The Libertines talk being clean and connected: “We just want to write beautiful songs in the moment”

The Libertines have spoken to NME about how a sense of sobriety, togetherness and the desire “to write beautiful songs” helped shape their long-awaited new album. Watch our video interview with the band above.

Announced last week with the launch of the single ‘Run Run Run’, ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ arrives in March as the long-mooted follow-up to 2015’s ‘Anthems For Doomed Youth’.

With the opening lyrics of ‘Run Run Run’ describing “a lifelong project of a life on the lash“, singer Carl Barat described the track as a somewhat “self-referential” statement about where The Libertines are today, ahead of their fourth LP.

“I was trying to work out if it’s a song of hope or a song of fear,” Barat told NME. “I think it’s a song of hope. It’s saying that even though time has moved on and this person has stayed in the same place, he’s still able to do what he does and he’s going to be who he is regardless of times changing. I don’t know if that’s a sad thing or a good thing.”

Asked if he feels more hope or fear now, Barat replied: “I’m eternally hopeful, and eternally afraid.”

NME sat down with Barat and co-frontman Pete Doherty to talk about being drug-free, becoming the band they are meant to be, who’d play who in a biopic, and penning an album inspired by Margate, war, the refugee crisis, dead birds, and Queen Elizabeth.

Hello, Libertines. You’ve felt very present since the last album. Does it feel surreal to finally be back with some new music?

Barat: “Yes, we’ve got a reason to be here now! It’s a monumental day for us.”

Doherty: “We’re fully behind the record. That’s not just the official line.”

What, if anything, does ‘Run Run Run’ tell us about the new album?

B: “It’s a bit of a red herring really. The whole record isn’t like that. Maybe it’s just getting a nod to the past out of the way.”

D: “There are three or four songs on the album that are that sort of tempo and guitar-driven. There are probably only one or two songs that are any punkier. It’s like an old melodic pop song like [Elvis Costello’s] ‘Oliver’s Army’. As a songwriter, it’s difficult to present good, classic-sounding songs. Call me old-fashioned, but that’s what I love. I love little diversions and mad jazz odysseys, but I love it when bands like The Coral and their new album… James Skelly just keeps writing incredibly beautiful songs with little twists, but still with that ‘60s melody, strength and solidity.

“I’d say ‘Run Run Run’ has got that, but I’d say there isn’t too much of that on the album. It’s probably more eclectic than we would have hoped for or would have done if we’d just done it by ourselves. The geezer who produced it – Dimitri Tikovoï – we gave him quite free reign.”

Speaking of eclecticism, Pete told us back in 2019 that you were looking like you’d be going in a similar direction to The Clash’s ‘Sandinista!’ – a little bit of rap and a little bit of everything. At what point did you shake that off and come up with this more cohesive batch of songs and new vision?

D: “When we heard my rapping!”

B: “The ‘Sandinista!’ thing was just the idea of having everyone involved. When we hadn’t written anything and we were a bit scared. The idea of ‘Sandinista!’ is that you can just do whatever with no particular expectations. It might have started in that way, but we ended up refining it because we realised what was there.”

D: *Starts rapping* – “’She tried to snatch my phone, I grabbed her hand and I pulled her close, I said ‘You only had to ask you know, now take me to where the zombies go’… Yeah, that didn’t make it onto the album.”

So what happened when you went to Jamaica that made everything gel? 

D: “It wasn’t a waste of time, because it really was an opportunity for us to spend a bit of time together. We just sat back and watched the Coronation. Or was it the funeral? Yeah, it was Lizzy’s funeral. At the time, we were well impressed with what we’d done. Then we got back and sat and played it to everyone…”

B: “It was essentially to get it out of the way. It’s better to do it there than to get everyone in the room, feel the pressure and not get anywhere. It was an essential part of the journey.”

Does Queen Elizabeth haunt the songs?

B: “A little bit, yeah”

D: “It was really strange. We were in this glass cubicle on a hilltop during a full-on hurricane, just watching the funeral and not really knowing what we were feeling. She does pop up in the song ‘Shiver’, which might be coming out as a second single. ‘The day they boxed all Lizzy away… The last king of every dying empire, just let it die/ Sit back enjoy the ride/ The last dream of every dying soldier/ I’ll see you there, flowers in your hair.’

“So this glass cubicle, they polish it like maniacs every day so the birds can’t tell that they’re flying into glass. Every so often, especially when it was very windy, you get these incredible little golden parrots and yellow hawks just going, ‘THWACK’ suddenly. It scares the fuck out of you.”

