Nervous breakdown: the insane tour of Japan that almost destroyed The Libertines
At this point, I’m fairly certain that anyone who’s been in The Libertines could survive a nuclear bomb without even using an Indiana Jones-style fridge. The resilience needed to survive the sheer amount of shit the universe flung Libs-ward is legitimately insane. Even beyond the truckloads of drugs heading into their collective system every hour, the band survived record label drama, tabloid scrutiny and countless brushes with the law. All of it curdled into the kind of bad blood between Peter Doherty and Carl Barat, which meant that if nothing else would kill them, the other might.
However, The Libertines today occupy one of the more enviable spaces in the world of rock. An institution that can still command the attention of thousands when it wakes from its slumber while also giving its members more than enough cash and clout to pursue their passion projects. Any musician would kill to be in Pete ‘n’ Carl’s position on their side of 40. However, perhaps they all remember one tour of Japan they undertook in 2003 and know that if that didn’t kill them, nothing will.
In his 2023 memoir Likely Lad, Doherty tells of the fateful tour, undertaken just as the hype surrounding their debut album, the previous year’s Up The Bracket, was at an all-time high. Doherty, however, was nursing a far more private worry, the fact that his heroin habit had blossomed into a full-blown addiction. It’s true; that is what a heroin habit does. However, Doherty’s had gotten so all-encompassing that, unbeknownst to the rest of the band, he’d smuggled some smack into Japan in his guitar case.
Now, being found with a few ounces of weed got Paul McCartney jailed for nine days, and that was the actual Paul McCartney. If Doherty got busted, then he was shit out of luck. Fortunately, he wasn’t. Unfortunately, that was the last bit of good luck they had that entire tour. He should have guessed this by the first gig of that tour, where he tried his hand at stage diving on an audience that wasn’t that familiar with the concept. They parted like Moses was nearby, and Doherty cracked his head open on the dancefloor.
Things, as they so often did, got worse. At a gig in Sapporo, Doherty had a mild nervous breakdown on stage. He destroyed Gary Powell’s drum kit, hurled John Hassall’s bass through his amp and stormed offstage. Fortunately, Carl Barat’s relationship with Pete was at an all-time high, one of the few times in the Libs that their relationship wasn’t at the heart of their problems. After an emergency pep talk in a bar across the road, the band finished the set, albeit with Carl blagging his way on drums as Powell, understandably, refused to be in the same building as Doherty.
To say Doherty wasn’t in a good place when the tour occurred is selling it short. He was a wreck mentally and physically. The posts he was writing on The Libertines’ official website make for some harrowing reading. He spoke frankly of his loneliness and paranoia, of how scared the size of The Libertines project made him. As befitting Pete Doherty in the mid-2000s though, the only person Doherty had to worry about was himself.
The next time the band went back to Japan, they went without him, and he made the decision that seemingly sealed The Libertines’ fate, burgling Carl’s flat while he was away. When he wasn’t actively sabotaging them, though, the gigs themselves were truly remarkable. They are a document of a special band at the peak of their powers, one we’re truly lucky to have in the year 2025.
