“Shall we give him the egg now?” I panicked.
“I don’t know,” Sam replied, half reaching into his satchel, “I just don’t know.”
The evening up to that point had been laced with a certain ambiguity, and the egg dilemma was just the tip of the iceberg, really.
We were two Brummie transplants in Istanbul, whose formative high school years had been more or less soundtracked by the Libertines, and now here we were, cramped in a smoky back room with former lead singer turned solo artist Pete Doherty, together with a Turkish pop manager, a bevy of cockney sound guys and several other fans whose superior oestrogen levels automatically relegated us toward the bottom of the list of meet-and-greets.
And then there was that damn ceramic egg.
I just hadn’t considered how delightfully abstract it would be to watch Doherty perform on the garajistanbul stage, delivering a beautiful and powerful acoustic set of tracks from his days fronting the Libertines and Babyshambles, as well a plethora of solo material.
As the singer climbed the stage, donning the garb of a nineteenth century busker-cum-gentleman thief, my mind was warped. The spark behind Orhan Pamuk’s Masumiyet Müzesi came to mind; the main character’s obsession with wanting to experience every aspect of his past and present in a single frame – I think I had it for a second! Middle England’s suburban life sat on display before me, like a museum piece framed by Istanbul herself. Hailing as I do, from those dour, grey islands on Europe’s Western shore, I was made more aware than most, that I was witnessing the musical product of Englishness outside its ordinary habitat – is this my life in third person and sung to a key?
Aside from a clash of contexts, though, it was quite the experience watching an epic clash of cools; Camden came face-to-face with cool alaturka.
Doherty’s own retro chic and demure eccentrism was as expected in all its charm. The crowd, on the other hand, epitomised a different kind of cool just by their presence alone – you’d have to be quite the music connoisseur to be a Libertines fan out here. As Sam would later comment , it’s not like when Jon Bon Jovi arrived and sold-out a concert here in an instant – Doherty has no “Livin’ On A Prayer”. Thank God, too – there was no room for dabblers or facebook-taggers to pad out the venue.
Garajistanbul’s 1000 capacity was two-thirds full; a perfect dynamic to experience this outgoing introvert’s charm from up close. Nowhere in the old counry, could we have enjoyed this spectacle in such an intimate setting.
Just as well, then, that crowd-pleasers abounded right from the get-go with “Don’t Look Back into the Sun”. It wasn’t long before hits like “No Time for Heroes” and “Fuck Forever” got the crowd raising the roof and the energy didn’t let up once. If it’s not from his raw delivery alone, Doherty can punch a hole in your heart with the lyrics themselves, documenting tales of his troubles and worries – he’s had enough of them, for sure.
Every verse is illustrated with the minutae of every-day urban life from Reebok Classics to cold winds, dirty magazines and pissing up walls – creating a beautiful and somehow derelict landscape under a heavy sky.
Songs like “Albion” paint a portrait of a time and place somewhere – anywhere, for that matter – in England. Doherty’s song-writting is a kind of modern romanticism, which would make sense for a writer who counts Shelly and Byron as some of his chief influences.
My identification with Blighty is residual at the best of times, but it’s testimony to Doherty’s song-writing that he is just subtle enough to force even an unpatriotic blighter like me into a nostalgic whimsy; “violence at bus stops and a pale thin girl with eyes forlorn, gin in teacups and leaves on the lawn”.
His portraits glorify the tiny everyday tediums that are long gone from my every-day experience after half a decade in the ‘Bul, and now listening to these words, it’s as though all of a sudden they’ve dropped-by to visit.
Are these references lost on the crowd? I wondered. What is the minimum requirement needed to enjoy a song that has the power to do this?
On that basis, we finally decided it was absolutely the least we could do to present Doherty with something to show our gratitude.
I inspected the egg. It was yellow, with the traditional patterns of the ones you get at the Grand Bazaar, but we got it from a Bakkal on Istiklal. Exotic enough, we giggled at the time. By the end of the show though, I was unconvinced.
“This is weird,” I muttered, stealing a couple of cold beverages from the special fridge, which was just like a normal fridge – but backstage. It probably wasn’t even stealing, either.
“This probably isn’t even stealing,” I added.
Doherty took a mouthful of pizza and left the girl’s embrace for a second, was now a good time? He received another fan excitedly as he was handed a gift. Not an egg, but a Fenerbahçe T-shirt actually personalised with his name on the back. The gift came from a bunch of Turkish fans who immediately began snapping photos and cheering. Much laughter and back-slapping ensued – “teşekuleğ, teşekuleğ,” he nodded humbly.
“Well that’s put an end to it,” I sighed.
“Some rich twat’s gone and had that made for him,” Sam observed astutely.
“I don’t think he’d appreciate an egg now,” I said. I suppose rock n’ roll will jade you like that, but it felt enough for us just to say “nice one”.
Nice piece. You’ve made me a little homesick now. “Nice one”
i like!