Visit London with Carl Barât
Translated by anjali_k
PARKLIFE Visit London with Carl Barât
Words: Jean-Vic Chapus
Pictures: Mathieu Zazzo [both have a long history of working with Libs and acolytes]
“When you are tired of London, you are tired of life”. This aphorism from 18th century writer Samuel Johnson could as well have been invented by Carl Barât. Learned connoisseur of his city, the former Libertines singer-guitarist, now fronting Dirty Pretty Things, is the perfect guide to walk Voxpop through the hills of Muswell Hill to Westminster, via Stoke Newington cemetery.
29th January, 12.00am, Muswell Hill
“For generations my family has lived in London. My heart belongs here until the day I die.” A walk through London with Carl Barât for guide. This seems so obvious. Few other bands apart from Libertines (co-fronted by Barât and Pete Doherty) and Dirty Pretty Things (his current gang whose second album recorded in LA and scheduled for a September release), have celebrated England so much. Their lyrics are always riddled with references to Soho and or the statue of Boadicea by the Thames for a reason. Traditionalism, eccentricity, dandyism, anachronism, debauchery and hedonism define the unbalance of this huge city of 7 684 700 inhabitants as well as the honest 29-year-old rockstar’s. Street kid à la Oliver Twist. Charmer. Keeper of traditions. Staunch islander. Last of the British Romantics. Londoner.
A north London suburb on a green hill. Muswell Hill. Ten minutes away from England’s neuralgic centre, this village seems to come straight out of a Ray Davis song. No surprise, darling! The Kinks leader and his brother Dave were born here. One of their albums is precisely called “Muswell Hillbillies”. Britpop-London, this cockaigne land, where eccentricity and primary colours are law, is to be found here and in Portobello Road. All the rest is just like American Suburbia. In Muswell Hill, shops have pastel-coloured signs. Some of the many churches are in fact Irish pubs. Perfect to reassure the missus about the state of your faith [in French faith= “foi” and liver= “foie”]. “Where are you going you pisshead? Down the pub with Kenneth and Damon!!” “No darling, I’m only going to Mass!”. Alright… Even better, there’s almost no traffic. In Muswell Hill bicycles are law and Delanoë [Parisian Mayor] has been once again overtaken by the Rosbifs [what we call the English. This sentence is a reference to the 2012 Olympics]. This kind of place is perfect if you want to get away to the country far from the sound and the fury of London nightlife.
If you’re looking for a piece of theatrical London, traditional and eccentric, the one Blur and The Libertines sang about, then Muswell Hill is the place to be. First stop outside a house on Hilfield Park. Carl Barât has been living here a few months. His girlfriend Annalisa Astarita, a pretty brunette with a soft and bony face, opens the door. “Good morning! How are you?” We mount the steps four by four up a wooden staircase. A hearty hug from a thinning Carl Barât, looking healthier than ever. Today, the man is wearing a greyish vest and an old pair of jeans held up by a pair of braces. With his long dark locks and his fiery eyes, he has never looked more like a character in a Charles Dickens story.
“I’ve spent the last four months in LA to record the second DPT album. Not only the Californian sun can get on my nerves pretty quickly but I’ve not been able to make the most of my new home! There’s a lot of work to be done here...” The Velvet Underground’s Banana Album is pumping on the stereo. Apart from a flat TV screen, the house in which Carl and his fiancée are living looks more like an antique shop. A lot of acoustic guitars are lying on the floor. Various trinkets are laid out in a mess. On the wall, a poster for the 80’s musical “Bugsy Malone”. Next, one of Edie Sedgwick. On the floor, huge piles of dusty books. George Orwell, several textbooks about the most important British battles throughout history, various works about Peter Sellers and a biography of David Niven, entitled “The Moon’s a Balloon”. Carl Barât insists for us to take this last book home with us. Above a wardrobe the word “LIBERTINE” in a neon sign overlooks pictures of Carl and Annalisa who have been together now for five years. Seeing how they (constantly) look at each other and the way they touch each other, they’re the complete opposite of the cliché of the insensitive rockstar lifestyle, always on a romp. Over there, still on the wall, a childish montage of Groucho Marx, James Dean and John Lennon. Terse explanation from Carl: “They remind me of Pete Doherty. He loved his icons. He lived in his own world! Which made communication quite hard. But come over here, I want to show you something really special...” We go upstairs to a room where an NME Brat Awards (a bronze middle finger) takes pride of place amongst paintings of the Battle of Waterloo. Is the NME Award the one that Doherty stole one day for crack money? We’ll never know, because Carl Ashley Raphaël Barât is proud to present us his antique table football. “There’s still a slot for old Francs coins! You’re French, so you must like table football!” Shall I tell our guest that all of us don’t feed exclusively on baguettes whistling Maurice Chevalier tunes along the River Marne banks? “You French like sarcasm. Is that why your president is called Sarkozy? Is the name derived from Sarcastic?”
“I’m working for a poetry website. Me and some friends publish poetry fanzines. We visit prisons in England and teach the inmates poetry. The prison system in England is cruelly in need of funding and they never use culture in the top-security wing…” While Annalisa tells us about her new life post-DJing at the Infinity nightclub, Carl Barât has gone into the kitchen. He’s making some tea and insists on showing us the darkest recesses of his fridge. Monsieur Barât is a cheese connoisseur. As such, the boy is delighted to present in front of our stunned eyes an enormous block of Cheddar and a Coeur de Lion camembert.
