Pete Doherty: Man Out of Time

Photo by Hedi Slimane

On November 22 Babyshambles begin their most high-profile tour to date, a nationwide jaunt to England's biggest arenas (and the largest the band has ever played) in just eight days; their U.K. label Parlophone's objective is to get Doherty in front of his many fans in as short a time as possible. "If we mounted a bigger tour of smaller venues," Coxon explains, "it could very probably come off the rails. It's safer this way."

One could argue that it would be even safer for Doherty not to tour at all, given his tenuous grasp on the sobriety he seems to genuinely covet. McPhillips suggests otherwise, though. "Clearly, a tour is an incredibly stressful thing to undertake," he says. "But then, it is also stressful for an artist not to live up to his professional obligations. It can be a hard thing for someone to feel their career is spiraling downward."

And so the show goes on, opening at Manchester's M.E.N. Arena, a place vast enough to host Red Hot Chili Peppers and, on tonight's evidence, at least twice the size it needs to be to house a Babyshambles crowd. Barely half of its 15,000 seats are occupied. At 9:15, the quartet take the stage, on time, to huge cheers and, against all expectations, an apparently sober Doherty excels. He is funny, wry, and captivating, and when he plays a solo version of "Lost Art of Murder" (from the current album and reportedly about his messy split from Moss), he is at once heavy with regret and light as air, a man who knows precisely what he is capable of.

After the show, however, it's another story. As Doherty leads me from the dressing room to the tour bus, he looks ravaged, slurring his words and walking as if on the deck of a ship that has just hit an iceberg. His left eye is pink and bloodshot; his chin sports a fresh open sore. Once on the bus, he pulls off his T-shirt to reveal a doughy torso and offers me tea. He sticks an arm through the ripped lining of a tattered jacket, looking for Christ knows what, and eventually makes do with a lighter retrieved from his jeans pocket, which he continually sparks, holding the flame just millimeters from his thumb.

I remind him that the last time we met, his latest heroin lapse was about to go public.

He groans: "Of course. You were there while it was all going off, weren't you? Shit."

He insists he doesn't want to talk about it. "I'm clean now, I really am. I have to be. If I started piping [smoking crack] or doing brown [heroin] again, then I'd let everyone down, and I just can't do that."

He leans forward till his head rests on his kneecaps. When he speaks, the sticky floor absorbs his words.

"Look mate, this isn't right. I've just done a show. Last thing I want to do now is sit around analyzing myself. It's not on." He looks up at me, pleading, "Couldn't we have spoken earlier?"

I explain that I had been waiting to talk with him since three this afternoon but was repeatedly told he didn't want to see me. His response is one of feigned amazement. His jaw goes slack.

"Nobody told me! You should've come directly to me! No point going through them, know what I mean?"

He suggests we catch up when the tour reaches Brighton, "where we can talk and watch all the pretty girls go by." He gives me his cell phone number and tells me to call him directly, and then asks me to leave him in peace.