Pop Quiz: Dirty Pretty Things

Pop Quiz: Dirty Pretty Things

Aidin Vaziri | He survived being in a band with Pete Doherty (who at one point broke into his flat and stole from him), battled drug-induced depression and has found himself an unsuspecting mark for the British tabloids. How has former Libertines member and current Dirty Pretty Things front man Carl Barat managed to keep it together? Rather nicely, judging from his new group's spiky debut album, "Waterloo to Anywhere." But that doesn't mean he's in the clear yet. Speaking on the phone from the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan, Barat talked about how the past just won't let him go.

Carl Barat of Dirty Pretty Things
Q: Do you think people have forgiven you for getting on with your life instead of killing yourself after the Libertines broke up?
A: I think people started to go, "Hang on, let's check this out and stop whining." If they thought (the Dirty Pretty Things album) was complete s -- , then they would still be pissed off, but they seem to be moving with us.
Q: There was a picture of you with Pete Doherty that appeared last week. Are you thinking of re-forming the band?
A: It's just a mate, you know. I'm as committed to this band as I was to the Libertines. Right now this band is everything.
Q: You're not just doing this because the band you really wanted to be in broke up under tragic circumstances?
A: No, that's not the case. It's a continuation for me, just with different body parts. It's something different from the Libertines. For me, this goes a little deeper. It deals with some kind of darkness that I was never able to fit into Libertines songs.
Q: Here's what the caption said: "Former bandmates Pete Doherty and Carl Barat have reunited to discuss re-forming the Libertines, two years after Barat kicked Doherty out of the British group. The pair met in the Dublin Castle pub in Camden, London, on Tuesday evening after mutual friends Kate Moss and singer Lisa Moorish encouraged them to put their troubled past behind them."
A: Hell.
Q: How many factual inaccuracies are in that?
A: All of them, I think.