haven't got it here, but I wrote him a letter with a proposition. But we'll see. We'll see. We were supposed to support him with the libertines. in the Dublin and Manchester he asked us to sport him.

And because few members of the band aren't don't like him, we turned it down but I said, I'll do it, I'll do it on my own. Like I mean, far for fee. But they didn't want to do it, so I don't know. I guess you can definitely trace the influence though, can't you, from his kind of British kitchen sink type images and and it's always wrapped up in some kind of tragedy and romance and and comedy as well. I think that comes through quite strongly in your stuff, doesn't it?

Yeah, if you think about a song like Still Ill, you know, that set the bar pretty high for the the grimness You know, but also the you know, the the the flowers in the dustbin, you know, under the iron bridge we kissed and although I ended up with sore lips. I decree today that life is simply taking and not giving. England is mine and it owes me a living. Ask me why and I'll spit in your eye. Ask me why and I'll die.

Do you feel like you get better at songwriting as you go on? Is it the kind of practice that benefits from sort of experience and and wisdom? Don't know. I don't know if it does. D in different ways, different type of songwriting. I think when you're younger there's maybe less for some people I think there's less of a filter.

if you've just got this burning lust to write, perform, you know, and just get it out there and and get it down and But I don't know, I think it's something very I mean, it's like the apple, isn't it? The apple It's still the same apple, you know what I mean? That grows in the same way. It's still the same pure thing. It's a song, you know? It's a song.

It's a poem. It's it's that pure thing, you know. Whether you whether you were doing it twenty years ago, whether you're doing it In two hundred years it's still gonna be the apple, you know? Yeah. And th there probably is a certain amount of value to naivety in songwriting as well, I think, you know.

Like as you said, you know, the the sort of like early like libertine song or the most popular libertine songs like Don't Look Back Into the Sun or Can't Stand Me Now, they're probably just as much as a product of youthful enthusiasm as they are any kind of like refinement or craft, I would imagine.

Yeah, and it just happened very, very quickly as well. I mean, we were we were precious about it. We didn't just put out any old crap, but it would happen very quickly. We just snatched these moments where, yeah, look, I got these chords, bang, I got this riff.

It would a and it'd be that'd be it, bang and then we'd do it and then we'd teach the band and then we'd play it and then we'd record it. It was just bang bang bang bang bang. We never really used to think about it. It was just always gut feeling and I think you do capture some of that on the on the last album as well, you know, like on um Run, Run, Run and and Merry Old England. It's like it's like you do tap into that youthful spirit on on songs like that.

Yeah, yeah, I was really I really I was really happy with Merry Old England done. Something happened though. There was another verse for that that that we wrote and then we we we went to bed. It was on the tour bus went to bed and no one had recorded it or written it down.

And everyone was gutted and we couldn't remember it. But we caught it in the video, the general idea of it about the two lads, the two migrant kids who end up working in the car wash but Have there been a lot of lost verses over the years, PC?

There's been a few, yeah. There was one song in particular there's a film called Saint Martin's Lane with your man, who's the actor who directed he he was a great actor, but he went on to direct The Night of the Hunter with Robert Mitchum, you know? Charles Lawton. So there's an amazing Charles Lawton film called Saint Martin's Lane. And on the streets of London there used to be teams of performers, street performers, reciting poetry, reciting Kipling's verse where uh

go placidly and m and they they'd entertain the cues, so people were cueing for the opera and the theatre and they'd put the hat round and it was a good trade, you know what I mean? And they'd have someone like picking the pockets round the back and all that and it was a thing. It was a proper subculture and this film's about this fella It's kind of tragic tragic hero played by Charles Lawton. And I sat up watching it one night out of my nut.

with a mate of mine and I had the guitar on my lap and I was so inspired by one of the melodies of these old songs. I wrote a kind of mini opera and I was like, You gotta get this down, put this down and blah blah blah. I don't know, I think I was on ketamine or something, so I was proper out there. There's nowhere uh you know I mean, it was like a hot air balloon and he'd he'd almost let go of the rope.

But I needed to get back to F so I made sure that he he recorded it all and then at the end of the night I was like, Let's hear that back and I knew in my heart something s he made something special, like this is like you know, this could be another Grace Wasteland or something.

and the record button hadn't been on and we got two hours of this Well I'd felt you know, when you're on Ketman and you feel like you've found the centre of the universe and all meaning and all all truth and it's been captured in a in one line and one melody, it's gonna change the world. We lost it and I still weep when I think about that. Oh. Yeah. But there you go. It's like the overhead kick I scored once that No one saw'cause there were two dogs fighting.

It was a Sunday league morning local team and there's no nets in the goal either, so no one even fucking I was like, I just went I just went and stopped caught over a kick. And it was like, Fuck off, Docky, go and get the ball it got miles as well. Ha ha ha. We're sorry to end on this painful note. There was another one as well, the Brixton Academy, where someone threw an apple, right? Full pelt, straight from my head.

Right. And it was in the break before the solo Time for Heroes, right? And I stopped, caught the apple, thought it me in the face, took a bite out of it, threw it back and then crashed in the opening chord while Carl started the solo. But these were the days before iPhones. So it's not been captured, but I swear to God. I haven't. I cherish you, my love. Yeah. Swear to God. That's Welsh Pete. He saw it. He remembers it. Rob Bryden's little brother. He remembers it. Yeah.

Oh. Well that's all from us, Pete. Thanks so much for chatting about the new record. Wow, it was a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me on. Thanks for your kind words about the record as well. That was Pete Doherty talking to us about his latest record, Felt Better Alive. Hope you enjoyed that. We certainly did. Pete's a unique character, isn't he? He sure is, yeah, with a very distinctive way of uh expressing himself about his work. Yeah, yeah. All without the aid of a safety net.

I love that story at the end there about him catching an apple on stage. Yeah, apples were uh a recurring motif throughout the chat, weren't they? It's just great to get into the detail of how he thinks about his art and about craft as well, and to kind of press him on the details of the writing process, I think, because his new stuff is as good as anything he's done, isn't it? Really. I agree, yeah. And um it's also another great example of how collaboration works.

You know, as he said early on, when he was working with Mike Moore and and Mike thought he was saying the Baron's Claw, which is such a vivid image, you know, Pete immediately seized on that and said, Well, I wasn't saying that, but I am now And really that's the mentality you want to have when you're in a creative situation like that. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean just having the person you're working with mishear something can send you down a fruitful path, can't it? Exactly, yeah.

It sounds like Mike was really important when it came to extracting ideas from the dictaphone as well. Yeah, but you know, at the heart of it it's Pete's brain really, isn't it, that's given us all of this colourful imagery and and married it to the music. Yeah, and you know, despite all the hoopla and and the sort of controversy surrounding the Libertines and Pete Other bands over the years, it's great that people never really lost sight of his gift for that.

Yeah, you know, I mean he's an important voice in the lineage of British songwriters, isn't he? So, you know, we're just glad we got this chance to understand how his brain works. So thanks to Peter for the insightful conversation and to Michael for getting this arrangement. Felt better alive is out now and we'll be back again soon.