Babyshambles have announced a UK reunion tour, marking their first gigs together in 11 years. Check out details below with our interview with the band.
The indie veterans have long been teasing a comeback tour – with a brief reunion on stage at Pete Doherty solo show last year and few of them getting together to play some classics on stage back in March – but now full details have been revealed, in what Doherty has called “unfinished business” and “a no brainer for me, a real desire to play some of them old tunes and have a little shindig.”
The current line up of the band – Pete Doherty, guitarist Mick Whitnall, bassist Drew McConnell and drummer Adam Ficek – will kick off the shows on November 14 at Norwich’s The Nick Rayns LCR, also taking in a London gig at the iconic O2 Academy Brixton on November 16: the site of many storied previous Babyshambles performances.
Speaking exclusively to NME at the venue, following a photoshoot that marked their first time meeting back together as a band, Doherty explained that the reunion only became possible once he and Whitnall had both been clean for a number of years.
“There was always talk about it; there was always a desire to play those songs again,” he said, “but the centrifugal point of it was addiction really, and the danger that me and Mick would be an unhealthy influence on each other. So it was people around us not wanting to meet up and probably us both knowing that it wasn’t a good idea.”
The shows will also coincide with the 20th anniversary of Babyshambles’ 2005 debut album ‘Down In Albion’, which featured original guitarist Patrick Walden – who sadly passed away in June. The band confirmed to NME that Walden was meant to be involved in the reunion, however Doherty described his death as “a real trigger to get it done”. “My first thought was of just seeing his face up there while we’re playing and that’ll be an important part of it,” he continued.
Babyshambles released three studio albums – ‘Down In Albion’, 2007’s ‘Shotter’s Nation’ and 2013’s ‘Sequel To The Prequel’ – during their decade together, with both ‘Down In Albion’ and its lead single ‘Fuck Forever’ landing in NME’s Top 10 albums and tracks of that year. Formed as The Libertines were disintegrating, much of Babyshambles’ tenure was surrounded by tabloid scrutiny over Doherty’s drug use and high profile relationship with then-girlfriend Kate Moss, who also sang on debut album track ‘La Belle et La Bête’.
Read NME’s full comeback interview with the band below, where they spoke about their plans for the shows and the journey of getting back together, alongside a very messy trip down memory lane.
NME: Hello Babyshambles. You’ve been teasing this reunion for a little while now, how long has it been in the works?
Pete Doherty: “It’s hard to be exact, like a lot of things with this band. We haven’t really communicated directly – I don’t think the four of us have been in the same room for so long. I ran into Drew a few times, and obviously we’re always looking out for each other and sending messages into the ether, but I don’t have a phone and Mick doesn’t have a phone.
“Now it’s been getting on for four or five years for both of us getting off the hard stuff, so we think maybe we might be safe to face polite society and tiptoe around each other again, and see if it’s real and if it’s true. I think it was, I’ve forgotten her name, but it was a Nobel Prize-winning marine biologist who said ‘Babyshambles without drugs is a bit like the Great Barrier Reef without coral’. But it turns out parts of the Great Barrier Reef have existed without coral now for some years, so if the Great Barrier Reef can do it…”
Have any of you hung out at all in the interim years?
Mick Whitnall: “People around us were always a bit worried about us even bumping into each other.”
Doherty: “With good reason…”
Whitnall: “When we had the first band meeting to discuss whether or not we wanted to get together, I said ‘Why haven’t we been in touch?’ and [our manager] said ‘Well, you’ve both been getting better’. My partner is well protective with me and we’ve been together a long time, but she loves Peter and [his wife] Katia.”
Doherty: “There’s very strong bonds there. Mick’s like a brother to me, from way back – even before The Libertines. He was like one of the bigger naughty boys in Camden with all these stories that went around about him, and then as you got to know him you realised those stories don’t come anywhere near the truth. They’re much worse in reality. But he was always there as a mentor when I was learning to play guitar. It was that era when I became a man.
“I grew up and learned most things I know about life and morality and immorality through Mick and to a lesser extent Adam. They’re like family. It’s the same with lots of people – there’s people in your life that you probably don’t see as much as you’d like to but you know there’s unfinished business there.”
Was Pat intending to be part of the reunion before he passed?
Drew McConnell: Yes, he was.
Was there any hesitancy in carrying on after you received the news?
Doherty: “No, it was the opposite.”
McConnell: “It’s like we have to do it now.”
Doherty: “It was difficult in the time after ‘Down in Albion’. It all sort of imploded and there were many times over the years when we tried to do it again with Pat and it always went wrong for one reason or another. Similar to the situation with me and Mick, it was a very fragile situation with Pat around addiction so it took years to even be able to talk about it. But it did look like it was ready to happen so it was a bit of a shock to be honest, and we desperately love him.”
The reunion is tying into the 20th anniversary of ‘Down In Albion’ – will you play the record in full or anything to celebrate?
Doherty: “I’m not really into doing an anniversary thing, even though I’ve done it with The Libertines. I don’t think it would be possible to be honest. We didn’t even know how to finish those songs at the time.”