The view from the top of Muswell Hill is particularly stunning. Down below the little red brick houses. All around the green dampened by the rain. “I love to watch the view from the top of Muswell Hill. All the houses are the same. A bit like Alençon in Normandy, but prettier. This part of London has been relentlessly bombarded by the Germans during WW2, and after that it has been rebuilt any old how!” While our man is holding forth about his neighbourhood, we encounter several Mr Smith and Mr Andrew (everyone is called Mr Smith or Mr Andrew in England, that’s a fact) walking their dogs. Carl Barât might be rambling on about “life in the village” but he’s still not planning on buying a fox-terrier. For now he’d rather strum his acoustic guitar with his eyes fixed on the horizon. “When I was younger we would come here often with a group of friends. Maybe have a drink, maybe have a smoke, or sing all night. In Muswell Hill you can do that. The only problem is the mud. You just can’t escape it. How many pairs of shoes or trousers I’ve ruined coming here. How many times I’ve stumbled over a branch or slipped down…”
“When you are tired of London, you are tired of life.” Today’s poetry time? Carl Barât must quote his sources. “This phrase is not mine, it’s from the writer Samuel Johnson. Ha ha ha! Good old Samuel… A real mine of aphorisms about England!” According to our guide for the day, Muswell Hill is becoming the latest fashionable neighbourhood for artists and music types. Only normal when you know that it’s one of the few boroughs in London where the price of rent hasn’t gone through the roof. For less than £12,000 a week (bling bling, can you hear the sound of excess) you can still find somewhere to live in Muswell Hill. International proverb: an old crone will always prefer renting a floor of her house rather than selling it and go elsewhere. Among the local “rock icons” in the area you can find Roger Sargent, the official photographer for the band led by Doherty and Barât. Johnny Borrell from Razorlight, an old bassist in the Libertines, as well. “I’ve heard that Amy Winehouse lives around here too. I can’t say for certain because I’ve never seen her around, but it would make sense of some let’s say, shady comings and goings when the sun goes down!” Wino the winebag or not, at least Barât can confirm that Litvinenko, the Russian spy irradiated with Polonium in 2006, was living here. Under the quiet surface, a refuge for KGB agents?
We stop off at a wine and spirit shop. “One of the shop assistants is French. He’s called Paul, or Jean-Paul. He has educated my nose with excellent wine. Come on, let’s see if he’s around!” Unfortunately, the shop owner tells us that Jean-Paul is on his day off. Barât, who loves his all-night long well-lubricated parties, is going to give us a real treat: posing for a picture in front of a fruit and veg shop, just under a sign that translates as “Eat more fruit”. When we walk past a barber shop, we think of doing the same picture with the guys in Herman Düne and their bushy mane of hair. The quavering hippies next to a sign saying “A shave, what a lovely thing!”, that would look awesome!
The clock is ticking out and it’s time to find a place for lunch. Carl’s face lights up: “We could go to the Broadway Café! It’s a nice unpretentious place.” On the way there, he looks up to a window above a grocery store, and stares nostalgically. “I used to live here a few years ago. How long did I stay? Oh, a couple of months. In general, I never stay too long anywhere. In London, when you have covered an area you can always go and discover the next one.
In Muswell Hill, no one is throwing their pants, their virginity or looks wet with desire at Carl. Just a few teens look on admiringly when the ex-Libertine walks past, but no mass hysteria. On the celebrity popularity scale, “CAAAAAAAAAARL!!!!!!” , who looks like an old aristocrat selling gin and tea flavoured filters, will always rank lower than “PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETE!!!!!!” the walking corpse. “In London, people are so over asking you for an autograph. If you go to Portobello, you can see Damon Albarn cycling by. And if you go up to Kensington St, chances are you’re going to bump into Hugh Grant at the organic market!”
“Didz is going to join us soon. Please be nice to him, don’t take the piss out of his moustache!” Didz Hammond, formerly bassist with the late Cooper Temple Clause and current rhythm axe wielder in Dirty Pretty Things, also lives in Muswell Hill. Apparently, he was the one who advised Carl and Annalisa to come and settle here.
We walk into the Broadway Café. The place, owned by a Pakistani family, looks like any other generic bagel shop in Brooklyn. Just another fast-food restaurant where you gobble down loafs of white bread and discreetly check out the girl on Page 3 of The Sun. Carl generously pays for the round of bacon sandwiches. When Didz arrives, the pair engage in the most serious conversation. The progress of their new album is on the agenda. “It’s going to be very different from what we’ve done before. A pessimistic record. Surely the aftermath of the Californian way of life on our eccentric minds of Albion citizens!” Didz Hammond is passionate when he talks about the civil war in Kenya, which he read about in The Independent. Last night the DPT gang went to see a very young Leeds band called Rebel Yell. “They must be 16 or 17 years old. Visually they’re like The Stray Cats and they play ska like The Clash. We haven’t been so impressed by a band in a long time!” After checking on their MySpace, I have to say that indeed Rebel Yell are an interesting band, between punk, reggae and hard rock rhythm. Didz adds, nose dived into his sandwich: “And especially they play with a double bass! Can you imagine that? We got pissed to forget that they are the future of England and we are only the present.”
The lead singer of DPT would like to nurse his perpetual hangover… preferably with a medicine called Pint Of Guinness. We head off to East London. On the way there, Carl tells us an amazing story: “One day Bob Dylan was staying in London and decided to visit his friend Dave Stewart from Eurythmics. At the time Dave was living at 13 Old Road. Just off Old Road there is also Old Street. In the spur of the moment, Dylan gets confused and turns up at one of the flats. A lady opens the door, a bit taken aback. On her doorstep the author of “Like a rolling stone” was asking her if Dave was in. The wife says that he’s not back home from work yet and they have to wait. So Dylan paces up and down until this big ruddy-faced guy turns up. Yeah… it just wasn’t the right Dave.”
