Peter Doherty - With Charles Bueller, Crookes Working Mens Club, Sheffield, 25/7/2025

  by Steev Burgess

published: 7 / 9 / 2025

intro

Steev Burgess watches an excellent set frpm Peter Doherty with his band, with superb support from Charles Bueller

Peter Doherty's busy touring life with his guitar, band, Max Bianco and The Libertines takes him to many varied venues. Five days ago he trekked on gravel paths through the Swiss mountains to Lac des Vaux to an open lakeside stage, and today his more familiar tour bus climbed one of the long hills of Sheffield to the Crookes Working Mens Club. First up, surprisingly, was Peter Doherty warming up the crowd with a few acoustic numbers, including rarities ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ and She is Far’ and a rendition of Sheffield United FC's ‘Greasy Chip Buttie’ song, before handing over to Strap Originals’ signing and solo artist Charles Bueller. The Dead Freights singer appeared here alone, revealing his quiet side, with an acoustic guitar and an understated charm. The suited, slim singer has a cool style about him, and his looks and turn of phrase at times remind me of a young Peter Cook, though this is no comedy. Bueller's songs have a bittersweet quality and self-deprecating humour. ‘What A Day To Be You’, for example, is full of clever lyrical twists, its lines “What a night to be me/Young free and single-handedly, squandering my opportunities/Like all good dreamers do” completed with lonesome whistling solos. The set is simultaneously influenced by Cohen and Cave, but with the loucheness of Noel Coward. It consists of excellently-penned slow ballads and lyrical gypsy jazz,including Bueller's equivalent to Ray Davies’ ‘David Watts’ called ‘Tall Handsome James’, where he's “hinking back to all the times that you sat through my coked- up seranades” and which captures the underlying modernity and vintage style in his music in a nutshell. His set was rounded of with ‘Bueller's Blues’, a lament about perhaps the compromises made in music where beauty gets in with showbiz and the singer decides “to shift my shame and kiss entertainment on the cheek” – which he delivered with a kiss to the microphone. As Peter Doherty watched from the wings, I had the sense that this talented artist really needed a more intimate, sit- down gig, than a crowd of Saturday night revellers waiting to sing along to their favourite numbers, but he pushed on undaunted and not for the first time I found something mesmerising in his work. Peter Doherty and his band, which formed around his current album ‘Felt Better Alive’, didn't keep the crowd waiting long. His team includied old friend Jack Jones on bass and acoustic guitar, Mike Moore who co-wrote songs on the latest album and significantly The Smiths’ Mike Joyce on drums. With this band line- up, Peter is happy to front the band much of the time without a guitar appearing to let his ‘inner Morrissey’ fulfil his youthful, pre-Libertines ambitions. With an eye perhaps on the possible Babyshambles reunion, Doherty launched into ‘Killamangiro’ and later, Fuck Forever and Albion, with a mention of Hartlepool in honour of a previous support artist, Max Bianco. The 26-song set demonstrated what an amazing collection of songs Doherty has to his name, and was drawn from all corners of his career, with at least at another fifteen tracks that would have been welcomed in by the fans. Highlights included the debut of ‘Stade Ocèan’, which conjures up the blue sea light of AC LeHavre's home ground, that Peter and his wife Kate sometimes frequent when in Normandy. The poignant ‘Hell to Pay at the Gates of Heaven’ was given an airing too, along with other solo album and Puta Madres tracks like ‘Kolly Kibber] and ‘Who's Been Having You Over’. The character at the centre of ‘The Day the Baron Died’ was introduced as an Eastern Europen Jew who came to England, and I realised that many of Peter's fictional characters like the Baron and Ed Belly are perhaps facets of Doherty's own personality or family roots. The set, which spanned Doherty's career, zigzagged from an impromptu ‘Knees Up Mother Brown’ to a Stone Roses cover and the singalong ‘The Last of the English Roses’, which segued into The Smiths’ ‘How Soon is Now’. The dazzling repertoire of The Libertines’ ‘Time for Heroes’, Babyshambles ‘Fuck Forever’ and The Smiths ‘Panic’ brought the front row of the crowd to a frezy. Some of Peter's most notable gigs down the years have been at smaller venues, where the chemistry has been right and a synergy builds between the hard core followers and band, and this was to be one of those nights, with the players faultless after a long soundcheck and punters new to the Albion phenomenon, overheard outside chilling in the beer garden afterwards saying that they didn't realise it would be this good. Against the odds, this approachable performer really has become a living legend, feeling the romance of both the English Greasy spoon and football song, to the more bohemian literary influences and life in France.

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