An understandable sense of anticipation surrounded Pete Doherty's arrival onstage at London's Garage venue. In accordance with the 10pm bail curfew imposed after his arrest for blackmail and threatening behaviour, it took place at the decidedly un-rock'n'roll hour of 8.45pm, but early start or not, Doherty has become the stuff of myth.
In recent weeks, virtually everyone in the British media appears to have developed an opinion about him. From broadsheet rock critics to tabloid pop columnists, Doherty's life has become a spectacle to which everyone has become a witness.
Last night, the happy witnesses gathering in their droves - split between a standard indie rock crowd and east London trendies, many of whom appeared to have come straight from the set of Chris Morris' sitcom Nathan Barley - got an oddly prosaic rock gig.
Doherty seemed to be wearing the same suit as at a court appearance earlier in the day, but made no mention of his legal troubles. After checking out of a drug rehabilitation centre on Saturday, he was in court to have his bail conditions amended to allow him to could stay out until midnight tonight to perform at the Brixton Academy, in south London.
He was warned that the amendment was a one-off and any violation of his bail conditions before his next court appearance in April could result in jail.
The former Libertines frontman spent four nights in Pentonville prison this month after he was alleged to have punched and demanded cash from a documentary maker, Max Carlish, 38, at the Rookery hotel in central London.
The altercation came after Carlish sold pictures of Doherty smoking heroin to a Sunday newspaper. Another newspaper is reported to have paid for a Naltraxone implant which is supposed to cure him of his various addictions.
Last night there was no sign of the off-the-rails Doherty. Instead, he performed a short, slightly chaotic set. It was the songs that lurched around wildly, taking in far wider influences than the ramalama punk for which The Libertines were famed: you can hear traces of everything from reggae to music hall to 50s doo-wop on What Katy Did. During songs, members of the audience clambered onstage to shake Doherty's hand.
Doherty is described as many things in the press, but of late the one thing he has not been described as is a musician. He may be the most discussed British rock star since the heyday of Oasis, but most of those doing the discussing have never heard a note by his band Babyshambles, whose two hit singles have enjoyed the standard firefly lifespan in the charts.
The gig was presumably intended as a means of focussing attention back on Babyshambles' music. It fitfully succeeded. The closing Fuck Forever, its title taken from an old Sex Pistols poster, was blessed with the kind of incontestably great chorus that should theo retically seal Doherty's reputation as perhaps the most gifted new songwriter Britain has to offer.
Midway through, he smashed his microphone against the roof of the stage until it broke. The preposterously anthemic song became a noticeably less anthemic instrumental. It was tempting to view the incident as a metaphor, but it need not be. However attractive it is to de pict Doherty as a naive victim, the truth is that despite his intriguing lyrical predilection for hymning a lost England, he has become a very mid-Noughties, post-Heat, post-reality TV, post-Popbitch sort of rock star: the public know more about his life than his music. The danger of playing that game is that a genuinely gifted artist ends up indie music's own equivalent of Tara Palmer Tomkinson.
