Pete Doherty: Benders, Burglary, and a Shocking Fall

Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. This is a story about a rock star. It's got sex, or a sex symbol anyways, and Kate Moss, and drugs, lots of drugs, heroin, and crack cocaine, and glorious rock and roll. But it's also a story about brotherhood, and the suspicious death. It's a story about Pete Darity from the Libertines, a rock star and a rock and roll band that made great music. Unlike that music I played a few at the top of the show. That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my mellotron called Shambolic Shasha MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to I Wanna Love You by ACON. And why would I play you that specific slice of windin' and grindin' cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on December 2nd, 2006. And that was the day that an unknown London actor named Mark Blanco fell to his death under mysterious circumstances after an altercation with Pete Darity and his entourage. On this episode, sex, drugs, rock and roll, a suspicious death, and Pete Darity of the Libertines. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land. December 2nd, 2006. It was a late Saturday night in London's East End. In fact, it was just minutes away from Sunday morning. Outside on the sidewalk, everything was dead silent. 14 feet up, an apartment on the second floor was a different story altogether. Screams cried out from inside, so loud that they echoed throughout the building. And they weren't the joyful, boisterous sounds of a Saturday night rave up. These screams were tense. They were menacing. They had the ring of a schoolyard fight. When the kids start circling up and the insults start cutting a little bit deeper, when the pushing and shoving gets a little bit more intense, when it feels like violence could break out at any moment. The sounds kept building, louder and louder, darker and more frenetic, agitated, angry. Until it felt like something was going to explode. Suddenly, the front door of the apartment building swung open. A tall man was pushed out onto the sidewalk. He was so tall that his head nearly hit the doorway as he was forcibly shoved backwards. He staggered back a few steps from the force of the blow, and then the door slammed shut in his face. Down the street, a security camera caught the tall man as he started walking a few steps away from the building. Suddenly he paused, frozen in place for a few seconds. His mind made up. He wheeled around and started walking back towards the building. It was an impulse, a split second decision. Less than a minute later, it was a decision that would cost Mark Blanco his life. Back inside the apartment on the second floor, Pete D'Arty, the pop star of Libertine's fame, was waiting for the ketamine to take hold. It held the promise of total annihilation, annihilation of all of his thoughts and worries. Soon it would leave a warm black void that he could float in for a few hours. Because despite his current status as an A-list rock star, Pete D'Arty had a lot of worries on his mind. And despite the scuffle he'd just witnessed, Mark Blanco was far from the top of the list. Pete had court in the morning, which meant inevitably another drug test. Hence the ketamine in place of his preferred fix, a mixture of heroin and crack cocaine. Over the past three years he had racked up dozens of arrests for possession. He'd been in and out of rehab and probation, and he quickly learned that unlike heroin and cocaine, ketamine didn't show up on the drug tests. There was his girlfriend. No, not the 19 year old girl sitting next to him. Pete wasn't sure if he could even remember her name. He'd only met her a few hours ago at a party at the hotel where he was staying. Instead, Pete was thinking about his fiancé, the supermodel, Kate Moss. The pair had just gotten engaged two months ago, but their on-again, off-again relationship was already hanging by a thread. The last thing Pete needed was Kate finding out about another dalliance with another young girl. Then there was his friend. It wasn't the stout and muscular man standing across the room from him. Johnny Headlock was a live wire, especially when he'd been using cocaine. Earlier at dinner, Johnny stabbed Pete's guitarist in the hand with a fork when the musician made a comment that he didn't like. It's true, Johnny Headlock was completely unhinged. But with the number of scrapes Pete got into, it was good to have a man around with Johnny's particular talent for violence. However, as the ketamine began to overtake him, Pete's thoughts weren't on Johnny. Tonight, like almost every night, Pete's thoughts were on the only man he'd ever loved. His former best friend, roommate, and co-founder of the Libertines, Carl Barrett. Only a few years ago, they'd been inseparable. They dropped out of school together to form the band. They moved into a dingy squat they called the Albion Rooms and started writing songs spinning out a detailed mythology for themselves as marauding pirates sailing on the good ship Albion, heading for an imaginary rock and roll utopia they called Arcadia. It was a mythology