Why I Fucking Love The Libertines Masterpost
Hey ho, this will be a kind of introduction post mostly aimed at people who are interested in The Libertines and the fandom but of course it’s also helpful for the ‘old’ hard-core fans. It’s also a super selfish post as I now have all the important stuff on one page and can come back here for reference. But well, you can use it as well and I might even get people to love The Libs through this post which would be super awesome cause they are amazing.
And this post will of course be also very subjective when it comes to shipping, opinions on band members and songs and that stuff. I won’t list facts about the band here that you can easily read on Wikipedia or other sites dedicated to the history of the band, I’ll add other stuff here that is good to know but probably not serious enough for a site different than Tumblr *sigh*.
I’ll start off with the music – cause it’s kind of the most important thing. I guess with life in the fandom, meeting new friends, fangirling and that stuff we sometimes forget about the music. Not in the sense that we don’t listen to it anymore and only indulge in writing fanfics and having discussions with other fans, but in the sense that we forget that it was the music that brought us here in the first place. And you simply can’t be a part of a band fandom if you don’t like/know the music. Sorry, I don’t make the rules. You just can’t have the dessert before the main course.
So let’s get started:
Punkish garage rock style with kind of rough and absolutely banging tunes
Really hard to choose favourites but I’ll do it anyway:
Death On The Stairs:
This song isn’t only a favourite of The Libs themselves but also of mine. I might even go as far as calling it my favourite Libs song of all. This melody is pure heaven as it is so simple yet so genius and seeing as it’s about Carl’s depressive phases which I can deeply identify with this song just stuck with me. Apart from that I can’t really explain what for me personally makes this song superior to other Libs songs though.
“So baby please kill me/ oh baby don’t kill me/ but don’t bring that ghost ‘round to my door/ I don’t wanna see him anymore/ please kill me/ oh baby don’t kill me/ just don’t bang on about yesterday/ you know, I wouldn’t know about that anyway”
Horrorshow:
This song is absolutely wild. It’s a loose-your-voice kind of song that makes you jump up and down when hearing it – especially live – and you will be crushed by other fans when they play it on a gig…the people just go mad.
”She said ‘I’ll show you a picture/ a picture of tomorrow/ there’s nothing changing/ it’s all sorrow’/ oh no please don’t show me/ I’m a swine, you don’t wanna know me”
Time For Heroes:
What fascinates me most about this song is that it has no refrain. Most songs live off their refrain, many people know nothing of a song but the refrain. And this song manages to go completely without it and still be stuck in your head. Plus the lyrics are genius:
“It’s these ignorant faces that bring this town down/ yeah I sighed and sunken with pride/ you know I passed myself down on my knees”
“And we’ll die in the class we were born/ but that’s a class of our own my love”
The Good Old Days:
A classic. I don’t know what to say about it to be honest. It’s about living in the here and now, it’s about the good times in The Libertines. The lyrics are grand, especially the last line I chose has become a kind of motto of both the band and the fans as well. Also make sure to listen to an acoustic version in which Pete adds a little line and try to catch it ;)
“But if you’ve lost your faith in love and music the end won’t be long/ because if it’s gone for you then I too may lose it and that would be wrong/ I tried so hard to keep myself from falling/ back into my bad old ways/ and it chars my heart to always hear you calling/ calling for the good old days/ cos there were no good old days/ these are the good old days”
“The Arcadian dream has fallen through/ but the Albion sails on course”
I Get Along:
This is Carl’s “Fuck ‘Em” anthem (literally, as this is a line in the song hehe) that is going to entrain you every time you hear it. You’ll want to smash peoples’ faces in a pacifistic way when listening to it. Played live this song is awesome. Also Carl’s voice oozes pure sex, you will melt.
“People tell me I’m wrong/ fuck ‘em“
This album is surely affected by Pete and Carl’s living situation, struggle to gain money, self-doubt, but most importantly by their shared dreams and them trying to make them come true.
Indie rock, less rough with some very soft songs on it
Again I’ll choose 5 favourites to make it fair:
Can’t Stand Me Now:
This is actually really heart-breaking as it is obviously about Pete and Carl and them not getting along very well because of Pete’s drug use. Also one of the songs that make you go “…they are so gay for each other” but more of that later on in this post.
“No, you’ve got it the wrong way round / you shut me up, and blamed it on the brown/ cornered the boy kicked out at the world/ the world kicked back a lot fuckin’ harder now”
^ also about this line: I always thought it was “…and blamed it on the brown, cornered the boy, kicked out at the world” like that there should be a comma after “boy” cause I think it would make more sense. The narrator (Pete) is still talking to the person who “shut him up” (Carl), or is he not? When people post this line “cornered the boy kicked out at the world, the world kicked back a lot fucking harder now” it always sounds as if they think the boy kicked at the world while I think that the person the narrator addresses first cornered the boy and afterwards kicked out at the world… Just wanted to get this out of my system at this has been nagging at me for a long time now.
Music When The Lights Go Out:
The first softy song on the album and super sad and beautiful. Pete sings it in such an angelic voice. Can’t say much more to it – just listen.
(It’s super hard to choose the fave lyrics from this song as it is perfect from head to toe.)
“Is it cruel or kind not to speak my mind/ and to lie to you, rather than hurt you?/ well I’ll confess all of my sins/ after several large gins/ but still I’ll hide from you/ hide what’s inside from you.”
