Born 1979 in the English town of Hexham, Pete Doherty is a musician, poet and visual artist best known as the frontman of The Libertines and Babyshambles. A defining figure of the early 2000s indie rock scene, Doherty gained a devoted following for his poetic lyrics, raw performances and magnetic presence.
Though his creative achievements were once overshadowed by a turbulent personal life and struggles with addiction, Doherty has since found stability, living in France with his wife and child. This renewed focus has allowed him to explore painting and prepare for the release of a new solo album and a new poetry collection later this year.
In his second exhibition at the Janine Bean Gallery, Felt Better Alive, Doherty presents a selection of multi-layered paintings and collages, intricately woven with lyrics and typewritten phrases.
We’re just catching you right before you go on stage. How are you?
I’m feeling a bit cream-crackered, this is the last night of our English tour. I say that, but it never really stops, does it? I mean, just when you think it’s safe to breathe something comes up.
What do you have planned for the new exhibition at Janine Bean Gallery in Berlin?
I’ve got some amazing stuff that’s never been seen, and they’re gonna have to come to my atelier in Étretat in Normandy to pick it up. Somehow, despite all the chaos of The Libertines itinerary this year, I managed to write and record a new solo record Felt Better Alive. I’m really proud of it. A lot of things around this exhibition are going to be connected to songs on the new album. And I’m very honoured that the gallery is going to let me display some of my tat related to the album there.
Next to paintings and collages, what else will you be showing?
I’ve got a hell of a lot of things that I don’t really know what to do with, because there’s no room for them at my mother-in-law’s, but I could never throw them away. I got a massive golden shrine that I bought at a curry house in Margate. And everyone, including my missus, is horrified by it: “You’re not having that at home.” But when I told Janine about the shrine, her eyes lit up, with a rare flame that you don’t see that often amongst gallery owners, who maybe have become jaded by the scene. So, they’re going to come and get that shrine and a couple of old beds and mannequins.
I don’t really give a fuck what anyone thinks.
You first gained recognition as a visual artist with your ‘blood paintings’. They were created by using a syringe to spray your own blood onto the canvas…
The blood thing never really interested me, they were more sensationalist. It was just such a big part of my everyday life then because I was going through so many syringes, I didn’t want to feel like I wasted my time just taking gear. So, I found a way to justify it. But the thing was, they went for loads of money and they’re now all worth a fortune. But eventually, I just stopped doing it, because I just think it’s a bit creepy.
It sounds like you’re happy to have left all that stuff behind you…
It wasn’t possible to continue. You just can’t get away with that level of abuse. If you’re doing it every now and again, that’s fine, you can control it. But if you’re an addict, you’re on a path that’s uncontrollable. So, the only way out was either to stop or to die, because you degenerate your body, your finances, your morality as well.
Many people at the height of addiction say it’d be right if you could just smoke a little opium once at the end of the week to chill out. But if you’re banging up all day, every day, people just don’t want that around. So, you end up in places where it’s tolerated, and a lot of the time, alas, those places can be slippery places. They’re not arcadian glades with a lot of peace and merriment and creativity; it’s dark underworlds.
You’ve often mentioned Jean-Michel Basquiat as an influence on your work. He struggled with addiction and once expressed fear that people believed his art suffered when he got clean. Did you ever fear it would impact your creative output?
I don’t know if I’m capable of answering that, not just off the cuff. I’d have to give it some more thought, because I got a feeling this question is going to come up a lot within myself over the next 10 to 15 years. And I’d like to sort of address it seriously. I’d like to sit down with myself and try and answer it.
You’re a hugely prolific artist, doing poetry, music and painting. Is that impressive output a form of compulsion, too?
There are maybe elements of compulsion, but I think it’s more a case that sometimes there can be an emptiness to the world without art, without literature, without music. God bless her, old mother Earth is wonderful and bountiful, but for every nice walk in the forest, I think my soul equally needs beautiful films and beautiful music. I don’t know if that’s addiction or condition. But I love it. You know, before the whole fucking world goes up in flames, enjoy a bit of culture! Read a very nice book!
Painting is not really a necessity. It’s a kind of luxury.
You’ve spoken before about how painting is like an “inspection of your own psyche”. I would have thought it was a more intuitive, unconscious process…
I don’t know, it all happens so naturally. I don’t really feel comfortable analysing all that. I love to do it with other artists, especially artists who we don’t know anything about their lives, like Vermeer. If you really get into a Vermeer painting, you can decide all kinds of things about what he was thinking, what he wanted to say, and then maybe you read a little bit of history, about Amsterdam or William of Orange. It can take you into a new world, but then what you’re doing is inventing a version of Vermeer… because we don’t know, he wasn’t tweeting bollocks every day.
You often play with British symbols, like Union Jacks. Has your view of England changed? From once glorifying it in songs like ‘Down in Albion’ to a more ironic, cynical view like ‘Merry Old England’ – a recent song that captures the dismal prospect of travelling to England as a migrant…
No. But at the same time, it’s pretty glorious to fucking fight your way through Europe! To leave Africa and cross the Mediterranean and get to fucking Greece. Get through there and get to Calais, Pas du Nord, find a dinghy and then set sail for the white cliffs. That’s some fucking glory. What a fucking adventure. That’s some medieval shit going on there. And then you reach the promised land, and you’re like, oh, what, really, this is it? This is what’s left in England? And then you get sent to fucking Rwanda. Of course that didn’t happen in the end. But you’d be glad wouldn’t ya! Please send me to Rwanda!
I was slipped a Mickey. As a young man, I was sold a dream and fell for it completely.
How does the experience of painting differ from making music?
Painting is not really a necessity. It’s a kind of luxury, to have that time and space, and just get hold of a nice blank canvas. To find a good pen that the baby hasn’t hidden in one of your shoes or tried to flush down the toilet or find a blank sheet of paper that the dog hasn’t fucking sat on. It’s a luxury to have the time to think even for a couple of hours. Songwriting is different. I’m not that adept, technically. If I’m going to do some serious recording, I’ve got to have a studio, which means organising people, and it brings pressure.
So, it’s like a special military operation, armed only with the kernel of a good idea and your guitar. Whereas the painting you’re not running around, you’re not performing for anyone. It’s just you. And then in six months, after you’ve put the canvas away and get it out again, you’re like, ah, there’s something to that. I’m glad I did that painting. And then maybe you’ll get a bit of pride in it, or think you could maybe sell it for a few quid.
Do you take so much time with songs too?
I would never play a song to anyone I thought was shit. I wouldn’t record it. And if it was on a dictaphone I would wipe it. There’d be no trace of it if I didn’t have a little bit of belief in it.
For years you pursued a hell-raising, rock‘n’roll lifestyle. Do you think artists have to live a certain way, explore life on the very edge?
I was slipped a Mickey. As a young man, I was sold a dream and fell for it completely – that the artist had to explore the Hunter J. Thompson version of creativity, mixed with Arthur Rimbaud and Edgar Allan Poe and Johnny Thunders. And I fell for it, I was under its spell. But sometimes it’s nice just to put your feet up, listen to the radio. That’s cool, too. But between you and me – and I probably shouldn’t really say this because it’s probably flawed – but artists should live a certain way.
And it has to be the way I say, otherwise they could destroy all my sentimental dreams of the artists in this crumbling Western liberal democracy that we fought so fucking hard to put together and now is just slipping away. Even if it’s in isolation and disengaged from politics, they need to be allowed to think that they live with a fire inside them that gets into the coldest moments.
- Felt Better Alive through Apr 26, Janine Bean Gallery, Torstraße 154, Mitte, details.
