PHOTO BY ROBERTA RIDOLFI
THE LIBERTINE
Pete Doherty on his new album, Grace/Wastelands... and all the other stuff.
There's been no dearth of coverage for Pete Doherty, but most of it's been through
Court TV. After a series of very public, and very failed, rehab attempts, the singer seems - finally - to have it together, just in time for a new album. NYLON Guys spoke with the rock idol last month in London.
On his newly clean routine:
“I’m not just staggering around… I haven’t just thrown it out there and hoped for the best. I’m following it really closely.”
On the new album, Grace / Wastelands:
“There’s more effort gone into making them complete as songs, rather than just knocking out streams of consciousness that might sound intriguing or happen to rhyme… I wasn’t hiding behind dirty guitars.”
The best part of going to jail:
“The only good thing about going to prison last April was that I didn’t have to do the Royal Albert Hall gig. Even as the sentence was passed, and [the judge] said ‘two months’ or whatever it was, I was thinking, Thank God, I don’t have to do that. Obviously when I came out, it had been rescheduled.”
And about that infamous gig:
“I had it in my head that I was going to be playing to stately families in boxes, staring at me down opera glasses, saying ‘Oh dear, what is that young man blabbering about?’… No [it wasn’t like that], there was a bloody stage invasion. I had to disguise myself in a fireman’s hat, or else I was going to get squished.”
--INTERVIEW BY REBECCA NICHOLSON;
SEE THE FULL STORY IN NYLON GUYS MAGAZINE, ON STANDS NOW
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