No Rock And Roll Fun

THIS IS YOUR HERO ON DRUCKS: Interesting piece about the coverage of Doherty's drug life in Spiked, which compares the way the papers barely mentioned Jarvis Cocker or Brett Anderson's fondness for heavy drugs while really going after Doherty. Neil Davenport suggests that this marks a change in how the media deal with star's little habits, although it's not really the cultural shift he seems to think it is. The real difference between now and the Britpop/Grunge years is actually mentioned by Davenport, although he doesn't seem to notice:

And they're not alone. Recently BBC4 devoted half an hour to Doherty, with Newsnight's Kirsty Wark cheerily probing his drug habit like it was a fondness for Haagen Daaz. [...]
Elsewhere Kurt Cobain famously threatened British journalists who raised questions about his and Courtney Love's heroin use.

So, let's ask the question again: why are the media running interviews with Doherty (happy to chat about his problem to fund drugs he otherwise couldn't afford) when they didn't with Kurt, Brett et al who were desperate not for it to become too-common knowledge to the extent where they would schmooze or threaten to keep it out the papers? Any ideas?

Actually, it's not even true to say that there was this blanket 'don't mention the drugs' at the start of the last decade. Surely there wasn't a person alive who didn't get that Brett's skin problems weren't the side effect of forgetting to use a buff-puff three mornings running? And for a solid nine years, the only mention of Evan Dando in the pop papers was in the 'How much of his talent has he pissed away on crumble this week' column on page seven of the Melody Maker.

A final point: if the tabs didn't write about Doherty doing drugs... well, there's not much of a story there, is there?

Meanwhile, Doherty turned up on stage for a Babyshambles gig last night, waving his naltrexone implant about. Truly, he is the People's Smacko.

music drugs media pete doherty jarvis cocker brett anderson kurt cobain pete doherty babyshambles