A Likely Lad

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Still, within the 300-odd pages are major revelations and intimate insights previously unheard of from the performer’s colourful life. But that was before he found his drug use move from recreational dabbling, to crippling dependency and an addiction that took many attempts at recovery before finally getting clean.

I’m hard pushed to think of another musician who managed to be so prolific with such a sustained drug problem. Towards the end of the book, Pete seems to open up more and takes on a much more optimistic tone with the musician finally seeming to grapple his life, meet a woman he loves, and commit himself to sobriety (sort of). His voice leaps off the pages and is a testament to the biographer's determination to have the reader feel as though they were sat in a cosy cafe, listening to this affable chap, look back on his life so far, with a mixture of bittersweet happiness interspersed with a touch of regret. But hearing Pete speak now with a calm persona, a rational outlook, and no longer that wandering maelstrom of chaos, it sounds like he's finally figured out who he is and what he wants to be. For fans, it’s certainly worth a read, particularly for anecdotes about the making of his albums, his memories of concerts (many of which can be found online) and how particular songs were written.

That sounds like me,” he says, “I think that’s a solid foundation of my character, prone to despair or melancholy. Their music reminds me of nights out with my mates at indie club nights and so many other nostalgic memories of my late teens/early twenties. A Likely lad is reminiscent of an amalgamation of two other ghost-written memoirs; Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth and and John McEnroe: Seriously. A classic example is when he mentions the birth of his daughter in passing, the way someone would mention eating a Mars bar: 'Oh yeah, my daughter was born around then. Visit our privacy Policy for more information about our services, how New Statesman Media Group may use, process and share your personal data, including information on your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications.

In 2007 a book of his “collected writings” was published (containing reproductions of his handwritten lyrics, alongside other scrawled fragments). Fun is always enticing and being a bit naughty has a certain allure when you're younger and wanting to experience everything life has to offer. This memoir, dictated but not written by Doherty, follows him from highly intelligent and relatively sheltered boy, to university drop out, to drug addled singer in defining early noughties indie outfit The Libertines. Irritatingly, Peter reminded me of Skimpole in some place, talking about how he is 'a perfect child' when it comes to finance and owing money.

Unfortunately this book lacks the poetic warmth Doherty is known for speaking in, and forgoes a lot of talk of the relationship between him and Carl in exchange for tedious goings on about drug binges and the like. One of the more shocking revelations in the memoir is that Doherty has recently found God and appears to be largely of sober mind during recent years, which makes the self-imposed tragedy of his life somewhat more bearable when reading. This despite a trail of death, squandered money, a kid he barely saw, unreliability, prison sentences and so on. He does obviously talk extensively about his addiction and he dips into some of the mayhem his life has been, but the sugar coating he puts on much of his 20+ years of extreme drug use, makes taking his words at face value (forgive me here) a tough pill to swallow. Rather, he relayed his life story to Spence who then formed the narrative that makes up the few hundred or so pages of ‘A Likely Lad.

I enjoy a debauched music memoir and enjoyed Pete's musical output with The Libertines, as well as some of his shambolic side projects. He approached stints in rehab as an obligation he did for other people (the justice system, bandmates and so on) and regarded himself as a fully functioning addict.Doherty’s drug use left him unable to perform the role of professional musician – when the band went on without him, he was wounded, railing against “the industrialisation of the Libertines”. It lacked a bit of detail and spark about certain things and felt more like a chronology of his life. Deep down I know I never wanted to end up a hopeless junkie, with an addiction that I became a slave too.

But you can't put an old head in young shoulders and many inevitably had to learn their lesson the hard way too. Richards also took into seriously his responsibility somehow to those who are dead and were influenced by his use of drugs. The musician Pete Doherty has often been described as a “poet” – by fans, breathless NME journalists and, of course, himself.He sometimes made use of tabloid curiosity, selling photographs and stories to pay debts, a naivety guiding his approach: “I thought I’d be able to crack it. That would have been useful at least , if Pete feels like this, to say a bit more in that he had the chance to survive this drug abuse but more are those who had no chance. But I saw heroin ruin the lives of so many people - many of whom you'd never have expected to get mixed up in such things.