Photo: Press
Peter Doherty has spoken out about the making of new album Hamburg Demonstration, which was recorded with Johan Scheerer, and explained the events that led to his most personal record to date.
He told 6Music that he originally planned to do the sessions with Babyshambles guitarist and his songwriting partner Mick Whitnall but it didn’t happen: “Mick Whitnall, who by the way now is completely clean […] but at the time... we were shacked up at the Reeperbahn and Johan thought that you know... he called the police when he first saw Mick. If Mick came in the studio then the session was off. I told Mick ‘Look we’ve got to go’ and Mick said ‘You stay’ and he went off.”
Doherty continued: “There were some songs that I had wanted to do with Mick, some big songs that I still haven’t done, they’re still there so I just had to fall back on pure solo stuff.
“[…] Even Grace/Wasteland are mostly co-writes. He continued to explain The Libertines and Babyshambles too are mostly co-writes before adding: “There aren’t a lot of 100 percent Doherty compositions but this record is.”
Meanwhile, Doherty also told 6music about his relationship with Hamburg and how the recording came about: “Hamburg was at a time where I didn’t really have anywhere permanent to live. I was mostly on a bus with Babyshambles so I think one time we finished doing a show in Berlin and we arranged to do one show in Hamburg to keep us ticking over. A fella called Johann Scheerer had a little studio he said I could stay in the flat if we could do a little bit of recording upstairs and maybe talk about putting it out on his label.”
Listen to the full interview here.
Meanwhile, Doherty heads out a French tour in November where he will be the first to play at Le Bataclan since the attacks.
16th Paris - Le Bataclan SOLD OUT
17th Paris - Le Bataclan
18th Toulouse - Le Bikini
19th Marseille - L’Usine, Isters
21st Clermont/Ferrand - La Coopérative de Mai
22nd Lyon - Le Transbordeur
24th Caen - Le Cargo
25th Nantes - Stereolux