“We could have asked Gary to join us, but today there’s a critical football match. Arsenal vs Newcastle. Like a lot of true Londoners, Gary supports Arsenal. He must be taking out the red and white scarf right now!” So we just speed past Gary’s flat in Shoreditch. Carl and Didz laugh thinking about his reaction when he finds out that his colleagues have left him behind. “Well we’re sorry Gary. Don’t hold it against us! Bye bye…” The brave Gary, already in The Libertines he was the constant peacemaker, or scapegoat at the height of Doherty and Barât’s antics. One was smoking crack through the ears and the other was cracking his face and falling asleep in the bathtub completely legless. In the middle of that, Gary was still smiling. Unshakable.
Albion Road. East London. We have left leafy Muswell Hill behind and are now in the architecturally depressing Hackney. Welcome to Ken Loach Land. Would you like any more working class blues? Kind of a grim place, Hackney is, if the local papers, warning us about the rising criminality rate, are to be believed. “We inform our dear London customers that the city centre and the Oxford Street busy crowds are much better.” The place is home to a harmonious melting-pot of nationalities. Pakistani communities rub shoulders with native English folks and Turks and Irish. Still Hackney remains one the poorer and most dangerous boroughs in London. “Of course at night you can encounter gangs of rather lairy drug dealers, in Dalston. At the end of the day I would still say that London is less dangerous than some places in Paris like La Goutte d’Or or Stalingrad! [He’s very well informed… these are the areas in Paris for crack dens and such...] I’ve seen more often Parisians fighting over nothing than Londoners!”
Libertines aficionados will know that Barât and Doherty have lived in squats in East London a few years back. They were part of a community of doomed pop poets in a sort of disused factory with a beige façade. It was precisely on Albion Road. “We used to live in a squat with Pete over there. He loved it. He was in his element. I was just suffering in silence. I was thinking we would reinvent a friendly little democratic world, all sharing things out. In the end I found out that in the squats it’s only fucking dog eat dog. Life in the squats has taught me this: generosity and land of plenty are only for the rich. As soon as I could I told Pete, let’s get out of here!”
VOXPOP’s historical column: this area has seen the birth of Daniel Defoe, author of “Robinson Crusoe” and “Moll Flanders”. We stop off at an Irish pub called Auld Shillelagh. Quite a lot of old Irishmen and Irishwomen with pleasant faces. Hearing our accent, they’re all trying out “Bon-djoor! Comment-ah-lay-voo?” Time for a Guinness. In the courtyard of the Auld Shillelagh, the conversation turns once again to football, until Dirty Pretty Things’ American guitarist, Anthony Rossomando, joins our little group of tourists. The forecasts for tonight’s match are gaining momentum. 3-0 for Arsène Wenger’s team is the most agreed on (It will be the actual score - Ed). Is football a unanimous passion in DPT? Carl Barât thinks for a moment then says: “As a Londoner I have to choose a local team. So I go for Arsenal, because of family tradition, and also because of some old stars of the club like Tony Adams or Thierry Henry!” For our readers not acquainted with football matters, Tony Adams was an old team captain for Arsenal in the early 90’s, and a renowned alcoholic. In France, our brainless bleached players would rather be caught at 275mph on the motorway. It’s a much more spectacular thing to do to attract attention, but lacks some class. More than ever, England is an island. Didz Hammond: “I’m sorry but I prefer Chelsea. They’re more distinguished. Their old manager, José Mourinho, he cracked me up. He was like Malcolm McLaren in a manager’s body. All the Mafiosi stuff, their president Abramovitch’s money, it’s like a thriller novel. Anyway, nowadays London is ruled by Russian oligarchs.”
“In cemeteries there is a particular semiotics. No family vault, or tombstone is ever laid out at random geographically. In England the place of a tomb is crucial!” We’re on a spree in Abney Park, in the borough of Stoke Newington. At first sight, this place is as impossibly Victorian as Jack The Ripper, apparently left to go to ruins. You could almost forget about the burial places of illustrious people, as soon as you get past the gates. William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army, are resting here in peace since 1912 for William, and 1890 for his spouse. Grass has seemingly not been cut in ages. Ivy is climbing up the side of a tiny crypt. This is where Anthony Rossomando decides to test out his brand new semi-acoustic guitar with in-built amp. A horrible feedback noise. The reaction from the DPT guitarist, who is still only a big child: “You can write that we make rock music to wake up the dead!” Carl Barât snaps out of his reverie and says forlornly: “These French journalists are going to think that we’re Black Sabbath, you idiot.” In the windows of the creepy crypt all sorts of iron decorations are hanging, in a most beautiful “Salvador Dali’s Melted Watches” effect. Abney Park is enormous. The smaller graves are piling on top each other. Virtually none of the graves looks like it’s being tended to or flowered regularly. As a consequence, walking through this cemetery feels like walking directly on the dead corpses. “When I was 19 or 20, I used to come to Abney Park very often. I used to walk a lot. I would lie on the graves. I’m not sure why, but this place has always inspired me a lot of lyrics. I must have written hundreds of poems for girls, or for myself. And then one day I kind of gave up on the idea of making a living through poetry [aww, Carlos, you are a great poet!!!!!]. At the moment, I’m thinking about starting again. Stoke Newington will surely see more of me soon...”