So the queen is dead, all the wildlife is dying…

D: “Yeah. It feels like the end of the world, doesn’t it? We [did] have a few apocalyptic songs that were a bit more boisterous than I could handle. I kept going to bed every time Carl started doing his big apocalyptic numbers. They were terrifying.”

Carl, you said that the first album was born of the “panic and disbelief” that you could do this, the second of “total strife and misery”, and the third of “complexity” – and this one is more of unity and connection?

B: “Yes, on this one we were all facing in the same direction.”

D: “All we want to do is write beautiful songs. That’s what we’ve always wanted to do, but we got distracted – mostly by ourselves. On this occasion, we followed the pattern of writing songs that we believe in but there was nothing else to say; no fanfare, no cacophony. This is the album we’re proud of.”

Do you feel like The Libertines are now the band you were always meant to be without the distractions? 

B: “There’s plenty of ramshackle baked in still. I don’t think we really know what kind of band we want to be; we just want to write beautiful songs in the moment. It just so happens that at this moment, we’re all facing the same direction.

“There’s been a lot of focus and everyone’s been working on finding their own personal place in the world as well. Everyone has very different lives and we managed to find something to unite over. That’s what The Albion Rooms has been really good for – having that in bricks and mortar, and co-owned by everyone. It feels like it’s part of this journey that’s been going on for a while now.”

D: “The other albums were basically written before we went in the studio. This time it was a case of people presenting really strong ideas, and then everyone else just tucking in, putting their bibs on, rolling up their sleeves and chewing the fat. There were so many times on this album where I thought I knew what the song was, and then it became completely different for the best.

“‘Songs They Never Play On The Radio’, for example. That was written and I thought it had its place in the world. It’s completely different now to any vision I ever had of it. John just sat down at the piano, louche as you like, and then played it in this epic Beatles-y way. At first, I thought it had to be jangly but then I just let go. I thought the song was going to drown, but then it came out in this massive water spout with all nymphs and goblins before bursting down on us from the sky.”

All four of you are credited as writers across the album. How did the spirit of the record change when John and Gary got involved?

B: “It was moments like Pete just described with everyone being there and having confidence. There was a flow state that gave us the confidence to go to places that we wouldn’t normally have gone in if we weren’t on the same page.”

D: “I remember being sat in John’s bedroom 24 years ago, and he had a song called ‘Annabelle Lee’. We never used to do it in the band – not because we didn’t want John to sing, but we both secretly loved the melody and thought that maybe one day we could worm our way into it. That’s what’s happened now. We turned it into ‘The Man With The Melody’ and we’ve all got a verse on it, and Gary sings on the chorus. It’s a completion and a full stop.”

Lyrically, what would you say you’re mining on this record?

B: “It’s one of those things you realise what things are about after the fact.”

D: “The most stressful times of the writing were the morning where we were sat with the pads getting told by the producer that songs needed vocals. We’d just been ad-libbing for most of the songs, so there were these frantic sessions which became a little bit stretched out where we couldn’t get it together with the lyrics. Then, they just sort of appeared out of nowhere.

“It’s fair to say it was pretty stressful finishing some of these songs, lyrically – which is what makes it even more precious as it was touch and go for a couple of them. We couldn’t let it go half-arsed.”

Let’s look at some other bangers on the record. ‘Have A Friend’ seems like a song that speaks for itself about unity?

B: “Yeah, in the face of war perhaps.”

D: “It was [originally] called ‘The Ballad Of Bakhmut’. There’s still a lot of that going on. The world is basically at war.”

B: “When the news [of the Ukraine invasion] was breaking, it felt so devastating and seismic. You don’t really know what to think and a song can process it for you.”

‘Merry Old England’ is quite beautiful in the way it discusses the refugee crisis. What are you trying to invoke with that song?

D: “I love that song so much. I think it’s unfathomably beautiful. You can’t hold me back, I’m going to climb your cliff, scale your fence, and take over your country. I don’t think there’s any question marks at all. One man’s end-time capitalism London is another man’s playground of dreams where anything is possible – the mythical city that you finally reach after trying to break out of your miserable town and fulfil your dreams.

“For all the cynicism and talk of being pushed out of town, there’s another generation that will come and find a way to bring it alive again or find a way to make it their own; despite the weight of the fucking world.”

B: “The song is more of a montage than banging a drum, particularly.”

D: “It’s weird. I’ve tried playing it acoustically to people and some of the lyrics are strangely provocative. Even to say, ‘Syrians, Iraqis, Ukrainians, welcome to Merry Old England – how are you finding it?’ To start singing about visas, dinghies, the cliffs once white now grey; you can see people from both sides get excited. It’s just asking this kid on the corner of Margate who has landed there, kicking his heels and not really knowing what to do, how he’s finding it.”

