“There was someone who’d been so constant in my dreams and my thoughts and my memories and my hopes. Seeing that face…every time I thought about it I nearly passed out. I just wanted to hold my friend to make him feel better.”
“When we got on stage we were both terrified of getting up there. I never understood people who don’t get any stage fright. We still do to this day. There’s you and your mate on stage and also the feeling of blagging it. And we’d find solace in each other, a bit of comfort in each other”.
“Pete was big on the performance poetry scene. I was always really impressed with Pete for doing that. I still recite his poems.”
“It was a dream. It was like something else. Waterloo (station) was the gateway from where I’m from into London, and it’s been in loads of my songs and album titles…That was the place. It held such assignment for me. I felt this kind of weird distant belonging. Every inspirational character in my life had a place in there…It just had everything that life and literature and culture and music and art had ever presented to me.”
“Once Pete nicked my shoes. We had the same shoes, and I had to be barefoot. And it seemed like the worst thing in the world. It didn’t occur to me I could probably get away with wearing someone else’s trainers. I could have found some shoes!”
“We were kids then. The reason we’ve been able to come back together now is that we accept each other for who we are a bit more. Being accepting that you’re like that, and I’m like this, and that’s alright.”
“Our differing choices in drugs came between us in quite a big way. The drugs that make you die or homeless…I wanted to avoid and I wanted my friend to avoid, my friend who I cared desperately about. I couldn’t accept it or work on a clever way of corralling or convincing or counselling…I just went batshit crazy every time.”
“We did Top Of the Pops. And Peter did that classic watching Top Of The Pops at home seeing his band singing his song without him in it and someone else there. And it must have been horrendous for him, man. It didn’t occur to me at the time. It must have really broken his heart and I feel horrible for that.”
(Discussing Peter breaking in to his flat). “It wasn’t our finest hour really. But it’s a testament of our love…our love for each other as brothers and friends that we manage to overcome these things.”
“When he was coming out of Wandsworth (Prison)…I had to get there at the crack of dawn…I just wanted to get to the prison gates and say, “It’s alright, and I’m sorry, and you’re sorry”. When we saw each other… it had always been so highly charged our relationship, ever since we made a pact together back in the days when we first met saying, “It’s going to be all or nothing”. It’s been so emotionally charged, we’ve such a deep investment in each other, that it was par for the course.”
(About Dirty Pretty Things) “I was happy to have a few things off my own bat which people responded to…And we did have some good times. But essentially I got a lot of my energy for songwriting and performance from the heartbreak and the staggering turmoil that I’d endured, and it was staggering…Just when I felt like I had a bit of closure, we got back together again.”
“We’d spent years communicating through the press, writing little bits in songs to take a dig at each other, or say that we love each other. Just knowing each other would hear them and pick up on them.”
Distraction Pieces Podcast, 2016
I love the bloke, I wanna live with him, do you know what I mean? But it’s too extreme, either way. I think Carl genuinely fucking can’t stand me or he loves me too much. If that’s the case, he’s gonna kill himself.
Peter Doherty after The Libertines split, Kids in the Riot (via p33tur)
Pete: ‘The tabloids can fucking kiss it, man. As soon as I get 12 Number Ones I’ll buy them out and have a huge bonfire. All the fucking journalists will be tied up, gagged and bound in flammable gaffer tape. All the people saying “Pete Doherty’s put on weight”: they’ll see! I’ll lose a stone as the sweat pours from me while their carcasses go up in flames. The squeals of their last breaths…’
“Let’s keep going, I love you, I love you so much” -Pete Doherty on their suicide pact, 1997
“There was one point where I very very nearly, just to be close to him, started taking full on heroin.” -Carl Barat, 2004
“I love him. Wouldn’t go, um – certainly not on Radio 1 – go into too much detail, but… we had lots of wonderful times together, yeah.” -Pete Doherty,
”I think there’s, y’know, obsession and jealousy on both of their sides. They bitch about each other to each other or to other people. They have a bond, intellectually and spiritually, like nothing I’ve ever seen … but sometimes, you know, you just think, God, why don’t you just get a room?!” -Roger Sargent
“not too different from falling in love”” -Carl Barat, 2008
“I’m obsessed to the point of needing to know everything. All of you…I quite love you.” -Pete Doherty, 2002
“He [Carl] was saying, ‘Well, look, what if it’s all gonna happen again?’ and I said, ‘One thing: maybe it will, maybe it won’t, but one thing that’s going to help me not fuck up again is you, and doing all that together.’ Because he means a lot… -Pete Doherty, 2009
“…it’s a deep love. Deep love does funny things to people’ -Carl Barat, 2010
“If I’m honest, I miss having a best friend who, for all his foibles, who got me…you know, when you meet someone who gets you and you get them on the deepest level, I mean that…that’s something that I always missed about Pete.” -Carl Barat, 2010
”a visibly choked up Doherty [on being asked what he missed most about Carl] then simply replied that he had “just missed Carl.” -Pete Doherty, 2010
“He’s my soulmate, and I love him, and that’s the truth.” – Pete Doherty, 2015
Thanks to Rough Trade, Peter and I moved east to Bethnal Green, to the next Albion Rooms, and it was domestic bliss after a fashion. We shared a business bank account and the flat, a beautiful place that had one big room upstairs and one tiny little cupboard. Nevertheless, it was spacious and bright, and the main room – Peter’s room – housed the most amazing brass bed. I know that because I saw it every time I went through it to get to my bedroom (the cupboard).