6pm. The sun is setting over London. The “New Laboured” people are going to be able to cast aside their three-piece suits and their briefcases to wear their dancefloor attire. Nowhere else compares to London when it comes to the schizophrenia between daytime (seriousness, urgency, respectability) and the excess of night time (debauchery, violence, drama). We are now in the heart of Westminster, a royal view over Big Ben. When you’re following Carl Barât around London, everything is like a compromise between tradition and modernity. You can be an habitual British drunkard and a respectable Member of Parliament. We follow DPT inside a pub, let’s say, rather typical. The place is called St Stephen’s Tavern. It sits at 10 Bridge Street, round the corner from Canon Row. Apparently, this typically Victorian pub has seen the custom of illustrious British political figures such as Sir Winston Churchill. The gilt, the wooden benches and the green leather settees give nothing but an air of authenticity. No wonder: “As soon as Big Ben strikes 5, you can see a compact fleet of Labour and Conservative MPs flocking in here. They are allowed a 15 minute pause. So they drink as many beers as possible and laugh out loud. It’s very funny. Especially straight after that, they’re going to go back to discussing the important matters of England!” To make sure that MPs don’t miss out on, say, the discussion on the extension of Prince Charles’ ears, or the one about naming Amy Winehouse as Minister Of Health, the St Stephen’s Tavern is connected to the Division Bell, in the House of Commons. This bell indicates to MPs an impending voting in the House.
On our way to the River Thames banks, Carl Barât stops in front of the statue of Boadicea on her chariot. “It’s my favourite statue in London, it has a really horrible story. Boadicea was a Celt from the Iceni tribe, and wife of King Prasutagus. When he died, she inherited the kingdom from her husband, which the Romans disliked. The Roman Army kidnapped her, with her family, they raped her two daughters, and molested her and enslaved her. After that, she tried her best to stir up her people to get revenge!” Listening to this feverish tale, we can’t help but think about this Libertines song that goes: “If Queen Boadicea is long dead and gone/ Then the spirit of her children’s children’s children it lives on” (“The Good Old Days”). Is Carl Barât’s songwriting exclusively London based? “It is! This is where my ancestors are from. I was born in Basingstoke. This town is forever etched in my heart. I can’t write about anywhere else. I would feel like a fraud or an exiled poet. I can’t live anywhere else. In London there is enough mythology to last you a lifetime, or even more. Everytime I go away, I have to discover it all over again when i come back. This city changes a lot faster than its citizens.”
St Martin’s Lane. Leicester Square area. In a pub called The Salisbury, packed at this time of day when everyone is getting out of work. Tonight, Carl has an appointment with his friend Adam Green from New York, on tour to promote his last album “Sixes & sevens”. Earlier today, while we were canoodling around the DPT frontman’s intimate London, Adam Green was appearing on a tv programme on Channel 4, the very arty “Culture Show”. Didz Hammond: “It’s a rather specialized and exclusive show, presented by Lauren Laverne, she used to sing in that Britpop band Kenickie. Do you remember her? Now she’s a star on the BBC!” Visibly nervous, Carl can’t stop fiddling with his mobile phone. It transpires Adam has left numerous messages on his answer machine to plan the evening. The young man had a really brilliant idea: throw a tv set out of his hotel room window. “God! Adam can behave like such a kid sometimes. I had to tell him “Very well, Adam. You can throw this fucking tv out if you want, but what is the point in all of that?” The truth is Adam can afford this sort of extra on his hotel bill...”
Adam Green falls into Carl Barât’s arms. The pair met for the first time in 2002 in New York. [Wasn’t that 2003?] The ex-Moldy Peach had covered on this occasion The Libertines’ “What a waster” while Doherty and Barât had transposed the premonitory “Who’s got the crack???” by the Big Apple duet. Later on, the aristocratic British working-class boy and the upper-class anti-folk American will spend an entire night of boozy debauchery filmed by a tv crew from Arte channel. This half-hour sequence is frighteningly reminiscent of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Gabin in “Un Singe En Hiver”. [Find it on YouTube! It’s hilarious! It’s called “Au Coeur de la nuit”]
Both singers are wearing coats, almost identical, except they don’t give off the same feel. Green’s is immaculate and smells of new and expensive. Barât’s is stained with grease, blood and what have you. “Oh yeah! This coat. I remember. We were invited to a fitting by a famous fashion designer, me and Pete. We were on our best behaviour, but as soon as the staff had their backs turned, we would stuff our plastic bags with loads of clothes! It’s only fair. They were using our image, so we nicked their garb. It was our second nature!”
Adam Green and his stunning girlfriend don’t seem too keen on having dinner in a neon-lit greasy-spoon. Whereas Carl Barât, leader of the pack, praises the place’s excellent value for money. Everyone ends up choosing from a selection of rubber parading under codenames such as “King’s chicken with potatoes” or the astounding “Chicken Supreme” floating in its sea of mint sauce. To avoid confrontation with our guide, we decide against bringing up the subject of gastronomy. Adam Green is marvelling: “When I was on tv, I managed to mention the words “dick” and “cock” several times. Live...” And he’s also surprised that every Englishman seems to spend their day betting on everything at Ladbrokes. He gets told that it’s a sort of tradition, and he adds: “At least I hope that they don’t bet on people’s death? Britney Spears’, for instance!” Didz and Annalisa smile. We bet that in a not too distant future New Yorkers will want to live a life of debauchery like they’ve seen in the NME. “Pubs, tubes, drugs” as the poet once said. Carl grabs his girlfriend’s hand and tenderly holds it to his chest. For VOXPOP, “It’s time to go...” For the DPT frontman and his gang, the night is only young. “London Calling” sounds even more striking in the night illuminated by Piccadilly Circus’ giant billboards. “New York city is very pretty in the nighttime, but oh, don’t you miss Soho… La-Dee-dah, la-dee-dah...”