The Ha Ha Wall:
I have no idea if other fans even like this song? But I ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT! The rhythm and little guitar melody make me want to dance, it always cheers me up and gives me energy. Also only the Libs can pull it off to put a kind of Asian sounding middle part into such a song and make it sound super fucking good.
“If you get tired of hanging around/ pick up a guitar and spin a web of sound”
“It’s been a long war and we’re tired and dirty/ still not dirty enough for you”
Campaign Of Hate:
Also making me want to dance and feel more energetic instantly. It’s also critical of society so what more do you want?
“Now remember why you came/ not to play follow the leader, no no/ poor kids dressing like they’re rich (Mods!)/ rich kids dressing like they’re poor (oh my god!)/ white kids talking like they’re black”
“Oh don’t believe them when they say/ that you don’t get nothing for free/ it’s all for free”
What Katie Did:
This is the song that made me fall in love with The Libs so obviously it’s super important. When I got diagnosed with depression I joined a forum for people suffering from it to find people who feel the same. There was a thread about music and what music helps you to feel better and a guy posted a video of Pete singing this song live. I really loved it and in the comments I read that in the original version a guy named Carl would be on vocals and so I listened to the original version to compare and what can I say? I fell in love with it as well, listened to more songs and simply fell in love with The Libs. I then read their Wikipedia article and was a bit confused as all of that kind of rang a bell. And then I suddenly remembered that I had read that whole article already as I had discovered them a while back already. I had listened to Don’t Look Back Into The Sun then and hated it… I was stupid when I was younger…
“What you gonna do Katie?/ you’re a sweet, sweet girl/ but it’s a cruel, cruel world/ a cruel, cruel world/ safety pins are none too strong Katie/ they hold my life together”
This album is marked by the problems within the band caused by Pete’s drug use and I bet a whole lot of miscommunication. Sad, even if we got great music out of it.
Still indie rock but different from the second album again? God what am I even doing here, I don’t know shit
Gunga Din:
This is the first song they released after so many years of nothing and I don’t just love it because of that fact but also because it has a catching rhythm and lyrics that make me go “THAT’S ME!”. And the melody is great too. So. Perfect.
“Woke up again to my chagrin/ I’m getting sick and tired of feeling sick and tired again/ I tried to write, because I got the right/ to make it look as if I’m doing something with my life”
You’re My Waterloo:
This is a classic, maybe even THE LIBERTINES SONG that they decided to record again. I have to admit I’m not really a fan of that new version, make sure to check out the old version that has been on the internet for ages. It has a kind of rougher, low-quality-honesty going for it whereas the new version is more clean cut and I’m also not really into the piano. I Don’t know, I bet many fans will disagree with me on that one but well, as I said: subjective.
“You’re my Waterloo/ I’ll be your Calvary/ I’m so glad we know just what to do/ and everyone’s gonna be happy/ everyone’s gonna be happy/ everyone’s gonna be happy/ but of course”
Heart Of The Matter:
This is THE SONG of the album. Everyone will agree with me on that one. Don’t just listen to this song, watch the music video. It’s going to break your heart but you will be happy about it. I’m so proud of my boys for what they did with this song, it is brutally honest and I’m still super angry that they didn’t get the NME award for best music video in 2016 for it, they deserved it most. (but we were voted best fan base so let’s just have that *grin*)
“With all the battering it’s taken/ I’m surprised it’s still ticking”
“So hold a light to my misery/ but don’t send it up in flames/ it’s only I who takes the blame/ but try me anyway”
Glasgow Coma Scale Blues:
This is a really cool track with a rock attitude and meaningful lyrics. Not much else to say.
“And I see me, oh you won’t even see me/ yeah I see you, in fact I’m looking straight through you”
“The only thing that kept us apart/ was your cold unloving heart”
“What happened to the joy in the hearts of the boys/ at the start of the part of the scene?/ they were part of the seams/ a dream shared and pulled apart/ one dream broken by two Libertines”
Dead For Love:
This song is really artsy if you allow me this word. It’s got a mystic and echoing background sound and dark lyrics as well as a poem that gets recited at the end. I still haven’t worked out how it goes though, I’m not a native speaker and it’s not very clear. Anyway it’s super beautiful.
“And everything he ever did/ he only ever did for love/ everything he ever said/ he only ever said for love/ and now, now he lies dead/ he’s dead for love/ his mind’s at ease, he sleeps in peace”
“A guy like this needs to be sure/ no one was there when the devil rode out before”
All in all this album reprocesses the split up of the band many years ago. It’s a strong subject in many of the songs and you can see that there still isn’t everything said yet. Well, they’ll work this out, I’m sure.
Now there are other songs you must know that aren’t on the albums but just on b-sides or that just got published on the internet. These include:
Albion:
Later recorded in the studio and published on an album of Pete’s band Babyshambles this song got famous through the Babyshambles Sessions that I’ll add underneath these few songs.
“Talk over/ gin in teacups/ and leaves on the lawn/ violence in bus stops/ and the pale thin girl with eyes forlorn”
“I’ll be waiting in the photo booth/ at the underground station/ so come away, won’t you come away/ we could go to/ Deptford, Catford, Watford, Digberth, Mansfield/ anywhere in Albion”
What A Waster:
“There’s tears coming out from everywhere/ the city’s hard, the city’s fair”
“When she wakes up in the morning/ she writes down all her dreams”
“Meanwhile from under the covers she says/ save me from tomorrow, save me from tomorrow”
The Delaney:
“On the bus the other day/ you could tell right from the start/ there’s magic in all that you play/ but oh, can you play guitar boy/ can you play guitar?”
