Kirsty Young has spoken to Pete Doherty for her podcast Young Again, asking the rockstar what advice he would give his younger self. The episode will air on Radio 4 at 9am on Tuesday 31st December, and on BBC Sounds.
On the difficulty of talking to his younger self
I'd find myself in a treatment centre, a court-ordered detox or something like that, and they'd ask you to write a letter to your younger self, and I always had a lot of difficulty with this… I think I'd generally just burst into tears. Even like picturing myself, you know, as a nine-year-old or a 15-year-old, It was quite difficult for me in that state. Now, I think I could probably do it without bursting into tears, so let's go on.
On Kate Moss and the tabloid interest
That was the only reason I was in their lens anyway was because I was with Kate. Before I was with Kate I was never in the tabloids, maybe on page 27 about a gig or maybe they’d actually write about my music, it was only because of her profile that I got sucked into that.
…
I was bang in love, I was like, head over heels in love, and just having a proper knees up, really, and thought it was a sacrifice worth making. I thought it was a hit worth taking. But she was the opposite. She was like, "This will not be tolerated. I've spent years building up a profile. You're not gonna throw my hard work away." And I was like, "All right, I'll be good." And then the next night, you know, it'd be the same again. It'd be like, you know, drugs or fisty cuffs or something, or pay some local kids to smash the glass over the paparazzi's car, and then they just come back the next day and write an even worse story.
…
Away from the cameras, like with Kate, where she had a country place, or she could go to some island, it was always like that chaos was out there and then you have flashes of violence, but it was a sanctuary do you know what I mean? Be like Harvest the Neil Young album, Harvest, slow Sunday country ballads. That's what I think of when I think of those times…
Announcing his new solo album...
PD: Pete Doherty's solo album, April 2025, all the songs that weren't good enough for The Libertines album or were too good for The Libertines album, they're put on that. I don't know what to call it. I was gonna call it “If You Can't Fight Wear a Big Hat” or “Felt Better Alive”, which is one of the standout tracks on the album. I think we're gonna call it Felt Better Alive actually, yeah.
KY: Okay. Does it feel exposing having a solo album, doing it without the people that usually surround you?
PD: No, not really. No, no. There’s like amazing musicians that I've worked with before. I mean, it's not my first solo album. I mean, if anything, less exposing. Sometimes with The Libertines, there's more compromises you have to make. We do do slower songs, but it's still very upbeat. Sometimes just playing acoustic stuff, solo stuff, I just like that, you know? And it's more about, you can actually hear the lyrics as well, like, whereas at The Libertines gig people know them, it doesn't matter if they can hear them or not, everyone sings them. Whereas it's just a bit more European.
On keeping his cash in the fridge
PD: When we first got that record contract, we spent it all on new instruments and records, basically. And we put the rest in cash in the fridge, and we'd iron it every morning, right?
KY: You'd iron the cash?
PD: Yeah.
KY: Because?
PD: Just 'cause it was ours, and we could if we wanted.
On listening to Radio 4 in prison
PD: I remember that for about for a little while I had a cell on my own, they put me in solitary. And I remember having a radio and just lying on my bed listening to the radio. They were doing a serialization of Jekyll and Hyde I remember and I was like god bless Radio Four.
KY: Here's to that.
PD: I stood by them ever since.
On addiction
Well, it's funny 'cause last night I came into London for The Libertines show tonight, and I would normally get that little tingle and it'd be so easy as well, you know, there's a dozen places I could go and get myself sorted out. But that seems to have passed. I mean, you obviously still got to be on your toes because it's a funny old thing addiction. They used to say that when you get clean, your addict is just in the corner doing press-ups.
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I think that maybe it's a devilish thing, devilish thing. Maybe it is the devil, but we just call it different things. It's a malevolent influence that can creep in and take over. And it does, it does, it can take your soul, you know? You don't care about the things you do or the things you're party to.
On the alchemy of working with Carl Barât
From the moment I met him and those early years we spent together, so much hope was built up inside me, that it was him and that we had something special and that we were gonna do it together. That was, for me, that was everything.
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I saw this genius musician, he'd just pick up the guitar and it would just drip with, with, like, one second it'd be, like, delightful, but quirky, whimsy notes, and the next minute it'd be some dark melancholy chord progression, and it all tied in perfectly to the lyrics… I spent a lot of time chasing him around London making him sit down and teach me guitar and so all my hopes really were pinned on him because I believed in it so much.
On Carl Barât helping him kick his drug habit
He stood over me and normally he would never even be in the same room - he could never watch me do it. He came in and I had the needle in my arm and he just said something along the lines of, I won't tell you exactly what he said but it's something along the lines of, “you cannot do this anymore, can't keep trying and failing either you know either this stops or that's it, there's no more, we can't do this, we won't be able to open the hotel, we won't be able to do The Libertines.” That was it really, that was the last time, I think that was the last time I had a needle in my hand.
On writing The Libertines lyrics, ‘reasons to stay alive, not to die at 25’
I was living in student digs in Whitechapel in a big hall full of medics, and he'd [Carl] come over there and we wrote that line actually from Shiver about reasons to stay alive, but we wrote that one of those nights he came over. So that lyric’s been there for me even before we were called The Libertines. I mean I still get a real shiver when I sing that line anyway because there's always people in the crowd who that line connects with and we always see hands go up for that line.
On his dad not liking his early music
I played him this really early acoustic version of a song called What a Waster and remember he said, “look, you can't sing first of all and you clearly can't write songs well or play guitar”… But two years later, that song had been released and was single of the week. And then when he seen it was single of the week in NME, he was like, “What's that song? What a Waster." He made me go around to play it to the neighbour and I was so fuming.
On the advice he’d give his younger self
“Just get some sleep. Just get some sleep from time to time. I mean just get your head down get some sleep”.
…
Maybe I'd actually just get myself, tie myself up, put him in a boot, take him out to a forest and give him some tough love, actually. Yeah, in fact, I wouldn't even offer any advice. I'd just say, "This is for your own good."
