Back to the Bataclan

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Music

Back to the Bataclan

One year ago, this Paris venue was the epicentre of the worst attack on French soil since World War 2. Now reopened and reinvigorated, we attended Pete Doherty's show to reflect on a city changed but defiant.

Until a month ago, the Bataclan theatre was shuttered up and veiled under scaffolding. On November 13, 2015, ninety people were killed after three men entered the venue during an Eagles of Death Metal concert, firing indiscriminately into the tightly packed crowd. Armed police moved in when it became clear that this was a suicide mission and no-one would be spared: two of the attackers blew themselves up and the other was shot dead. The Bataclan was one of eight sites hit in simultaneous attacks carried out by Islamic State that left a hundred and thirty people dead and hundreds wounded. It was the worst atrocity committed in France since the Second World War.

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Last weekend, on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks, the venue reopened with a concert by Sting. A few days later, I made my way along the Canal Saint-Martin from my apartment to watch Pete Doherty, formerly of the Libertines and Babyshambles, play the second of his two nights at the Bataclan. Doherty was a natural choice for the reopened venue, having lived in Paris on and off since 2009, when he left England in an effort to overcome his drug addiction. The day after the attacks, he'd sat outside the Bataclan with his acoustic guitar in a troubadour's show of solidarity.

I had a drink at the rock bar next to the venue and then joined the queue. I was curious about the audience: would there be an element of tourism, drawn by the elephant-in-the-room significance of last year's tragic events? The show was sold out, as it had been a year earlier when Eagles of Death Metal performed: the venue was hot and thick with bodies. In the initial moments after entering, the act of macabre visualisation felt communal: it was impossible not to imagine the physical reality of what took place that night, its infernal logistics.

The human imagination is mercifully limited, and after ten minutes, we were no longer in the Bataclan of panic and blood, but in a pretty cool ornate theatre, just the right size for the sweaty intimacy that makes for a good gig. In fact, it felt like a party. Sure, I took note of the emergency exits out of irrational anxiety, but I succumbed with ease to the boozy and good-natured atmosphere. During that night last November it was the people at the bar who had been attacked first; tonight there was a cheery clamour for half-pints of lager and plastic cups of wine.

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The impact of November 13 on the psyche of the city should not be underestimated. Part of what made the attacks so disturbing was that – with the exception of the Stade de France – they were launched not against high-profile or symbolic targets, but seemingly random "soft targets", including bars and restaurants around the city's more fun, grungier, youth-cultural areas. Much of the tragedy took place in the 10th and 11th arrondissements, areas usually bustling with Parisians drinking and eating on terraces, or dancing in clubs and grotty bars. It's the area of Paris that most resembles Dalston, Shoreditch or Kreuzberg – the place you go to forget your cares, meet your mates, get drunk, kiss a girl or a guy, dance to loud music. In a city where elegance and refinement can verge on the stifling, the area around the canal offers a welcome touch of carefreeness.

I lived in Paris for much of 2015, and left a week before the attacks took place. Watching the events unfold in the media, I was astonished to see my canal-side stomping grounds transformed into a combat zone (a visibly rattled President Francois Hollande, who was present at the Stade de France when the attacks began, quickly declared that this was nothing less than an 'act of war'). As the scale of the carnage became apparent, I was beset by the depressive notion that it was all over: they had killed Paris, and the graceful, confident manner of living I'd found so enchanting there could not persist. I'd been planning to move back to Paris on an artistic residency, and for a stunned couple of days I selfishly worried that this would no longer be possible, that the rapidly declared "state of emergency" would separate me from a beloved city I was by no means done with.

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Of course, it didn't play out like that. Parisians say it took a few months, but normal service, with the bustle of bars and nightlife, did resume. Let's not forget that Paris endured the Nazi occupation, the massacre of 1961, and sporadic terror attacks at the hands of Islamists, and right-wing dissidents (though none of them approached the scale of 2015). Witnessing last year's atrocities on distant screens, it was easy to forget how expansive and busy the city is: when you head out in search of a good time, the likelihood of being caught up in an attack feels tiny. Besides, what choice did people have? Stay in and cower? That was never going to happen, and Parisians once again enjoy themselves with the élan their heritage encourages, accepting the calculated risks of big-city life in the 21st century climate.