the British music press was only too happy to run with. They saw Pete and Carl as the next in a long line of competitive co-leads of British bands such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, The Kinks and Oasis. When the Strokes and other American bands kicked off the early 2000s Garage Rock revival, British critics quickly found their answer in the Libertines. The band appeared on the cover of British music magazine, Anamide Week they dropped their very first single. It didn't matter that the song What a Waste-er was laced with so many profanities that it could never make it onto the radio. When their debut album, Up the Bracket came out a few months later, the magazine gave them its best new band award for 2003. With success, bred competition between Pete and Carl. Pete was furious when a song featuring Carl on lead vocals was selected for the band's performance on the late show with David Letterman. Carl raged when the Pete-written single, Time for Heroes, went higher on the charts than his songs. Add into the mix copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and every other rock and roll excess and soon their brotherhood was curdling into bitterness. By 2006, Pete and Carl were mortal enemies. Pete's new band, Baby Shambles was in constant competition with the group Carl was leading Dirty Pretty Things. They competed for airplay, for tour dates, for chart position and in 2006 it looked like Carl was winning. Dirty Pretty Things hit the top three of the UK album charts and put three singles into the top 40 while Pete's band had only managed a brief stint at number 10. So between tour dates, court dates, women troubles and a frantic attempt to outdo Carl with his next Baby Shambles album, Pete had a lot on his mind that night. After the party at his hotel started getting out of hand, Pete went looking for a place to get stoned and chill out for a few hours to try to get his head on straight before he had to head back to court in the morning. That's what he hoped to find at his friend Paul Roundhill's apartment that night. Paul was an artist and his apartment was a hangout for a certain group of the in the know London Bohemians. It was a place where Pete could sit for a few hours or for a few days and write songs or match wits with the painters, the poets and musicians constantly circling through the apartment that Paul liked to refer to as a literary salon. Of course the neighbors referred to it differently. They called it a crack den. Copious amounts of drugs were bought, sold, traded and consumed in the flat. Then the police were called more than once to break up a gathering. And just a few years earlier, another British singer-songwriter named Paul Coneffy wandered out onto Paul's balcony after taking drugs and plummeted to his death. The police ruled it was a freak accident and no one was charged. Still the neighbors whispered to each other about the drugs and the wild behavior. They all knew it was just a matter of time before something like that happened again. It is not hard to destroy a college. Last season, the podcast Campus Files brought you stories of fraternity drug rings, stolen body parts, campus cults and more. And now Campus Files is back for another season. There's a guy screaming into his phone. He's like, I just saw Charlie Kirk's ass made it right in front of me. Every week is a new episode and a new story. It's so chaotic. It's almost like a university on a siege. Listen to and follow Campus Files, available now wherever you get your podcasts. Pete Dardy heard the sound of metal grinding on metal as a prison guard slit open the heavy iron door of his cell. He and his three cellmates looked up in confusion as the guards stepped aside and the prison chaplain walked in. Pete had only been in lock up for a few days, but he recognized the older man's salt and pepper hair and his kind smile, a rarity in the grim atmosphere of shepi prison. He was surprised as the chaplain stepped toward him, but Pete was intrigued by what he carried in his hand. Not the hand with the Bible. Sure, Pete had grown up going to church with his parents and sister. His father was a major in the British Army, so church was a familiar comfort as the family bounced from one base to another. But it had been years since he stepped foot inside of one. It was what the chaplain carried in his other hand that caught Pete's attention. A battered acoustic guitar. The instrument was scratched and scuffed and it was missing two strings. But after a month without touching a guitar, Pete was jonesin. When he reported for lock up, Pete was terrified about going through heroin withdrawal in prison. But he didn't need to worry. It turned out scoring drugs in jail was even easier than on the street. But what he hadn't counted on was how hard it would be to withdraw from music. Now the chaplain was holding the guitar as he bent down to look Pete in the eye. Pete's mom had written him a letter begging him to check in on her son. His explanation had Pete's cellmate snickering with laughter, but Pete pretended not to hear it. It was 2003 and Pete was only a few days into his first stint