Factory Records' Tony Wilson on The Libertines/Himself/Drug-Taking By Musicians & Poets/Grime

The Libertines Crack Up

Singer Pete Doherty’s drug-fuelled split from The Libertines is unremarkable in the world of rock, and probably a healthy development in creative terms, writes Factory Records impresario Anthony Wilson

WRITE a piece about The Libertines? Give me a break. I don’t care about The Libertines. But a piece about drugs and music. Where do I sign up? When I say I don’t care for The Libertines, I’m not being controversial for the sake of it. I often am, though not this time. I find the darlings of NME insipid and drab. And I feel bad about that because I have enormous respect and even love for the two Lib champions, Rough Trade owner Geoff Travis and Alan McGee, the Scot who discovered Oasis.

And I tried. I bought the first album. Played it – for 15 minutes even – but I was pushing myself. So. Crap band and crap album, but good press on the drugs front.

And here’s where I get confused – which drugs are we talking about? The word junkie is used when describing Pete Doherty, the band’s former frontman and co-songwriter, but probably wrongly.

Over the remaining paragraphs of this short piece I am going to appear flippant about heroin. And that can be a stupid thing to be. I know just how dangerous and destructive smack is and have seen friends die, so if I offend, please take that into account.

But – the end of a musician’s creative life? Please. Do we have to review the history of 18th and 19th century British poetry to remind ourselves that although 15% of addicts die, and 60% just stop, around 20% live – in something of a haze admittedly – and produce work, good work, until they die of other causes?

Funny this should involve Alan McGee. Back in late 1988, McGee ran up to me on the wide balcony overlooking the Hacienda dance floor (those were his formative days as an honorary Manc) and said, “Tony, that band of yours, the Mondays, you’ve got to sell them now, you’ve got to break them as soon as you can, Tony.” “Why Al, what’s the hurry?” “They’re all gonna die Tony, they’re all gonna die”.

Having realised McGee was talking about their narcotic indulgence, I tried to calm him down and repeated one of my mantras: “Alan, remember what [co-founder of Atlantic Records] Nesuhi Ertegun used to say: ‘Don’t worry about the drugs, some of my biggest artists are junkies, they’ve been junkies for 20 years. They’ve been giving me platinum albums for 20 years. Don’t worry about the drugs. Cocaine, that’s different.”

And there it is. Smack can kill you, but, if you have the strength, it need not kill your creativity (Thank you, Mr Coleridge). As for the other drug – I’d love some informed medical comment instead of outraged public abuse. We all know why cocaine, inducing euphoria and false confidence, makes you think you’re doing great work when in fact the work is utter bilge. That we understand. But why does it make seriously good artists produce utter crap in the first place? And cocaine-fuelled creativity is always, always utter crap. That’s what I want to know.

Anyone who has worked more than a few years in the Garden of Earthly delights that is the music industry has had their “cocaine album”. God help us. For me, the awful three years during which I worked for a company called London Records was only made bearable by the knowledge that in the Tin Machine, they actually had a worse band and album than my lot Revenge. Nuff said.

And so if the drug of choice for Doherty is indeed crack, then that is the cocaine problem to the power of three. Or maybe 33. My beloved Happy Mondays coped well with the stuff Alan McGee was worrying about in 1988. But when they hit crack on Barbados in 1991, the end was nigh …

The one thing that would help – not Doherty, but musicians in the future – is if someone could answer my plea for medical reasoning behind the destruction of creativity that goes hand in hand with the white stuff (no, not amphetamine – that increases your IQ by 7%) and even more the distilled white stuff.

Just don’t use the word junkie; that gives the wrong impression of laudanum: for someone who’s lost on crack, the word should just be “fool”. Another cautionary note; after Shaun Ryder of the Mondays (and most of the rest of them) got lost on crack in Barbados, I despaired and gave up on Ryder in particular. And I was totally f***ing wrong. The lyrics on his Black Grape stuff were up to form (that means sheer genius) and even last year’s understated Australian album contained a single, Scooter Girl, which is up there with his best. So: sack the fools; but don’t give up on them. And as for a band’s main creative source leaving, beware easy predictions. Two other mates, Peter Jenner and Andrew King, were managing a psychedelic outfit in the 1960s. Main man did drugs and went a bit crazy diamond. Peter and Andrew went with the main man and left the baggage (“the musicians”) behind. Main man was Syd Barrett. The band ended up on the Dark Side Of The Moon. Be warned.

So what is this Libertines bullshit? Could it be marketing? I don’t think so; McGee is too honest for that. And I was accused of marketing the Mondays with drug stories when all we did was sit back and wait for the latest excess to occur.

Drugs and music are deeply interesting: Sergeant Pepper was not made on acid, it was made on speedballs; heroin, meeting soul music at the centre of Sly Stone’s cranium, created funk and modern dance music, and on and on. But The Libertines. Try the album and not the press; if you get it, good luck. If, like me, you don’t, then run to the new sounds of British black youth finding an authentic, non-American voice in the wonderful world of post-grime.

(Yes, I’ve got a new band and they aren’t skinny white kids with guitars and “drug problems” – they do have a drug song though; High-Grade Is My Grade.)

This article was not written with a little help from my friends – and I am wondering if my friends Geoff Travis and Alan McGee will ever forgive me – but The Libertines, with or without the drug scandal, are not the big event NME thinks they are.

Tony Wilson is founder of Factory Records who signed Joy Division, New Order, Happy Mondays and James; he was also behind the Hacienda club in Manchester.

The Libertines release their second album, The Libertines, tomorrow