The Libertines (2005)
Interview Background
It must have been a rather strange time for Carl Barât when I interviewed him in 2005. Exactly a year before, The Libertines had released their incredible self-titled album, but now with the band in limbo the songwriter had turned his hand to compiling the latest in the Under The Influence compilation series. Bandmate Pete Doherty might have been excommunicated from The Libertines, but Barât was still happy to talk about his former friend without any sense of malice in spite of their ructions. At the time NME seemed to be featuring Libertines dirt on a weekly basis, but Barât showed no wariness towards the media during this interview and proved a gentlemanly interviewee. His ensuing projects with Dirty Pretty Things might have been middling in comparison to his Libertines output, but I couldn’t fault Barât as a conversationalist.
The following is an edited version of an interview first published in Rip It Up, September 2005.
Carl Barât - No More Heroes
by Scott McLennan
Having helmed two glorious and hedonistic Libertines albums with his estranged friend Pete Doherty, dapper UK artist Carl Barât has now turned his hand to compiling the latest compilation in the Under The Influence series. Following in the footsteps of Morrissey, Ian Brown and Bob Geldof, Barât has collated 15 of his favourite tunes for the new collection.
When Rip It Up speaks to him, the eloquent Barât is a little unsure of the compilation’s tracklisting due to legal wrangles with some of his choices.
“The first tenet of the record company’s manifesto was, ‘No Beatles or Stones, as they charge too much’,” Barât begins. “I also wanted The Velvet Underground, The Doors, a band from England called The Coral and The La’s.”
The La’s are on the version of your album I’ve received.
“Are they? Oh cool,” Barât exclaims. “You’ve probably got the right thing - I must just have the crappy promo. No one ever sent me anything beyond a scratched-up CD with a photocopied cover - most of the songs didn’t even work.”
While many of Barât’s selections are tunes he grew up with, it has previously been stated that when The Clash’s Mick Jones came on board as producer for The Libertines’ debut Up The Bracket, the band were largely unaware of his group’s musical legacy.
“That’s quite correct,” Barât confirms. “I’ve got enormous holes in my background knowledge of music, which is quite exciting to me in a way. The things I love I fall in love with obsessively, and everything else either doesn’t interest me or is something that I can later look forward to learning all about.”
David Bowie, a similarly significant artist who appears alongside The Clash on Under The Influence, is another musician Barât has previously encountered.
“Actually I’ve met Bowie a couple of times. I lit his cigarette once when I was tearing tickets at the Old Vic Theatre. He was a snappy dresser and quite a looker, but a bit shorter than I thought. He was going to see The Iceman Cometh starring Kevin Spacey.
“A lot of people went to see that one, including Peter O’Toole, the All Saints and other more forgettable people,” Barât continues with a chuckle. “I was in The Libertines at the time, and I met more people while working at the Old Vic than while in the band.
“Before I worked at the Old Vic I was ushering for Marcel Marceau’s company. One day at the after-show party I was working behind the bar and I was delighted to be in this elitist company and Peter [Doherty] came in and started shouting at me, ‘What are you doing with all these dickheads?’. It was kind of humiliating.”
Doherty’s ability to scupper the good-natured cool of his former bandmate is legendary. The eponymous Libertines album was recorded following Doherty’s crack-fuelled burglary of Barât’s flat, tabloid exposés of the erratic singer’s drug use and studio dust-ups that led to manager Alan McGee getting both guitarists a bodyguard. Rip It Up’s chat to Barât comes exactly a year on from the release of the troubled but incredible The Libertines.
“Is it really?” Barât exclaims. “I feel glad to have reached closure on it really. It was a very emotionally fraught time of my life and I’ve got my gold disc at home, which I look at wistfully sometimes. I’ve got my new band I’m working on now and putting the effort into that, but I don’t rule out any future releases from The Libertines.”
Backstage at the recent Reading Festival, Doherty fanned tabloid hype about his destructive ways by getting into a fight with early Libertines acquaintance Johnny Borrell of UK band Razorlight.
“Pete phoned me up that day and told me about that in a kind of heroic light,” Barât sighed. “I don’t have a great deal to say about it really, but I can well imagine it happening and them both antagonising each other. I get on quite well with Johnny and I actually went bowling with him the other day, but I’m glad to be out of it and ignore all these complexities, complications and politics that can wear a band down.”
