Dirty Pretty Things/The Enemy
The last time Carl Barat was in prison, it was to visit former bandmate Pete Doherty at HMP Wandsworth. "I didn't really see as much there as I have here," he says, looking around Pentonville prison, and smoking a fag. "Just a door." He pauses, and does his best to recollect something pertinent about Wandsworth's decor. "It had nice knockers," he says.
Then, it was an act of forgiveness and solidarity - Doherty had been remanded for having burgled Barat's flat in the last, fraught days of the Libertines.
Today his reasons are scarcely any less altruistic. He and the rest of his new band, Dirty Pretty Things, are here to play a gig in support of Wasted Youth - a campaign aiming to raise awareness about rising male suicide rates. Organised by Heat journalist Dan Fulvio after his younger brother, Steven, took his life on Christmas Eve last year, Wasted Youth aims to draw attention to the fact that, in the past four years, suicide has killed more young men aged 15-34 than any other single cause. "I just want to tell young men that staying silent isn't strong," Fulvio says.
Pentonville was chosen to highlight that prisoners are seven times more likely to take their lives than the average person. As one of the first gigs to be held in a British prison, Wasted Youth is big news. Hence the rather surreal sight of the press congregating in the courtyard of one of Her Majesty's prisons.
Inside the prison, the chapel has been converted into an unlikely arena of rock. A low stage has been provided for the Dirty Pretty Things and their support band, the Enemy. Prison officers stand in a line at the back. The governor, Nick Leader, explains that the attitude of inmates towards suicide is "macho - men don't talk about how desperate or scared they are". He hopes the gig might help to change this, and wants there to be more.
"I have a preference for R&B," he says, hopefully. "And I like the Twang. I wonder if they'd do anything?" The Enemy - three diminutive, whippet-thin lads in sateen adidas tops who, God bless them, look as if they've been arrested for loitering with intent next to the pic'n'mix - take to the stage to a roar of approval and immediately encounter the main problem, from a rock'n'roll point of view, with this jailhouse rock: it's taking part in a church. In broad daylight. To a sober bunch of men. Who one would broadly surmise, given their demographic spread - 50 per cent black, mostly over 30 - probably aren't that into rackety teenage indie-rock. Still, as befits a three-piece who have just had a tour of Pentonville's solitary wing, they play an impassioned set. The audience nod their heads.
They can't really do much more. Inmate Shaun Doherty explains that they're desperate for more of these gigs, so they're all on best behaviour. They won't even stand up, in case they get asked to leave. Doherty had a run-in with his more famous namesake, Pete Doherty, during one of his tenures there.
"Yeah," Doherty says, sighing. "He had all my newspapers for a month." It takes Dirty Pretty Things - who, with their mix of punk and reggae are, shall we say, more rhythmically diverse than the Enemy - really to engage the audience. While saying very little between numbers, their mere presence - a sexy-looking rock band with guitars that can be heard across the prison - seems to be taken as a simple act of solidarity.
The joyful Come Closer lightens the mood, and as Barat rises up on tip-toes with the effort of delivering the breakneck narrative of You Fucking Love It he gets a cheer. There is, obviously, no moshing, head-banging or stage-diving; toes tap, heads bob, and the inmates' faces lose their wary battle tension.
After a scant 35 minutes, Dirty Pretty Things leave the stage to a standing ovation - carefully patrolled by prison wardens. Inmates using the opportunity to call out for CDs to be reallowed into the prison are quietly removed.
The band congregate back in the courtyard and sit on picnic furniture, looking slightly dazed. "That was the weirdest gig ever," says bassist Didz Hammond. "How odd to be walking out to a cold beer and a fag, while they all just stay there."
3/5
Source:
The Times
