PETE DOHERTY: ROMANTIC ENGLAND AND THE ART OF REINVENTION

PETE DOHERTY ON ALBION, IDENTITY AND THE POETRY OF ENGLISHNESS

Pete Doherty on English Heritage, Romanticism and Creative Reinvention is less about notoriety and more about authorship. Beyond the mythology and tabloid fog sits a songwriter preoccupied with Albion — an imagined England shaped by literature, memory and longing. With Grace/Wasteland, Doherty turned inward, assembling a body of work rooted not in chaos but in cultural inheritance. Produced with the measured guidance of Stephen Street and enriched by collaborators such as Graham Coxon, the album reads like a map of England both real and romanticised. Streets, poets, lovers and lost afternoons drift through its verses. For Fused, this is not simply a solo debut,  it is a study in how place, heritage and imagination intertwine in contemporary British songwriting.

Pete Doherty must be sweating. and not from a comedown. He has just faced two daunting milestones.The tainted dreamer has just turned 30 and has just released his first solo album. This would arouse a dampness on the brow of most, let alone the modern day Peter Pan that is Doherty. His childlike wavering of responsibility and determination to bury his head in sands of romanticism (and smack) has left us frustrated over the years. Something intrinsic to our souls hates perceived talent (no matter how elusive it may be) going to waste. Stephen Street is like us. Except his determination to nurture musical flair has earned him squillions of pounds, the canny little bugger.

Having worked with The Smiths, Blur, and The Kaiser Chiefs after sensing a project that could be hugely successful with a little tweaking, it is not surprising that Pete was next on his ‘To do’ list. In his own words to the NME after producing Babyshambles ‘Shotter’s Nation’, “I want to prove to those people that he can make a decent record…still there underneath it all is a very sharp, well-read, artistic person that has let his less clever addictions get in the way”.

We heard from the two on their new release, ‘Grace/Wasteland’.

Pete was far perkier and more engaging than expected. Although still conversing in his typically delicate and rambling manner, like a carefree bird hopping from one brambly hedge of a subject to the next, he managed to maintain cohesion in describing his new material – probably because his music appears to follow the same drifting pattern.

When asked why he has decided now to release a solo album, he commented that it felt like the right time: “You got a messy desk; you need to put things in order… this untidy pile of strong ideas and things that got left out along the way”. He referred to the fact that some personal musings never seemed to reach fruition in the previous bands, but now felt right to bring those brainchildren to a close.

It can’t have hurt to have producer Stephen Street rooting for him, especially as the last time they had met, Stephen had not so gently put it: “You’ve got to sort yourself out here, because if you don’t, I can’t work with you”. Perhaps in an effort to quash any suggestion of hostility in the workplace, Pete mentioned that it went a lot smoother than during ‘Shotter’s’ in 2007. He humbly admits, “I was a lot more with it… er… and I wasn’t with it last time… yeh, there wasn’t too much cause for alarm… like last time”.

In return Stephen had only praise for Pete, although he did jovially add that from his previous experience he was “warmed up, as it were, to working with Pete in the studio”. Talking frankly and uncomplicatedly, he told us he had a lot of respect for Doherty as an artist, despite the often negative paraphernalia surrounding him. “I was very, very confident that he had the ability, if he was focused, to make a great solo record”. Which no doubt would reflect well on Street’s own honing skills to boot.

Stephen insisted on bringing in fresh talent to bring a new perspective and direction to Pete’s own musical palette, calling in close friend Graham Coxon to “help, nurture, and put a slightly different angle on things”. It wouldn’t be the first time – Coxon was also dragged into the studio to rev his moped for a sound effect on Kaiser Chiefs ‘Employment’, that’s one for you trivia enthusiasts!

“Graham was a big fan of Peter’s. I took round the very basic demos that Pete had given me, to Graham, sat there with him, played the songs, told him the ideas I had in mind for it, left him with it over the weekend and he phoned me back on the Monday and said yeh, he’d be up for it”.

“The way we started the album was very low key, it was basically Graham on acoustic, Pete with an acoustic, sitting on either side of the screen… straight away I think Pete felt quite inspired by the fact someone as good as Graham had said yes in the first place… secondly I think he loved the way it was sounding, playing off of one another… In the same way Pete used to play guitar off of Carl”.

The songs are very poetic and dreamlike, with a running theme of Albion and Pete’s romanticised beholding of English heritage; there is a fondness of modern day society interwoven with nostalgia for the literary England during which Doherty never lived, but you get the feeling he idealistically misses. The romanticism extends to his tenderly discussing loves lost and a girl who knows her “Kappas from her Reeboks” and her “Winstons from her Enochs”, which sounds like a reference to Croydon born Kate Moss. Incidentally, Peter was overheard talking about Moss outside a London club earlier this year: “I miss her so much. I don’t even read the papers because of her. I can’t look at her”. Sob.

When asked how he felt about his new material, Pete’s conversational structure slightly deteriorated into more of an insight into his own mind. It was quite unsettling how much I understood what he was getting at, babbling on about “all the boys together and all the girls together, skipping and dancing, kind of a ska feel”, but when you hear the album… it makes sense. He talks about “jabs… which I always liked”, purely jabs of sound of course.

Doherty goes on a reminiscent flight of fancy, informing us, out of the blue, of his “Uncle Albert, he’s not gay”. Right, good to know, in case we were ever to come across aforementioned Albert and jump to the wrong conclusion and embarrass ourselves terribly. He tells us a story of wearing his Liverpudlian Uncle Albert’s eccentric trousers at age 15, which he thought had magical powers. Found in the bottom of his Nan’s wardrobe, he donned said trousers (“I thought I was the bollocks in them trousers”) and went into a kebab shop demanding a kebab, and was then chased out by the shop owner with a skewer, “But the trousers didn’t give in”…

The fact that this is apparently the basis for one of his songs gave a sense of relief; the man was not going mad. It’s quite an endearing story really.

“I don’t know how Stephen did that with my vocals actually, getting them sounding so good”; a comment that gives an idea of Doherty’s own struggles to see himself as a valid artist, particularly when it seems he would so love to be up there with the literary greats of the past.

The mentor/childlike relationship becomes apparent again when Pete tells us how it surprisingly took less time than he expected to record. “He’d say, “Right just one more and then you can go”. And I’d be feeling it and just be getting warmed up and he’d say “Right that’s it; I’ve got enough to play with. Off you go.”

“It’s very much what an album should be, a collection of songs that represent a certain period of time”. Pete seemed proud of the album, and its relevance to that period: honest, straightforward and open. It was produced with the help of Babyshambles bandmates, and other selected compadres including Scottish singer Dot Allison and poet Peter Wolfe, or Wolfman, with a close knit, friendly ambience. “It sounds really daft but these people are my friends… and for this record to be made… it’s really been my year”.

We recommend you give the album a listen. The diverse musical influences featuring give it a real twist of originality and confidence but maintain that naivety and folksy simplicity that we associate with our old mate Pete.

“I’ve led a sheltered life, and I think this record reflects that”.

Pete Doherty On Albion, Identity And The Poetry Of Englishness

Words: Amelia Phillips [2009]
Illustration: Kelly Thompson