If you ask us, there’s a case to be made that Pete Doherty and Carl Barat are two of the most important cultural figures of the twenty-first century.
No, seriously: hear us out. Not only did they invent their own brand of mythic English rock ‘n’ roll in a time where everybody else was grabbing a pair of leather trousers and doing their best Julian Casablancas impression, but they were also the only band of their generation that seemed to really mean it.
To appropriate the words of Le Sac and Pip: Bloc Party? Just a band. The Holloways? Just a band. Hard-Fi? Just a band. The Next Big Thing? Well, they were nearly always Just A Band.
The Libertines, however, were never Just A Band.
To those who knew, The Libertines were a way of life.
Here at One on One HQ, we know people with Libertines tattoos. We’ve met grown men who can be moved to tears by the opening notes of You’re My Waterloo. Heck, we’ve even seen an impromptu rendition of Time For Heroes break out on Camden High Street in the early hours of a cold winter’s morning in January 2019.
To those who hated them, they were little more than a ramshackle band of addicts and wasters; an accidental success, destined to join The Fratellis and Tribes in the minuscule footnotes of mid-noughties indie history.
To the rest of us, though, they were the outlaw rebels, the true rock ‘n’ rollers, and the last of the real romantics, all rolled into one leather-clad package. They were the dreamers, and the believers; the walking, talking, and swaggering proof that the rock ‘n’ roll dream was still, for some, alive and well.
And, on Monday night, they brought that rock ‘n’ roll dream to Bristol.
Sure, their show at Bristol’s O2 Academy wasn’t perfect.
It started half an hour late, and we left nurturing suspicions that a certain Mr. Peter Doherty may well have spent the preceding two hours feeling a little… Well, worse for wear.
For most artists, that set of circumstances would spell the death of a show before they’d ever stepped on-stage; but, at a Libertines show, it seems like part of the package. You see, The Libertines‘ live shows are designed to be enjoyed by people who tend to enjoy getting a little ‘worse for wear’. We’d call them boisterous, but that would seem like an understatement – instead, picture your typical indie-rock, pints-flying-through-the-air, so-drenched-in-sweat-you-could-wring-out-your-shirt gig, and multiply it by ten.
It also helps that the band themselves seem to view every moment without mayhem as a moment sadly wasted. If it wasn’t Doherty who was clambering over an amplifier to scream in the faces of the front row, it was Carl Barat; if it wasn’t the opening notes of Don’t Look Back Into The Sun that was whipping the crowd into a frenzy, it was the sight of the band’s two frontmen leaning into the same microphone and partying like it was 2004 all over again.
So, if you’re ever in two minds about going to see The Libertines, let us break down what you can expect.
Will you get to see two frontmen who helped to define a generation cavorting, thrashing, and belting their way through one of the finest back catalogues of indie-rock songs in British musical history? Yes. Will you get to be part of a crowd who are willing to bellow each and every word of said catalogue back into the faces of the aforementioned frontmen? Well, yes.
Oh, and most importantly: will you leave the venue dripping with sweat, the last notes of Can’t Stand Me Now echoing through your mind, and already counting down the days until you get to do it all again? God, yes, you will.
And that, dear reader, is why The Libertines continue to endure. They’re the last of a dying breed; a rock ‘n’ roll band who believe in rock ‘n’ roll, and understand that half of the allure of the dream lies in escaping from your everyday life and believing – just for a moment – that you’re part of something bigger than yourself.
They’re not like you and I – they’re rock stars, God dammit. Long live The Libertines.