Threepenny Memoir: The Lives of a Libertine

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• We were officially big in Japan (though thankfully no one in the band actually said that out loud) and we'd been booked for a headline tour. The first thing that happened was that a little dog came and sat down next to me. We'd all been drinking for the duration of the flight, and I thought it was the sweetest thing in the world - one of the special welcome dogs had taken a shine to me.
  Of course, it was the drugs dog, and they sit next to you to indicate they can smell something on you. (S. 68) · Christian_alternakid
• David Letterman told me to put my cigarette out once, just after we did "I Get Along" on his show. Marilyn Manson, whose real name is Brian, was on, too. We were ordered not to talk to him, but Brian got into the lift with us, so we got out, ran down the stairs and, as the lift doors opened and Brian got out, we were playing and singing "We'll Meet Again". He thought it was hilarious at the time. He gave us his exasparated face, which I imagine he gives to a lot of people, and just pushed past us. (S. 74) · Christian_alternakid
• I remember promising Peter that I could cook and going off to the market to buy the ingredients to "bangers and mash". That idea's obviously a non-starter in France, but i was a naive English idiot. To compound things, I can't cook anyway, a fact that was bourne out of the potatoes I eventually served, which were so rock hard that we ended up lobbing them from our balcony at passing tourists. (S. 106) · Christian_alternakid
• Somewhere out on the road, we bought some exotic looking fireworks, but when we got back to the city we realized we had nowhere to set them off. Band logic quickly dictated that they should be let off in the hotel room. They made an amazing sound and the colours were quite beautiful, until one of them shot out of the open window and straight into this pond full of koi carp, which are sacred in Japan. There was a godawful sound as the firework fizzed and exploded in the pond, the water boiled and hissed, and all these wonderful looking fish were suddenly still. (S. 71) · Christian_alternakid
• We started out in the back of vans, like any band worth its salt, and got promoted to tour buses pretty quickly. That's really when it all started to go a little pear-shaped. We became less of a gang, more of a band; it became more of a job. It's a terrible cliché, but success did spoil us. That and the drugs; but they came with the territory.
  Inexorably, the magic faded and the routine took over. Peter saw that coming before any of us did. He'd rage against the dying light, try to cajole us into not behaving in a linear way. He wanted to break out of the gig/hotel/bus routine very early on, almost as soon as it started happening. "Don't do that", he'd say. "Come on an adventure instead."
  And, in a way, he was right, even if that adventure did end in a crackhouse at sunrise. (S. 173) · Christian_alternakid
• When we were really firing on all cylinders and were together then it really felt like no one could touch us, and that nothing else mattered.As much as I try to deflect it, play it down and be English about it, there was a very powerful romance and beauty to our friendship. At the beginning it was pure an uncomplicated; there was a chemistry. Together we were a complete unit, in each other's company quite different from how we were with other people. I can sit here as the shadows get longer and be diffident about it until the sun comes up again tomorrow morning, but the fact is that if that dynamic between us hadn't existed none of this would have happened, I wouldn't be lamenting what I lost - what we both lost. When we're together and we can forget about bullshit, we become two old sould, kindred spirits in seclusion. (S. 49) · Christian_alternakid
• It was strange, the cult of The Libertines: it was romance and poetry, a vehicle for this ragtag gang with guitars, something that people often desparately wanted to be part of. We were the kind of band who let people in. We wanted to pull those barriers down between them and us, and we engaged with our fans, in a true, direct way, long before such engagement - using the internet and social media - became a tool of the record industry. (S. 88) · Christian_alternakid