Something about Carlos

Dee-jaying at Frequency Festival

Q magazine is out with a short interview with Barat. He repeats the old stories about Peter's incontinence etc and talks about the musical influence he's had from his dad. Thanks to Epiphany for writing it down:

From The Libertines to Dirty Pretty Things, freewheeling guitarist and singer-songwriter Carl Barat has found inspiration in a whole raft of bands, experiences and friends…
The influences of an artist can be found in a variety of locations: people, places, life-changing records. For the past two months, Q has teamed up with Orange to bring you This Is Who I Am - a series of intimate interviews with a number of heavyweight artists. Kasabian’s Tom Meighan and The Enemy’s Tom Clarke have previously explained how their music influences have impacted on their lives, and which people and relationships made them who they are today. In the third and final part of the series, it’s the turn of Carl Barat - former frontman with Dirty Pretty Things and one-time Libertine - to take the confessional…
Q: Who was the most influential person on your musical career?

C: I guess my dad. He introduced me to music. I remember he used to drive around in a Reliant Robin, which was kind of embarrassing in lafter life. But I remember sitting in the back and listening to The Jam and David Bowie, so I had that drummed into me from an early age.
Q: What were some of your earliest musical developments?

C: I remember watching Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged show and copying it on a guitar. That’s how I spent most evenings. Then I guess I went ‘strictly metal’ for a few years.
Q: How did that happen?

C: I went with the attitude. But then eventually, I think I got into rap metal - bands such as Rage Against The Machine. From that I went on to hip hop, acts like Cypress Hill. Then I got into some weird English stuff like Gun Shop, and then there was that band Sensor…
Q: So who was the person that introduced you to playing music yourself?

C: Well, my dad had a guitar, which I wasn’t allowed to touch, so that in itself was an incentive, really. I secretly learned how to play it. I got caught a couple of times and got a bit of a drubbing, but that was the inspiration to learn. Then the second you can play Sweet Child O’ Mine to your friends - and you see the look on their face - it just snowballs from there, really.
Q: How did you meet Pete Doherty?

C: Through his sister. She mentioned she had a brother and always spoke very highly of him. Then one day she said he was finally coming up to London. She had to go and do something and he was in her room in [university] halls, so could I go and look after him? I went in and the room just stank of urine and there was this guy sitting on the bed - he was much bigger than I expected - wearing this plastic jacket and I thought “Oh God, he’s incontinent.” It was a bit awkward.
Q: What happened next?

C: I just thought, “Jesus, I’ve been lumbered with babysitting.” But he did have wily, electric eyes and a really fascinating curiosity about everything. I found myself wanting to impress him, for some reason. It turned out the pee smell was from the river - the window was open, it was right on the Thames. That was an interesting start to an interesting friendship.
Q: Why did you not want to meet him?

C: I just couldn’t be bothered, really. But then when I did meet him, he was just like the kind of person I’d like to meet anyway. He cared about words and language, history, culture and poetry. He was quite an inspirational fellow.
Q: When did you decide to write music together?

C: Pete had the idea pretty much straight away. He harangued me for about a year to get on with it, but I wasn’t sure what I was doing. I thought I was going to be an actor. But then eventually we got together and spent a long time doing it.
Q: You both have wonderful romanticism about England or Albion, as you call it. Where did that idea come from?

C: Albion was just a word we used as an embodiment; it means England, it means the white cliffs of Dover… We just used that to symbolise the vessel, the journey that we embarked on, because after a while, especially after I left Brunel Univeristy, I realised that this was almost like our destiny. I had to heed the call and throw myself face first into it. As soon as I realised this, it was like, “About time, let’s do it.” That was when we came up with the idea of Albion meaning England, which is something we both hold dear to our hearts. And then the voyage began, really.
Q: Do you think that your love/hate relationship with Pete Doherty will ever go away?

C: I doubt it very much. It’s never going to turn into indifference. Certainly not on my part, anyway.

And of course, we've all seen this video showing Carlos playing two versions of himself, the yankee and the brit. Mind you, I like the yank more.

Carl was hanging in NY in the last days (I guess he came back last night), and before that he played a dj set at the Frequency Festival in Austria (see photo above). As for his participation to the Instigate Debate roundtable at the Reading Festival, it seems he won't be there. The debate will involve Stephen Street instead (and of course Jon McClure).