in jail. But he was quickly learning to keep his head down. There were some people in this prison eager to make a name for themselves by thrashing a quasi-famous musician. Like the guy who came after him with a sockful of nuts and bolts on his first night in lock up. Pete and Pete put a target on his back. So did his well-publicized heroin problem. On his second day at Sheppy, three prisoners burst into his cell while he was alone. They backed him into a corner, and then strongly implied that they could score him heroin as long as Pete was willing to, shall we say, return the favor. So Pete ignored the laughter from his cellmates and accepted the chaplain's invitation to take a walk. He knew his sermon was coming his way, but it was worth it if he got a few minutes with the guitar. As they walked across the prison grounds, the chaplain launched into a speech about Pete's drug use. Pete pretended to listen, but his eyes were locked on the guitar, until finally the chaplain handed it over. He told Pete he could play for 20 minutes before he had to go back in his cell. Pete grabbed the worn-down instrument and sat on a sunny patch of grass outside the prison's ugly stone chapel. He tuned up the four strings as best he could and started strumming through the first song that came into his head. It was a song still bouncing around the UK Top 100 singles chart, a velvet underground oasis mashup that he wrote with Carl that they called, Don't Look Back Into The Sun. Tears welled up in his eyes as he remembered the last time he heard it. A few weeks ago, he was crashing at a friend's apartment, waiting to be sentenced. He flipped on the television one night and saw Carl and the rest of the libertines with another guitarist in Pete's place bashing through the song on BBC's Top Of The Pops. Seeing the band on television without him was painful, but now, strumming the song alone in the prison yard, the reality of what he had done finally began to sink in. Pete was in jail for a crime so bizarre, so shocking, so utterly stupid that he wondered if he would ever play with the libertines again. Back in July, the rest of the libertines were out playing the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, but Carl had insisted Pete stay home until he could clean up. Rather than taking Carl's advice, Pete took the opportunity to go on a bender, all the while getting angrier and angrier at the demand from his friend. Finally, he convinced someone to drive him over to the central London flat that Carl shared with his sister to see if his bandmate really was off in Japan. The apartment was empty when Pete arrived, but after three days of smoking crack, he was convinced he could see shadows moving inside of the room. He banged on the door and demanded that Carl come out and face him. And when there was no answer, he kicked in the door, leaving a size 11 Reebok print clearly visible. He wandered through Carl's living room, in between paintings and pictures of the band, where there was a large frame poster from a libertine's gig Carl had played without him. Rage boiled up. Pete wanted to burn the poster. He wanted to ransack the apartment. Instead, he quickly grabbed one of Carl's vintage guitars, a harmonica, a laptop, and some cash from Carl's sister's room. And he threw the items in the back of his friend's red Ford Fiesta, and they headed home where Pete promptly passed out. When he woke up the next day, he barely remembered the break-in, until the police showed up. Thanks to a tip from Pete's girlfriend, who thought he needed a wake-up call, as well as the shoe print from Carl's front door, cops had all they needed to book Pete for burglary. In the memory came roaring back as Pete finished playing the song on the battered acoustic guitar. He felt fat tears rolling down his face. But he also felt the wood of the instrument reverberate against his skin, and the steel strings against his fingertips. A pure, uncut music, after what seemed like an eternity without it. For just a moment, he could imagine a world where music was all he needed. He could repair his relationship with Carl. He could reunite the band. He could leave the drugs behind. And for the rest of his time in prison, that's more or less what Pete already did. On October 8th, 2003, when he was released after serving two months, he was as clean as he had been in years. And when he walked out of the prison gates, Pavarazzi were waiting to snap his picture. There was someone else waiting for him as well, Carl Barrett. Carl hugged Pete in an embrace and tossed him into the passenger seat, and the pair tore ass toward Ken. And they weren't going to take it easy on Pete's first night on the outside, not by a long shot. They were headed for a small pub and music club called the Tap and Tin. A young booking agent who worked there had been writing letters to Pete while he was locked up. Together they planned a small acoustic show, informally billed as the Pete-thority Freedom gig. But now the buzz was building that this is going to be much more than the solo acoustic performance from Pete. Tonight will be a full-blown Libertine's reunion. When the pub