Song Chronicles: “Can’t stand me now” by the Libertines

[Here is the third post of the series of articles Mike Raine thought about doing on individual songs. They focus on background, meaning, and anecdotes, to varying degrees.]

To the amazement of some, there was a time when Pete Doherty was half of an infamous song writing duo instead of half of an infamous tabloid duo. In the former’s case, Pete’s better half was fellow Libertine Carl Barat. Pete, Carl, and the rest of The Libertines exploded onto the British music scene in 2002 like a group of Hell’s Angels with a knack for writing catchy punk rock tunes. They lived without care or caution before imploding in a haze of drugs, fights, robberies, and arrests. The most important element in the band remained the relationship between writers and co-founders Doherty and Barat. The pair became inseparable in the public consciousness. Like many inseparable musical pairings before them, their brotherly relationship dissolved into a haze of drug abuse and betrayal while their fans watched in despair and their detractors in amusement. Amidst all the drama and in an amazing display of peace and reconciliation, Pete and Carl recorded
Can’t Stand Me Now

a song so revealing and personal, you feel as if you’re eavesdropping on a couple splitting up.

Pete and Carl were this generations’ addition to the long list of great British rock duos from Lennon and McCartney to Morrissey and Johnny Marr. Like their predecessors, Pete and Carl had an us-against-the-world mentality and aura that could make onlookers envious of their obvious bond and friendship. Whether it was Carl finishing Pete’s sentences in an interview or Pete carrying Carl to an ambulance after he drunkenly fell off a table on to his face, they had an inseparable bond that went beyond mere friendship. Fans lived vicariously through them, wishing they could be on board for the ride.

Then along came Pete’s crack and heroin addiction. It’s easy to forget that Pete was not a user of class A drugs when the band first broke the charts. It wasn’t until the release of their superb debut, Up the Bracket, that Pete first tried both heroin and crack. His use quickly escalated to the point where Carl and the rest of the band knew the end was near. That became abundantly clear when Pete was left behind as the rest of the band toured so that he could seek treatment. Instead getting clean, Pete broke into Carl’s flat stealing a guitar, laptop, and the band’s NME Award, all for the purpose of selling the items for drug money. Pete got a two month prison sentence. In an astounding display of forgiveness, Carl greeted Pete at the prison gates upon his release. That night The Libertines played a show at a nearby pub which would be named “gig of the year” by NME magazine.

All this makes Can’t Stand Me Now an incredibly personal song. Carl opens the song with, “an ending fitting for the start/you twist and tore our love apart” before Pete counters in the next verse with, “no, you’ve got it the wrong way round/just shocked me up and blamed it on the brown.” It’s obvious from the start that the song is directed at each other rather than the listener. Musical soul mates breaking-up through song rather than conversation. Every verse drips with the sentiments of the last words of a close relationship.

It is Pete and Carl’s well known history that gives lines such as “I know you lie, I know you lie/I’m still in love with you” such resonance. When they go into the back and forth vocals in a chorus of “you can’t stand me now” you can’t help but wish they would just work things out. But like every breakup conversation, it comes down to the question of whether the relationship is worth saving when it is clear that it’s no longer what it used to be. The lines of the final verse, “have we enough to keep it together? / or do we just keep on pretending / and hope our luck is never ending”, make it clear that the answer is “no”. The fights, drugs, and arrests had simply created too much drama for Carl to bare it anymore.

Both Pete and Carl would go on to blame the other for the disintegration of the band. Pete claiming that his being left behind while the rest of the band toured was just a final act of betrayal by Carl. Carl said that Pete’s drug use was getting in the way of the music and that he never kicked Pete out of the band. Carl simply wanted Pete to get clean before he rejoined. When they sing in unison, “I know you lie/ all you do is make me cry/ and all the words, they ain’t true”, they are both laying blame on the other.

“Can’t Stand Me Now” would go on to chart at #2 in the UK becoming The Libertines’ best selling single. British fans couldn’t resist hearing the audio diary of a couple that they had all followed from the start.
What Became of the Likely Lads

the second single off the album – which contains equally personal chorus of “what became of the likely lads/ what became of the dreams we had/ oh, what became of forever/ I guess we’ll never know” – would chart at #9. The Libertines played their final show in December of 2004 but Pete was not present. In a wise move, Carl disbanded the band following the show saying that it wouldn’t be right to continue to play and record under The Libertines name without Pete present. After all, there is always something vaguely sad about a band playing under a given name when a key part of the original line-up missing (Gun ‘n’ Roses, enough said).

Pete and Carl would both form decent bands following the clasp of The Libertines — Pete with Babyshambles and Carl with Dirty Pretty Things — but neither would equal the quality of The Libertines. In the past year, Pete and Carl have reunited to play on stage on a few occasions sparking endless speculation in the British press that a full Libertines reunion is in the works. However, The Libertines meteoric rise and fall have created a mystique and legacy that is hard to match. Many fans feel that a formal reunion would only detract from that legacy.