PARKLIFE Visit London with Carl Barât
Words: Jean-Vic Chapus
Pictures: Mathieu Zazzo [both have a long history of working with Libs and acolytes]
“When you are tired of London, you are tired of life”. This aphorism from 18th century writer Samuel Johnson could as well have been invented by Carl Barât. Learned connoisseur of his city, the former Libertines singer-guitarist, now fronting Dirty Pretty Things, is the perfect guide to walk Voxpop through the hills of Muswell Hill to Westminster, via Stoke Newington cemetery.
29th January, 12.00am, Muswell Hill
“For generations my family has lived in London. My heart belongs here until the day I die.” A walk through London with Carl Barât for guide. This seems so obvious. Few other bands apart from Libertines (co-fronted by Barât and Pete Doherty) and Dirty Pretty Things (his current gang whose second album recorded in LA and scheduled for a September release), have celebrated England so much. Their lyrics are always riddled with references to Soho and or the statue of Boadicea by the Thames for a reason. Traditionalism, eccentricity, dandyism, anachronism, debauchery and hedonism define the unbalance of this huge city of 7 684 700 inhabitants as well as the honest 29-year-old rockstar’s. Street kid à la Oliver Twist. Charmer. Keeper of traditions. Staunch islander. Last of the British Romantics. Londoner.
A north London suburb on a green hill. Muswell Hill. Ten minutes away from England’s neuralgic centre, this village seems to come straight out of a Ray Davis song. No surprise, darling! The Kinks leader and his brother Dave were born here. One of their albums is precisely called “Muswell Hillbillies”. Britpop-London, this cockaigne land, where eccentricity and primary colours are law, is to be found here and in Portobello Road. All the rest is just like American Suburbia. In Muswell Hill, shops have pastel-coloured signs. Some of the many churches are in fact Irish pubs. Perfect to reassure the missus about the state of your faith [in French faith= “foi” and liver= “foie”]. “Where are you going you pisshead? Down the pub with Kenneth and Damon!!” “No darling, I’m only going to Mass!”. Alright… Even better, there’s almost no traffic. In Muswell Hill bicycles are law and Delanoë [Parisian Mayor] has been once again overtaken by the Rosbifs [what we call the English. This sentence is a reference to the 2012 Olympics]. This kind of place is perfect if you want to get away to the country far from the sound and the fury of London nightlife.
If you’re looking for a piece of theatrical London, traditional and eccentric, the one Blur and The Libertines sang about, then Muswell Hill is the place to be. First stop outside a house on Hilfield Park. Carl Barât has been living here a few months. His girlfriend Annalisa Astarita, a pretty brunette with a soft and bony face, opens the door. “Good morning! How are you?” We mount the steps four by four up a wooden staircase. A hearty hug from a thinning Carl Barât, looking healthier than ever. Today, the man is wearing a greyish vest and an old pair of jeans held up by a pair of braces. With his long dark locks and his fiery eyes, he has never looked more like a character in a Charles Dickens story.
“I’ve spent the last four months in LA to record the second DPT album. Not only the Californian sun can get on my nerves pretty quickly but I’ve not been able to make the most of my new home! There’s a lot of work to be done here...” The Velvet Underground’s Banana Album is pumping on the stereo. Apart from a flat TV screen, the house in which Carl and his fiancée are living looks more like an antique shop. A lot of acoustic guitars are lying on the floor. Various trinkets are laid out in a mess. On the wall, a poster for the 80’s musical “Bugsy Malone”. Next, one of Edie Sedgwick. On the floor, huge piles of dusty books. George Orwell, several textbooks about the most important British battles throughout history, various works about Peter Sellers and a biography of David Niven, entitled “The Moon’s a Balloon”. Carl Barât insists for us to take this last book home with us. Above a wardrobe the word “LIBERTINE” in a neon sign overlooks pictures of Carl and Annalisa who have been together now for five years. Seeing how they (constantly) look at each other and the way they touch each other, they’re the complete opposite of the cliché of the insensitive rockstar lifestyle, always on a romp. Over there, still on the wall, a childish montage of Groucho Marx, James Dean and John Lennon. Terse explanation from Carl: “They remind me of Pete Doherty. He loved his icons. He lived in his own world! Which made communication quite hard. But come over here, I want to show you something really special...” We go upstairs to a room where an NME Brat Awards (a bronze middle finger) takes pride of place amongst paintings of the Battle of Waterloo. Is the NME Award the one that Doherty stole one day for crack money? We’ll never know, because Carl Ashley Raphaël Barât is proud to present us his antique table football. “There’s still a slot for old Francs coins! You’re French, so you must like table football!” Shall I tell our guest that all of us don’t feed exclusively on baguettes whistling Maurice Chevalier tunes along the River Marne banks? “You French like sarcasm. Is that why your president is called Sarkozy? Is the name derived from Sarcastic?”
“I’m working for a poetry website. Me and some friends publish poetry fanzines. We visit prisons in England and teach the inmates poetry. The prison system in England is cruelly in need of funding and they never use culture in the top-security wing…” While Annalisa tells us about her new life post-DJing at the Infinity nightclub, Carl Barât has gone into the kitchen. He’s making some tea and insists on showing us the darkest recesses of his fridge. Monsieur Barât is a cheese connoisseur. As such, the boy is delighted to present in front of our stunned eyes an enormous block of Cheddar and a Coeur de Lion camembert.
