Carl Barat - Threepenny Memoir_ The Lives of a Libertine

That thought took me all the way to Frome, where Danny and his family lived. There were three of us in the car: my manager, who’d been raging all weekend, me and Anthony Rossomando, who was sharing the journey back. We soon pulled away from the main road, full as it was with deranged looking kids clinging to their steering wheels, tops off and windows down, music that little bit too loud, off on to B roads and away from all that madness. The road got leafier by the mile, the views calmer, and then I experienced the softest of landings, sitting in Danny’s garden to enjoy a family lunch, good food and a respite from all the recent insanity. Sitting outside digesting the first solids I could remember, I felt the warm air on my skin and Anthony came and hugged me, then someone brought me a glass of wine. My manager had crumpled in a heap towards the bottom of the garden, and had rolled on to his back, blissfully asleep, his snoring the only sound for the next four hours. Suddenly, everything felt normal again, and I thought about Edie the cellist and, even if she wasn’t really my girlfriend, how I still really missed her, but how that was somehow okay. The dread of being alone was fading, as if I’d purged – or beaten it – from my system.

∗ ∗ ∗

The sky was black by the time we got back to London and I waved as the car pulled away. It was probably Tuesday by then, a new day just begun. From the high street down the long steep hill to my house there’s a view of London that is extraordinary: you can see beyond the Gherkin and the West End, past the Millennium Dome and all the way down to Crystal Palace where the natural bowl that holds this city in place rises up again. I lit a cigarette and the smoke went straight to my head, then walked unsteadily down the hill. I let myself in and walked out to the kitchen where a mouse scurried through the darkness. I picked up a pizza box and looked for somewhere to put it, realized there was nowhere and threw it back on the floor. I’d clean tomorrow, I thought, and I think I actually meant it. I climbed the stairs and flopped down on my bed, the house quiet and still. Somewhere a car alarm was going off. I was tired, but I wasn’t in despair. I didn’t need to have strangers in my house any more. I didn’t need to live life as a series of peaks and troughs. I had that choice. Later, I’d find a new manager who’d spot me playing as a surprise guest with Peter on YouTube; I’d find it in myself to write a new record, but alone this time; Edie the cellist would enter my life properly and save me in the process; I’d have a kid, and we’d reunite The Libertines … but I knew nothing of that then. I didn’t know that happiness was waiting for me, I only knew that I had to give in, I had to let it come. I lay my head on the pillow and slept.

About the Book

‘Looking back at The Libertines is like catching flashes of sunlight between buildings as you race by on a train. An old film reel where the spools are weathered and worn, leaving empty frames on the screen…’

In the final years of the last millennium, Carl Barât and Pete Doherty forged a deep musical bond, formed The Libertines and set sail for Arcadia in the good ship Albion; a decade later, Carl would emerge from his second band, the Dirty Pretty Things, after one of the most significant – and turbulent – rock ‘n’ roll trajectories of recent times. Threepenny Memoir navigates the choppy waters of memory and gives an inside look at life in the eye of the storm, chronicling how a pair of romantics armed with little more than poetry and a punk attitude inspired adoration in millions worldwide – and proceeded to tear apart everything they had.

With unflinching honesty but real warmth, Carl – who has recently performed with The Libertines for the first time since 2004, and released a solo album – looks back at the creative highs and the drug-addled lows of life with both bands, as well as giving an intimate account of the people and places that have informed his songwriting. From Camden bedsits, impromptu gigs and mine-sweeping drinks in the Dublin Castle to Japanese groupies, benders in Moscow and chatting to Slash, Threepenny Memoir charts a fantastic course through recent musical history. And, in the aftermath, Carl reflects on the pressures – both external and self-inflicted – that led to each band’s demise, and on the challenges and rewards that life as a solo artist now holds.

Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2010 by

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

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Visit our authors’ blog: www.fifthestate.co.uk

Copyright © Carl Barât 2010

1

The right of Carl Barât to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-00-739376-3

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EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-007-39377-0

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