Pete Doherty’s new single with Frédéric Lo was penned while he was “white-knuckling it with drugs”.
The Libertines and Babyshambles rocker has shared the new track, ‘You Can’t Keep It From Me Forever’, with the French musician and composer, taken from their upcoming joint LP, ‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime’.
And former addict Pete – who completely overhauled his lifestyle and hasn’t touched heroin since 2019 – has revealed the uptempo number is inspired by his bid to beat his addictions and the “self-sabotaging” feeling that it wouldn’t be long before he would be back to his old ways.
On what inspired the lyrics, he told NME: “I suppose it’s a not-even subconscious yearning for things.
“I’ve been clean since December 2019, so at the time of writing this I was really white-knuckling it with the drugs and feeling like it would only be a matter of time before I went back to it.
“It hasn’t turned out to be that way, but there was that kind of kicking out at the new way of being clean and feeling like it was temporary.
“You can apply that to any kind of yearning, but to me it was specifically about that. Time passed, and I’ve managed to somehow keep on the straight and narrow, if it is indeed straight and narrow.
“That’s the honest answer, but it seems silly to give that answer now, though. If it really was such a necessity then I would have just gone out and used. I suppose this is just a smarmy, self-sabotaging sort of thing, but just in the role of a narrator.”
The 42-year-old musician – who lives in France with his new wife Katia de Vidas – is looking forward to performing the guitar tune live at the pair’s upcoming UK and European shows, which will be announced in due course.
He said: “It reminded me a little bit of early Morrissey or some of the early Suede stuff, with an old-school catchy guitar.
“I never get bored of singing this song. I’m really going to enjoy singing it live. There’s just something so uplifting about it.”
‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime’ will be available from March 18 on Vinyl, CD, cassette and digital download along with exclusive and signed items from the Official Store www.peterdoherty.tmstor.es.
The track-listing for ‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime’ is:
1. ‘The Fantasy Life of Poetry & Crime’
2. ‘The Epidemiologist’
3. ‘The Ballad Of.’
4. ‘You Can’t Keep It From Me Forever’
5. ‘Yes I Wear A Mask’
6. ‘Rock & Roll Alchemy’
7. ‘The Monster’
8. ‘Invictus’
9. ‘The Glassblower’
10. ‘Keeping Me On File’
11. ‘Abe Wassenstein’
12. ‘Far From The Madding Crowd’