Another Rock and Roll waste.
 

Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll; the elixir of cool. Sometimes though, all I see is the tragic fucking waste of it. The brilliant and effortlessly cool singer songwriter reduced to a bit part in the news cycle freakshow. The arrogant and startling frontman unable to string together a coherent sentence. The diva unable to muster a performance, shrugging off the stage in a haze of cocaine chic. We've seen Amy Whitehouse progress from the amazing Back to Black to a parody of herself on stage. All that promise pissed away.

I was clicking through the BBC news site this morning and came accross a story about Pete Docherty, former frontman of The Libertines, then intermittently active with Babyshambles and solo apperances. He's been a drugs hound for as long as he's been famous, but the cool has become mere dereliction over the years. Now he's being questioned by police about supplying drugs to an heiress who was making a documentary about him, and who has been found dead of an overdose.

It really made me feel quite sad. This lad was so talented. Magnetic on stage. I remember watching an interview with him a few years ago, in which he sang acoustic versions of some of his songs. I recall him being very sweet. Here's a clip from that interview, of him singing Music When the Lights Go Out. At this point he was attempting some sort of recovery. Clearly it didn't work out so well.

So you see, the record companies are actually doing struggling artists a favor, by keeping them struggling and unable to afford drugs.

Can't Stand Me Now is a real solid song. It was written by him when he was in jail for whatever reason that I currently forget. My friend told me this video, shown below, is the last song The Libertines played together since the band kicked Pete Docherty out for drug use. There is definitely a lot of tension.

I'll go out on a limb and say it was most likely possession or sale of drugs. I know he did do a short time for drugs offences.

Oh sorry. He has done time for drug related stuff, but that particular occasion he'd burgled the other singer's flat.

What a waste of talent. I'm sick of drugs being trivialized by society, meanwhile our best and most talented are being destroyed.