Down with Albion:

Why Pete Doherty wants his skin peeling off moments prior to being rolled in salt

by Peter Wild

It feels a little like shooting fish in a barrel to even start having a go at the no-talent shitenik that is Pete Doherty. After all, what is he? A minnow. He's a pop minnow. In the grand scheme of things he's not even a Rick Witter. But there are people in the world who feel the need to refer to him in the same breath as artistes of the calibre of Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain. There are even people who speak of Doherty in the same breath as William Blake. William Blake. I shouldn't let it rile me that fuckwits feel the need to resort to hyperbole but, all the same, it does rile me. I want to say: yes, okay, Cobain and Hendrix battled their demons (and lost, tragically). Unlike Doherty, however, Cobain and Hendrix bequeathed some pretty tremendous tunes to us left behind after they shuffled offof this mortal coil. Everything Doherty has thus far bequeathed to posterity is shit.

I have friends who like the guy, think he's a talent — and even they apologise for him. You should listen to this track off of The Libertines' first record or that track off the second Libertines' abum, they say. (Before whispering, Don't start with Babyshambles, though - Babyshambles are shit.) These same friends then respond to my blankfaced lack of appreciation as tinny indie shite rattles out of the speakers adulterated with mockney sub-Clash whining with, Ah yes, but the production is shite. The Libertines were never produced. (They say this in order to turn the tables - it isn't that The Libertines were a shite band, it is that they were an authentic band who buried their nuggets of pop amazingness beneath lo-fi production that wreaks of authenticity and grime. They're basically saying, if I don't like The Libertines it's because I don't get it. Man.) To which, of course, the only sane and reasonable riposte is: bollocks. Bollocks bollocks bollocks and bollocks. Bollocks in caps with twenty-eight exclamation marks following behind like so many sycophants.

Some of my chums even go so far as to tell me that the attraction of Pete Doherty is not the music — it's the whole soap opera. He burglarises his mate's flat, he steals a car, he gets arrested for blackmailing someone, he's on the front pages for injecting an unconscious person with more drugs, he's tearing up some Camden pub out of love for the glass of milk that is Kate Moss. It's all of that, they say. The whole soap opera. To which I reply, in a mildly imploring tone (imploring because I can hardly believe that any right thinking person would shell out hard earned cashola for product that even the fans agree comes second to the riotous life): so, despite the fact that we all of us left the playground howsoever many years ago, you're still making apologies for some arse acting like a cock in order to annoy the teacher (except, for teacher read media). The point inevitably comes when these people run out of words to defend the twatsack and stare at me all guppy-eyed. Leave him alone, they usually conclude. What's he ever done to you?

The thing is this (and before we really get going, yes yes yes, I know Zygmunt Bauman probably said everything I'm about to say a whole lot more analytically but anyway): it isn't enough to merely simulate your heroes. It isn't enough to employ the word Albion. Employing the word Albion does not make you William Blake. Writing revolutionary poetry makes you William Blake. Similarly, wearing an old Sgt Pepper coat doesn't make you John Lennon. Pouting with your cheeks sucked in doesn't make you Sid Vicious. Cutting yourself doesn't make you Richey Manic. Struggling with a drug habit does not make you any kind of genius. The only thing that matters is the music. And the music doesn't stand up to Hendrix and it doesn't stand up to Cobain. It doesn't stand up alongside The Beatles and it doesn't stand up alongside the Sex Pistols. It doesn't even stand up alongside the fucking Manic Street Preachers and they are and were and always have been a collossal crock of steaming dogshite.

