The Libertines came, saw, recorded, conquered and fell apart over Pete Doherty's drug habit and the mounting tension between him and Carl Barât. Ahead of their return to the stage next week, LAUREN MURPHYlooks at how they won the hearts of a generation
THAT YEAR'S NME Yearbookdeclared that "2004 was a bittersweet year for the sons of Albion. Yes, they scored their highest-ever single placing when Can't Stand Me Nowreached No 2 in August, while their staggering, self-titled second album topped the charts. But, after several spells in rehab, founding singer/guitarist Pete Doherty was excommunicated from the band in July. It looks unlikely he will return."
It was an irrevocable summation of one of the most polarising British bands in recent years, but an accurate one – until March 31st, 2010, that is. On that day, a press conference was held at London’s Boogaloo bar to confirm that, yes, the rumours were true: The Libertines – Doherty, his co-frontman Carl Barât, bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell – would reunite to play at the Reading and Leeds festivals on August 27th and 28th. Their fee? Rumoured to be a whistle-through-the-teeth-inducing £1.2 million (€1.5 million).
It’s a chin-scratcher. The Libertines have hardly been a band adored on a Beatles-like scale by the majority of the music-buying public (although their fanbase is renowned for being fiercely loyal), and during their relatively brief recording career they gained a bigger reputation for tabloid notoriety thanks to Doherty’s criminal antics.
As the rumours of in-fighting between Doherty and Barât gained momentum, so did the former's drug habit. Studio sessions for their eponymous second album were fraught and bad-tempered, and consequently led to an underwhelming follow-up to the exuberant thud of a statement they'd made with Up the Bracketin 2002.
TIME FOR HEROES
Yet they’re obviously seen as important enough to warrant the brouhaha surrounding their reformation just six years after their split (although Barât and Doherty have played together sporadically in recent years). How did a band who recorded just two albums make such an impact on the British musical landscape?
Music journalist and Libertines fan Steve Cummins reckons that it’s a combination of factors that made them so revered, including the advent of a new wave of guitar bands led by their US counterparts The Strokes.
"When the whole Britpop thing finished around the end of the 1990s and start of the Noughties, the DJ and dance scene really took off," he says. "Then Radiohead released Kid A, and guitar bands started moving in a different direction. Even nowadays, there's very few guitar bands that don't have synths or some electronic element to them.
“But The Libertines were just like a traditional, ramshackle punk band, and there’s always a place for that. They were more than the sum of their parts – their lyrics were good, their melodies were good, they had a good backstory, they looked like a gang . . . and you wanted to be part of that gang. They had a good attitude and good energy.”
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Cummins attended several guerilla gigs arranged by the band via their fan forum, staged in the early part of the decade in Doherty’s Islington flat and Barât’s Bethnal Green abode. Having such access to a band you loved, he says, made all the difference.
“Nowadays, it’s kind of a given that you can be very close to the bands you like through Twitter, or whatever. Back then, it was kind of a new thing for a band to use the internet for stuff like that,” he claims. “That was the great thing about The Libertines: they didn’t seem to be in it for the money, otherwise why would they play gigs like that?”
WHAT BECAME OF THE LIKELY LADS?
Seen as a “band of the people”, perhaps, it was natural that the quartet – or at least the relationship at its core, between Doherty and Barât – would make human errors.
The duo have had a fractious love-hate relationship almost from the offset, and it was one that worsened as Doherty’s drug habit took hold. Even now, having agreed to reunite this year (reportedly at Doherty’s insistence), they haven’t spent any time in each other’s company since the gigs were announced in March.
Rehearsals, in their typically ill-prepared manner, didn’t begin until the second week in August. Barât himself has admitted that there’s a lingering tension. It’s hard to see where a band already on such rickety foundations can go from here, but that tempestuous bond is arguably what made the Doherty-Barât songwriting partnership so special in the first place.
Many consider their alliance to be a continuation of the British indie songwriting tradition; the Noughties version of Morrissey and Marr or Brown and Squire. The fact that neither of their post-Libertines endeavours (Doherty’s solo album and his work with Babyshambles, and Barât’s career with Dirty Pretty Things) have set the musical world alight adds weight to the argument that they work best as foils to each other.
In addition, perhaps Doherty, now 31, is now in a better frame of mind – older, if not necessarily wiser – to handle a reformation. His career has flagged somewhat over the past year, and it’s his car-crash of a personal life that continues to fascinate both the media and the general public alike, something that must rankle with the man who won poetry competitions as a teenager and takes his music very seriously.
At the same time, without his inadvertent rock-star persona, The Libertines would probably never have become so venerated in the first half of the last decade. The volatility of the band and particularly Doherty make them compelling, something that Festival Republic (the promoters behind the Reading and Leeds festivals) were surely aware of when placing their reputedly generous offer on the table.
“The Libertines were never well- rehearsed, and even their live gigs could always go either way – but that was part of the appeal, because it was exciting. And rock music should be exciting,” says Cummins. “That’s why punk was so big, because you didn’t know what was going to happen. Even in Ireland, people love The Pogues and Shane MacGowan because everybody loves a bit of unpredictability.
“Bands can become too polished and sterile, and The Libertines were the complete opposite of that. Lots of people hate them for those reasons, but it’s also the reason why the people who love them love them.”
WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT
It’s impossible to know what way their trinity of gigs (a warm-up set will take place in London next week) will go. It may all end it tears. It may well end in fists. It may even end in an extended tour, a third album and a renaissance of sorts, although with Barât’s solo album due for release in October, a third Babyshambles album also on the way, and Powell’s band The Invasion Of . . . taking off, it’s unlikely that that would occur before the end of the year.
Whatever happens, the legacy of The Libertines will probably continue to split opinion for years to come. An ending fitting for the start? Only time will tell.
Live fast, die young The birth, life, death and rebirth of The Libertines
1996
Pete Doherty meets his sister’s friend, Carl Barât. The pair become friends and form The Strand, which becomes The Libertines.
1997-2000Bassist John Hassall (right) is enlisted, and Johnny Borrell is on the margins but doesn't join the band. Paul Dufour initially plays drums, but he and Hassall quit after the band fails to land a record deal.
2001Drummer Gary Powell joins. They eventually sign to Rough Trade after impressing label boss Geoff Travis at a showcase. Hassall rejoins on bass.
2002Bernard Butler produces their debut single What a Waster/I Get Along, while Clash guitarist Mick Jones oversees the recording of their album Up the Bracket (right), released that September to critical acclaim.
2003Doherty's drug use causes cracks in the band. Non-album track Don't Look Back Into the Sun is released, but Doherty is largely absent from recording sessions. He refuses to join his bandmates on tour and is later arrested and imprisoned for burgling Barât's flat.
2004The band begin the troubled recording of their second, self-titled album (right), and play their last gig in March before Doherty leaves for an unsuccessful rehab stint in Thailand. On his return he is frozen out until he kicks his addictions, but instead he concentrates on new project Babyshambles.
2005-2008After the eventual dissolution of The Libertines in December 2004, Barât and Doherty don't play together again until a one-off gig in London in 2007.
2009Doherty reveals that the band had been offered "millions" to reform for festivals that year, but that Barât (below) had been apprehensive about doing so.
2010A press conference in March confirms that the Libertines are to reform for the Reading and Leeds festivals in August.
The Libertines play Leeds Festival on August 27th and Reading Festival on August 28th. They will warm up at the HMV Forum in Kentish Town, London, on August 25
