Kevin Courtney follows Pete Doherty to a council flat off London's Brick Lane, where he finds the tabloid's favourite bad boy tired, emotional and contemplating rehab after a series of late-night phone calls from his on-off lover Kate Moss. So is the former Libertine and current Babyshambles frontman a genius or a goon?
THIS may come as a shock revelation, but in my profession you no longer meet many coke-snorting, heroin-shooting, supermodel-shagging rock stars. These day they're all either super-healthy Ashtanga yoga heads, mineral water-guzzling bedwetters or middle management breadheads with guitars. Old-fashioned rock'n'roll antiheroes seem to have become a thing of the past, like guitar solos, triple concept albums and Keith Richards's liver.
So when my chance comes to meet a bona fide bad boy of British rock, I'm naturally a little excited - and apprehensive. Walking into London's Whitechapel, I feel like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, on a mission to track down the UK's most notorious rock'n'renegade and interview him with extreme prejudice.
Pete Doherty is the former singer from The Libertines and currently the singer with Babyshambles, but the world and his granny knows him as "that druggy fella who goes out with Kate Moss". His on-off relationship with the supermodel has made him (and her) the subject of frenzied tabloid scrutiny, which culminated in the publication of photographs allegedly showing Moss snorting cocaine in the band's studio during the making of Babyshambles' debut album. In the furore that followed, Moss lost lucrative modelling contracts, made a public apology, and checked into a rehab clinic in Arizona.
Doherty, meanwhile, got an implant to prevent him taking heroin, went on tour with Babyshambles, and, on the eve of the album's release, is still hoping that he and Moss can make a go of it again.
Even before Kate came on the scene, Doherty's dissolute life was already well documented. Born in Northumberland in 1979, the son of an army major, Doherty had a privileged, peripatetic upbringing. He shone in school , earning a place at Oxford, but dropped out after a year in favour of exploring the seamier side of London life. He formed The Libertines with his friend Carl Barat, and the band were either hailed as "the new Clash" or dismissed as "not the new Clash".
In interviews, Pete and Carl played up their image as rock'n'roll animals, but it was Doherty who really pushed the party envelope. Heroin, crack cocaine, sexual ambiguity - all added to Doherty's trashy appeal, but, as his drug habit worsened and he became increasingly unreliable, Barat took the tough love approach and refused to let him play in the band until he cleaned up. Doherty retaliated by breaking into Barat's flat, and was sentenced to a spell in Pentonville prison.
On his release, the two friends made up and went back on the road, but the volatile relationship soon fell apart again. This time, instead of wallowing in self-pity, Doherty hooked up with old mates Patrick Walden, Drew McConnell and Adam Ficek, and formed Babyshambles. Their debut single, Killamangiro, hit the Top 10 on the back of Doherty's cult hero status, as did their second single, Fuck Forever, but it was Doherty's high-profile relationship with Moss that really boosted his profile and earned him his reputation as the baddest new boy on the rock block.
As I head up Brick Lane towards our designated meeting place, I expect it to be mobbed by paparazzi. But all I see is one girl with a camcorder, who turns out to be working for Pete. "I'm going to be filming the interview," she informs me. Great. All my inane questions will be preserved for posterity. Doherty is "of no fixed abode", says Colin from Rough Trade, so the label has put him up in the Lane hotel to keep track of their wandering star while he does the required round of promotion.
Doherty tumbles out of the lift, distressed to kill in black jacket and trousers, striped shirt, polished brogues and pork-pie hat. He looks like he could be in The Specials, save for the single fishnet stocking - Kate's, perhaps? - wrapped around his right hand like a mesh glove. His boyish face is damp with perspiration.
The Ticket is third in line for Doherty's time, so I wait while the singer sits at the bar and does his first interview, cigarette in one hand and Cosmopolitan in the other. An hour later, Doherty is nowhere to be seen, and I'm taken down the streets of Whitechapel, past the mosque, to a block of shabby council flats. We climb to the third floor, and are led into a squat by a small, toothless, beardy chap named Paul who introduces himself as Pete's literary agent.
Inside, the squat is cluttered with books, records, memorabilia, knick-knacks and folders filled with Doherty's writings; the peeling walls are covered with posters, collages, cuttings and scrawled graffitti. On an easel rests a recent tabloid front page; the story is about Doherty's former manager, who denies that he sold the video of Moss powdering her nose to the tabloids. In the kitchen, a woman named Mrs Rabbit pours tea into old-fashioned china cups and shots from a large liquor bottle. It's like entering a psychedelic opium den on the set of Eastenders.
