Babyshambles are back better than ever, as Tim Hughes finds out before their forthcoming Oxford gig

Frank, honest and surprisingly eloquent, Peter Doherty can be relied upon to speak his mind. And he does not try to hide his frustration at the time it has taken for Babyshambles to bring out their new album.

“It was a shambles!” he sighs. “We had no communication, no direction. And that was enough for us to be lost at sea — without communication you can’t have anything.”

A man once equally courted and demonised as the bad boy of British rock, Peter has known his share of chaos, but has come through the other side, where he is hailed not as a car-crash celebrity but as a poet, artist and exceptional musician.

Forget the ‘Pete’ Doherty of tabloid fame: the stories of drug addiction; the arrests; the implosion of his former band The Libertines; his jailing for burgling former bandmate Carl Barat’s flat; and the all too well-documented break up of his troubled relationship with supermodel Kate Moss. Peter, as he prefers to be known, is the classic tortured genius; a polymath whose weakness for the finer, and illicit, things in life has unfairly overshadowed his talents — and his idiosyncratic way with words.

“Stephen Hawking tried to put his finger on it,” he says. “How wobbly particles just metamorphosise out of nothing into life. That’s a bit like what happened with this album...”

It took six years to follow up their previous, top five-charting effort, Shotter’s Nation, which itself came only two years after the release of debut Down in Albion. Both previous albums went gold and spawned a number of top 10 singles — including 2005’s **** Forever and 2007’s Delivery.

So why the delay? Well, things weren’t helped by Peter’s move to Paris. Guitarist Mik Whitnall and bassist Drew McConnell still live in London. The watery obstacle of the English Channel could be surmounted, however. More serious was an accident which threatened to finish off the band forever.

While riding his bike in London one July day two years ago, Drew was hit by a car. It left him badly injured, breaking three vertebrae, five ribs, a shoulder and a knee. It took him the rest of the year to learn how to walk again. The bass, and the band, became a low priority.

Fortunately, he is now back on top of his game. “I’m all right man; all right,” he says. “I still have lots of physio, because of the vertebrae, one of which was really badly shattered. I’m going to have to do a lot for the rest of my life. But I don’t mind that. “At one point I might never have been able to walk again, so I just feel happy to be in a position where I can get my life back to pretty normal.”

Taking time out to recuperate in Spain, Drew returned with a bag of new songs. He showed them to Peter — who had also been busy. Babyshambles were back. “Peter had started coming round my house, and we’d sit around and drink tea and talk about how we missed being on the road and making records,” says Drew. “One day I asked him, ‘What’ve you been listening to?’ and he went, ‘Well, to be honest mate, I’ve been listening to Babyshambles’. So I told him I’d been writing a few new songs while I was away, and I played him New Pair and others.

“He was like, ‘What?! You wrote these?!’ And then he showed me a couple of his new songs, Penguins among them, and suddenly we had something exciting going on.”

“It took Drew to gel it,” adds Peter. “After that he’d come over to Paris and make me sit up straight.”

It also took the talents of a handful of friends of the band, such as songwriter John Robinson (formerly of The Bandits) who penned album-closer Minefield and Fall From Grace, artist Damien Hirst, who designed the sleeve, and producer Stephen Street.

Drew admits Street’s involvement was crucial. “For one, we all get on with him, and secondly he just gets Peter sounding incredible,” he says.

Peter’s favourite song is also its catchiest, and one of the best he’s ever written: the morosely titled Picture Me in a Hospital. “It just turned up on this dictaphone I take everywhere with me,” he says.

“It came out all in one go, and then Drew got hold of it and straightened the edges. To me, that song’s got the whole spirit of the album distilled.”

On Friday, September 13, the lads return to Oxford for a show at the O2 Academy. The date is part of their first tour since 2010, and has caused huge excitement among fans.

“I’m equally excited to get back on the road again as I am to see the fans’ reaction to the new material,” says Mik. “I’m looking forward to it.”

He adds: “To be honest, there was a point not long ago where I thought, ‘Well, that’s it... Babyshambles is well and truly over’.”

And, the band agree, it has been well worth the wait.

Drew says: “The thing is, even though the three of us were apart beforehand, we’ve found out that we’ve still got this great sense of togetherness, despite everything, and I don’t think that will ever go.

“In fact, I think that’s why we do work so well together.”

Peter agrees. “I’ve realised there’s a hunger there for me — not for not having enough to eat, let’s make that clear — but to be in this band. It’s intrinsically a part of me, I think. And it’s taken this album to really remind myself of that.”

  • Babyshambles
  • O2 Academy, Oxford
  • Friday, September 13
  • Tickets: £25.87 from ticketweb.co.uk
  • Sequel to the Prequel is out on Tuesday