Arcady by Pete Doherty

Album: Grace/Wastelands (2009)

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This album opener is just Doherty, harmonica and some acoustic finger-picking from Blur's Graham Coxon. Doherty told The Sun March 13, 2009: "That's how I started out. The mayhem came later. The thing about all the chaos, the so-called rock and roll thing, is you can throw yourself headlong into it, into the night, into eternity. It's a childish fantasy thing. You're supposed to die and stay forever that age but most of us don't. Most of us actually have to come out the other side and lying there is still the old trusty harmonica."
Arcady, or Arcadia is a central plateau in Greece. Later writers idealized the life of shepherds there during ancient times.
Doherty explained the lyrical content to the NME March 21, 2009: "I'd been listening to an Edwardian musical that mentioned Arcady. It's still a dream of a place without infringement. A place without oppression… a place of creativity."

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