It clear from the first days of The Libertines that Pete and Carl were a flame that would burn out before it faded away (I know that is cliché but it is apt in this case). Can’t Stand Me Now gave fans a glimpse of what was happening in those final days of their partnership. The song allowed us to be a fly on the wall, listening to them bare it all. It was clear to everyone when the single came out that Can’t Stand Me Now was the public breaking up of one of the best bands in modern times. Not since the Sex Pistols has band risen and then imploded so quickly while leaving behind legacy that will be discussed for decades.

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Who cancelled the revolution?

[Since we are making him a regular contributor from now on, this is probably Mike Raine's last guest post. Here he asks a simple question about past musical culture and ties the answer to our 'generation X' heritage'. Great read. Everyone has an opinion on this so lets hear it.]

To be read while listening to Bob Dylan’s ‘The Times They Are A Changin’

followed by Graham Nash’s Chicago

Where has the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll gone? This is something I often asked myself in high school as I started discovering the brilliance of Bob Dylan, CSNY, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and countless other classic artists whose music contained a message and a political consciousness.

As I began to expand my musical interest, I realized that music was never going to be the center of a youth movement in the same manner it was in the 1960s. There are simply too many genres for kids today to choose from. Revolution was drowned out by a thousand different messages bombarding youth. It was easy to have a unifying message forty years ago. You essentially had three genres dominating the music world: rock and roll, folk, and blues. And they all had related messages of peace, love, and tolerance.

Personally, I blame disco. The coke-fuelled overindulgence of the disco scene was about selfishness, not brotherhood. Its music was mindless escapism. But this was only the beginning. From this point on, music became more diverse, lacking a focused message. There is a musical genre for every feeling you may have. Feeling angry? Listen to punk, heavy mental or gangster rap. Feel like partying? Listen to disco, pop, dance, hip hop, funk, or electronic. Feel like protesting? Listen to umm…… I’m not so sure anymore.

Yes, a few bands out there who get political on occasion. Think of Bruce Springsteen, REM, Bright Eyes, and most obviously, Rage Against the Machine. There are others, of course. But the point is that rock and roll is no longer a unifying force that politically conscious teens and twenty-somethings can rally behind.

What about U2, you ask. Clearly, U2 is an incredibly popular band – possibly the most popular band – but Bono has climbed so high on his pedestal you have to squint to see him. You have to give him credit for achieving more in the name of progressive politics and human rights than any of his predecessors in the music world. Still, most youth have hard time identifying with him because the level of esteem he now carries.

We are missing a new, young band or artist who professes a desire to make the world better and who can connect with young listeners on a large scale. And even if we were to find a new Dylan, would he or she have real impact? I am not too confident. As great and inspiring as Dylan was, he was a product of the times and came out at possibly the most opportune moment in music history for an artist of his style and message. In the early and mid 1960s while Dylan was earning the moniker “voice of a generation”, there was an incredibly unpopular war waging in Vietnam. A generation was coming of age that had never dealt with the consequences of all-out war the way their parents did. Television sets glowed in every living room with the realities of war, poverty, and racial segregation.

Possibly most importantly, the target generation in America was subject to military draft. Nostalgia can be a funny thing. It makes people gloss over the facts of earlier times. I am continuously amazed at the lack of importance given to the military draft and the role it played in instigating the youth movement of the sixties. It does not take much to forget that all the protests, sit-ins, die-ins, etc. that appear so altruistic when seen as brief black-and-white news clips actually had a very self-interested motivation behind them. There is something about the real possibility of dying pointlessly in a foreign land that motivates young people to take to the streets. Had there not been a draft that threatened to send an entire generation of young Americans off to their deaths, I am willing to bet that the 1960s would not be the blueprint for political consciousness it has become.

Over the span of years that mark the current war in Iraq, there are have been protests against the war, yet no one claims that the anti-war movement is currently as strong as it was in 1968. Sit in on any university political science class as they discuss the war and the public’s reaction to it and you will hear countless students lamenting the lack of action taken by their peers. Surprisingly, few of these passionate and frustrated students will provide a more thorough explanation as why this is the case other than to say that “young people just don’t care anymore”.
I think young people DO care about ending the war; they just don’t care as much. Students today would like to see the war end but they have people to see and Facebook pages to update and in when it come down to it, they are not the ones going to war. When seen in this light, it is easy to understand why anti-war protests don’t draw the numbers they did in the 1960s. This brings me back to the original point, the music.

The political music of the 1960s did not create a climate ripe for protests, the protests created a climate ripe for political music. Songwriters often write about what they see, and in the 1960s they were seeing upheaval and political activism. Dylan did not write The Times they Are A-Changin’ and wake up the next day to find that indeed something was a-changin’. He wrote the song because he saw and sensed that things were changing. Youth didn’t take to the street of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention because Graham Nash wrote the song Chicago. Nash wrote the song because the kids were in the streets.

So what does the lack of politically conscious music mean for today’s music lovers? It is a symptom of our times? Properly read, the symptom tells us we aren’t likely to be sent to war anytime soon and in the meantime, we have a lot of options in what we listen to.

So maybe the lack of political songs is a good thing. After all, if tomorrow I turn on the radio to hear Avril Lavigne singing “tin soldiers and Harper coming…”, I may start forwarding my mail to Khandahar. Well, I would do that as soon as I stop laughing at the thought of Avril Lavigne getting political.

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