The view from the top of Muswell Hill is particularly stunning. Down below the little red brick houses. All around the green dampened by the rain. “I love to watch the view from the top of Muswell Hill. All the houses are the same. A bit like Alençon in Normandy, but prettier. This part of London has been relentlessly bombarded by the Germans during WW2, and after that it has been rebuilt any old how!” While our man is holding forth about his neighbourhood, we encounter several Mr Smith and Mr Andrew (everyone is called Mr Smith or Mr Andrew in England, that’s a fact) walking their dogs. Carl Barât might be rambling on about “life in the village” but he’s still not planning on buying a fox-terrier. For now he’d rather strum his acoustic guitar with his eyes fixed on the horizon. “When I was younger we would come here often with a group of friends. Maybe have a drink, maybe have a smoke, or sing all night. In Muswell Hill you can do that. The only problem is the mud. You just can’t escape it. How many pairs of shoes or trousers I’ve ruined coming here. How many times I’ve stumbled over a branch or slipped down…”
“When you are tired of London, you are tired of life.” Today’s poetry time? Carl Barât must quote his sources. “This phrase is not mine, it’s from the writer Samuel Johnson. Ha ha ha! Good old Samuel… A real mine of aphorisms about England!” According to our guide for the day, Muswell Hill is becoming the latest fashionable neighbourhood for artists and music types. Only normal when you know that it’s one of the few boroughs in London where the price of rent hasn’t gone through the roof. For less than £12,000 a week (bling bling, can you hear the sound of excess) you can still find somewhere to live in Muswell Hill. International proverb: an old crone will always prefer renting a floor of her house rather than selling it and go elsewhere. Among the local “rock icons” in the area you can find Roger Sargent, the official photographer for the band led by Doherty and Barât. Johnny Borrell from Razorlight, an old bassist in the Libertines, as well. “I’ve heard that Amy Winehouse lives around here too. I can’t say for certain because I’ve never seen her around, but it would make sense of some let’s say, shady comings and goings when the sun goes down!” Wino the winebag or not, at least Barât can confirm that Litvinenko, the Russian spy irradiated with Polonium in 2006, was living here. Under the quiet surface, a refuge for KGB agents?
We stop off at a wine and spirit shop. “One of the shop assistants is French. He’s called Paul, or Jean-Paul. He has educated my nose with excellent wine. Come on, let’s see if he’s around!” Unfortunately, the shop owner tells us that Jean-Paul is on his day off. Barât, who loves his all-night long well-lubricated parties, is going to give us a real treat: posing for a picture in front of a fruit and veg shop, just under a sign that translates as “Eat more fruit”. When we walk past a barber shop, we think of doing the same picture with the guys in Herman Düne and their bushy mane of hair. The quavering hippies next to a sign saying “A shave, what a lovely thing!”, that would look awesome!
The clock is ticking out and it’s time to find a place for lunch. Carl’s face lights up: “We could go to the Broadway Café! It’s a nice unpretentious place.” On the way there, he looks up to a window above a grocery store, and stares nostalgically. “I used to live here a few years ago. How long did I stay? Oh, a couple of months. In general, I never stay too long anywhere. In London, when you have covered an area you can always go and discover the next one.
In Muswell Hill, no one is throwing their pants, their virginity or looks wet with desire at Carl. Just a few teens look on admiringly when the ex-Libertine walks past, but no mass hysteria. On the celebrity popularity scale, “CAAAAAAAAAARL!!!!!!” , who looks like an old aristocrat selling gin and tea flavoured filters, will always rank lower than “PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEETE!!!!!!” the walking corpse. “In London, people are so over asking you for an autograph. If you go to Portobello, you can see Damon Albarn cycling by. And if you go up to Kensington St, chances are you’re going to bump into Hugh Grant at the organic market!”
“Didz is going to join us soon. Please be nice to him, don’t take the piss out of his moustache!” Didz Hammond, formerly bassist with the late Cooper Temple Clause and current rhythm axe wielder in Dirty Pretty Things, also lives in Muswell Hill. Apparently, he was the one who advised Carl and Annalisa to come and settle here.
We walk into the Broadway Café. The place, owned by a Pakistani family, looks like any other generic bagel shop in Brooklyn. Just another fast-food restaurant where you gobble down loafs of white bread and discreetly check out the girl on Page 3 of The Sun. Carl generously pays for the round of bacon sandwiches. When Didz arrives, the pair engage in the most serious conversation. The progress of their new album is on the agenda. “It’s going to be very different from what we’ve done before. A pessimistic record. Surely the aftermath of the Californian way of life on our eccentric minds of Albion citizens!” Didz Hammond is passionate when he talks about the civil war in Kenya, which he read about in The Independent. Last night the DPT gang went to see a very young Leeds band called Rebel Yell. “They must be 16 or 17 years old. Visually they’re like The Stray Cats and they play ska like The Clash. We haven’t been so impressed by a band in a long time!” After checking on their MySpace, I have to say that indeed Rebel Yell are an interesting band, between punk, reggae and hard rock rhythm. Didz adds, nose dived into his sandwich: “And especially they play with a double bass! Can you imagine that? We got pissed to forget that they are the future of England and we are only the present.”
The lead singer of DPT would like to nurse his perpetual hangover… preferably with a medicine called Pint Of Guinness. We head off to East London. On the way there, Carl tells us an amazing story: “One day Bob Dylan was staying in London and decided to visit his friend Dave Stewart from Eurythmics. At the time Dave was living at 13 Old Road. Just off Old Road there is also Old Street. In the spur of the moment, Dylan gets confused and turns up at one of the flats. A lady opens the door, a bit taken aback. On her doorstep the author of “Like a rolling stone” was asking her if Dave was in. The wife says that he’s not back home from work yet and they have to wait. So Dylan paces up and down until this big ruddy-faced guy turns up. Yeah… it just wasn’t the right Dave.”
