N THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOW, DURING

which time attempts to schedule another meeting with the man become ridiculously complicated, many people I talk to refer to something called “Pete fatigue.” This is a national condition, by all accounts.

“Pete could well be an expert in sabotage,” says Nigel Coxon, Babyshambles’ British A&R rep, who helped mediate the new album’s awkward genesis. He explains that ruinous stories have often broken the same week that the band has released singles and that, due to “Pete fatigue,” radio stations are resistant to give them any airplay, something Doherty desperately needs. Despite having more column inches written about him than any other British male rock star today, he isn’t selling a huge amount of records. In contrast, the Kooks, an English indie outfit also in thrall to the Libertines legacy, shifted nearly two million copies

above everyone else, a special talent. Is he worth the effort? I’d say yes, yes he is.”

On November 22 Babyshambles begin their most high-profile tour to date, a nationwide jaunt to England’s biggest arenas (and the largest the band has ever played) in just eight days; their U.K. label Parlophone’s objective is to get Doherty in front of his many fans in as short a time as possible. “If we mounted a bigger tour of smaller venues,” Coxon explains, “it could very probably come off the rails. It’s safer this way.”

One could argue that it would be even safer for Doherty not to tour at all, given his tenuous grasp on the sobriety he seems to genuinely covet. McPhillips suggests otherwise, though. “Clearly, a tour is an incredibly stressful thing to undertake,” he says. “But then, it is also stressful for an artist not to live up to his professional obligations. It can be a hard thing for

Mick Whitnall

walking as if on the deck of a ship that has just hit an iceberg. His left eye is pink and bloodshot; his chin sports a fresh open sore. Once on the bus, he pulls off his T-shirt to reveal a doughy torso and offers me tea. He sticks an arm through the ripped lining of a tattered jacket, looking for Christ knows what, and eventually makes do with a lighter retrieved from his jeans pocket, which he continually sparks, holding the flame just millimeters from his thumb.

I remind him that the last time we met, his latest heroin lapse was about to go public.

He groans: “Of course. You were there while it was all going off, weren’t you? Shit.”

He insists he doesn’t want to talk about it. “I’m clean now, I really am. I have to be. If I started piping [smoking crack] or doing brown [heroin] again, then I’d let everyone down, and I just can’t do that.”

He leans forward till his head rests on his kneecaps.

Drew McConnell

ON FICEK: BEN SHERMAN SWEATER AND SHIRT, BENSHERMAN.COM. ON WHITNALL AND MCCONNELL: JOHN RICHMOND JACKE TS, JOHNRICHMOND.COM.

 

of their debut album, Inside In, Inside Out, in the U.K. last year. “It’s very distracting,” Coxon laments.

According to Dr. Mike McPhillips, an addiction specialist and medical director of the Causeway Retreat, a rehabilitation center in Essex, England, Doherty’s faltering progress is not quite as bad as it looks, but rather entirely typical.

“There is nothing unusual in lapsing and relapsing—sometimes for years,” says McPhillips, who has not treated Doherty. “It’s simply part of the process. Anyone who just stops [using] the minute they go into a clinic is an exceptional case. One can only feel compassion for someone in the public eye with these problems, and [Doherty] has essentially become cannon fodder.”

“With Pete, it’s always going to be a bumpy ride,” says Coxon. “But then he really is head and shoulders

someone to feel their career is spiraling downward.”

And so the show goes on, opening at Manchester’s M.E.N. Arena, a place vast enough to host Red Hot Chili Peppers and, on tonight’s evidence, at least twice the size it needs to be to house a Babyshambles crowd. Barely half of its 15,000 seats are occupied. At 9: 15, the quartet take the stage, on time, to huge cheers and, against all expectations, an apparently sober Doherty excels. He is funny, wry, and captivating, and when he plays a solo version of “Lost Art of Murder” (from the current album and reportedly about his messy split from Moss), he is at once heavy with regret and light as air, a man who knows precisely what he is capable of.

After the show, however, it’s another story. As Doherty leads me from the dressing room to the tour bus, he looks ravaged, slurring his words and

When he speaks, the sticky floor absorbs his words.

“Look mate, this isn’t right. I’ve just done a show. Last thing I want to do now is sit around analyzing myself. It’s not on.” He looks up at me, pleading. “Couldn’t we have spoken earlier?”

I explain that I had been waiting to talk with him since three this afternoon but was repeatedly told he didn’t want to see me. His response is one of feigned amazement. His jaw goes slack.

“Nobody told me! You should’ve come directly to me! No point going through them, know what I mean?”

He suggests we catch up when the tour reaches Brighton, “where we can talk and watch all the pretty girls go by.” He gives me his cell phone number and tells me to call him directly, and then asks me to leave him in peace.