5. Can't Stand Me Now

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcast. This programme contains strong language, adult themes and sleas. You tell me I've got a bad reputation. Well tell me five things I've done that warrant this bad reputation. No one's ever come up with one. I used to get a lot of bands that come up to me and say, we're much more rock and roll than you mate. I hope not. Fair enough. Good luck. See ya.

The naughty's indie guitar explosion saw a sudden heady rush of fame, fans, and access to drugs for young musicians around the UK. Not unexpectedly, this led to some healthy and some deeply unhealthy competition. Everyone was like competing a bit in the scene. Luke Pritchard the King. So when you did an interview, quite often they would say

Oh well, such and such from this band said this about your music. And then you would be like, Well what I'm gonna say and so they they did do that, bands being pitted against each other, like battle royale for bands, you know. I mean I think I might have started that. Johnny Burrell Razorlight I didn't feel like people were really like taking my band on

On its own terms. It was everyone was writing about the Libertines. I couldn't read an article about rays like they just talked about us. And it was like, you know, the fact that I wasn't the Libertines. So I was just like, I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna slag off whatever, whoever you've got. But I wrote it down. I sat there with the the journalist. He asked me one question and I just recited everything that I decided that I was gonna say in advance. And he was like, whoa.

You got anything else? I was like, hold on. Got the piece of paper out of my back pocket. I was like, Yeah, do you want me to go after the Catholic Church or the Queen? And that sort of created this character which was great. I just thought that would kind of be fun. The press lapped this kind of thing up. This was feuding as entertainment, often playing out on BBC TV panel show, Nevermind the BuzzCorps.

mewn gwirionedd yn ymwneud â'r cymdeithas ac ymwneud â'r cymdeithas ac ymwneud â'r cymdeithas ac ymwneud â'r cymdeithas ac ymwneud â'r cymdeithas ac yw'r cymdeithas. My mate Johnny Burrell from Razorlight said he said that he thought the kooks were bending down with their asses in the air waiting to be fed by Radio 1. And say what Luke said in return. He said yeah, he's a twat. Like all those bands, they all consider us a little bit on the pop cheesy side.

We're like from the south, went to a stage school, like went to Brit school, went to BIM. And so we got a lot of the brunt of that. From two thousand and three to two thousand and five, I was at the Brit School. It's funny that Luke got made fun of for going to the Brit School'cause I remember the Optic Monkeys taking the mick out of me at the Brit Awards because they give like Brit School students like free tickets. When I accepted my awards

In the crowd, I recognized a bunch of people that went to the Brit school and I shouted them out. I also said that free performing arts at school is incredibly important. And then I think the Arctic monkeys went up and were like making fun of me. One of the scene's scrappiest bands were Art Brutes from London, a band so fighty that they formed in a riot. We went to watch P Doherty play in like two thousand and three.

And he broke a guitar string and he ran away and didn't play the gig. And there was like nearly a riot of the audience were really getting fighting. Dick. Like they're getting really quite like aggr aggressive and then this woman shouts, Surely there's a bandit. And my brother, who was not in a band, put his hand up and said, We're a band. The whole angry mob sort of turned to us. So I think like our second or third show was like jumping on stage to fill in V Docket who just hadn't turned up.

The UK indie music scene of that time never had a cohesive or signature sound. It was varied. That's one of the things that made it invigorating. But even within that variety, Art Brute and their lead singer Eddie Argos and the vacuum cleaner he played on stage were an outlier. We were like a bit too rocky and garagey for like the art school, Maximo Park, France Ferdinand, block party side of things.

ac yn ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r ymwneud â'r amser. It was like a fight in the lift about whether we were really rubbish or really good. One of the most publicized indie feuds of the time kicked off when Eddie Argos said that Kelly Okureki from Block Party was ripping off 70s post-punk music. I didn't really have a laptop until like two thousand and seven or eight. So I didn't really understand the internet.

So I'd done this drunk interview with Play Louder at Glastonbury. I thought, oh that's fine. That's on the internet, no one's gonna read that. Kelly went on T4 and called me Fatty Argos. This beef sort of grew and I didn't I don't like being fat. I was in Shoreditch and I saw him and I went to apologise'cause it got too he was glaring at me a lot. I kept saying sorry and he didn't he didn't accept my apology.

