Pete Doherty on Babyshambles and getting the band back together
Pete Doherty and Babyshambles. Picture: Barnaby Fairley
In 2004, The Libertines were coming to an end, having led the garage rock revival in the UK alongside The Strokes in the US at the turn of the millennium, squabbles over drug use between the band’s two frontmen Carl Barat and Pete Doherty were now tearing the band apart.
After Doherty had left the band they released one of their best known singles, which detailed the pair’s fall out, with Doherty asking on the record “have we enough to keep it together?”.
The answer was no, and Doherty, now 46, formed Babyshambles, who initially underwent a number of line-up changes before settling on the Northumberland-born singer being joined by Patrick Walden on guitar, Gemma Clarke on drums and Drew McConnell on bass.
Babyshambles music initially showed a punkier edge to Doherty’s songwriting, on tracks such as and and even brought in ska reggae influences. The band continued until Barat and Doherty put their differences aside to fully reunite The Libertines in 2014, having performed a number of gigs in 2010.
The band has released three studio albums in (2005), (2007) and (2013), and has had four UK top 10 singles, with all of their LPs also reaching the top 10.
Now 10 years on, and following the death of Walden in June last year, Babyshambles are back, having just completed a UK tour, which culminated with a raucous performance at Camden’s Koko venue, and a new single named Dandy Hooligan.
“There’s nothing I’d rather be doing, and there’s no turning back now, but it’s complicated,” Doherty explains in the hesitant manner you might expect for someone who has spent his life on the front pages of Britain’s tabloids. “It’s lovely to see the fellas again, first and foremost, and catch up, and this is probably the only way, really, we could do it.
“The only way the four of us could get together is under the guise of a Babyshambles reunion, that’s a good excuse for the four of us to see each other again, and dig up all the darkness and joys of the past and talk shit. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a band that talks so much hilarious shit.”
Doherty says that performing solo or with The Libertines are now “really familiar places to me” and says the Babyshambles reunion has been “different from both of those” adding that it now feels “brand new”.
He continues: “There’s kids who who’ve heard these songs at home, but they’ve never seen the band. There’s some people who are coming out who were there back in the day, the first time around with the Shambles, way back, like 2004.
“So lots of ghosts from the past popping up, you know, men in cloaks at the back of the band demanding vast amounts of money that no one remembers owing, and things like this… people turning up with triplets, claiming that Drew’s the father.”
With a smirk he adds: “It sounds funny, but it’s not funny for Drew.” But not all of the ghosts of the past have been a laughing matter for Doherty, as he says playing the songs from what was a dark time in his life has been taking its toll.
Wearing his recognisable braces, but without his trademark hat, Doherty adds: “Just playing these old songs, it’s quite emotional for me, because they’re all so f***ing intense.
“And there’s a lot of songs rooted in a certain time in my life that it’s been a long time since I lived like that, or felt a lot of those things, it’s not that there’s an element of play acting, but there is a little bit of having to tread back into that old state of mind.
“I can feel it, and it’s really quite creepy actually, when I’m on stage and I feel the things I used to feel, but my life’s so different now, and the anger that in a lot of it used to be a perfect vent for me, and I used it, and it would be the only solution, would be violence and destruction.
“That was always the obvious conclusion to me to these feelings, but I don’t want to do that anymore. First of all it’d really frighten the dogs… and anyway I can’t go back to jail, and so I’m just left with all this repressed violence and anger that subsides after a while.” Doherty also says it had been difficult performing without Walden, struggling to speak about his former bandmate without becoming emotional, saying “we all loved him and missed him”, and revealing that he had been part of the reunion plans prior to his death aged 46.
He adds: “It’s a little bit confusing as well, because the idea of doing these songs from the first album was that he was going to play on them in a way he only can.
“The thing his missus read out at the funeral, he’d said to her specifically, ‘if I die, make sure whoever plays my parts at the f***ing reunion doesn’t f**k them up, because I’ll be watching either from heaven or from hell’. So that was a strange thing to hear.”
Guitar duties have been taken on by Mick Whitnall in the latest incarnation of Babyshambles, while drummer Clarke, who left the band in 2005 and made a surprise appearance at the last date of their reunion tour, has since been replaced by Adam Ficek.
But Doherty explains they are still looking at ways to include Walden’s spirit in their latest work. He says: “He (Walden) wrote a song before he died that we’ve had a look at, it’s beautiful song, but it’s got some quite ominous lyrics, I won’t repeat the lyrics, I don’t know if they’d (his family) want me to.
“But basically it’s talking about himself in the third person, being no longer with us, if you see what I mean.” It would seem more new music is on the cards for Babyshambles, but Doherty says he has not been thinking about a new album.
The singer concludes: “I can’t even begin to think about it, I don’t even want to start thinking about it… “I was a bit disappointed… because we played Coventry… and it was a pretty poor turnout to be honest, really, that got me thinking that if we did it, it would probably just be for us.
“Luckily, we’ve got our label, Strap Originals, splendid independent label, so we could release it, but I don’t know…. if England calls we will answer.”
- Babyshambles’ latest single is out now, and the band has teased they will return to the stage in 2026, posting “you might just be seeing us next year” on their Instagram page on New Year’s Eve.
