In It For The Crack

The extraordinary life and times of indie rock ’s most spectacular wastrel, in his own words.

By Pat Gilbert.

Living on the edge: Peter Doherty seeks clarity from the murk.

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A Likely Lad ★★★★★ Peter Doher ty with Simon Spence

CONSTABLE. £20

IN A MEMOIR where drugs, violence, death and HMP loom large, there’s one passage more deeply disturbing than most. During a holiday in Wales to write material for a second Libertines album, Peter Doherty tells how he and his bandmate Carl Barât argue over a girl, after which Barât attempts suicide by stabbing broken glass into his face. The next day, Doherty is blamed by management for his horrific injuries; Barât says nothing.

Was Doherty responsible? This is the reader’s dilemma, and part of A Likely Lad’s irresistible allure – to peer into the fog of blurred remembrance and sift fact from fiction, reality from drug hallucination. Did Kate Moss really burn Doherty’s beloved teddy bear Pandy when they split? And, more gravely, where exactly was the singer when playwright Mark Blanco fatally fell from a balcony, minutes after they rowed (see panel)?

To its credit, A Likely Lad – expertly pieced together by writer Simon Spence from hours of inter views with its subject – doesn’t try to whitewash past events. Indeed, Doherty, like us, seems to be seeking clarity from the murk. From the start, the narrative is revelator y, debunking myths about his supposedly tough “army brat” upbringing (he adored his officer father) and comprehensive schooling in Liverpool (it was really Bedworth). We learn in forensic detail about his arrival in east London in 1997, where dreams of becoming a poet quickly gave way to starting a band with his sister’s wannabe-actor friend Carl Barât. But “there was a lot of tension from day one,” he notes.