A night on the town with Dirty Pretty Things
What national publication are you from? “Err, The Oxford Student,” I hesitatingly reply to the imposing tour manager. “Yeah great, well follow me.” After successfully blagging our way backstage at the Oxford Brookes student union for an interview with one of the most anticipated new bands on the scene, I eagerly step backstage past envious looks from a group of girls, to stage an unrehearsed and very unprepared impromptu interview.
Having played first in Italy and Paris, then Mexico and Texas, and returning for a pretty hefty UK tour split with another European stint right in the middle, we find bassist Didz Hammond and guitarist Anthony Rossomando waiting for us, perched upon a pretty big speaker sharing a bottle of flavoured vodka. The drummer Gary Powell and frontman Carl Barat mill about the corridor we’re in, eating and drinking (straight Jameson of course).
Over the course of the hour and fifteen minutes which compromised the set, Carl Barat and the band proved that they aren’t the Libertines part deux, but a close-knit band with a newfound unity. Some of the songs definitely resonate with a familiar Libertines influence, but this is understandable considering Barat is widely regarded as having been the main guitarist and creative force in said band. (He taught Pete Doherty to play the guitar.
Meanwhile while Doherty’s downward spiral continues, it’s pleasing to watch Carl Barat’s band doing what they do best and focussing solely on the music. The sound is gritty, electrifying and supremely confident, while the lyrics are still poignantly romantic and at times display a raw anger: “My loyalties are torn / I’m finding different paths now / I never saw before / And it hurts less every day / The paths lead me away / Lead me away from those / blood thirsty bastards.
The band’s manager Alan McGee has recently stated that the album is “turning into a classic already”, and there are few at the concert who would disagree with this statement. Whilst signing several large posters, Didz tells us about the gigs so far.
“Well this one was pretty good actually, and yeah, I think we are hitting a bit of a stride now, after the European tour, but if you asked me a month ago I would have said we were hitting our stride then, but definitely we are moving on, and we keep improving our live gigs.” What with all the baggage and history the band are laden with, one could forgive them if they went straight into playing to larger crowds, but Dirty Pretty Things seem to have their feet firmly on the ground.
As for proving their mettle, it is something that the band have no qualms about doing. “We didn’t wanna take any short cuts or use anything as a stepping stone (read: The Libertines).
We wanted to do it as properly as we could, just like any new band does, and definitely going to Italy for two weeks with our tour there, and going to Mexico for a bit, being out of the public eye and winning people over like we were a new band has helped us improve, because we are a band, we’re a four man band, and we have that realness to us, we have a unity.” The unity is evident on stage as they play off each other, huddle together, share mics and continuously change positions.
“What people have gotta realise is we’re not like an immediate super group just because of The Libertines, and people will be quick to jump on that and criticise us or our music or compare it to The Libertines stuff. But we’re a new band and we’ve come together now and, yeah, it is difficult to escape the shadow of The Libertines but we are trying to hit our stride on the tour and focus on what we’re doing now I think we are getting there and people are seeing that.
I was curious as to why exactly they chose Oxford and the Zodiac for their first ever official UK gig, and why they returned to play the Brookes student union. “Well to be honest it’s just up the road from London, haha, and yeah, I like the venues and Oxford has a pretty big rock scene to it, so we kinda hoped people would come see us,” a sweaty, relaxed Didz answers.
While we wanted to focus the interview on Dirty Pretty Things and the future, rather than The Libertines and the past, it proved to be the white elephant in the room that was difficult to ignore. I mentioned that in the middle of the crowd, I did notice a fair few people shouting for The Libertines, and Libertines songs. When I ask if this annoys the band, I received a refreshingly honest and laid back answer.
“Well fortunately we can’t hear them when we’re up there, but it’s the same thing as when journalists ask about Peter [Doherty], we’re aware of the big history but we don’t wanna be The Libertines Part Two. We are a new band and we are more direct, I think we have more feeling about us and we have more to us really. But we can’t do anything about it, it’s just nice to do something that’s nice and fresh, and with the history behind us we have had a bit of a running start.
It is difficult not to notice that some of the songs the band played during the set retainined a very distinctive Libertines vibe. I ask if the songs are primarily influenced by The Libertines. “Well it’s kinda inevitable really. I wouldn’t have come here and Anthony wouldn’t have as well if we hadn’t known what we were getting into,” Didz answers after covering the picture of his face with notes and a signature scrawled on the poster. (He didn’t like his face in the picture.
I decide to ask if they will ever escape the shadow cast by The Libertines; in essence, will they win over new fans, or just retain the old? “Well its weird, I’m not setting the scene or trying to play it down but with The Libertines and everybody who liked The Libertines, they created that fan base separately from us. I don’t want to alienate any of the fans you know, but I think DPT will pick up new fans and, hopefully, retain many of the old.
