Amid a fug of cigarette smoke in a dressing room backstage at Dublin’s 3Arena, one of the most-loved British indie bands of the past 20 years get ready to shoot the breeze.
Friendly, upbeat drummer Gary Powell and bassist John Hassall are the first to take their seats. A few minutes later, co-frontman, guitarist and self-appointed tour documentarian Carl Barat has barely sat down before he points to the large DSLR camera slung around his neck and asks: “Mind if I take some photographs?”
The tall, suited Pete Doherty, a late addition to the interview, sits smoking quietly in the corner, occasionally piping up in a voice so soft-spoken that you have to lean forward to hear it.
They all look similar, perhaps with a few more grey hairs as they approach their late 30s. Yet there’s something different in the air.
This is The Libertines version 2.0 – officially speaking. That’s not counting all the times they temporarily split and reformed during the initial epoch (1997- 2004) that produced two defining albums. True, they are a band with a troubled past; but it’s behind them – at least for now.
The foursome are in good form, with a new album, Anthems for Doomed Youth (their first in 11 years), to promote and a clutch of strong new tunes to play. They first reunited in 2010 to headline Reading and Leeds, but a record wasn't mooted until about this time last year.
“Hyde Park was a little bit of a powderkeg, wasn’t it?” says Powell, addressing his bandmates. “The response to us, and our response to the audience; we all just looked around at each other and we thought ‘Oh my God, this is amazing’. That spurred us on to the point where we thought, ‘We have to do something else now.’
“It’s a great position for us to be in, because not only do we have a new album, but – without wanting to sound corny – we have a newfound friendship. That’s the most important thing, as far as I’m concerned: the fact that we can be in a room together and enjoy the music that we’ve made, and not really be worried about anyone else’s response.”
All four have had numerous solo projects over the past decade, but this is a different proposition entirely.
“None of us had stopped making music or playing in bands,” says Doherty. “It’s obviously what we all love doing, but all the way along, whether you like it or not, there’s something special about this combination. It’s not enough to play the old songs; that feels like being your own covers band or something.
“It’s a big release to do new stuff. And a lot of the time, when I played on my own or even with Babyshambles, people inevitably want to hear their favourite songs – and invariably, they’re Libertines songs. There were times I’d sometimes think, ‘Oh fuck, imagine if we were to get The Libertines back together and do those songs again’.”
Last November, Barat travelled to Thailand to begin writing sessions with Doherty, who was then receiving treatment for his heroin addiction. He completed the programme in January, but the constant tabloid references to his problems with drugs threatened to overshadow what was essentially a happy time.
“It can do, but I think it’s just certain people are interested in different aspects,” Doherty says after a lengthy pause. “Most people who are into the music are into the music. I dunno, really . . . Thinking you can control [the media] in any way, or get your feelings across. You can’t; it always ends up getting distorted. So you just get painted in a certain way, and no one really gets to know how you truly feel.
"That was my fantasy, actually – to become a billionaire, buy the Sun and the Mirror and close them down."
Barat jumps in. “What people have to realise that in one breath they’re like, ‘You junkie fucking scumbag’, but the second he shows any sign of trying to make an effort, people stop staying slightly disparaging things. Essentially, people are corralled like sheep into certain ways of thinking.”
Constant flow
In December the four signed a deal with Virgin EMI, and in April relocated to Karma Sound Studio in Bang Saray with producer Jake Gosling.
“Basically, there were three studios set up,” says Powell. “I had a little studio set up in my room, there was another studio set up next to that where Pete and Carl jammed out ideas, and there was a main studio where the guys were producing things.
"If you read about how The White Album was written – and I'm not saying we're anything like The Beatles, but there was a constant flow of work happening."
Working with Gosling (who is usually more associated with the likes of Ed Sheeran and One Direction) and recording in Thailand had an impact on this most quintessential of English bands, with their fanciful notions of Albion and Arcadia smattered throughout their back-catalogue.
Bang Saray, they all agreed, was far removed from their halcyon days in London, but it did give them a sense of perspective. With Doherty now living in Paris and Hassall in Denmark, it requires some effort to be a Libertine. Barat, for one, says becoming a father has given him a better understanding of time and mortality.
“I used to think time just was an amorphous concept,” he says, “whereas now I understand there’s a beginning and an end and that you can’t go out and party all the time. It wasn’t that I didn’t care enough, but I’ve stopped beating the shit out of myself and learned to focus on something that’s a bit more lasting.”
Together for keeps?
2015 marks 18 years since The Libertines first began playing together. What does the future hold? Do they have enough, as one of their better-known tracks says, “to keep it together” for another 18?
Doherty takes a drag from his cigarette, nodding. “It’s wide open, really. I’d like to make another record soon.”
Barat, as has been his way in their long and complicated friendship, tempers his bandmate’s enthusiasm with a somewhat more pragmatic statement.“We’re as terrified now as we were with the last album,” he admits. “You’re terrified that people won’t understand what you sweat and bleed over. Because it’s been been a Sisyphean, Herculean task to get back to this point where we’re ready to have that voice again, of course, it’s breathtaking. In other ways, we’ve got absolute confidence in what we’re saying. It’s the only thing we can say, because it’s us.”
Anthems for Doomed Youth is out now