One of Barât’s good friends - who coincidentally pops up on Under The Influence with the track Sitting Up Straight - is Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey. The recent Libertines biography Kids In The Riot details an example of Goffey’s odd humour, with the drummer donning a pair of green tights and running into a recording studio where The Libertines were working. Barât is still unsure what the motive for such a display may have been.
“I think he just likes wearing green tights,” Barât ponders, before revealing his own escapades in pantaloons. “I wore tights in the secondary school play of Hamlet once playing Fortinbras, but the seams came out. It was in front of our local councillor, who was actually Guy Ritchie’s mum, and it was a rather embarrassing exposé. I don’t know if many people noticed my shame, but I cowered off the stage and on came my understudy - it was good for him at least.”
With his new band looking to release their debut single in the next few months and an album slated to be recorded by the end of the year, Carl is looking forward to a fresh start. However, there remains a chance that The Libertines saga could still have a happy ending.
“The ball is in Pete’s court, as he knows,” Barât offers. “I wish and hope something will be good again and we can get back together. I believe that the strong friendship is still there.”
Under The Influence: Carl Barât (DMC)
Unpublished Interview Material
How are the rehearsals going tonight?
“Slow. We went to a party for a bit of motivation and then we came back here, but I had to tell everyone that I was going to be absent as I had six phoners for Under The Influence, which is what I’m now doing. It’s a pleasure though, since it’s always lovely when someone cares about what your favourite tunes are. I was honoured to do so.”
Is the new material you’re working on under the name of Carl Barat or do you have a name for the band?
“There is a name for the band but I don’t really like to let on just yet. We’ve got a few names, but we want it to mean something. Some names sound great but the band name needs to be about what you stand for, so it’s very difficult. It’s like naming a child, but even more so than that. I have a few names but I haven’t given them to the boys [in the band] yet, so it would be a bit hard for me to name them for you.”
Are there many tracks on this album that were tunes you first played when learning guitar?
“I would have said Velvet Underground, but I couldn’t get that on. I wanted Rock N Roll, but Cool It Down was my favourite. A lot of the songs on the CD are the soundtrack to my childhood; songs I never really chose but were inflicted on me. They became part of my genetic make-up in that sense.”
Which of the tracks on Under The Influence have you only become switched on to in recent times then?
“Well obviously there’s The Streets, plus Pulp. I wanted to get the Cooper Temple Clause on there as well, but their bass player told their manager that he wasn’t having it. I think we were having a bit of a do at the time, but anyway…”
There aren’t too many females on the album – do you feel you don’t have too many female influences?
“I guess so, although there’s [The Mamas And The Papas’] Dream A Little Dream. I love a lot of female singers – I really love Joni Mitchell and er… okay, there it ends [laughs]. I think more girls like girl artists than guys do girl artists, but I could be wrong though and maybe that’s just misogynistic.”
Was the reason you included Sitting Up Straight because you’re a friend of Danny Goffey from Supergrass, or were you always a fan of I Should Coco?
“I Should Coco for me is their best album, which I wouldn’t be saying if I thought Supergrass were going to hear this. It’s a song that I completely related to as a kid living in the same kind of town. They wrote that song about their experiences and it was something I agree with, so it wasn’t about nepotism and jobs for the boys.”
The CD cover of Under The Influence states ‘Carl Barat of The Libertines’. Does this mean The Libertines are a going concern?
“I can only hope The Libertines will continue to write songs, mean them, believe them and have something in them. It’s still an open chapter for me, but I’ve made it very clear that the ball isn’t in my court.”
Morrissey’s Under The Influence CD didn’t say ‘Morrissey of The Smiths’ and Bob Geldof’s didn’t say ‘Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats’ - did you have any concerns with the record company writing ‘Carl Barat of The Libertines’ on the cover?
I have no idea – I just chose my favourite songs when I was asked to. If they’re going to put that then I’m not going to argue with it. They’re not going to write ‘Carl Barat of South London’, since no one would know who I was. It doesn’t bother me.”
You’ve said before you don’t have many idols – was meeting Morrissey when you supported him something quite special?
“It was special, but I didn’t want him to fuck up the image I had in my head of him, plus I didn’t want him to not like me, so it was a bit of an unfulfilling meeting really, as it always is when you meet your heroes, I guess.”
Good luck with recording the new album and we’d love to see you tour Australia again sometime soon.
“I’d love to come back and I’ll bring my own fried cod – it’s a fish you don’t have over there!”