McConnell: “We’d have to figure out where [‘Pentonville’ collaborator] The General is…”
Doherty: “Someone saw him doing illegal cabs in Kings Cross, I don’t know how he got back into the country. Apparently, really sinister, he just went ‘You didn’t see nothing’ and drove off into the night. I think maybe we’ll get [original drummer] Gemma up to do some drumming as well. I saw her at Pat’s funeral and there’s so much love there. It’ll be a general celebration of all things Shambolio.”
McConnell: “See if [The Clash‘s] Mick Jones will come and do a tune or two because he did a bunch of backing vocals on ‘Down in Albion’.”
Doherty: “Get Naomi Campbell to do ‘La Belle et La Bête’. That’s the headline… Anybody who’s had any involvement with Shambles is welcome to come. There’s no hard feelings! ”
Is it nostalgic being back in Brixton Academy with the band?
Doherty: “There’s all these amazing memories coming back, especially in this place. Alan Wass, god rest his soul, was always here supporting for 40 minutes longer than his allotted slot. Kate [Moss] skipping on stage doing a little vocal.”
Was this before or after Babyshambles got dropped from supporting Oasis because you didn’t make it to the first date of the tour…
Doherty: “That is a shame that, looking back, because nobody believed me that it wasn’t my fault, but I was well up for that. That was the missus that deliberately kept me.”
McConnell: “‘He just looked so peaceful, he was asleep I didn’t want to wake him up’. OK cool…”
Pete, Drew and Adam, you had a taster of playing together again a couple of years ago – was the chemistry immediately back?
[Silence]
Doherty: “I’ll take that as a no then!”
Adam Ficek: “It wasn’t the whole line-up but there was definitely that sense of love and connection.”
McConnell: “I had the time of my life, I was beside myself playing those songs again. But Mick wasn’t there. We’re gonna do it properly this time.”
Doherty: “We’re gonna be tight as a nut’s chuff.”
Whitnall: “I played a gig with a pub band [recently], it’s the only gig I’ve done since I’ve played with these guys. It’s the first time I’d played since I was about 14 without being out of my tiny little mind on something or other and I was fucking abysmal. I got to the solo and it was just *TWANG TWANG TWANG*. Everyone was like, what the fuck was that?! But it’ll be fine…”
What are your fondest memories of the time around ‘Down in Albion’?
Doherty: “There was a studio in Wales. We went on a day out in a canal barge and there were all these court-ordered security guards there who were meant to be looking out for paparazzi and keeping dealers away.”
Ficek: “The dogs ate all the Xanax and they kicked us out.”
Doherty: “The couple who ran the farm, she’s now a registered wiccan and she has a wiccan school where she teaches Welsh mountain kids to live at one with the earth.”
Ficek: “I don’t think they were ready for the barrage of what hit them.”
Doherty: “It’s gonna take more than a dreamcatcher to stop Babyshambles!”
Your reputation definitely preceded you at that point…
Doherty: “I was in Riminy not long ago and as I passed this church, this woman went ‘Sante Maria!’ and slammed all the big wooden doors and windows shut. And I was like, ‘Oh yeah! Shambles played here!’ £20,000 hotel bill.”
Whitnall: “I had to pay £10,000 for setting off the fire extinguisher, but I had to clear the room.”
Doherty: “There was that bloke who was wearing nothing but Fred Perry holding a light fitting, wandering around saying. ‘Mick said there was party. Fun party’.”
Whitnall: “There were a lot of naked people in that room.”
Doherty: “Sante Maria!”
Do you think Babyshambles got their dues creatively amongst all the madness?
Doherty: “I think so. There’s so much love out there for those songs, it was always two different worlds. The real fans hated the tabloids because they didn’t believe it. It was weird. It was a complicated tightrope to walk because we believed so much in what we were doing and we were getting so much press coverage, but none of it was about the amazing songs we were writing.”
McConnell: “But the people that came to see us play were not the people that read The Sun.”
Doherty: “It’s so weird. I run into tabloid reporters sometimes who are somehow still in that world and now they’re like, ‘Alright Pete!’ Oh right cool, you’re the cunt who wrote all those evil articles, you alright?”
You said in a recent NME interview that you’d written a song that could be a Babyshambles song – does that mean there’s new material in the works?
Doherty: I really hope so. When we do the bigger shows, it’d be nice to release a single and a couple of B sides. I’ve got a couple of ideas and when we get in a room, we’ll try them out. I think that’ll be healthy to play some brand new stuff. I’ve got a couple of belters that have come out of nowhere like gifts from gods. There’s one in particular, ‘Dandy Hooligan’ – a ‘Stone Me What A Life’ sort of Shambles, rocksteady jig – that could be a good old time.”
Babyshambles’ 2025 reunion tour dates are below. There will be an exclusive pre-sale for tickets here at 10am on Wednesday September 3, before tickets go on general sale from 10am on Friday September 5 and will be available here.
NOVEMBER
Friday 14 – Norwich, The Nick Rayns LCR
Sunday 16 – London, O2 Academy Brixton
Wednesday 26 – Birmingham, O2 Academy
Saturday 29 – Liverpool, Mountford Hall
Sunday 30 – Manchester O2 Victoria Warehouse
DECEMBER
Tuesday 2 – Newcastle O2 City Hall
Thursday 4 – Glasgow O2 Academy
Sunday 7 – Leeds O2 Academy
Monday 8 – Nottingham Rock City
Wednesday 10 – Plymouth Pavilions