Doherty is sitting on a threadbare couch strumming an acoustic guitar. He looks pretty out of it. Among the ashtrays, colouring pencils and other detritus on the coffee table sits the fabled Book of Albion, Doherty's hardback scrapbook containing various thoughts, doodles, scribbles, poems and pictures. He's singing a French-language version of Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, translating Morrissey's lyrics as he goes. "I prefer it in English," says the French journalist who has just finished interviewing him.
In the corner, a small TV plays a homemade DVD of Doherty, sitting in exactly the same couch, strumming a different song. You can buy these DVDs on Paul's website and own your very own piece of Pete.
We begin by discussing the music, specifically, Babyshambles' album, Down in Albion, produced by ex-Clash legend Mick Jones. It's already been leaked onto the internet; when a Japanese journalist calls during the interview and admits she downloaded, Doherty hangs up on her.
The album is a ramshackle collection of barrelhouse punk tunes, broken-down ballads and elegantly wasted love songs; the tunes have a rough and tumble momentum and an endearing sloppiness that calls to mind early Clash crossed with vintage Johnny Thunders. Some of the tracks were written even before the Libertines days, but it's hard to hear La Belle et La Bête, Pentonville, What Katy Did Next and Back from the Dead without thinking about Doherty's present-day situation.
"There's never any fiction, really," he manages. "But in the same way that many people thought the second Libertines album was about me and Carl, which it wasn't. It was about me and different individuals, who just happened to fit the role. Can't Stand Me Now is about someone else, but once we started singing it live, it worked perfect, like it was scripted.
"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."
If there's a thread of a story to be unravelled from the album, it's probably a love story, detailing a doomed liaison between a rich, glamorous princess and a very unsuitable boy.
"If you hit the nail on the head, and you find that every time you sing those songs, the emotion still runs through you ice cold. Although to be fair," he adds, referring his real-life love story, "we are treading carefully on drifting ice. So, for the time being, those songs were sung with complete passion and complete honesty.
"It's almost a shame, really, that the songs are true, because it tends to hint that maybe my soul is in a state of sadness or turmoil, when people might question my right to feel anything but glad that I'm alive. Unfortunately, with most of the media coverage, things such as real life or real emotions or even melody, they're the last thing that people would be interested in or want to write about."
Doherty's not one to merely hold a grudge - he clings tightly onto it and drawsall the comfort and nourishment he can. He's still angry at Carl for kicking him out of The Libertines, even though it looks as though Babyshambles' success will easily eclipse his former band's. And he's angry at being portrayed in the press as the devil incarnate, luring hapless young supermodels into a life of drugs and squalid surroundings.
After months of being hounded by the "papar-nazis", it must be a relief to be able to focus on the music for a change.
"Well, yeah, it's all I've ever done, really. I could talk all day about the album, but listening to it, playing it and working on new songs is the whole essence of my existence, really. And this is the first time I've sat down with journalists for a long time - ever since the Libertines days, really. It's a bit like day one, really."
Sitting here in this darkened room, without his band, his coterie of fans and disciples, even without his supermodel girlfriend, Doherty cuts a somewhat forlorn if dapper figure, like David Bowie in the final reel of The Man Who Fell to Earth. He gazes at the rain outside and tugs distractedly at the strands of his fishnet glove. It must be good to have the album coming out, I suggest, because it's something to keep him busy while he's separated from Kate.
"I suppose anyone who has been separated from someone they love will understand that. I've developed enormous patience, I don't know where from. I used to be impatient to the point of childishness, but I do believe in love, and I do believe in the album, and I've waited patiently for both. Now that both have arrived at the same time, it's just a question of holding it together, and keeping my plates of meat firmly on homeward bound."
He's had many a latenight phonecall with Kate, he says, and is thinking of going into rehab himself. For the moment, though, it's only a thought; last year, Doherty absconded from a grueling rehabilitation course at Wat Tham Krabok, a monastery in Thailand. If he musters up the courage to check in again, it'll be his fourth attempt to clean up.
"Hopefully I can wise myself up a bit, smarten myself up. I'm gonna have to, for the sake of my son, and for her kid as well. And for her."
While his personal life remains a shambles (what's new?), musically Doherty believes he's enjoying a purple patch. He's writing some of his best work since The Libertines, he says, and he's got plenty more new songs where Albion, Up the Morning, A'Rebours and Pipedown came from. He picks up the guitar and performs one of them, a jaunty number called 352 Days.
There's no doubt that Pete Doherty is a talented bloke, capable of painting the good, the bad and the seedy side of life in gracefully sloppy brushstrokes. But he's also damaged, possibly beyond repair, and anyone - friend or fan - who shells out their time, devotion and loyalty may end up getting back some very small change.
Down in Albion is released today on Rough Trade