After being scattered all over the world, how does it feel to be back in your old playground of London?

B: “We were driving down Old Compton Street where we used to work in the theatres and…”

D: “We felt like a couple of old gits!”

B: “We did. You can dial back the time in your mind and see all these different incarnations of the city. It’s the most magnificent organism of a place. ‘The city’s hard, the city’s fair’. It’s so alive. It’s quite beneficial to have perspective on that through time. I feel like it never leaves me. I feel a part of it even though I’m not living here.”

D: “It’s a bit too much for me. I’m a bit overstimulated because I lead quite a quiet, rural life now. I’m just doing the promotion work and then getting back to the wife and the dogs. You could quite easily fall for it all over again.”

Pete, when you released ‘The Fantasy Life Of Poetry & Crime’ with Frédéric Lo, you talked about how being drug-free and living a serene life in France had helped shape that record. How did you find approaching a Libertines record from that different perspective?

D: “I don’t know. It’s just an everyday scrap, really. It’s proper toe-to-toe with the demons, but because I believe so much in Carl, Gary, John and this record, it’s a pleasure. I just want to do my bit, be as professional as I can, let people hear the songs, and then go and play them. If not, we try again maybe or just crack on with the hotel and see if we can do anything with that.”

The first time NME came down to The Albion Rooms, Carl spoke about it being like Warhol’s Factory – a band HQ where creatives could come, go and feed off each other. Now you’re talking as if, for this record, the hotel almost became the fifth member of the band?

B: “It is our tangible embodiment of what we do. When we live in three different countries and only see each other through touring schedules, we need something. It’s essential that we have something to find us.”

D: “You know that there’s a key line that runs under Loftus Road and goes to Glastonbury? If there are any aspiring poets, cleaners or chamber maids, send CVs to The Albion Rooms please – for a gig or a job.”

Pete, there’s a new film about your life made by your wife and collaborator Katia de Vidas coming out soon. How does it feel to have your life under the microscope at a time like this?

D: “I’m really happy for Katia, really. It’s been finished for quite a while. I just hope the world gives her the credit she’s due. Now we’re thinking about the next project for her. She wants to do a fiction film. Hopefully if this does well and she can get the money together for the next project, it’ll be amazing. I’ll just be made up for her.

“It’s quite heavy watching a lot of that stuff, but it is a different time. The fuzz, forcefield and camouflage of the drugs I was taking at the time meant that I wasn’t arsed about what people thought or how I looked.”

Is this film drawing the curtain over that part of your life?

D: “Yeah, I still feel really connected to that fella up there on the screen. I can see it’s me, but I don’t think I’ll be able to watch it again, to be honest.”

Have you seen it, Carl?

B: “I have. Anything like that is hard to watch. She’s been making it for 10 years, and I think it’s a beautiful portrayal. It’s through her eyes, and I think she’s done a great job.”

Would we ever see a Libertines biopic?

B: “We’ve talked about it, but then we always have a row about who’s playing who!”

D: “We even tried to sit down and write some screenplays for it, but it always turns into some farcical comedy. There was a musical made in Korea called The Likely Lads. They said it was going to run and run, but it closed after two nights.”

So who would play who?

D: “Now with all this AI, you can just play yourself. We’d be playing with ourselves, as usual.”

How does the future feel right now? Does another album seem more likely than before?

D: “It would have nothing to do with whether we were relevant or getting fat, it would just be whether or not we had any decent songs. That’s the only way I can look at it. I just still get off on writing wicked tunes. Carl recently said to me, ‘I don’t care about being cool any more – I just want to write beautiful songs’. I was like, ‘That’s what we’ve always done’. Apparently not!”

B: “You just reminded me that I wasn’t cool.”

Are there any Libertines bucket list moments left to tick off, or is it just for the thrill of existence?

D: “I’ve got a new batch of songs on the brew that I’d really like Carl to hear and see what he can do with them.

B: “I’m always striving for the perfect song myself. I don’t know if you ever find it. It’s a bit Sisyphean, isn’t it? We’ll get there, or not.

So it won’t be another eight years until we get a new Libertines album?

B: “Maybe it will, you never know. We’re trying not to put that pressure on ourselves at this stage. I’d like to get in a flow state where songs just come out, but I find it quite hard work.”

The Libertines release ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade’ on March 8.

Fans who pre-order the album will be offered the chance to purchase tickets for ‘All Quiet On The Eastern Esplanade – described as “two days of special acoustic and electric live shows by The Libertines” at the 500-capacity Lido in Margate on Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 December.

A new documentary about Doherty’s life, Stranger In My Own Skin, will hit cinemas on November 9.

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