Carl Barât, Threepenny Memoir
Q Mag: Then you apparently called Carl a ‘racist’.
Peter: Oh shit! OK, I was lairy…and Carl didn’t deserve me bringing up…why did I get kicked out of the band again? It never gets discussed, y’see? Aw I shouldn’t have said it! I love him so much. It’s all coming back to me now. I offered him out as well! ‘Toe to toe on the cobbles’ was my expression. I took my jacket off! Jesus Christ.
Q Mag: What’s worse is how gracious Barat was.
Peter: I’ve never seen him like that before, never; he was elegant and charming and didn’t get battered.
Q Mag: Barat bundled him into the toilet and announced some ‘massive’ secret news.
Peter: He’s been nest-egging. All our advances. Cos he knows I always just spunk mine. He’s got this gaff now, on the seafront, I won’t say where, and we’re gonna open a Libertines Hotel. With a studio, nightclub, a bar. He’d dead set on it. Open to…anyone who’ll pay the bills!
Peter Doherty, Q Magazine, February 2017 (via missoneminute)
Reposting as I omitted a couple good ones. As requested by anon some weeks ago, here’s a selection of Carl’s quotes about, and during, his separation/splits from Peter. They are from interviews spanning 2003-2015. Big ole walls of emo coming at ya. There’s so much material that I’ll do a part two at some stage. Peter’s quotes coming soon too. Enjoy the pain, after the cut.
Inspired by a post compiled by @missoneminute of some of Carl’s Greatest Fibs & Backtracks, I thought I’d collect a few more quotes from Carl, Peter and friends around the topic of some of said vacillating: fanfiction. As much for my own reference as anything!
Have you ever Googled yourself? Carl: Of course. But all that came up was some filthy bit of fan fiction about The Libertines. I looked at it the other night with my girlfriend but I can’t seem to get it up anymore. 2006 (via here cos original source seems to be gone)
“I’m aware of it, but it’s not choice reading for me. Would you like to read stuff like that about you? If it has a literary basis, I think it’s good and healthy and I stand by it. But I’d rather they laid off me and my supposed homosexual tendencies. It does make me uncomfortable to read it, but as long as people realise it’s fiction then I have no problem with it.” 2006 (can’t find source for this, if you know please tell me!)
There are loads of gay erotic fantasy stories about you and Pete being lovers on the internet, does that bother you? Carl: I completely advocate creative thought, and if people want to make up stories, I am flattered to be involved. I don’t mind it at all really. I’d rather people did creative things than did nothing or negative things or talking shit in forums. Didz: I would be quite flattered I think. Carl: Didz is hoping someone might very well do it for him as well. You just need to work out which band member you’d like to be with. (laughs) Even if it’s not sexual, I wish there was more things to advocate creative writing. 2006 (original source seems dead)
Speaking of the two of you as lovers, have you read any Libertines fan fiction? 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. 2015
I do love the comments under your Youtube videos. A lot of people seem to want a romance between you and Pete Doherty. Yes, there are many supporters of this idea. They turn us from men into just objects … no, so it’s really strange. Is there fanfiction about you? Yes. I just was going to say, there are some pretty unique stories. Sometimes do you sit there, in the candlelight, and read about yourselves?While getting closer? Yes, with a bottle of wine… no, not really.2015 (translated from German)
suchasinistergame 