News

Pete Doherty Cancels Shows Over Health Scare, Nobody Surprised

11:16 a.m. · November 25, 2009 · by Craig Hubert

The excuse of "exhaustion" has become the "irreconcilable differences" of the music world, a signifier thrown out to the press by a public relations team that can broadly mean a variety of things -- most of them worse than being exhausted.

So when Pete Doherty, a man with a sordid history of drug abuse, canceled a string of tour dates in Ireland last month due to "exhaustion," nobody really believed it. That's why it is no surprise that in an interview with NME, the artist admitted that he was actually in the hospital, hooked to a life-support machine:

"Their [doctors'] immediate thought was that it was to do with drugs but it wasn't," he said. "What happened? Well, I don't know. I don't remember. I was running into the walls, making steering wheel signs with my hands. And then I just… stopped. My body just stopped."

Later in the interview, Doherty claims that he was cleared to leave the hospital after an overnight stay, and plans to resume touring with current band, Babyshambles, in December. [Spinner]