Alan McGee recounts the shocking aftermath of a row between bandmates Pete Doherty and Carl Barat in his new book, Alan McGee: How to Run an Indie Label.
The former Oasis manager and Creation Records boss briefly managed The Libertines while they were releasing their self-titled 2004 album.
In the book, McGee explains that he was “bored” after shutting down his label, through which he managed acts including Oasis, Primal Scream, and The Jesus and Mary Chain.
He was made aware of The Libertines after being told that their former manager had split with the band after becoming “fed up with them”.
At the time, he said, things were “very messy” as Doherty was facing charges for burgling Barat’s home out of revenge after he was kicked out of the band.
After a first, unsuccessful meeting with the embattled co-frontman, McGee said he flew to America and Doherty spent six months in prison.
When he returned, Doherty was out of jail. McGee said he agreed to take a meeting with a band “to get rid of the c***s”.
He ordered champagne and, by the second bottle, had signed on as their manager.
“I assume that whatever worked for Primal and Oasis will work for them too, so I sent Carl and Pete to my big house in Wales,” he said. “The other bands always loved that s***, getting out to the big house in the country. So I send The Libertines down there to get to know them and make a plan.”
McGee said he noticed something was amiss between Barat and Doherty on the drive up, which only worsened at the house.
The next day, he woke up early when he heard someone coming down the stairs: “It’s Carl. I look at him in my peripheral vision and I’m instantly stunned.
“It looks like someone has poured tomato ketchup over his head and he is wearing a spooky mask,” McGee continued. “His eye is also hanging out of his head. For two seconds I’m in disbelief. ‘That’s a mask...’ I mutter to myself.”
It was only when he looked again that McGee realised that Barat’s eye was in fact hanging out of its socket.
“[Barat] mumbled that during the night he had self-harmed after an argument with Pete and head-butted the sink 10 times and his eye is now hanging out,” he recalled.
“I get one of my new baby Charlie’s wipes and I put the eye back into his head. I’m now thinking, what the f***, I only signed this band three days ago and now I got this mad kid holding his eye into his head.”
McGee managed to get a local farmer to drive him and the “still-pissed” Barat to hospital, where doctors were only just able to save his eye.
“Typically of The Libertines, it’s still not really sorted because they have sewn it the wrong way round,” McGee said. “So then I have to take him to Portland Street hospital in London and it costs eight grand to get it done properly.
“And that was my first week of managing The Libertines.”
McGee previously mentioned the incident while promoting his 2013 autobiography, Creation Stories.
Alan McGee: How to Run an Indie Label is out on 5 September.
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