“Some people run from trouble, some people meet it half way/ others are glad to pay their cab fare over/ and superficially you enjoy the company that you loathe to bear”
Don’t Look Back Into The Sun:
Ho boy, Carl really knows what to do with his guitar (and I don’t mean putting his cigarette between the strings when he has to play instead of smoke when onstage), these little melodies he always thinks of are so amazing, I could cry.
“Oh, my friend you haven’t changed/ you’re looking rough and living strange/ and I know you got a taste for it too”
“Don’t look back into the sun/ you’ve cast your plans but you’re on the run/ and all the lies you said, who did you save?/ but when they played that song at the Death Disco/ it started fast but it ends so slow/ and all the time it reminded me of you”
Cyclops:
I love the feeling of this song as well as the lyrics and I especially love how Pete and Carl sing the last line together (awwww).
“What you try to do to me?/ it seems to come so naturally/ how you annoy me/ how you destroy me”
“Wow, money’s the church/ fame is the steeple/ everyone on the telly indoctrinate the people”
“What you tryna do to me?/ what you tryna do to me?/ you make me happy”
Bucket Shop:
“Well someone said you were an angel/ only what kind of angel/ would whisper 'hello’/ and shout 'goodbye'”
General Smuts:
“Well life is short/ we spend all our time/ just fucking and fighting my friend/ well a soul can’t be bought”
“Well I’ve been stuck in a hole/ and it’s dark down here/ every time I’ve thought I’ve seen the light/ well it just fades and disappears”
Skint And Minted:
“No one got it right, no one got it wrong/ live outside your head, live inside a song/ oh love those long lost weekdays spilling over me/ and your outlines are all I can see”
Hooray For The 21st Century:
“Every sweet little lie ever whispered to you now rings true/ no need to wake the sleeping dogs when they’ll just turn on you/ I’ll make my way instead to the foots of your ivory tower/ but no love do I find there amongst the leaves and the dying flowers”
“What became of the working class/ Nike, Reebok, Adidas/ scratch cards, pittbulls, ecstasy/ hooray for the 21st Century”
Seven Deadly Sins :
There are again two versions, the new recorded one is as a bonus on the third album, I like both versions, you should try out both.
“Pride, lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath and envy/ its all in a hard days work for me”
“Hand me my gun/ my friend we’ll have some fun/ shoot down the spies in the trees/ and kick up the leaves/ in the morning breeze/ pay no mind”
Babyshambles sessions:
1
2
3
So then let’s get to the members!
I’m not going to list their biographies here, you can easily google that yourself if you’re interested. So I’ll describe their personalities a bit and show you pics, cause that is more fun anyway.
1) Carl is smol and tiny.
2) Carl is a meme. I mean it. He is a total dork, cute, funny, awkward and most importantly super embarrassing. He makes me cringe regularly and you will feel the same.
3) I mean it kind of belongs to “Carl is embarrassing” but I think it deserves its own section: Carl is a bad bad Twitter whore.
4) Carl is super damn hot. Like ho boy I can’t breathe because of his beauty sometimes.
Sorry for not being more serious but you can’t always be. Carl has had a history with depression and nagging thoughts. There are also rumours he self harmed when younger. A fan said she talked with him about it and that he used to hide the scars with the bandanas he wears but that he actually wears them nowadays because he likes the look. I don’t want to sell it as a fact though as I never heard him admit this himself.
6) Carl only eats bananas.
7) Carl has tiny nipples.
I’m afraid this’ll look as if I don’t cherish Carl much but the opposite is the truth. I love this fella so much and I would die to meet him one day, even more than I would to meet Pete. I think we’d have more in common and I’d love to give him a big hug. Also I want to marry him. Fuck Edie and Pete. He’s mine.
Pete Doherty:
1) Pete manages to be super tall and super smol at the same time.
2) Pete is also embarrassing sometimes.
5) Pete likes to walk around with his fly open.
Gary Powell:
1) Gary is an uncomplicated and good natured soul.
2) Gary is a bit crazy. The good kind.
John Hassall:
1) John rarely smiles.
2) But when he does ho boy.
3) If you hadn’t realised: he is beautiful.
4) John is done with Pete’s and Carl’s shit.
Which brings us to what you all waited for. I thought about naming this section “Conspiracy Theories” but it hardly is one, it is more like an official secret:
Pete’s and Carl’s relationship:
Like in fandoms for TV shows, in this fandom (gay) shipping is really common. You just HAVE to believe in the (totally sexual!) romance between Pete and Carl. They always talk(ed) about there being a romance, a love between them themselves, here a few examples:
“I know of people who’ll love me when I’m dead, they won’t call me those things then. It won’t matter, they’ll say ‘he was unhappy and he’s better off’. They’ll say ‘I knew him and I spent time with him’. They’re lying. There’s only one man who knows me, who spent time with me, and he doesn’t now. One man I love in this world. One man I respect. He cripples me now.”