opened, more than 300 people squeezed into a space designed for half that number. And by the time the band hit the stage, it was pure pandemonium. Kids were everywhere, pogoing up and down, climbing onto the stage and working themselves into a frenzy while the band ripped through a dozen cathartic songs. It was freewheeling rock and roll chaos at its best. Enemy would eventually declare the freedom show the gig of the decade. They sent a photographer to document the night. He snapped the backstage picture of Carl with his arm around a bleary-looking Pete-thority, both showing off their matching Libertine tattoos. It was an iconic indie rock image that would eventually adorn the cover of the second Libertine's album. Not everything ended on a high note, though. Carl and the crowd passed Pete some heroin, and he shot up in the bathroom, despite promising that he wouldn't. Later, the party spilled out into the street in an improvised conga line, and Carl tried to jump a parking meter and missed. He landed on his chin and skidded a solid 10 feet across the sidewalk. When he stood up, blood was soaking his white t-shirt, and there was a hole in his chin so big that you could see his teeth through it. A few dozen stitches and a small scar seemed a worthy price for a memorable night. Pete and Carl both felt hopeful about their renewed partnership and a second Libertine's album. For a moment, things seemed bright, but darkness was looming for Pete. More drugs, more chaos, and more bloodshed. Getting instant insights is amazing, but if there are too many data points, it can be hard to see what works. So I'll ask my AI assistant for recommendations. And with PDF spaces in Acrobat Studio, it's easy to remix documents and transform insights into standout content, so you can go from idea to creation in record time, all within an AI-powered workflow. Do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on Adobe.com. March 2004. Mick Jones of The Clash was feeling it. He had his hands up in the air and his hips were swinging in that little dance that he always did during a great studio take. In the tracking room, the Libertines were slamming their way through a new song called Can't Stand Me Now, their first of the day. Mick signed on to produce the album, was listening in the control room and he liked what he heard. The song was written by Pete as a duet. It was a song about a love gone wrong. It wasn't about Kate Moss, who Pete wouldn't meet for another year. Instead, it was about the love between him and Carl. It was structured like an English indie rock version of Johnny Cash and June Carter's Jackson. Only instead of a married couple bickering about the flame going out, it was two brothers calling each other out for controlling behavior and rampant smack addictions. Mick was nervous about starting with this one. The lyrics were so raw and direct, but it quickly became clear he didn't have any choice. Although the band booked a week of rehearsals before the session, this was the only song they had ready. Watching Pete and Carl leaning into their lines, shouting back and forth, he knew it was worth the risk. The electricity of their performance was impossible to miss. Standing practically nose to nose, the two frontmen conjured up years of frustration in three and a half minutes. Mick knew the song was a winner. That's why he was working with Pete and Carl again, despite all the hassles. Because they made great music. Mick had also produced the band's debut album, Up the Bracket. Back then, Pete and Carl had been a handful. But Mick had been through a share of 10th studio sessions with Joe Strummer, and they still managed to make plenty of great albums. He could handle the tension. And his steady hand and impeccable rock credentials kept Pete and Carl relatively restrained during sessions for the first album, which snuck onto the top 40 of the UK album charts. A year later, the follow-up album was hotly anticipated by fans in the music press. No one had any doubt that it would hit number one. The ticket actually get it made, that is. Mick knew that the last time Pete and Carl spent more than 48 hours together, they were supposed to work on new songs for the album at the home of their manager, Alan McGee. Instead, they got into a fight and Carl got so adrunct that he bashed his face into a bathroom sink until his eye was literally hanging out of the socket, and he needed 70 stitches to repair the damage. So Mick was more than a little concerned about the prospect of Pete and Carl spending a week recording together in the same room. The bodyguards would help, though. Alan McGee, who had dealt with his share of combustible brotherhoods as the manager of Oasis and the Jesus in the Mary chain, decided to hire bodyguards for Pete and Carl to make sure they didn't try to kill each other during the recording sessions. The presence of the two burly men unnerved Mick, but fortunately the vibes have been great so far and the bodyguards had spent most of the morning shooting pool. In the tracking room, the band brought the song to a thundering climax. The ending was so good that Mick made a mental note to