Carl Barât: “The Libertines? I refuse to look long term…”
Pete Doherty's foil tells MOJO the recently reunited band are taking it day by day.
WITH A NEW album completed and a surprise Pyramid Stage slot at Glastonbury (pictured) successfully navigated, things might be looking up for The Libertines – but long-term planning remains strictly off the agenda, the band tell MOJO.
Speaking in our new issue (August 15 / #261) the often ill-fated four-piece say they have finished recording third record Anthems For Doomed Youth, the follow-up to 2004’s The Libertines, but despite upcoming headline slots at the Reading and Leeds Festivals, co-frontman Carl Barât is refusing to count any chickens just yet.
“Obviously we’ll do our best… I refuse to look long term, though,” he tells MOJO’s Lois Wilson. “Any plans for The Libertines have always gone south – I’m just living day by day.”
However, that unpredictability, in no small part down to the eccentric but highly erratic Pete Doherty (sessions for the new album took place in Thailand after the co-frontman completed a bout of rehab in the country), can be a positive, insists bassist John Hassall.
“The volatility, the unpredictability, that’s part of The Libertines,” he explains. “Without it, it wouldn’t be us, but it’s channelled into the creative process now, it’s not destructive.”
Get the latest issue of MOJO, on sale in the UK now, for the full interview with The Libertines, and watch them live from the Glastonbury Festival below now.
PHOTO: Getty Images