And then I said to him, I'm sorry what I said to a journalist, but to be fair, you are a bit moany. And he punched me in the head. And then you got dragged out by the bouncer? And then he came back in again and he jumped really high in the air and kicked me in the chest, which is amazing I think. Oof. I've been doing stuff like that. Singing Wa uh uh oh No one likes you in America, it raised like I love the drama.

Well, the Arctic Monkeys were jeering rude things about Art Root. And then they threw a bottle of champagne. Ian in Art Root was really angry about that. So he picked up this bottle and it kicked in the dressing room door. So yeah, I guess we are all a bit fighting. Oh, someone threw a lemon at me at Glastonbury once. I can't remember the name of the band. Bleach blonde guy from some annoying band. Can't remember. It's gone.

The enemy really egged us on to fight each other because they knew that's good press. I think I did like single reviews and I just gave everyone like really horrible single reviews. I mean, that's so out of character for me. But I was like so done with media and I was just drunk and bored on tort. I think I gave everything everything a really bad review. I was literally just being a dick. I didn't mean it, I'm really sorry.

The animosity wasn't just between bands. One of the scene's biggest groups were eating themselves. The greatest. who many fans dubbed the most important band in Britain will release their second album next week. But its arrival comes at a time when the future of the group is still uncertain. got some gigs coming up. It's a bit of a depressing subject. Why is it depressing? Obviously given the nature of the current current things it's quite hard to keep doing gigs without people.

The friendship and songwriting partnership between Carl Barrett and Pete Doherty always had a fractious, jealous, intense nature. That intensity reached its boiling point in the summer of 2003. P well the burglary that that's all connected really to the chaos. In particular the drugs because Kraken Hair and the honeymoon period was gone, I was now like a full on addict and and so me and Carl we didn't see each other.

And when we did, he wasn't happy with who I was bringing and and and who he saw I was turning into. When Doherty found out that the Libertines were going to tour Japan without him, he helped himself to Barat's laptop, VCR, an antique guitar, a harmonica, maybe an enemy award, and some ham from the fridge. And this is how I remember it. I don't know if anyone actually believes this, but I went down to see him.

And he wasn't there. I kicked the door in. Took a few bits. I put him in the car. And then realised what I'd done. I just left it there in the boot of the car. So they got it all back. I think it's oh yeah, handing myself in really. .co.uk One of the libertines has been jailed for six months for burgling one of his bandmates I think the month in Wormwood Scroll.

you know, although it was like there was bits and bobs inside, relatively speaking, I was clean. And so Carl I think if he sort of an opportunity to maybe get a glimpse of who we'd known before, the heavy addiction. And so he came to meet me at the at the gates of the prison. And we sort of reformed that night. But that was a mess. That w it didn't take me long. I did I wasn't out of prison. Very long at all before I went straight back to to heavy drug use and then

Yeah, after that it was more intermittent, lots of arrests and Carl trying to trying to navigate working with me and writing with me. I think it was very difficult. Truly because of the drugs, I think, you know. Six months after Doherty's release from prison, Libertines were in the studio all together to record the follow-up to their acclaimed and influential debut album. Mae'n ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud hynny.

The label hide a bouncer each for Doherty and Barrett to keep bad influences out of the session and to keep the two men from fighting. Oh labels. Keep making the record, guys. Keep the money going. For me it's imp for me it's impossible to play an angry song and not and not be angry, do you know what I mean? We got ourselves worked out into a bit of a state, I think, and then uh

But well there was a gig of Brixton Academy where I just felt this is not I don't wanna do this. Cut my chest over with a razor blade. ran down Brixton High Street and that was it really. The Libertines self titled Second Record was an album made under duress, and the music was a raw documentation of their interpersonal. It went to number one in its first week, but it was to be the Libertines last album for more than a decade. And by the time it came out, Docker T was no longer in the band.

The Philippines have dropped Pete Doty as their front man because he can't get off drugs. The band says he can come back when he's clean. Libertines frontman Pete Dogacy failed to show up in court this morning to face charges of possessing an offensive weapon. Police claim he was found with a flick knife.