try cutting it and using it as a song's intro. It seemed like the right move for a song that was about an ending. Mick motioned for the band to join him in the control room. He lit a spliff and inhaled as he sat back in a chair. The band, the pair of studio engineers and the bodyguards all filed into the room and stood around a long glass coffee table. Hearing the song again through the speakers, it was clear to Mick that they had just captured lightning in a bottle. The song practically jumped out of the speakers. It felt like a number one song. Not wanting to lose momentum, Mick quickly asked Pete and Carl what song they wanted to do next. Carl threw out a suggestion and Pete shot it down. Pete suggested another but Carl spat back that song didn't seem finished. Mick felt the tension rising in the room. Pete suggested they set up a small digital recorder at Carl's apartment so the two of them could flesh out a few of the songs between sessions. Carl's eyes narrowed into slits. You mean the apartment that you broke into? He asked. Everyone was silent as the question hung in the air. When Carl continued, my sister won't even let you step foot in the apartment. Mick stubbed out the spliff in an ashtray and jumped up from a seat. Trying to jump in before things got worse. So he walked across the control room and saw Pete staring speechless at Carl from across the glass table. He looked like he might break into tears or possibly rip Carl's head off. Better to start off with a gentle approach Mick thought to himself. He reached an arm toward Pete and Carl. Boys, boys, what's all this about? He asked softly. Carl looked at Pete with a sneer. His eyes were still burning with anger. It's nothing Mick, he said. Pete just can't handle his brown. Before Mick could react, Pete launched himself across the glass table at Carl. As he tackled Carl, they both went down in a heap and Pete started punching him wildly in his face and stomach. Mick was shocked. In the past, Carl had been the more aggressive one. Pete would rather run than fight, but maybe prison had changed him. Fortunately, the two bodyguards rushed in. One easily lifted Pete in the air by the waistband of his jeans and the other held Carl back as he screamed about wanting to finish things outside. After struggling for a few minutes, eventually both Pete and Carl calmed down. Mick shared a few choice anecdotes about the scrapes he and Joe Strummer got into while recording Combat Rock, and they even managed to lay down a few more songs that day. But after the fight and the emotional drain of recording Can't Stand Me Now, Pete's heart wasn't in it. Something about hearing the words he had written for Carl being sung back at him, he'd always imagined that Carl hated him on some level. After recording the song, he knew it was true. And thanks to the tenacity of his bodyguard, Pete showed up for the next few sessions. But his partnership with Carl had fractured beyond repair. Besides, Pete was looking forward to new bands, new experiences, new friends. Like the ones who were hanging around his apartment every morning when his bodyguard showed up. The crack dealers and groupies and other so-called artists that inhabit his world now. While the rest of the Libertines were mixing the album, Pete was in rehab. And when the band was playing festivals, Pete was in court on a series of drug possession charges. And by the time the second album hit number one on the charts, Pete was out of the band indefinitely. While Carl trying to reign him in, Pete's drug use spiraled even further out of control. Chaos followed him everywhere. Violent altercations with paparazzi, trashed hotel rooms, canceled gigs. And on one fateful December night, for an unknown actor with dreams of stardom, a brush with Pete Thardy would mark his last night on Earth among the living. Mark Blanco started off his Saturday evening on December 2, 2006, like he did most Saturdays, at the George Tavern. Mark was intelligent, Cambridge educated. He was a trained actor, and his friends said he had real talent, but he struggled to land roles. He also struggled to connect with people offstage. He had a hard time finding his place in the vast London art scene. At the George Tavern, though, he finally felt like he'd found a community. Here, he made friends with artists like Paul Roundhill, whose so-called literary salon was just around the corner. The George Tavern was where Mark Blanco decided to put on a play. He was 30 years old and tired of feeling like life was slipping by. He was tired of waiting for some director to cast him. Instead, with the help of some friends, he would put on his own production, right there, at the tavern. For his debut, he chose accidental death of an anarchist, an Italian play based on the real-life death of Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist who fell to his death under suspicious circumstances while in police custody. Mark threw himself into the production. He acted in the lead role. He directed. He did the marketing, which is why, as he put away a few pints at the George that Saturday night, he had a stack of flyers for the show tucked into