I caught a documentary on BBC3 last year about Pete (and you should know, every time I say Pete I say it through gritted teeth with as much disdain as I can formally muster within polite society) - I watched it to see what all the fuss was about. What I saw was: spoilt rich kid surrounded by the worst kind of sycophants (people talking in hushed tones about what a fucking God Doherty was, how his every breath, burp, fart, wankspurt, was, verily, the stuff of dreams) given to spouting the worst kind of pretentious pseudo spiritual psycho babble in the knowledge that the vast majority of his audience are thick as too short planks, too busy bleating in and out of whatever pen the NME suggests they should reside in to stop and ask themselves, hey — is this actually any good? Doherty sang a song over the closing titles that was just plain embarrassing. Like Ricky Gervais in The Office, you know? That one where the guy comes in to do the training and Ricky takes over and ends up singing shit songs.

So. To answer the question What's he ever done to me? He's got in my face. Normally reasonable people — people I respect — apologise for him, make excuses, attempt to make me see the error of my ways. And the thing is, I believe we should all live and let live. It's only... people. People, you see, get in my face about Pete Doherty. And Pete gets in my face. Whenever I go to by a newspaper, there he is, pouting like a fucking muppet from the front of a half dozen crap magazines I'll never buy (but it doesn't matter that I'll never buy them, I've seen the covers, the images have taken up residence behind my eyes). And it's getting worse. Some fuckwit with money (or worse: some genius with money who knows that most people are fuckwits) has given Doherty the opportunity to PUBLISH HIS DIARIES. Like he was Oscar Wilde or Samuel Pepys. Like (aye, and here's the rub) he's more than just a rock star, when in fact he's less. Far less. Far, far, far less. He is, after all, a minnow. If his column inches translated into units sold he'd be James Blunt. But they don't, for the simple reason that he's shit. He's a cult leader for a cult of fuckwits and the fuckwits loudly proclaim, ah yes, you just don't appreciate the fact we have a genius in our midst, before dragging poor Nick Drake out of the woodwork to illustrate the point that many geniuses are not appreciated in their lifetimes. Unfortunately we live in an age when to be unappreciated is to be a genius. We can all cite our own unappreciated genius and do the maths: if Nick Drake / John Kennedy Toole / whoever went unappreciated in their lifetime then obviously, given that I am unappreciated, I must be a genius. Makes sense, right?

Except of course sometimes people are unappreciated for a reason. In the case of Pete Doherty, he's unappreciated because he's a junkie fuckwit who thinks he's a genius who surrounds himself with other junkie fuckwits who tell him he's a genius. You could argue that he's ploughing the Tracey Emin My life is my art, darling line but, frankly, that was a pile of yet to be washed abortion buckets when Emin trotted it out. He describes himself as a musician — and so it is the music that should be judged. And, if you're not a fuckwit (hah! you see how I turned it round on the 'you don't get it, man' brigade!), you can see that his entire oeuvre is wanting.

Happily, I'm not alone. I know there are people in the world — good people, intelligent people — who roll their eyes whenever they see the self-styled waster (and roll their eyes when they see young men attempting to style themselves in the style of the waster). What I'm saying to you is this: stop rolling your eyes. When you see the King of the fuckwits, let go. Say fuckwit. Better still, shout. FUCKWIT. And don't stop there. When you see his admittedly small cadre of followers about town, let them know. Let them know they're fuckwits. Make sure to tell them. They might look at you funny but who cares? Who cares what a fuckwit thinks of you? Right. Tell them they're fuckwits and they might see sense.

And then hopefully, if we all cross our fingers and our toes and say our prayers every night like good little boys and girls the annoying fucking fuckwit's fifteen minutes might speed by all the quicker.

Or perhaps someone will lace his drugs with Paraquat.

Then I'll know there really is a God and my own personal prayers have been answered.

© Peter Wild 2006

Peter Wild is the co-founder of Bookmunch. He is the editor of a forthcoming series of books for Serpent's Tail, the first two of which - Perverted by Language: Fiction inspired by The Fall and The Empty Page: Fiction inspired by Sonic Youth - will be published in 2007. His writing and fiction have appeared in Scarecrow, NOO Journal, Word Riot, Laura Hird, SN Review, The Big Issue, Nude Magazine, Alt Sounds, City Life and Eyeballkid.