Moving to rural Normandy probably saved my life. When I first moved to France I stayed in cities like Marseilles, Paris, Lille and Perpignan, but it was too easy for the dealers to find me. My wife, Katia, is French and we eventually found a little village on the Normandy coast just before the pandemic.
As well as being close to Katia’s family, it’s the kind of place where any dealer prowling around the streets is going to get noticed. Katia’s uncles would arrive on the double — sometimes they just happened to be carrying their hunting rifles — and take the guy by the scruff of the neck. These days, if I see a dealer, they usually cross the road to avoid me.
You come from a military family — both your mum and dad were in the forces. Did that mean you moved about a lot as a kid?
Always upping sticks, like we were in some sort of military campaign. At the time I didn’t mind — that kind of life felt exciting and adventurous. We’d have six months here, six months there, always the new kid at school. Sometimes I’d change my accent or the way I looked and pretend to be a new person. Give myself a fresh identity. But as I got older I kind of missed being from “somewhere”. At Christmas we’d visit relatives in London or Liverpool for a couple of weeks and it would break my heart to leave. I’d tasted this feeling of home and family, and it was a wrench to leave it.
So, when the Libertines money started rolling in, did you immediately invest in bricks and mortar? A place to call your own?
Even when we were having No 1 albums and I was making good money, I never saved or invested. The more money I made, the more I spent. Unfortunately I am now paying the price for that — still trying to sort out tax bills from ten years ago. You’ve got to remember that when you’re in the depths of an addiction you don’t make the smartest choices. And it’s easy to mythologise that kind of existence.
You get paid in cash, you rent a room in a swanky hotel, you know people who can get what you want when you want it. And even if I couldn’t afford a hotel, there’d always be someone willing to put me up. And put up with me! It might sound corny, but I thought of myself as some kind of musical Hunter S Thompson.
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Did you ever find yourself living somewhere that you didn’t want to be? Were you ever scared?
I’m sure I laid my head in dangerous places and I was in the company of dangerous people. But I always had this knack for self-hypnosis. I could convince myself that tomorrow I would wake up and find my Arcadia. I’d find a way to be free. Having said that, I did end up in prison and, yes, that scared me. [Doherty was jailed for various offences and spent time in both Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville.] It didn’t matter how much self-hypnosis I indulged in, I didn’t want to be there. I knew I’d gone too far.
Have you and Katia bought property in France?
Yes, but I’ve also finally put money into a property in England. Carl [Barât, his Libertines bandmate] convinced the band to buy an old seafront townhouse in Margate. We’ve turned it into a little bar, a recording studio — we recorded the new album there — and a bit of a community thing. If a local band needs some studio time or a place to crash for a couple of weeks, we try and help out. It’s also a hotel and we rent out the rooms, but we’re running at a loss. I’m better at being an artist than I am a hotelier. And to answer your original question, Katia and I bought a one-bedroom bungalow in Normandy, but it got damaged in one of the recent storms, so we’re currently living in this place that used to be owned by Katia’s grandad.
• Inside Carl Barât and Gizzi Erskine’s Margate cafe, home of the fashionable fry-up
Have you decorated? Does home have a ‘look’?
I think, deep down, I’m quite set in my ways. I like old stuff. Not crazy old … just bits of cheap porcelain, Babycham paraphernalia and old Seventies fag packets. Look at the design of a Player’s No 6 packet or a vintage Camel and compare it with what you get today. And I have a fetish for old British banknotes, 1960s fivers and ten shilling notes. I collect old chromatic harmonicas too.
Anything that cost you serious money?
There was a time when I was always down Spitalfields Market in London carrying a big wad of cash. One or two of the stallholders would always greet me with smiles and big hugs, showing me some picture or a human skull. I was always a sucker for an expensive hat or a 17th-century walking cane. Maybe an antique ring with a secret compartment. There must have been one or two of those stallholders who had to rethink their retirement plans after I finally got clean.
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What about guitars?
Some of them have set me back a few quid. Not silly money, maybe a few grand. I’m sure there are people who spend much more on their cars or having a new kitchen. My favourite is the 1960s Epiphone Coronet. Yes, it sounds brilliant, but even before I plugged it into an amplifier I strapped it on and thought, “This feels right.” It looks like a rock’n’roll guitar should look.
Do you see yourself settling in Normandy for good?
It’s something that Katia and I have talked about, especially now we’ve got Billie-Mae [their daughter, now almost one]. My job constantly takes me away from home and there’s no way to avoid that, but when I actually get the chance to spend some proper time with Katia and Billie-Mae, I can almost feel my roots digging down into the earth. We have breakfast together, I walk the dogs and we listen to music. I play silly games with Billie-Mae, I read books and write letters. I don’t drink as much, I eat better and I’m in bed by nine. My dream is to be financially secure enough to just put my feet up.
The Libertines album All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade is out now. Their UK tour starts on July 28
