Illustration by Tez Humphries

With rockers through the ages succombing to the lure of excess, we ask: do you have to be off your head to be a creative genius? 

Words by Kingsley Marshall

(First published in Stranger 011 - August 2006) 

There is a received opinion that surrounds cultural production. Genius, it has been said, is closely linked to madness, with it wholly reasonable to extrapolate from this that creativity is in some way a dangerous force, and raising a spectre that neurosis and self-destruction are somehow indelibly entwined with inspiration.

This has never been more evident than since the dawning of rock n' roll, whose cliche of sex and excess has spawned and spat out such demons as Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, the entire cast of The New York Dolls, The Ramones, Motley Crue, Richey Edwards of the Manic Street Preachers and a legion of others.

Although eclipsed briefly by the recent death of Syd Barrett, Pete Doherty is the epitome of the unbalanced creative. Famously jailed for burgling the flat of band mate Carl Barat, his fondness for crack and heroin contributed to the rise, but also rapid demise of The Libertines. Despite this, he remains buoyed by his pariah status in the tabloids and what remains of the British rock press, who misguidedly champion his band Babyshambles as a saviour of rock n' roll, rather than a Libertines-lite whose countless changes of line-up have amounted to little more than a regrettably erratic body of recordings which even uber-producer Mick Jones was unable to rescue.

There was something in Doherty's literary borrowings and his tall tales of Albion that struck a chord with me, the penny finally dropping with the emergence of the Dickensian schtick of comedian Russell Brand. It took a while to track it down, but it was an interview with Sid Vicious in Fred and Judy Vermorel's definitive book on the Sex Pistols, published over 20 years ago, where it all came together. Speaking in a manner best described as chimney sweep chic, Vicious explained that he had spent "every ha'penny I make" on heroin in the months before his death.

As music writer Lester Bangs put it in an essay written shortly after Sid's death and the alleged murder of Nancy Spungen, the Pistols guitarist was neither a star shining too bright nor a musician whose creativity could only be curtailed with copious volumes of scag, "not a doomed lost soul, not a societal or sub-cultural casualty." In fact, as he bluntly put it, Sid was "just a simple mediocre asshole."

Describing the Pistols as a media scam in 1979 went against the tide of much music writing - even more so once canonised by their first death in the family - but Bang's plea that sleaze and nihilism can only go so far still stands today, and that we all have a duty to find something to replace all of the "retching and fixing and mutilating yourself."

In the manner of such coincidences, I'd recently been sent Vermorel's biography of Kate Moss for review, the last few chapters of which drag out the entrails of the model's relationship with Doherty. Here Doherty is placed as a corruptor of Moss - bizarre considering the preceding chapters which describe a history of overindulgence which the star has traded on since becoming the face of heroin chic, a waifish, emaciated look which inexplicably shifted lorry loads of Calvin Klein in the 1990s.

And Syd Barrett? Inevitably, the "crazy diamond" headlines reached fever pitch following his recent death. Many obituaries dutifully regurgitated the crock that Barrett's implosion was in part a reaction to the fame of Pink Floyd, but also vicariously linked substance abuse to his schizophrenia, a connection medical science has never been able to present (in fact reports to the contrary have been made since the 1970s).

Arguably, the tragedy of Syd Barrett's death is that it offered an opportunity for those who should know better to reassert the old clichˇ that it is better to burn out than fade away - thus ensuring we endure another generation of Doherty and his ilk. Don't believe the hype.

We have been reading; The Sex Pistols: Inside Story by Fred and Judy Vermorel (Omnibus Press), Mainlines, Blood Feasts and Bad Taste by Lester Bangs (Serpent's Tail), Madcap: The Half-Life of Syd Barrett, Pink Floyd's Lost Genius by Tim Willis (Short Books), Addicted To Love: The Kate Moss Story by Fred Vermorel (Omnibus Press) and Trash: The Complete New York Dolls by Kris Needs and Dick Porter (Plexus).