I was navigating my way back from the bar when Pete Doherty emerged onstage, flanked by his band of gorgeous young things. A French woman dressed in red announced a minute's silence for the victims. A pissed English guy at the bar hollered and was quickly shushed. Then the band kicked off with "I Don't Love Anyone (But You're Not Just Anyone)" from Doherty's imminent, second solo album Hamburg Demonstrations. Next came one of the gems of his oeuvre, "The Last of the English Roses", which prompted my girlfriend to note that anyone who rhymes "Enochs" with "Reeboks" must be touched by greatness.

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Still cherubic (if puffy) at 37, rumours that the notoriously debauched singer had fully gotten his shit together proved less than persuasive. Inebriation levels notwithstanding, Doherty's songwriting has never really dipped in quality: the newest songs have all the wit, observational deftness and charisma that helped propel the Libertines to era-defining heights a decade and a half ago. Doherty excels at affectionate character sketches tinged with junked-out wistfulness, yet beneath it all throbs a death wish that looks less like a posture each passing year, as the boyish man stumbles towards what may prove to be the mother of all midlife crises.

In his (minimal) between-song banter, Doherty scarcely mentioned the night of the violence, aside from muttering that he and his band were "not like those others - we came here to be nice to you." One new song, however, addressed the atrocity head-on: "Hell to Pay at the Gates of Heaven", a rollicking, countryfied stomp recalling Bright Eyes at their most shit-kicking. Priorly Doherty had lurched through the set like a man unable to look the world in the eye, with far more passion being shown by his bandmates (his bass-player and shirtless guitarist were having the night of their lives). Now he crackled with vim and connection as he snarled, "Come on boys, choose your weapon: J-45" - a nod to a favoured acoustic guitar model - "or an AK-47." For the length of the song, music was war, music was winning.

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Doherty's reanimation proved catching. French audiences can be reserved to the point of petrification, but when the band belted out the gleefully reckless Babyshambles number "Fuck Forever", the roof was taken off. After howling the last chorus, Doherty picked up the mic-stand and hurled it over the pit. As it clattered perilously onto a surge of hands, the anarchic gesture put me in mind of the Parisian André Breton's declaration, a century ago, that the simplest surrealist act consists of dashing into the street with a pistol in your hand and firing blindly into the crowd. And then, with inevitable circularity, I was visualising again the brutalised young men who had fired blindly into crowds just like this one. Some destructive acts are cathartic, and others leave lifelong shadows of grief and anger.

This era of spectacular atrocities, viral snuff movies, and ratings-friendly post-truth demagogues raises the awkward question of voyeuristic complicity. On the night of the Paris massacre, Twitter had lit up like a Christmas tree: even as the bodies fell, the sense of a dark collective excitement - an alienated neuronal rush that flooded social media under a guise of concern and compassion - was impossible to dispel. For a few uneasy hours it seemed as if life in western Europe had become so bored, so emotionally impoverished in its reduction to the scope of screens and windows, that it took the spectacle of mass-murder to jolt a digitally atomised society into feeling anything at all.

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But no - most people, in France or anywhere, want peace, the possibility of a night out or a companionable meal without fear or violence. And far from numb, this Bataclan crowd was in a state of delight. Now Pete Doherty was holding something aloft - was it a paper bird? - setting it on fire and launching that too into the crowd. For the last few songs he hurled anything that came to hand: the mic-stand again; a Zippo lighter that could have taken someone's eye out; an acoustic guitar; a mannequin that had been sitting next to the drum-kit. The security guards sternly retrieved the equipment only for Doherty to nonchalantly fling it back at the crowd. During the encore, he unrolled a tricolour and wafted it out over the audience, where it was upheld by hundreds of arms till it floated out of sight somewhere near the bar.

The final song was the gorgeously elegiac solo number "Flags of the Old Regime", written after the death of Amy Winehouse, but whose chorus could not but resonate differently tonight:

I don't want to die any more 
Any more than I did want to die before

Some traumas will never heal. One grieving father had refused to attend the city's commemorative ceremonies days earlier, calling them "pointless". On French radio he'd spoken of "an anger that will never leave me". Yet what was happening here tonight - this raucous gig on a site where festivity had been met with savagery - seemed honourable, a vital response to an act of hate. By the end, Doherty, apparently barely able to stand, slumped and sat by the kit where the mannequin had been. Then his grinning bandmates helped him to his feet so they all could take a bow - and there was Pete Doherty, fucked forever, waving to the crowd, and the ghosts of ninety rock-fans who died while enjoying one of the infidel West's loveliest offerings: a good time in the city on a Friday night.

Rob Doyle is an author residing in Paris. You can follow him on Twitter.

(Lead photo via Wikipedia. Second photo by Takver via Flickr)