It must have been a rather strange time for Carl Barât when I interviewed him in 2005. Exactly a year before, The Libertines had released their incredible self-titled album, but now with the band in limbo the songwriter had turned his hand to compiling the latest in the Under The Influence compilation series. Bandmate Pete Doherty might have been excommunicated from The Libertines, but Barât was still happy to talk about his former friend without any sense of malice in spite of their ructions. At the time NME seemed to be featuring Libertines dirt on a weekly basis, but Barât showed no wariness towards the media during this interview and proved a gentlemanly interviewee. His ensuing projects with Dirty Pretty Things might have been middling in comparison to his Libertines output, but I couldn’t fault Barât as a conversationalist.
The following is an edited version of an interview first published in Rip It Up, September 2005.
Carl Barât - No More Heroes
by Scott McLennan
Having helmed two glorious and hedonistic Libertines albums with his estranged friend Pete Doherty, dapper UK artist Carl Barât has now turned his hand to compiling the latest compilation in the Under The Influence series. Following in the footsteps of Morrissey, Ian Brown and Bob Geldof, Barât has collated 15 of his favourite tunes for the new collection.
When Rip It Up speaks to him, the eloquent Barât is a little unsure of the compilation’s tracklisting due to legal wrangles with some of his choices.
“The first tenet of the record company’s manifesto was, ‘No Beatles or Stones, as they charge too much’,” Barât begins. “I also wanted The Velvet Underground, The Doors, a band from England called The Coral and The La’s.”
The La’s are on the version of your album I’ve received.
“Are they? Oh cool,” Barât exclaims. “You’ve probably got the right thing - I must just have the crappy promo. No one ever sent me anything beyond a scratched-up CD with a photocopied cover - most of the songs didn’t even work.”
While many of Barât’s selections are tunes he grew up with, it has previously been stated that when The Clash’s Mick Jones came on board as producer for The Libertines’ debut Up The Bracket, the band were largely unaware of his group’s musical legacy.
“That’s quite correct,” Barât confirms. “I’ve got enormous holes in my background knowledge of music, which is quite exciting to me in a way. The things I love I fall in love with obsessively, and everything else either doesn’t interest me or is something that I can later look forward to learning all about.”
David Bowie, a similarly significant artist who appears alongside The Clash on Under The Influence, is another musician Barât has previously encountered.
“Actually I’ve met Bowie a couple of times. I lit his cigarette once when I was tearing tickets at the Old Vic Theatre. He was a snappy dresser and quite a looker, but a bit shorter than I thought. He was going to see The Iceman Cometh starring Kevin Spacey.
“A lot of people went to see that one, including Peter O’Toole, the All Saints and other more forgettable people,” Barât continues with a chuckle. “I was in The Libertines at the time, and I met more people while working at the Old Vic than while in the band.
“Before I worked at the Old Vic I was ushering for Marcel Marceau’s company. One day at the after-show party I was working behind the bar and I was delighted to be in this elitist company and Peter [Doherty] came in and started shouting at me, ‘What are you doing with all these dickheads?’. It was kind of humiliating.”
Doherty’s ability to scupper the good-natured cool of his former bandmate is legendary. The eponymous Libertines album was recorded following Doherty’s crack-fuelled burglary of Barât’s flat, tabloid exposés of the erratic singer’s drug use and studio dust-ups that led to manager Alan McGee getting both guitarists a bodyguard. Rip It Up’s chat to Barât comes exactly a year on from the release of the troubled but incredible The Libertines.
“Is it really?” Barât exclaims. “I feel glad to have reached closure on it really. It was a very emotionally fraught time of my life and I’ve got my gold disc at home, which I look at wistfully sometimes. I’ve got my new band I’m working on now and putting the effort into that, but I don’t rule out any future releases from The Libertines.”
Backstage at the recent Reading Festival, Doherty fanned tabloid hype about his destructive ways by getting into a fight with early Libertines acquaintance Johnny Borrell of UK band Razorlight.
“Pete phoned me up that day and told me about that in a kind of heroic light,” Barât sighed. “I don’t have a great deal to say about it really, but I can well imagine it happening and them both antagonising each other. I get on quite well with Johnny and I actually went bowling with him the other day, but I’m glad to be out of it and ignore all these complexities, complications and politics that can wear a band down.”