his jacket pocket. As he ordered another round, a friend popped into the pub with an excited look, and he said that the rock star, Pete Dardy, had just turned up at Paul Roundhill's apartment. When Mark heard the name, his ears perked up. He knew from the tabloids about Pete's reputation as a druggy and as half of a celebrity couple. With Kate Moss. But he also read that Pete was a true artist, someone with deep knowledge of poetry, books, and plays. Hell, he'd named his band after a Marquis de Sade novel. In short, Pete Dardy was the kind of man who might be interested in a new do-it-yourself theatre production. If he could get Pete to attend the play, then he had no doubt that attendance would go through the roof, and the play would be a success. And Mark was determined to make it a success. So, Mark set off for Paul Roundhill's apartment, arriving just around midnight. And whether it was the excitement, the pints, or his all-consuming desire to make the play a success, witnesses say he was drunk and aggressive, or at least overly enthusiastic when he began talking to Pete about the play. He cornered Pete, badgered him about attending. And then, when Paul and Pete's bodyguard, Johnny Headlock, tried to back him away from Pete, he refused to leave. Pushing and shoving broke out. Witnesses from the apartment building heard screams, and then Johnny Headlock and Paul forcibly pushed him out of the building. After taking a few steps away, Mark Blanco decided to return. Why? Maybe he left something behind. Maybe he wanted to get the final word. Maybe, as Pete suggested, he wanted to make a dark, artistic statement with a brutal final act. What we do know is that just 57 seconds later, the same security camera that captured him leaving the building showed his body plummeting to the ground and hitting the sidewalk. What happened to Mark Blanco? The police were quick to rule the death of suicide in later an accident. But there's no evidence that Mark Blanco was suicidal. Toxicology reports didn't show any drugs in his system, although his blood alcohol level was elevated. A forensic analyst claimed that reverse projection techniques indicate a second person was on the balcony with Mark Blanco before he died. The security camera shows Pete D'Arty, a young woman, and his bodyguard all running from the scene moments after Mark's body was discovered. They stepped right by the prone body, paused to yell something up at the balcony, and then sprint away. Was this because Pete D'Arty wanted to avoid another arrest for drug possession and another negative tabloid headline? Or was it because they knew something more about what happened to Mark Blanco? There's also this. Two weeks after the death, Johnny Headlock walked into a police station and confessed to murdering Mark Blanco. You heard that right. He confessed to the crime. But an hour later, he recanted. During his interrogation, he was so high on cocaine that the police questioned the validity of his confession from the start. Meanwhile, just a few weeks after Mark Blanco's death, Pete made the extraordinary, some might say extraordinarily tasteless decision to make a video of himself singing a brand new song in the same flat where Blanco died. In the name of the song, the lost art of murder. The Libertines reunited in 2010. Since 2014, they've put out two new albums and toured with more regularity than in their early 2000s heyday. Pete D'Arty, for his part, says he's clean. He says French cheese has replaced heroin as his drug of choice. He also says he knows nothing about what happened to Mark Blanco during the latter's final 57 seconds in that apartment. And maybe there's nothing to know. Maybe it was just a freak accident. Just another in a series of horrific events that accompany Pete D'Arty's slide into darkness. To the surprise of many, somehow, Pete managed to make it out the other side alive. He repaired his fractured relationship with Carl Barrett to continue making great music. But not everyone who followed him into the darkness would be that lucky. And that's a disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Alright guys thanks for listening to this episode of Disgraceland. Pete D'Arty, listen I want to know a question of the week this week. What do you think happened? Do you think Pete D'Arty had anything to do with the death of Mark Blanco? 617-906-6638 voicemail and text. Let me know what you think. You can also email me at disgracelandpod.com. Hit me up on the socials at Disgraceland Pod or in the Patreon chat go to DisgracelandPod.com to sign up to become an all-access member today to unlock exclusive and ad-free content. Guys, appreciate y'all. Here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at DisgracelandPod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show we really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to DisgracelandPod.com. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland Ad Free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter and Facebook at DisgracelandPod and on YouTube at youtube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rock a roll. He's a bad, bad man.