- Peter speaking about Carl, Babyshambles.com, 2004
“I do love Peter so dearly. The thing about Peter, is that, ever since I first met him, he had this innate ability to just charm someone…Like to me he’d say: ‘I love you, you’re working class, but with a violent heart and a poetic temperament’. And I’d go, ‘wow, yeah, you really know me!’…But just that ability to sort of surmise people…and he’d do that…But um, where was I going with this? ….Just he’ll think of the tiny details that only a poet thinks of. He used to phone me up when he was miserable, when we were having one of our dramas. ‘Whatever. Ok, Pete, it’s fine. Where are you?’ And he’d go ‘In the rain!’ So endearing and so beautiful…The thing about Peter and I is that we’re both very old, very kindred souls. And for whatever we talk about, that’s kind of circumstantial. It’s like anything can happen. We could do anything. Individually, together, apart, to each other. But a conversation after six months, it’s the same thing. It’s euphoric…it’s…you know. I love Peter and …I think Peter loves me. A lot of times we don’t like each other, but the underlying thing is that love.”
– Carl Barat, There Are No Innocent Bystanders
“Boys like physical contact. If you enjoy physical companionship, romance, something tender, you just want it to be true. That’s Libertine-ism: no barriers, no borders, no fakers, no forgers. Pleasure is pleasure.”
– Peter Doherty, Attitude Magazine, 2002
“My heart melts that…[you] ask me about soulmates. Because you’re right, you know. It’s a beautiful thing that we should all believe in…Yeah, I missed my friend so much. I still don’t think we spend enough time together. And he’s my soulmate and I love him and that’s the truth…Something so pure and beautiful and true…They’re going to say a soulmate is a myth…[but] when they experience a soulmate then that’s what destroys the myth.”
– Peter Doherty on Carl Barat, Vice Magazine 2015
“His story with Carl was not finished of course. Pete: Ah, it is not…but it will never end. Everyone has someone in their life whom they love, but in some way or another, the relationship was abandoned by one of them, or by both of them. You become strangers and you realize that the person you love most in the world, you do not know them anymore.
Carl: We never separated…we separated, then we flirted a bit, and in 2010 we got back together, but we did not realize it. We were very uncertain about each other’s feelings. We only communicated through the press, granting interviews knowing that the other person would read them. I knew that I had to go see Peter, the friend that I love and that I missed, to know if this friend, and this friendship, still existed. It was terrifying, but I have been able to see things as they were, in all their beauty. My dear old friend, and my brother, with whom I grew up with in such an intense way.
Pete: I feel even closer to him than I did before…there is no one else who I connect with at this level. (With) Carl, I know that there are things that no one else can give. It’s strange, but he really knows me. I forgot that there was someone else on this planet who could understand me in this way, it is mysterious, but it is comforting and beautiful, and I’d never really realized it before.
Peter gives us a book to give Carl, writing a dedication on the page. It is “The Last Englishman”, the autobiography of AD Wintle.
Carl: On my part, there is nothing to forgive I think. I love him so much, he is like a brother, these are unconditional feelings.
Carl takes his mug into the adjacent album store, where with a stroke of luck, he immediately lands on an ideal gift to give back to Peter. It is the soundtrack to “Is Paris Burning?”, which Carl duly dedicates. “Perfect!” he says.”
– Peter and Carl’s separate interviews in Rock and Folk, October 2014.
“Do you want Peter to come back, to be honest? Carl: I do, of course I do (bursts into tears). Peter is the only person who I could trust for so long. I cannot express my feelings by words like ‘lonely’ or ‘left behind’. It’s like something was suddenly scooped out from the inside of me….To tell you the truth, I have a twin brother who died when I was a child. And Peter would say to me, 'Even if no one stays with you in the future, I will never leave you, because I am the reincarnation of your lost twin brother.’ I still believe what he said then. And I believe that he will come back to me, no matter how long it will take.”
– Carl Barat, Rockin'on, September 2004
“I’m scared to share a microphone with him now because people say it’s a gimmick. Sometimes I do rush over [to the mic], but that’s only because after you have had a few drinks and smoked a certain amount you get that really nice smell on your breath. You know, like when your lover has got that winey, smoky taste. Not that Carl’s my lover…I’d rather toss off a frog.”
– Peter Doherty, Time Out Magazine, August 2015
“For me and Pete, it wasn’t too different from falling in love.”
- Carl for The Mail on Sunday, 2008
“There have been moments in our relationship where physicality has ensued. I’ll leave it there. I wouldn’t like to say.”
- Carl for Attitude Magazine, 2011
They always denied that their relationship was sexual or even romantic in a coupl-y sense though…Anyway, probably good to know (or not, I don’t know) is that the ship name is Pearl.
Another indicator for their relationship is the lyrics in their songs. You can make up a lot of course and take some of the lines for what they are not BUT there are some lyrics that are evidentially about each other. The best example is You’re My Waterloo:
“So just say you love me/ for three good reasons”
“And you’re the only lover I had/ who ever slept with a knife”
are the most obvious lines here. Sung by Peter, this song is definitely about Carl as stated by Carl himself:
“Carl: I actually used to sleep with a knife [in reference to the lyrics: “You’re the only lover I’ve had / Who slept with a knife”]
Peter: Yeah, what’s strange is that he actually used to sleep with a knife.”
– Les In Rocks, September 2015
The word “lover” and the official music video let it appear as a love song even if especially Carl says it is about friendship. (You directed this video yourself you weirdo! You didn’t have to include a kiss scene if it is just friendship???)
Another song that is sung by both of them at each other, even if it is about the problems in their relationship and them being mad at each other, is Can’t Stand Me Now:
“I know you lie, I know you lie/I’m still in love with you”
I could literally quote the entire song for you to understand their problematic relationship (a save place for this is always genius.com, there you have the lyrics explained very well) but this one line is enough to focus on the romantic aspect. “Being in love” usually means to have a romantic interest in someone else, not platonic.