“We could have asked Gary to join us, but today there’s a critical football match. Arsenal vs Newcastle. Like a lot of true Londoners, Gary supports Arsenal. He must be taking out the red and white scarf right now!” So we just speed past Gary’s flat in Shoreditch. Carl and Didz laugh thinking about his reaction when he finds out that his colleagues have left him behind. “Well we’re sorry Gary. Don’t hold it against us! Bye bye…” The brave Gary, already in The Libertines he was the constant peacemaker, or scapegoat at the height of Doherty and Barât’s antics. One was smoking crack through the ears and the other was cracking his face and falling asleep in the bathtub completely legless. In the middle of that, Gary was still smiling. Unshakable.
Albion Road. East London. We have left leafy Muswell Hill behind and are now in the architecturally depressing Hackney. Welcome to Ken Loach Land. Would you like any more working class blues? Kind of a grim place, Hackney is, if the local papers, warning us about the rising criminality rate, are to be believed. “We inform our dear London customers that the city centre and the Oxford Street busy crowds are much better.” The place is home to a harmonious melting-pot of nationalities. Pakistani communities rub shoulders with native English folks and Turks and Irish. Still Hackney remains one the poorer and most dangerous boroughs in London. “Of course at night you can encounter gangs of rather lairy drug dealers, in Dalston. At the end of the day I would still say that London is less dangerous than some places in Paris like La Goutte d’Or or Stalingrad! [He’s very well informed… these are the areas in Paris for crack dens and such...] I’ve seen more often Parisians fighting over nothing than Londoners!”
Libertines aficionados will know that Barât and Doherty have lived in squats in East London a few years back. They were part of a community of doomed pop poets in a sort of disused factory with a beige façade. It was precisely on Albion Road. “We used to live in a squat with Pete over there. He loved it. He was in his element. I was just suffering in silence. I was thinking we would reinvent a friendly little democratic world, all sharing things out. In the end I found out that in the squats it’s only fucking dog eat dog. Life in the squats has taught me this: generosity and land of plenty are only for the rich. As soon as I could I told Pete, let’s get out of here!”
VOXPOP’s historical column: this area has seen the birth of Daniel Defoe, author of “Robinson Crusoe” and “Moll Flanders”. We stop off at an Irish pub called Auld Shillelagh. Quite a lot of old Irishmen and Irishwomen with pleasant faces. Hearing our accent, they’re all trying out “Bon-djoor! Comment-ah-lay-voo?” Time for a Guinness. In the courtyard of the Auld Shillelagh, the conversation turns once again to football, until Dirty Pretty Things’ American guitarist, Anthony Rossomando, joins our little group of tourists. The forecasts for tonight’s match are gaining momentum. 3-0 for Arsène Wenger’s team is the most agreed on (It will be the actual score - Ed). Is football a unanimous passion in DPT? Carl Barât thinks for a moment then says: “As a Londoner I have to choose a local team. So I go for Arsenal, because of family tradition, and also because of some old stars of the club like Tony Adams or Thierry Henry!” For our readers not acquainted with football matters, Tony Adams was an old team captain for Arsenal in the early 90’s, and a renowned alcoholic. In France, our brainless bleached players would rather be caught at 275mph on the motorway. It’s a much more spectacular thing to do to attract attention, but lacks some class. More than ever, England is an island. Didz Hammond: “I’m sorry but I prefer Chelsea. They’re more distinguished. Their old manager, José Mourinho, he cracked me up. He was like Malcolm McLaren in a manager’s body. All the Mafiosi stuff, their president Abramovitch’s money, it’s like a thriller novel. Anyway, nowadays London is ruled by Russian oligarchs.”
“In cemeteries there is a particular semiotics. No family vault, or tombstone is ever laid out at random geographically. In England the place of a tomb is crucial!” We’re on a spree in Abney Park, in the borough of Stoke Newington. At first sight, this place is as impossibly Victorian as Jack The Ripper, apparently left to go to ruins. You could almost forget about the burial places of illustrious people, as soon as you get past the gates. William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army, are resting here in peace since 1912 for William, and 1890 for his spouse. Grass has seemingly not been cut in ages. Ivy is climbing up the side of a tiny crypt. This is where Anthony Rossomando decides to test out his brand new semi-acoustic guitar with in-built amp. A horrible feedback noise. The reaction from the DPT guitarist, who is still only a big child: “You can write that we make rock music to wake up the dead!” Carl Barât snaps out of his reverie and says forlornly: “These French journalists are going to think that we’re Black Sabbath, you idiot.” In the windows of the creepy crypt all sorts of iron decorations are hanging, in a most beautiful “Salvador Dali’s Melted Watches” effect. Abney Park is enormous. The smaller graves are piling on top each other. Virtually none of the graves looks like it’s being tended to or flowered regularly. As a consequence, walking through this cemetery feels like walking directly on the dead corpses. “When I was 19 or 20, I used to come to Abney Park very often. I used to walk a lot. I would lie on the graves. I’m not sure why, but this place has always inspired me a lot of lyrics. I must have written hundreds of poems for girls, or for myself. And then one day I kind of gave up on the idea of making a living through poetry [aww, Carlos, you are a great poet!!!!!]. At the moment, I’m thinking about starting again. Stoke Newington will surely see more of me soon...”
