Gary Flockhart: Good to see Peter finally doing what he does best

Published on Friday 27 March 2009 09:01

GIVEN the amount of complaints that I heard from pals after his last – admittedly patchy – concert in the Capital, you'd have sworn there was never a time in the past when perma-wasted Pete Doherty served up dross.

I said to them, "What did you expect? Guy's a smackhead - small miracle he even made it."

This, remember, was the bad-old-days of the shambolic Babyshambles shows, when the talk before gigs was if Pete (or Peter as he's taken to calling himself recently) would appear – or if he did, what sorry, intoxicated, drug-addled state would the trilby-wearing trainwreck be in.

He would cancel almost as many shows as he'd turn up for, and when he did play, would often nod off in some heroin haze mid-song.

It was back in the days when you couldn't open a red-top without seeing pictures of 'Potty Pete', who'd become regular tabloid fodder for being Kate Moss's paramour and a world-class drug addict, rather than the world-class musician that his fans claimed he was.

To all eyes, the then 27-year-old looked like he'd successfully filed his application for the Forever 27 Club, that exclusive domain of dead rock stars that counts the likes of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain among its foremost members.

"I know where the self-destruct button is, I just have to resist the temptation to push it," he said around then. No-one held their breath.

Against the odds, these days the outlook is a lot more positive for the singer.

Not only is he off the hard stuff, he's turning up on time for gigs, looking relatively healthy and, most tellingly, has finally made an album that's comparable in quality to the stuff he did in the early days of former band The Libertines.

So as he prepares to play The Picture House tonight, fans can expect to see a very different Pete to the sweaty, filthy figure who played the Corn Exchange in 2006.

"Right now, I'm clean as a whistle," the singer announced earlier this week. "I think it's all about confidence. With the new album, it's all quite mellow, and I'm a shy man.

"When you're wasted it becomes even more petrifying to go out with just an acoustic guitar," he continued. "When you're in that place, it's much easier to hide behind a massive wall of noise. That's not there right now." That's a massive improvement on just a few months ago, when he said his drug use was frequent and horrifying. "I get very paranoid," he revealed. "There was this time I thought terrorists were on my roof, trying to break in. You can laugh about it, but it was scary. In my mind they were outside trying to get me.

"When you have the crack shakes, you think that everyone you know is going to kill you."

So apart from a more together Pete, what can fans expect from tonight's gig?

Well, according to press reviews from his recent tour, we're looking at a show in which Britain's most notorious rock star is stealing the spotlight for the right reasons – his music.

He's ditched the trademark trilby and has been turning up in jeans, trainers and a sweatshirt. He still looks a little out of it – that's actually just Pete – but crucially, he's stopped slurring his words, falling off the stage, and is performing better than ever.

The naysayers won't want to hear it, but I'm not surprised one jot by all the positive press he has been receiving since his solo tour kicked off.

You see, for all his faults, and he has many, Pete is an extremely talented, literate, intelligent young man. He always possessed the ability to write classy lyrics – it's just that in the past he possessed a lot of Class A drugs too.

Now that he's off the smack – and fingers crossed he can stay off it – the world is finally seeing the real Pete (sorry, Peter) Doherty.