I’m pretty lazy with looking for other song references now as this post is taking me ages as it is already, here have another two posts on that topic, about songs they wrote about each other both before and after the band broke up, provided by the lovely @missoneminute (who is one of two Tumblr Libertines blogs I can highly recommend. That sounds as if all the others were crap, which they aren’t, but if you are looking for long-term fans with profound knowledge on the fandom, who post regularly, @missoneminute and @albion-sails-on-course are THE two blogs for you).
Here you have some videos to watch that show how absolutely gay those two appear around one another. It’s one thing for them to deny any sexual relationship between them, but they can’t tell us they look ‘no homo’ on stage.
NME Awards with Pete and Carl reciting a poem together
Don’t Look Back Into The Sun Glastonbury 2015 (especially 4:20 is super gay)
You’re My Waterloo at Ally Pally
Buffalo at 6:20
Backstage NME Awards Chas’n’Dave
The Bismarck Joke
Vertigo Glastonbury (1:18)
I Need My Biggles
Sadie Frost
Gig at their home (Guerilla gigs)
Pete and Carl 2001-2002
Pete and Carl 2003-2005
Pete and Carl 2014
Dry Humping
Gobble Gobble Gobble
@missoneminute ‘s friend made body analysis posts for her for certain Pete and Carl moments, they are super interesting and gay and you can find them all here.
And these are some stories/excerpts from interviews that sound pretty gay/they-have-feelings-for-each-other-y:
The tea story - Carl having a jealous fit and interrupting Peter’s make out session with his girlfriend by angrily making tea and cursing.
The door slam - When Carl turned up to see Peter after ages apart and drunkenly brought Anthony with him so Peter slammed the door in their faces in a jealous rage.
The top to tail - When they shared a single mattress and one morning Peter claims Carl woke with Peter’s “massive boner in his face” and “couldn’t stop talking about it”.
The vertical smile - Peter rather graphically describing staring at Carl’s bare ass while they were both shagging girls in a loo:
“An encounter where he and fellow band member Carl Barat had sex with two fans in a disabled toilet after a gig on their 2003 Scandinavian tour was typical.
“We met a right old punk who took me and Carl under his wings and took us to the sleaziest club, a proper rock ‘n’ roll dive with all these garage kids,” said Doherty.
“I remember fucking this girl in the toilets, on the floor, proper sort of sliding about the tiles and Carl came in with another girl, as cool as you like and bent her over the toilet.
“Yeah, he had a smile on his face. And a vertical smile on his bum.”
The threesome - Peter’s ex Katie Lewis aka the Katie of What Katie Did describing a threesome she had with Peter and Carl after a wasted night out. She’s low on detail but CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE. Like seriously.
The naked cycle - That time Peter cycled naked back to the tour bus through the streets to try and get to a girl before Carl hooked up with her but failed to make it in time and was forced to watch them snog for hours instead. Also he had no clothes because the girl he had been with had locked him naked in a bathroom:
Tandem-girl story from Kids in the riot:
It was just girls, girls, girls. In Munich, I went off on a tandem with this girl, back to her place. She insisted on playing Suede. So it’s afterwards and I want to go back to the venue because there’s this other girl and I wanna get to her before Carl does, but the tandem-girl locks me in the bathroom so I think, ‘Disaster,’ and actually end up booting the door through and she was screaming, screaming, screaming and she was naked as well. She’s had my clothes away, and I’ve had to jump back on her bike and race through the streets of Munich with just a hat on, back to the bus. And at the end of the night we had to leave Munich because we couldn’t stay and Carl was just snogging this girl endlessly and I’m stood there like fucking Hancock, when Sid James has pulled and he hasn’t. That was the girl that I’d cycled back for.”
Arcadia and back - When Carl took Peter to his mother’s house and showed him the “wild woods” and “took him to Arcadia and back”.
Have you noticed changes in each other?
Pete: ‘I never really used to take much notice before, but now we’re being asked to analyse the changes and the differences, just to placate the naysayers. I’m scared to share a microphone with him now because people say it’s a gimmick. Sometimes I do rush over [to the mic], but that’s only because after you’ve had a few drinks and smoked a certain amount you get that really nice smell on your breath. You know, like when your lover has got that winey, smoky taste. Not that Carl’s my lover… I’d rather toss off a frog.’
Carl: ‘That’s why he moved to France.’
Speaking of the two of you as lovers, have you read any Libertines fan fiction?
Pete: ‘Don’t mention that! He gets really annoyed.’
Carl: ‘I wouldn’t even know where to look for it.’
Pete: ‘He’s lying. Someone pointed us in the direction of it. It’s fucking weird, man, isn’t it? A lot of effort has gone into it. There’ll be a poetic stream of consciousness and then suddenly, BANG! My cock will appear in Carl’s ear. I think it must be written by someone close to us, because apart from the actual sex side of things, which obviously isn’t true, some of it’s quite close to life.’
What advice would you give to a young band just starting out?
Pete: ‘You should start that question “Is there any advice…”’
Is there any advice…?
Pete: ‘No.’
Carl: ‘Nothing apart from “Keep the faith!” It’s the hardest thing in the world, and the easiest.’
Pete: ‘Just don’t listen to the naysayers who say that it’s a crap idea to put on this certain event at this certain place. Just do it. Play the really dodgy pub at the end of the street. You could meet a songwriting partner. You could get a blowjob. I don’t know.’
