Threepenny Memoir_ The Lives of a Libertine by Carl Barat

Author:Carl Barat
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2010-09-17T04:00:00+00:00

SIX

Dirty Pretty Things

I wasn’t sure what I was hanging on to as The Libertines fell apart, what piece of flotsam or jetsam I’d clung on to as the ship went down. I was out there on my own for a while, but once I’d had time to think about everything I realized that being in a band wasn’t out of my system. I began to feel that The Libertines’ demise had been a tragedy, because we’d had so much more to say. It also seemed a natural progression, really, because Anthony Rossomando had come into my life during the later stages of The Libertines, and we both felt a creative partnership that had more to give. On a more selfish level, I’d become rather accustomed to the way I was living. There was an element of everyone panicking: Is this over and, if it is, what are we going to do? God forbid we might have to get real jobs.

Over many drunken and drugged nights I’d be the reassuring hand on the tiller. Don’t worry, boys, I’ll look after you, I’ll sort it all out. Ludicrous coke talk, too many cocktails fuelling my after-hours’ bravado. After a while we just assumed this was what we’d do: we’d move on into a new band, and then there was a sudden rush of business and it began to happen. I remember we had a ludicrously long list of band names that everyone had come up with, and frequent pub meetings where we’d verbally tussle over what to call ourselves. It was around that time that John, The Libertines’ bass player, quietly left, to concentrate on his band, Yeti, which had previously been a side project. It wasn’t a surprise, but it left me feeling deflated all the same. I wish I could tell you that we had a grand plan after that, but if you’ve read this far then you’ll understand that was never going to be the case. We honestly didn’t have a clue who might play bass, but we had impetus and we had forward motion: it seemed inevitable that we’d pick someone up along the way. I mean, what’s a band without a bass player?

Between bands, I was doing DJ sets to keep my hand in, and I remember playing a festival in Wales called Wakestock, and watching the sun come up over the Welsh coastline after a long, long night. I was sitting on the roof rack of someone’s Land Rover with Didz, from Cooper Temple Clause, and playing him two new songs I’d written after The Libertines, the two ‘dead’ songs, as I’d come to call them. One was ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’, the other a tune called ‘Deadwood’ – both destined to be singles, and both reliant on the word ‘dead’, which later seemed significant. I’d written them on the tide of emotion I was riding coming out of The Libertines, and, in hindsight, they’re kind of Libertinesque, but that’s where I was, and it was a dark and confused time.

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