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Boyz:
Boys In The Band – Introducing The Libertines – Dated: Saturday 05/10/02

Talking Liberines
Currently creating a racket all around the country on a nationwide tour, Carl and Pete from East London’s The Libertines took time out to talk to Hudson about being ‘the best band in Britain’…

With the rise of punk guitar bands like America’s The Strokes and Australia’s The Vines, it wasn’t going to to be long before the music press looked for a British band to fly the thrash-guitar flag. Step forward The Libertines from Bethnal Green. Although knocking aroundthe London scene for the last few years, they were snapped up by Rough Trade earlier this year, and scored a surprise hit in the summer with debut single ‘What A Waster’. Not that you’ve probably heard it, as a sprinkling of ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ in the lyrics ensured no airplay whatsoever.
Having roped in the Clash’s Mick Jones as producer, the now give us their debut album – a short and sharp collection of DIY wonders. Lyrics brimming with British and London reference points have already earned them comparison to The Jam and Blur, although on their current tour of the country’s smaller venues and college campuses, they seem more intent on recreating the chaos of The Sex Pistols. Founder Members and co-writers Carl Barât and Pete Doherty roused themselves from sleep on the tour bus to explain themselves to Hudson…

How’s the tour going?
Pete: It’s rocking. Rocking and rolling and chaos and tender. Tickety-boo is the only way to sum it up.

Other bands complain that being on stage is great, but that everything else connected with touring is a bore.
Pete: Other bands are all whiners, aren’t they?
Carl: The travelling is all grey roads and travel lodges, but it’s what we always wanted to do, and we’re doing it.

How did you feel about NME calling you ‘the best band in Britain’?
Pete: You can’t deny it. But at the end of the day, it’s only NME.

Do you feel under pressure to deliver?
Carl: Not really, no. We’ll just continue doing our own thing.

Who writes your lyrics?
Carl: Half and half.

Some reminded me a bit of Morrissey – references to The Queen and London street names. Is it both of you who use the British reference points?
Carl: It’s both of us. We sort of had a dream together. To create our own world, and to include those things that are special to us. The English thing, it’s all we know really, it’s what made us.
Pete: I wouldn’t say [Morrissey] was an influence, but I’ve always liked his stuff. I think the best stuff he did was the first Smiths album, which had more peculiar, darker lyrics.

One of the lyrics in ‘Time For Heroes’ is ‘there’s fewer more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap…’. Are you worried you’re gonna be branded as imperialistic fascists for that?
Pete: No, that doesn’t worry me. I’m not an imperialist or a nationalist. But it’s true. Baseball caps are horrible things.

Do you resent the omnipresent influence of American culture?
Pete: On the rare occasions that I do open my eyes up to the world it can be a bit alarming, but then again, I’ve never been to America, so I don’t feel qualified to comment. I think certainly a lot of tics and quirks that are coming into language, the way we articulate our thoughts, is being harangued by shite American films. Just seeing teenagers in sort of Linkin Park gear, it always jars a little bit with me, but maybe that’s my own aesthetic snobbery. Hopefully I’ll have a more fully-formed opinion for you when I visit America.
Carl: It’s quite funny because quite a few guys turn up at our gigs in baseball caps, but I know where Pete was coming from when he wrote that lyric. What we’re against, or what I’m against, is charmless crassness.

How did you two first meet?
Carl: I was knocking around with his sister. I was training to be an actor at the time, and while I was there his sister happened to share the same accommodation.
Pete: But I remember seeing him when I was a kid in Liverpool, and he was in a band called The Riot or something like that. He was really young. They were fucking awful, but he was a great guitarist, and he was the bloke that my sister met. I was a bit dubious of his relationship with my sister. I’d meet her down the Black Cap in Camden…

The Black Cap? Do you often hang out down there?
Pete: Do you know, I’ve only been in London about twice over the last month because we’ve been on tour. I don’t even know where I hang out now. Filthy McNastys. I think I’m banned from The Black Cap actually.

Why?
Pete: Oh, I don’t know. Peddling something or other. The bouncer threw me out.

In  a recent NME interview you claimed that you’d very briefly worked as ‘rent boys’?
Carl: We just needed a few bob. We saw an ad in the paper for an escort agency. We thought it was going to be taking people out to dinner and being charming and posh and entertaining. The bottom line was visiting a lot of old men in their hotel rooms.

Is that when you boiled out?
Carl: We didn’t turn any serious tricks. I’ll give you that much. You should ask Pete about it. He’s more the dark horse…
Pete: If people think it’s all some sort of joke then i think that’s how we’d prefer it, because there’s lots of vunerable people out there who haven’t been as fortunate as us – mates of ours – who are still in this weird position. It’s not something to be funny about.

Can i ask if you’ve actually had sex with a man?
Pete: No, you can’t ask me that. I get asked that all the time, every night some curious kid or whoever. But you can’t ask me if I’ve had sex with a woman either.

Now you’re touring, who gets the most groupies?
Pete: I snogged one of the guys from the Beatings, you can print that. They’re a really good band. A very good-looking band. Just a snog though, because I don’t want to make myself out to be some sort of slut. Snog is more romantic. It’s not like saying I shagged one of the Beatings up the shitter…

And any big fights yet?
Pete: Yeah, we played in Cardiff, but I can’t remember the name of this fucking band. We did a TV show, and were then down the Cardiff Barfly afterwards just having a drink, then this local band were there, and this little lad kept coming up to me and saying “Your band’s gay, your band’s gay, you’re shit!”, and in the end I just had to knock him out, so there was a big old punch-up in Cardiff.

A sort of straight bashing?
Pete: Yeah, it was sort of like that. I thought he was joking but he had bloody evil in his eyes. He hated my guts, so I gave him a pumch. We don’t like fighting, I’ve never been that good at it, but you’ve got to stand up for yourself, or there’s no point being on the planet.