Carl: ‘You could get both, if you read the fan fiction.’
Now excuse me for adding so many gifs to underline the gayness that you will never see the end of this post:
So then let’s get to The Libertines as a whole again. These are some clips concerning the whole band that you have to see:
The Libertines In The Van
encore shenanigans
Music moment of the year
very young Libertines
Other funny Libertines stories:
Steve’s teeth story:
Did you make much from busking?
Pete: “Then there was that time with Scarborough Steve [Bedlow, former singer/cohort]. It was about nine in the morning, a Sunday, and we’d run out of booze so he suggested we go out busking. He’d just had some of his teeth knocked out and had some temporary ones in. Falsies. We were all absolutely mangled by now and it was afternoon by the time we got down to the bridge. A boiling hot day. These Japanese girls walked past and said, ‘Do Twist and Shout!’, so we started singing: ‘Well shake it up baby now’, and when we got to ‘You know you look so good’, Steve’s tooth fell out.”
Carl: “It landed in an old Nescafé tin that we had as our pot. Then a car ran over it. Those girls were disgusted.”
Umbrella story from Kids in the riot:
“We’d been up all night, bombing around Tokyo, breaking into bars. We found this funny complex where the lifts went up to different bars and we found ourselves on this level where the bar was actually locked so we bust open the door and the pair of us stole bottles of gin and an umbrella.”
Christmas interview(or “ I used to take him to Arcadia and back “):
What’s your favorite Christmas carol?
Pete: “Oh, that French one, Carol Debois, she’s lovely.”
Gary: “Mine is (sings) Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg, Batmobile lost its wheel, then the Joker got away, hey!”
Carl, where will you be this Christmas?
Carl: “I shall be in Watership Down. That’s where my mum lives. The cat brings in rabbits from time to time. I saw that, the cat got frisbeed last year by a fucking juggernaut.”
Pete: “I used to go there and meet his mum…”
Carl: “Er, with me.”
Pete: “…and he used to take me into the wild woods.”
Carl: “I used to take him to Arcadia and back.”
Pete: “It was pitch black. And I’d see (Greek God) Pan.”
Carl: “He saw Pan and he came running with his tail between his legs. We didn’t even know he had a tail ‘til then. Since then he’s kept it very short.”
On the road with the best new band in Britain
by Neil McCormick
The rock band is making a deafening comeback. Neil McCormick jumped on the bus with the Libertines to see if the rituals of the rock tour were back too. Forming a crazy quilt of laddered stockings, tartan mini-skirts and torn T-shirts, four girls stretch out across twin beds in a hotel room in Glasgow. The mini bar door hangs open, the barren interior looking as forlorn as a bank safe after a raid. Empty bottles of spirits, beer and wine litter the floor, several filling up with ash and fag ends. John Hassall, thin, pale bassist with the Libertines, lights up another hand-rolled ciggie and enquires in a polite, dazed voice: “Whose room is this anyway?”
It is 2am on the 10th day of the Libertines’ European tour, and Pete Doherty and Carl Barat (joint singers, guitarists, songwriters and polemicists for the London quartet) have slipped away to wander the corridors, looking for another mini-bar. What they would really appreciate (they let it be known in an odd slang of their own invention) is some “bugle” or some “brackle”, the exact pharmaceutical ingredients for which they leave to the imagination. But they settle for a bottle of red wine in the chambers of a man from Rough Trade records who has come north to watch his young charges perform.
“Can you ever get a buzz better than that?” asks the soft-spoken, otherworldly Doherty. He is not referring to drugs or alcohol. He is talking about tonight’s performance: the clattering of guitars, the charge of bass and drums, the swarm of bodies in a climactic stage invasion. “You can’t get that feeling anywhere else. It’s communion. It’s like being washed away in the ocean, carried aloft on a wave.”
“High seas, low seas, swab the decks, all hands on,” mumbles the foppish Barat. An acrid smell of sweat hangs around the two young bandmates, who appear to be still dressed in the distressed threads they were wearing on stage. Someone suggests that they might avail themselves of the shower facilities before reboarding the tour bus in half an hour to make their way to the next city.
“I don’t look that bad,” says Doherty, offended. He runs his fingers through a greasy tangle of barbed wire curls.
“It’s 'cos I’ve hardly had any sleep. I’ve been hallucinating all night. I’ve looked worse, though.”
“I haven’t washed my hair in years,” says Barat. “Never had any complaints.”
“If you don’t wash your hair, it cleans itself,” reports Doherty. “That applies to the human body as well.”
I fear for the health and sanity of the Libertines. A ramshackle garage rock quartet whose Up the Bracket album sounds like the savage young Beatles colliding with the Jam and the Clash in a pop culture spin-dryer, they may one day be established among Britain’s greatest combos. But first they have to survive life on the road.
Let me take you on a tour round the cramped bus that acts as home for several weeks for four band members, their beefy roadie Paul, exasperated road manager Rob, implacable soundman Nick the Hat, the imperturbable Moose the driver and various strays collected along the way. Downstairs, behind the driver’s cabin, there is a recreation room that resembles a much abused pimp’s suite, complete with white leather sofa spotted with suspicious stains. Amid the empties, there is a TV, video, stereo and Playstation 2. Above asink has been taped a notice: “Your mum is not here. Please clean up yourself.” No one has been paying it any attention.