One of Barât’s good friends - who coincidentally pops up on Under The Influence with the track Sitting Up Straight - is Supergrass drummer Danny Goffey. The recent Libertines biography Kids In The Riot details an example of Goffey’s odd humour, with the drummer donning a pair of green tights and running into a recording studio where The Libertines were working. Barât is still unsure what the motive for such a display may have been.
“I think he just likes wearing green tights,” Barât ponders, before revealing his own escapades in pantaloons. “I wore tights in the secondary school play of Hamlet once playing Fortinbras, but the seams came out. It was in front of our local councillor, who was actually Guy Ritchie’s mum, and it was a rather embarrassing exposé. I don’t know if many people noticed my shame, but I cowered off the stage and on came my understudy - it was good for him at least.”
With his new band looking to release their debut single in the next few months and an album slated to be recorded by the end of the year, Carl is looking forward to a fresh start. However, there remains a chance that The Libertines saga could still have a happy ending.
“The ball is in Pete’s court, as he knows,” Barât offers. “I wish and hope something will be good again and we can get back together. I believe that the strong friendship is still there.”
Under The Influence: Carl Barât (DMC)
Unpublished Interview Material
How are the rehearsals going tonight?
“Slow. We went to a party for a bit of motivation and then we came back here, but I had to tell everyone that I was going to be absent as I had six phoners for Under The Influence, which is what I’m now doing. It’s a pleasure though, since it’s always lovely when someone cares about what your favourite tunes are. I was honoured to do so.”
Is the new material you’re working on under the name of Carl Barat or do you have a name for the band?
“There is a name for the band but I don’t really like to let on just yet. We’ve got a few names, but we want it to mean something. Some names sound great but the band name needs to be about what you stand for, so it’s very difficult. It’s like naming a child, but even more so than that. I have a few names but I haven’t given them to the boys [in the band] yet, so it would be a bit hard for me to name them for you.”
Are there many tracks on this album that were tunes you first played when learning guitar?
“I would have said Velvet Underground, but I couldn’t get that on. I wanted Rock N Roll, but Cool It Down was my favourite. A lot of the songs on the CD are the soundtrack to my childhood; songs I never really chose but were inflicted on me. They became part of my genetic make-up in that sense.”
Which of the tracks on Under The Influence have you only become switched on to in recent times then?
“Well obviously there’s The Streets, plus Pulp. I wanted to get the Cooper Temple Clause on there as well, but their bass player told their manager that he wasn’t having it. I think we were having a bit of a do at the time, but anyway…”
There aren’t too many females on the album – do you feel you don’t have too many female influences?
“I guess so, although there’s [The Mamas And The Papas’] Dream A Little Dream. I love a lot of female singers – I really love Joni Mitchell and er… okay, there it ends [laughs]. I think more girls like girl artists than guys do girl artists, but I could be wrong though and maybe that’s just misogynistic.”
Was the reason you included Sitting Up Straight because you’re a friend of Danny Goffey from Supergrass, or were you always a fan of I Should Coco?
“I Should Coco for me is their best album, which I wouldn’t be saying if I thought Supergrass were going to hear this. It’s a song that I completely related to as a kid living in the same kind of town. They wrote that song about their experiences and it was something I agree with, so it wasn’t about nepotism and jobs for the boys.”
The CD cover of Under The Influence states ‘Carl Barat of The Libertines’. Does this mean The Libertines are a going concern?
“I can only hope The Libertines will continue to write songs, mean them, believe them and have something in them. It’s still an open chapter for me, but I’ve made it very clear that the ball isn’t in my court.”
Morrissey’s Under The Influence CD didn’t say ‘Morrissey of The Smiths’ and Bob Geldof’s didn’t say ‘Bob Geldof of The Boomtown Rats’ - did you have any concerns with the record company writing ‘Carl Barat of The Libertines’ on the cover?
I have no idea – I just chose my favourite songs when I was asked to. If they’re going to put that then I’m not going to argue with it. They’re not going to write ‘Carl Barat of South London’, since no one would know who I was. It doesn’t bother me.”
You’ve said before you don’t have many idols – was meeting Morrissey when you supported him something quite special?
“It was special, but I didn’t want him to fuck up the image I had in my head of him, plus I didn’t want him to not like me, so it was a bit of an unfulfilling meeting really, as it always is when you meet your heroes, I guess.”
Good luck with recording the new album and we’d love to see you tour Australia again sometime soon.
“I’d love to come back and I’ll bring my own fried cod – it’s a fish you don’t have over there!”
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