Pete Doherty's Mum Talks

Posted on August 21, 2006

Jacqueline Doherty, mother of troubled rocker Pete Doherty, candidly discusses her new book about her son's battle against drug addiction and wonders where it all went wrong in a new interview with the Times of London. The new book is entitled Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son (Headline).

Yet she does endure a rare and peculiar pain. To Jackie her son is a sick and fragile boy. But to the world, Pete Doherty, former lead singer of the Libertines, now Babyshambles, is a self-destructive rock icon, glorious heir to Hendrix, Cobain, Joplin and Morrison, whose drug-related ends all came at 27, "the year of rock and roll death" as Jack White called it, and Doherty�s age now. Her very worst fear is the subject of ghoulish anticipation. "I meet Peter�s fans who say they never miss one of his gigs, in case it's his last." Her friends thought it consoling to say, look, he�s a rock star: taking drugs and living dangerously is what rock stars do. "But," Jackie cries, "he isn�t their son."
It was the day of her mother' funeral in April 2003 when Jackie realised that Peter (he is never "Pete"to his mum) was an addict. Doherty had flown to Liverpool from the Libertines'tour of Japan to be a pall-bearer. He was fidgety, tearful and melancholy, but Jackie attributed his mood to jet-lag and grief. But when they talked after the funeral he confessed many lyrics to his songs were about drugs. Then in the car to Heathrow � Doherty was to rejoin the Libertines in America � he became anxious, desperate to reach London. He refused to be taken to the airport, demanded they set him down in Whitechapel. He needed to meet someone and it had to be tonight...
Eight weeks later, Jackie was on night duty when a friend of Doherty's called to say Peter was out of control. She heard of drug-induced frenzies, bizarre behaviour. So Jackie rushed to London � her husband, a major in the Royal Corps of Signals had been posted to the Netherlands � to meet with Rough Trade, the Libertines'record label. Her son should seek rehab and he' be fine within two or three years, she was told, a time-frame that seemed pessimistic back then.
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This is the first time Jackie, 52, has been interviewed and she is wary of upsetting Peter or those close to him, whom she relies upon for information and to protect him. When I ask about Kate Moss, Doherty' on-off love, she says merely that she met her once. Does it not make her angry that while the supermodel faced no charges and has grown richer, her glamour only enhanced by her then cocaine problem, Doherty is arrested every other week, vilified and imprisoned? "I think everyone should leave them alone," is all she says. "They�ve been deeply in love and people just won't leave them alone."

In the the lengthy -- and moving --interview, Jackie discusses Pete's happy childhood, the effect her son's drug addiction has had on her marriage and on Pete's siblings. Sometimes it's easy to forget that there are real families suffering behind those tabloid headlines. Let's hope Pete can somehow kick his heroin addiction.