Occupying pride of place in the toilet is the award which theLibertines collected when NME readers voted them “Best new band in Britain”. Upstairs, there are 10 bunks, overflowing with luggage, guitar cases and stray items of clothing. Aft is another small recreation room. To the fore is a tiny cubby hole which Doherty has claimed for himself. It is not a pretty sight. Strewn with socks and underpants, bras and stockings, butts and empties, rank with the stench of body fluids, it has the ambience of a cupboard in which someone has held a bachelor party. Interlopers have been banned from the bus in a vain attempt by management to curb certain destructive influences. Nonetheless, Doherty has contrived to spend the overnight journey from Sheffield to Glasgow cooped up with four female acquaintances, all squeezed together on his single bunk. The results are not pretty. When Rob finally departs, Barat pokes his nose round the door and reels back in a display of olfactory horror.
“Well there’s been four stowaways in here all night, sweating it out in the dark with no air vents,” wheedles Doherty, defensively. “Of course its gonna be a bithumid.”
“There’s a massive roof hatch,” Barat points out.
“Yeah but you can’t open it without the key,” counters Doherty.
“I wasn’t going to wake Rob up and say, 'The hostages are getting restless, can we open the air vent’ was I?”
“Hostages, was it?” says Barat.
The friends both start to laugh. The girls, however, are looking rather alarmed to notice that the much feared Rob has returned before they could make good their escape. Doherty turns to his disgruntled road manager with eyes of twinkling innocence.
“And imagine my surprise,” he declares.
It is astonishing to think that even after half a century of this rock and roll lark, touring (certainly at the start-up level) remains as chaotic and ridiculous as ever. It is a life positively encrusted in unhealthy rituals built around bad meals, worse drugs, casual liaisons, sleep deprivation and lack of hygiene. Between service stations and chain hotels, killing time with uppers, downers and inbetweeners, days consist of endless waiting, waiting for that one adrenaline-fuelled burst of activity on stage. Afterwards there is only the slow comedown, the desperate attempts to maintain that high with hedonistic abandon, culminating in a gradual estrangement from reality, a sense of dislocation that hangs around everyone who boards the bus.
And the truth is: this is what most of them really want. Pop culture myths of decadence and debauchery are embraced with naively open hearts. After all, everybody knows that sex and drugs and rock and roll go together like stock markets and crashes. Booze and hangovers. The Libertines’ requirements, to be placed in their dressing room before each show, includes the following: “48 large cans quality lager, 8 Red Bull, 24 cans coke,1 bottle good white wine, 2 bottles vodka, 1 bottle whisky”.
“I like touring,” says Doherty, swigging a huge tumbler of vodka and Coke backstage at King Tut’s in Glasgow. “It’s like a school trip.”
Which makes you wonder what kind of school he went to.
“We get more comfort on the road than we do at home,” claims Barat. For the record, he makes this statement while sprawling on a threadbare couch, in a tiny windowless room jammed with sweaty bodies, the floor strewn with cigarette butts.
“At least we’ve got hot and cold running water here,” says Doherty. “We haven’t got that at home. I have to flush my toilet with Evian. Only the best forthe Albion rooms.”
Doherty is a notoriously unreliable narrator. The grandly named Albion rooms are, in fact, a run-down East End rental where Doherty and Barat reside. The Libertines’ chief ideologues have created for themselves a fantastical aesthetic of theimagination they refer to as the Arcadian dream, to which they have set sail on the good ship Albion, the latter referencing their arch nostalgia for a certain indefinable quality of Englishness. They name-check Oscar Wilde, Disraeli, Dickens, Galton and Simpson, Steptoe and Son, Tony Hancock, and a holy trinity of Sids: Sid James, Syd Barrett, and Sid the Sexist.
“People accuse us of being in love with the colours of an old world and dusty tins,” says Barat.
“But it’s an age that exists now. You can own the tin now,” says Doherty, taking up his co-
conspirator’s train of thought with the deftness of a double act. “Its not like time-travelling or pretending you live in another era. You can appreciate the beauty of something whenever it was made, whether it’s a charming image of rollers and quaint fags hanging out of the corners of mouths.”
The pair can go on like this for hours, and frequently do. Two girls on assignment from a local college magazine gaze on as if beholding the fount of all earthly wisdom. “What are your feelings about going to war?” asks one.
“I’d never say I wouldn’t fight a war,” says Doherty, who has a penchant for Crimean army uniforms.
“In different ages I would have done. I’d have fought the Vikings.”
King Tut’s is jammed to capacity. Condensation drips down the walls. The crowd heaves in expectation. Gary Powell, the incongruously urbane black American drummer, says: “I don’t think we should get anybody up tonight.” Paul the Roadie concurs. “No stage invasions. It’s too dangerous. All right Pete?”
Doherty just gives them his innocent smile. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out what’s going to happen next. At the conclusion of a performance that is a jolting explosion of primal energy, Doherty and Barat start pulling fans on to the stage. It is one of their oft-repeated tenets that there should be no barrier between performer and audience. Soon the band have disappeared in a swell of bodies. Someone starts up the anthemic I Get Along and 30 or 40 interlopers jump up and down bellowing the lyrics. Barat’s guitar is unplugged but he sings instead. Doherty occasionally surfaces, looking utterly ecstatic. “There’s no way my stage can take that,” mutters the promoter.
But the mood in the room is euphoric. It’s a big punk rock blast. It is, as Doherty would have it, communion. Then it’s over. The band fight their way offstage. “You can’t do that again, Pete,” warns Powell, who has been fighting people off his kit.
