The Libertines - I Get Along

AUG 05 2003 · 12:00

The Libertines - I Get Along (2003) Era: UK Post-Punk / Garage Rock Revival (2002–2004) - Peak of early-2000s British indie insurgency; NME-led cultural moment that redefined guitar music's mainstream relevance in the UK High. This video is a primary visual document of one of the most mythologised moments in early-2000s British rock. The confirmed absence of Pete Doherty transforms it from a standard promotional clip into an inadvertent chronicle of the band's fracture, making it uniquely valuable both as a music video artefact and as biographical evidence. Its warm, low-fi early-digital aesthetic and rapid-cut performance style are exemplary of the Rough Trade / NME-era indie visual language, and the footage retains significant interest for researchers of UK subcultural fashion, post-punk revival genre history, and the sociology of indie celebrity. Context: Released in 2003 as the lead track on a US-market EP, 'I Get Along' captured The Libertines at the apex of their cultural moment, NME cover stars, spearheads of the UK garage rock revival, and a band whose internal chaos (Doherty's drug use and eventual imprisonment in September 2003) was already becoming inseparable from their mythology. The video's notable absence of Pete Doherty is itself a document of that disintegration: he failed to appear for the shoot, a pattern that would recur until the band's dissolution in 2004. Written by Carl Barât as a companion piece to Doherty's 'What a Waster' on their debut double A-side single (June 2002), the song encapsulates the band's defiant, anti-establishment posture. The Libertines operated within a London scene centred on Bethnal Green's Albion Rooms and fuelled by NME championing, positioning them as the British counterpart to New York's Strokes-led garage rock wave. Director notes: The video was produced in 2003 as a promotional clip released alongside the US-market 'I Get Along' EP on Rough Trade / Sanctuary Records. Multiple sources confirm that Pete Doherty did not appear in the video, with the most widely cited explanation being that he simply did not turn up for the shoot. The production proceeded with the remaining band members, crew, and extras. One contemporary fan account describes the setting as a studio environment rather than the band's actual Albion Rooms flat, and notes the presence of extras with film cameras styled in a fashion-industry aesthetic, suggesting a label-commissioned, mid-budget promotional production rather than a guerrilla or self-directed shoot. The video was later included on the DVD bonus disc bundled with the 8 September 2003 reissue of the debut album 'Up the Bracket'.