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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Kate Hutchinson

‘Glastonbury’s definitely still medieval!’: The Libertines’ Pete Doherty and Carl Barât interviewed at the festival

Pete Doherty and Carl Barât during their Guardian Live event at Glastonbury Festival 2025.
Pete Doherty and Carl Barât during their Guardian Live event at Glastonbury Festival 2025. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian

On the final day of Glastonbury, the Libertines are due on the Pyramid stage for an afternoon show. But first, their co-frontmen, Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, make a stop by the Astrolabe stage for the last of Guardian Live’s in-conversations at this year’s festival. “They are the greatest British rock band of the last 25 years,” says Guardian critic and today’s host, Miranda Sawyer. And Doherty and Barât are two of the most notorious hell-raisers in indie-rock. But this is a changed band, perhaps, who stop for a photograph with Mr Tumble before they walk onstage.

They kick off the talk with fond memories of Glastonbury, a place that has long been “part of the mythology of the band,” says Doherty. For him, it was running into his sister, AmyJo, having not seen her in three years. “I heard this couple fighting in the mud.” But then he realised: “I know that voice. It was AmyJo. She was having a full on barney with her boyfriend at the time. We had a massive, warm embrace and a little cry.”

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