“It was beautiful, Gary,” says Doherty.
“You cannot do that again,” Powell reiterates.
Doherty looks longingly back from the side of a stage still teeming with invaders, chanting for more. “Shall we go out and do another one?”
“With what?” roars Rob. “They’ve nicked all the fucking mics!”
The night after Neil McCormick’s departure, the Libertines were due to play in Hamburg. On arrival, however, singer Pete Doherty was diagnosed with bronchial pneumonia, and the band were forced to cancel the rest of the tour.
Apart from smaller edits on pics, there is much much creativity going on in this fandom. Not so much fanart (though it exists), but comics, memes and above everything else: so many fanfictions. I’m afraid I can’t give credit to all the artists cause I’ve found most of this stuff on the internet without a source but if you know who’s responsible for a certain piece, just tell me and I’ll add their name:
Pictures & Lyrics by @exarcadiaelux
Ridiculous “Carl and boys” post by @audreyhornee
These are all the fanfics I have saved on my computer, ask if you are interested in some and I’ll send them to you:
A Carl Trap For Peterlumps – ?
A Certain Romance – rain_phoenyx
A Christmas Crime – ?
A kiss With a Fist – ?
A Labyrinth Of Mirrors – pherber9
A Lesson In Observation – katie_delaney
A Present For Peter + Payback For Peter – el_gardner
After Carl’s Operation – swallow_sunny
Afterwords – smutriot
Albion Central – ?
Albion in the Park – plastic-beads
Ariel & Raphael – pherber9
Assembling The Crew – ?
Barcelona – mimioomin
Being a woman – ex_stellares61
Berlin – esclarmonde2907
Blood – katie_delaney
Boarding – katie_delaney
Boyband Threequel – dachelle
Carl As Teacher And Pete As Student – shut_out_light
Carl The Stripper – madam_ray
Counter Attack by edithandstan
Death Fires – katie_delaney
Düsseldorf – katie_delaney
Dwindling Innocence – katie_delaney
English Lessons – katie_delaney
Football – ?
France – katie_delaney
Frustrations – katie_delaney
Fuzzy’s Magnificent Carlos The Whore Fic – fuzzy_bumpkins
Gary’s Tourbus Tales – ladyland7
Gay For Christmas – albionstocking
Give Me A Reason + Partners + The Good Stuff – flaaa_blah
Glory Days – tizian23
Groupie – albion_lass
Heat – katie_delaney
Heat – ex_stellares61
I don’t want to go to Chelsea - katie_delaney
In The Dark – jacyna
Is That The Bone Or A Vein? – ?
Italy – katie_delaney
Lola – nice_faces
Lost In The Moores – caramel_69
moulin rouge Thursday – cestmonreve
My Word That Was Fun – ex_stellaros61
NME Awards – katie_delaney
Notebook – cyclictic
Oh, the arrogance! – ohsailors
One Plus One Makes Three – alchemywow
Peepshow – ex_stellaros61
Pete And Carl Drabbles 1 + 2 – light_fingers
Phone call – swallow_sunny
Playing Games – light_fingers
Poetry and Pornography – niconoire
Positioning Pete – ex_isabellas222
Purple and Pearls – ?
Reactions – katie_delaney
Romances Sans Paroles – ?
Shadow Men – ?
Shower Scene – callisto_ares
Side Of The Road – ?
Slow Down Boy – ahothouseflower
Speakerphone – naanie
Swallowed By Brown Eyes – ex_isabellas222
Take Away – katie_delaney
Tease – rain_phoenyx
The Blinding – mimioomin
The Bone Dance – ?
The Curious Incident of the Jackal in the Nighttime – mimioomin
The Escalator - 0_clay_0
The Model – swallow_sunny
The Morning After – ladyland7
The Wedding Suit – edithandstan
Two Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – mimioomin
Under Neon Loneliness – yfli
Under Pressure – albion_lass
Unfold Your Wings - Becoming a Veela for Dummies – tizian23
Wittenberg – katie_delaney
Written In Blood – mimioomin
Zebra Striped Shirt – ?
(Some of those aren’t finished or I didn’t save all the parts yet.)
An absolute classic here is The Zebra Striped Shirt. If you are interested in smut, then you should definitely check out katie_delaney. She’s a goddess and publishes both on albion-fic.livejournal.com (which is THE platform for Libertines fics) as well as on her own blog katiedelaneyfics.wordpress.com. An absolute favourite writer of mine is mimioomin. She’s got a private account you can visit at the age of 18 if you have an account of your own. Just send her a friend request and she’ll surely accept you, she’s a sweetheart.
For more fics ask @the-libertines, I know she has a load, I actually got some from her.
I’ve done my fair share of horrible Pearl stuff, so here is everything I ever did:
An Awkward Secret That Someone Denies (oneshot)
East Of Eden Chapter 1
2
3
4
Close Off Your Senses (And Turn Out The Lights) Chapter 1
2
3
4a
4b
5
6
7
8
A Letter From Pete (oneshot)
Bang Bang You’re Dad (oneshot)
I’m definitely going to hell
Comic - Tiny Carlos Chapter 1
2
Beer Group and other conversations 1
2
3
Advent Calendar
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12-16
17-20
And this was it. Phew. That took me ages and I have grey hair now. But I’ll still be here gaying the world if you need anything. Bye.
P.S.: if the links don’t work just tell me, I have all the videos saved.