After losing Carl already I then lost my family as well. My dad was just deciding that he wasn't having it at all and uh more jail and death. The way it was going, it was really either I was gonna die or I would just end up going to prison for longer and longer times, you know? Crack was really big at the time. Crack was really in. And like hard drugs because people idolized people that did hard drugs.

you know that's why the libertines connected with people man you know what I mean because there was there was a void after oasis that the oasis generation kind of moved on and and and the new Up and they were even more fucking mental than we were, you know what I mean? Our kind of going out cigarettes and alcohol, bit of fucking coke, a bit of you know, some pills and fucking have it till seven o'clock. and then heroin and crack and you know.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime, criticised London's coke-snorting fashionistas and musicians for glamorising cocaine. He claimed it was, in fact, Turning some of Africa's poorest countries into failed narco states, leaving a trail of misery, corruption and violence comparable to that of the slave trade two hundred years ago.

the general public mindset at the time just felt a lot more reckless than it had in like say the late nineties or whatever. Now it was head on it when I look back now it certainly was but It's too reductive to see it just as that because a much more romantic argument for why it was that way, and it was just from the passion of it

Not all bands in the scene by any means struggled with addiction to heavy drugs, but it's true to say there was a general, all-consuming sense of hedonism, intoxication, wildness. That's where Indie Slea's really earned its name. You're always like exhausted, you haven't slept for days, like you're all beaten up. But you're operating on instinct and adrenaline and excitement. And Ryan Jarman, the Cribs. I always felt like it didn't matter how much damage I did to myself, it was like...

people are getting a buzz out of it, you know what I mean? So I guess it can't be that bad. Drink through it or, you know, just put some cocaine on it. But um you know, there was quite a lot of casualties from that era unfortunately, you know what I mean? That was intense or whatever, you know. Here's something that happened on TV at the NME Awards.

Something conspired where we were getting handed an award which we weren't up for, but I ended up jumping on the table and it landed on this vase and it smashed. It stuck straight through my back. I guess when you do stuff like that you don't feel it because there's no nerves in there or whatever. And when I came off stage after getting the award.

My manager was backstage and he was like drip white. I put my hand on my back and my fingers just went straight inside and I was Oh my god. So we went to the hospital and the stitched me up and then They said, No, you've got to go straight back to your hotel and go to sleep. Do not go back out tonight.

And it's a really good job that I did go back to that awards because they hadn't stitched me up properly, they hadn't stitched me up internally and I was just blowing up like a balloon. I was leaving like trails of blood everywhere and stuff and if I had a gone back to the hotel I don't think I would have made it through the night anyway.

But then my phone rings and it's like the press guy and stuff like oh amazing, amazing. Have you got photos of it? Top story on BBC News. The enemy wanna run it as like full page spread. Good work and all this kind of stuff. And I'm just like blood everywhere, feeling depressed and like, guess it was a good thing, you know what I mean?

I always thought it was funny that I got banned from going to the enemies when me and Ryan broke up. because he was getting an award and I was told I couldn't go. And I was like, me? Like based on what reputation? What am I going to do that's going to be so crazy? I'm like, he's literally done that. Drugs don't suit me very well, I'm quite self aggrandizing anyway. I drunk a bit too much, I would say. Eddie Argos, Art Brute again. Indy Slees' finest feuder and biggest piss taker.

As a member of the class of two thousand and five. I had a good time really. I look back at it quite funny. I I get messages from people sometimes uh especially from like the Camden kind of side. Like, hey Eddie, we made it through with Survivors. I'm like, ah, I didn't I'm alright. Doing this is fine, you know. Yeah. I felt a bit bad about some of it and some of it was funny. And I miss it. I I like to read now of bands dissing each other. You get strung out. Johnny Barrel.

There were times where where I was uh tired and emotional, you know. And there's definitely things that things that I said that I that I regret. But um Whenever I did take down a band, at least it was funny. The guy from um Said that I killed Indy. That's Preston from the Ordinary Boys. But that's a story for another time. Children, now go to sleep. I am sorry, you know, I ap I apologize. I didn't mean to. These things happen. If you're enjoying this blah blah blah.

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