Over the Edge With Pete Doherty

The room, even more trashed than the hall, looks like a homeless person's squat. The lights are dim, with an orange glow, like a muted campfire. A man in a peacoat, his fingertips blackened -- the indelible ink of a crack pipe -- crouches on an old couch and shoots us a startled, feral look. The only sign of celebrity sits atop a crowded mantel: a trophy from a music-awards show, picked up the week prior. The award was for "Sexiest Male."

And there he is -- Pete Doherty, singer of Babyshambles, ex-boyfriend of Kate Moss and the most famous junkie in Great Britain. He stands in the center of the room, tall and rangy, his hair tousled, his eyes sunken, a cross dangling from his neck on a white, beaded chain. He's holding a laptop computer in one hand and a tiny round laptop camera in the other. He is using the camera to film something in front of him -- though there is nothing in front of him -- and he is staring hard at whatever he is filming as it appears on the laptop's screen. Without looking at us, he says, softly, "Johnny, this is not a good time." Johnny begins to speak, but Doherty, without raising his voice or taking his eyes from the screen, interrupts: "Are you not listening to me, Johnny? This is not a good time."

Johnny turns to me and says, "Maybe you'd better wait in the hall."

With Babyshambles and his first band, the Libertines, Pete Doherty has made some of the most exciting music to come out of Britain in the past five years. His best work is smart, scrappy punk rock that draws on both the energy and eclecticism of the Clash -- Mick Jones produced both Libertines albums and Babyshambles' debut, Down in Albion -- and on the hyperliterate English lyrical tradition of songwriters like Ray Davies, Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker. But his legend -- comically at times, tragically at others -- has shined most brightly in epic tabloid tales, where he embodies nearly every aspect, good and bad, of what we think about when we think about rock stars: drugs, alcohol, brushes with the law, drugs, fashion models, onstage fistfights, onstage collapse, fan riots, drugs, jail, poor driving, gratuitous Rimbaud quoting and, hey, did we mention drugs? Over the course of Doherty's short career, the twenty-seven-year-old has been jailed a half-dozen times -- once for two months, for robbing his own bandmate's flat. Most of these arrests have been a direct result of Doherty's long-standing drug abuse, which, in a spirit both theatrical and self-destructive -- and, perhaps, of protest -- the singer has never made any effort to hide. "Normally, someone who smokes crack will deny it and say, 'Don't do it, kids!'" says Babyshambles bassist Drew McConnell. "Peter never lies to anyone." Such honesty has made the singer an irresistible target for British authorities. Over the years, Doherty has also bested several rehabs, including a Thai monastery known as the most intense clinic in the world, which boasts, "Once someone starts his program, the only way he can quit is when he's dead." Doherty split for Bangkok after three days.

By late January, in the course of three months, Doherty -- his name is pronounced Dockerty -- had been confronted by police or arrested at least ten times. The latest two arrests, both for possession, were, rather incredibly, on the same day -- the day before I was scheduled to fly to London for an interview. I would spend the next six weeks attempting to track Doherty down, enlisting his friends and bandmates and making two separate trips to the U.K. "Does he even know I'm trying to interview him?" I finally ask McConnell, after several close encounters. A tall, soft-spoken Irishman who does not use hard drugs, McConnell is silent for a moment. "We've definitely made him aware of it," he finally says. "But with Pete, you're not always quite sure what he's retaining."