6pm. The sun is setting over London. The “New Laboured” people are going to be able to cast aside their three-piece suits and their briefcases to wear their dancefloor attire. Nowhere else compares to London when it comes to the schizophrenia between daytime (seriousness, urgency, respectability) and the excess of night time (debauchery, violence, drama). We are now in the heart of Westminster, a royal view over Big Ben. When you’re following Carl Barât around London, everything is like a compromise between tradition and modernity. You can be an habitual British drunkard and a respectable Member of Parliament. We follow DPT inside a pub, let’s say, rather typical. The place is called St Stephen’s Tavern. It sits at 10 Bridge Street, round the corner from Canon Row. Apparently, this typically Victorian pub has seen the custom of illustrious British political figures such as Sir Winston Churchill. The gilt, the wooden benches and the green leather settees give nothing but an air of authenticity. No wonder: “As soon as Big Ben strikes 5, you can see a compact fleet of Labour and Conservative MPs flocking in here. They are allowed a 15 minute pause. So they drink as many beers as possible and laugh out loud. It’s very funny. Especially straight after that, they’re going to go back to discussing the important matters of England!” To make sure that MPs don’t miss out on, say, the discussion on the extension of Prince Charles’ ears, or the one about naming Amy Winehouse as Minister Of Health, the St Stephen’s Tavern is connected to the Division Bell, in the House of Commons. This bell indicates to MPs an impending voting in the House.
On our way to the River Thames banks, Carl Barât stops in front of the statue of Boadicea on her chariot. “It’s my favourite statue in London, it has a really horrible story. Boadicea was a Celt from the Iceni tribe, and wife of King Prasutagus. When he died, she inherited the kingdom from her husband, which the Romans disliked. The Roman Army kidnapped her, with her family, they raped her two daughters, and molested her and enslaved her. After that, she tried her best to stir up her people to get revenge!” Listening to this feverish tale, we can’t help but think about this Libertines song that goes: “If Queen Boadicea is long dead and gone/ Then the spirit of her children’s children’s children it lives on” (“The Good Old Days”). Is Carl Barât’s songwriting exclusively London based? “It is! This is where my ancestors are from. I was born in Basingstoke. This town is forever etched in my heart. I can’t write about anywhere else. I would feel like a fraud or an exiled poet. I can’t live anywhere else. In London there is enough mythology to last you a lifetime, or even more. Everytime I go away, I have to discover it all over again when i come back. This city changes a lot faster than its citizens.”
St Martin’s Lane. Leicester Square area. In a pub called The Salisbury, packed at this time of day when everyone is getting out of work. Tonight, Carl has an appointment with his friend Adam Green from New York, on tour to promote his last album “Sixes & sevens”. Earlier today, while we were canoodling around the DPT frontman’s intimate London, Adam Green was appearing on a tv programme on Channel 4, the very arty “Culture Show”. Didz Hammond: “It’s a rather specialized and exclusive show, presented by Lauren Laverne, she used to sing in that Britpop band Kenickie. Do you remember her? Now she’s a star on the BBC!” Visibly nervous, Carl can’t stop fiddling with his mobile phone. It transpires Adam has left numerous messages on his answer machine to plan the evening. The young man had a really brilliant idea: throw a tv set out of his hotel room window. “God! Adam can behave like such a kid sometimes. I had to tell him “Very well, Adam. You can throw this fucking tv out if you want, but what is the point in all of that?” The truth is Adam can afford this sort of extra on his hotel bill...”
Adam Green falls into Carl Barât’s arms. The pair met for the first time in 2002 in New York. [Wasn’t that 2003?] The ex-Moldy Peach had covered on this occasion The Libertines’ “What a waster” while Doherty and Barât had transposed the premonitory “Who’s got the crack???” by the Big Apple duet. Later on, the aristocratic British working-class boy and the upper-class anti-folk American will spend an entire night of boozy debauchery filmed by a tv crew from Arte channel. This half-hour sequence is frighteningly reminiscent of Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Gabin in “Un Singe En Hiver”. [Find it on YouTube! It’s hilarious! It’s called “Au Coeur de la nuit”]
Both singers are wearing coats, almost identical, except they don’t give off the same feel. Green’s is immaculate and smells of new and expensive. Barât’s is stained with grease, blood and what have you. “Oh yeah! This coat. I remember. We were invited to a fitting by a famous fashion designer, me and Pete. We were on our best behaviour, but as soon as the staff had their backs turned, we would stuff our plastic bags with loads of clothes! It’s only fair. They were using our image, so we nicked their garb. It was our second nature!”
Adam Green and his stunning girlfriend don’t seem too keen on having dinner in a neon-lit greasy-spoon. Whereas Carl Barât, leader of the pack, praises the place’s excellent value for money. Everyone ends up choosing from a selection of rubber parading under codenames such as “King’s chicken with potatoes” or the astounding “Chicken Supreme” floating in its sea of mint sauce. To avoid confrontation with our guide, we decide against bringing up the subject of gastronomy. Adam Green is marvelling: “When I was on tv, I managed to mention the words “dick” and “cock” several times. Live...” And he’s also surprised that every Englishman seems to spend their day betting on everything at Ladbrokes. He gets told that it’s a sort of tradition, and he adds: “At least I hope that they don’t bet on people’s death? Britney Spears’, for instance!” Didz and Annalisa smile. We bet that in a not too distant future New Yorkers will want to live a life of debauchery like they’ve seen in the NME. “Pubs, tubes, drugs” as the poet once said. Carl grabs his girlfriend’s hand and tenderly holds it to his chest. For VOXPOP, “It’s time to go...” For the DPT frontman and his gang, the night is only young. “London Calling” sounds even more striking in the night illuminated by Piccadilly Circus’ giant billboards. “New York city is very pretty in the nighttime, but oh, don’t you miss Soho… La-Dee-dah, la-dee-dah...”