We’re not the Chilli Peppers you know, we haven’t got too big for our fans. That’s why we’ve been on tour for so long, at these venues trying to get new fans and keep the old ones.” As a fan of the Red Hot Chili Peppers I rebuke Didz for his remark, and he retorts with a wailing Chili Peppers-esque, “What you got, you gotta get, it put it in you”. Hmm.
So if Dirty Pretty Things got as big as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, would they still be mingling with the fans before the gigs? “Well, I’d like to think so. I hope so, yeah. I dunno really, I don’t really wanna be separated from the mechanics around you. Which is why we’re sat here really.” Very true. As Anthony wanders back with some cold noodles, it reminds Gary he has food in the fridge, and he runs off.
Carl meanwhile floats elusively around, but we do find out that the rumours are true - he doesn’t have an English driving licence, but he did buy a Mexican one which he used in the video for Bang Bang You’re Dead, and apparently he almost bought a Ph.D, though he does not elaborate further for obvious reasons. Equally uncertain is the origins of the nickname, Stan, for Anthony, although nickname-giving in a band is an undoubtedly complicated and convoluted process.
As the focus shifts to the present and the future, Didz struggles to remember what his favourite track on the new album is: “I dunno man, I’ve kinda lost track of it”. Ok. When I query as to his favourite song that he played tonight, I receive a similarly shady answer. “Err, I dunno. Deadwood always comes pretty high, but it’s a different one every day.
Between mouthfuls, Stan explains how, “We always start with that [Deadwood], it’s got a good rhythm and its high energy and, yeah, we always enjoy starting with that one actually. It sounds fucking huge live”. I ask who Kirsty is, as the band had finished the set with the song B.U.R.M.A. dedicated to the her. It turns out that Kirsty runs the very grassroots Dirty Pretty Things MySpace page. “Yeah, Anthony and Gary are very good on it [Myspace], but Carl and I are really crap.
The song’s called B.U.R.M.A., it stands for Be Upstairs Ready My Angel and it used to be this code during the war. It’s got a real old-fashioned romance to it, and oh yeah, Blood Thirsty Bastards is kinda my favourite actually. It’s kinda like Stan started it, then Carl flushed it out, changed it a bit and it fits together nicely.
If you were wondering, Anthony was playing something on the guitar, then Gary started playing along and it worked, and I was trying out various melodic basslines, and then on pen and paper • it was a bit weird • but by that night we had pretty much the whole song [Blood Thirsty Bastards] together. It came pretty much together, and that was a real imperious group effort, and its getting more and more like that.
Is it a constant process? Anthony replies in his New York accent: “Well as constant as we’d like, but we’re kinda run off our feet at the moment. But yeah, we all come up with ideas and we try them out on each other, and if it sounds good we will work on it, and yeah we really can’t wait to properly get working on some new stuff. We need it as well to give us that acceleration to keep us moving forward as a band.
Following Carl’s surgery to remove a tumour on his neck (which apparently has left him largely deaf in one ear), the band decamped to a secluded base in Cornwall to create the songs. “We started off with some songs that Carl had written, like Bang Bang You’re Dead and Deadwood, and we started thrashing some ideas out as a band. But all our songs come from different sources and the creative process, as we’ve been about for longer and longer, is getting more natural.
But I mean we haven’t got anything in our back pockets, it’s like as soon as we write it, it’s out there.” It has been suggested by people in the music press that Bang Bang You’re Dead is aimed at Pete Doherty. I asked Didz whether it is aimed at anyone without mentioning any names. “No, no,” he says, neatly sidestepping the question. “It’s a really well-produced song that we thought would work well as a first single.
Well actually it was Stan’s gran, she said ‘ooh yeah I like that bang bang song,’ he replies with a grin, before telling us how they came up with Waterloo to Anywhere as the album title. “It’s really where the band was formed, in Waterloo, and Carl’s family are traditionally from there.
And its because we’ve really been all around the place so far on this tour, from Italy, to Mexico and back to the European tour, and we don’t really want to go anywhere specific so it’s kinda half and half like that.
With most of the crew having finished packing up, and with the band eager to go for a some drinks, Didz finally tells us about his joy upon discovering he has been voted Reading’s number one rock icon, and how he does not regret leaving The Coopers, but is proud of what they have achieved and will go onto achieve. Meanwhile I ask Gary how he thinks Dirty Pretty Things compares to Babyshambles, to which he replies, “Well, I don’t really know because I have never heard any of their music. I haven’t heard the album and I don’t really have the desire to.” Quite.
Dirty Pretty Things’ debut album, Waterloo to Anywhere, is released in May on Mercury.
4th May 2006