Threepenny Memoir_ The Lives of a Libertine

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The room looked like the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album come to life: the great and the good, the infamous, the notorious and the inane all gathered under an opulent domed roof, lit up in blushes of colour, celebrating another year for the NME Awards. A dense bass guitar made the soles of my feet tingle as the room rubbernecked at a Stetson that was cutting a determined swathe towards the plush, red stairs Peter and I were standing on. Diminutive, and lit like she had her own spotlight, the lady beneath the cowboy hat tilted high on her head gave us a winning smile, before leaning towards us.

‘Hello, The Strokes,’ she purred warmly before disappearing towards the door behind us.

It was our first ever NME Awards ceremony and Madonna had just confirmed that it wasn’t our year.

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Looking back at The Libertines is like catching flashes of sunlight between buildings as you race by on a train. An old film reel where the spools are weathered and worn, leaving empty frames on the screen. Faces disappear and reappear, sights crackle and fade as we aimlessly walk the streets of an ever-changing London, pub-crawling, minesweeping – secretly topping up our drinks from half-full glasses left unattended by their owners. We dream of Albion and the high skies above the low ceiling of our basement flat.

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