麻豆社

In her 麻豆社 Radio 4 podcast Young Again, journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Young asks fascinating people what advice they would like to give their younger self.

Pete Doherty rocketed to fame in the early 2000s as the frontman of The Libertines, a band he started with Carl Barât. While lauded as one of the most exciting musical talents of his generation, Doherty became every bit as renowned for his life off-stage thanks to drug addiction, prison sentences, and a relationship with Kate Moss.

He talks to Kirsty about some of the most difficult times in his life and the path to a happier existence. Here are seven things we learned.

1. Music is worth dying for

Both of Pete’s parents were in the army. He considered following them, but instead moved to London to study English at college, though he dropped out in his first year. There, he cemented his friendship with Carl Barât, with whom he would form The Libertines in 1997.

“I was like a heat-seeking missile on him,” says Pete. They wrote songs together and Pete soon realised he’d found his musical soulmate. “We’d written a few songs and then I just knew this was something worth fighting for – worth dying for – and I was going to give it all I had. That was it. I’d found it, the thing that makes you want to join the army or do anything… I believed I was fighting for the right side.”

He doesn’t think he’d have been a success without Barât. “We had something special,” he says. “We were going to do it together. For me, that was everything. I don’t think I’d have bothered otherwise. I dread to think what would have happened to me.” The Libertines first broke up in 2004, but have been back together on and off since 2010.

2. His addiction is always in the corner doing press-ups

Before becoming famous, Doherty says he had “no connection” to the world of drugs, but they were all around him in the music world and he says he and Barat, “who was always determined never to go down that road [of addiction]”, experimented.

“We did a bit of coke together. We had a good time and for [Carl], it was, ‘That’s it.’ For me, it was like, ‘Right, what’s the next thing?” Doherty became a heroin addict, but is now clean. He says, “Obviously, you still have to be on your toes, because it’s a funny old thing, addiction. They say that when you get clean, your addict is just in the corner doing press-ups.”

He's never complacent about addiction. “A really strong tie has severed, but you’re never completely free.”

3. He once missed a gig due to hallucinations

As a child, Pete once sustained a head injury that caused him to hallucinate – “this ball of string kept coming after me and it wouldn’t stop” – and they’d sometimes return in adult life.

“After a few days without sleep, I’d get the same thing,” he says. In his drug-abusing years, he’d often go a long time without sleep. In fact, his advice to his young self would be, “Get some sleep, for god’s sake. All the things that went wrong, like ending up in jail, or missing concerts [were after days without sleep]. I missed a concert at The Astoria because I was so freaked out. I won’t even tell you where my head was, it was so weird… I ended up sitting in a taxi outside the venue, not going in, while people who paid to see me tore the place apart… I was really hallucinating.”

4. His tabloid fame was a price worth paying for love

Pete began dating the model Kate Moss in 2005, which saw them both regularly in the newspapers. “Before I was with Kate, I was never in the tabloids,” says Pete. “I was head over heels in love and just having a proper knees-up, really. I thought it was a sacrifice worth making. A hit worth taking. She was the opposite. She was like, ‘This will not be tolerated. I spent years building a profile and you’re not going to throw my hard work away.’”

He didn’t know how to avoid the press. “You can’t really beat these people. It’s a bit like a virus. There’s nothing sporting about it. There are no rules to it. It’s just, ‘How can we make this sound as bad as possible and sell more papers?’ I’d be like, ‘I know what I’ll do. I’ll write an amazing song that’s so beautiful… they’ll have to write about it’. But they never did.”

5. Prison made him tougher

Doherty has been in jail several times, once for burgling Barât’s flat and other times on drug offences. He says prison “took the wind out of me a little bit and toughened me up… Prison twists your mind. It twists your outlook. It builds up pressure.”

He says he “wasn’t interested” in violence, but the environment changed him. “I think I went a bit mad because of it. Distorted in some ways. This constant barrage of noise.” He’d get through it in part by listening to the radio. “For a little while I had a cell on my own – they put me in solitary – and I remember… just lying back and listening to the radio. They were doing a serialisation of Jekyll And Hyde. God bless Radio 4.”

6. His life was changed by a woman who waited

“Everyone, I loved, and who loved me – my family and Carl – and knew me before I even knew what drugs were, they saw me change [on drugs] and couldn’t have a relationship with me,” say Pete. He was shocked that people thought he’d changed, but gradually realised they were right.

He eventually met a woman called Katia de Vidas, now his wife, who viewed him differently. “I like to think she saw something in me, even when I was using. That’s when we fell in love. She fell in love with the person she saw, and then just waited for him to come out when I was clean. I’m still hoping I can stay clean and be that person.”

7. He’s putting out a solo album in 2025

Doherty is putting out a solo album in April 2025 of “all the songs that weren’t good enough for The Libertines album or were too good for The Libertines album.” He finds solo albums less exposing. “Sometimes [with] The Libertines, there's more compromises you have to make… Sometimes just playing acoustic stuff, solo stuff, I just like that… you can actually hear the lyrics as well.”

He’s still working on a name for the album. “I think we're gonna call it ‘Felt Better Alive’.” Which is one of the standout tracks on the album.”

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