Guitarist enjoys big break, however long it lasts
It sounds like the stuff of legend. A local guitarist is painting houses to get by, playing in a well-regarded local band. Within a month he is rehearsing in London with one of Europe's hottest young acts and eventually touring the far corners of the globe.
For Anthony Rossomando, this fantastic journey has been his life for more than a year now.
Best known in these parts for his frenetic playing in the Damn Personals, Rossomando was living the life of a local guitar hotshot, working odd jobs and playing clubs around town. That was when the call came from the Libertines.
"It was like, `I'm going to meet this dude and play some guitar,"' Rossomando recalls in a typically low-key manner of the invitation to meet guitarist Carl Barat and audition.
By all accounts the Libertines, who play the Paradise Monday, should have been on top of the world at that moment. Their debut, "Up the Bracket," produced by Clash legend Mick Jones, earned critical praise. Featuring a dark sentimentality, the album mixed the best elements of Jones's former band with more contemporary influences of esteemed British artists such as the Smiths. Meanwhile, the group's spontaneous and brash live performances resulted in the band sharing bills with everyone from Morrissey to the Strokes.
Yet in the midst of this success, a problem grew. Guitarist Peter Doherty, Barat's songwriting partner and a friend from their days spent squatting in East London tenements, was rapidly spiraling into drug addiction. His personal problems sank to such lows that he began failing to show up for performances.
"He didn't turn up for a tour," Barat says. "Then the second time, we got a guitar tech who knew all the parts in case it happened again because he was so erratic."
At this point it became apparent that the band should begin searching for a touring guitarist to fill in for Doherty on US dates. Keith Wood, president of the band's label, Rough Trade America, started putting the word out in the States.
"We got lots of responses," he says, "and someone recommended Anthony."
A former jazz composition and music education major at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Rossomando, 26, had abandoned the trumpet to focus on guitar during his freshman year and spent hours locked in his dormitory room practicing and teaching himself.
It was that type of raw spirit that the Libertines sought. After a two-day tryout, Barat knew that he had found the right man for the temporary job.
"I checked out a bunch of guys, but Anthony was just a natural, really," Barat says. "He was fast at learning the songs, and he's got a unique style. He plays like someone who hasn't been trained, which is actually what I was looking for."
With the job in hand, Rossomando went to London to meet and practice with the rest of the band -- bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell. "They have a really sincere approach to music that I immediately latched onto,"
Rossomando says. While the Libertines went on to successfully tour America, things didn't go so well for Doherty, who had broken into Barat's apartment, resulting in a jail sentence. Yet on the day of his release, Barat was there to greet him, and the original Libertines lineup reunited onstage that evening, seemingly bringing to an end Rossomando's stint as touring guitarist.
When the group set out to record its second album, once again with Jones, Doherty rapidly slipped into old habits. "The Libertines," which takes on the painful theme of boyhood friends torn apart, was completed, but when it was time to support it on the road the call once again was made to Rossomando.
"I don't spend too much time pondering things that are beyond my control," Rossomando says when asked about the unlikely scenario that found him playing Japan's Fuji Rock Festival as well as a number of large European festivals in the past few months. If anything, he seems suited to simply enjoying the experience.
"I saw the Ben Kweller crew in Scotland, and they carry Wiffle balls and bats on tour," he recalls, laughing, of one particularly unusual experience in his travels.
Maintaining the credo, "Once a Libertine, always a Libertine," Barat says the door remains open should Doherty resolve his personal problems, and he admits that the band's future, with or without his estranged pal, is uncertain.
"It's unlikely we'd call it the Libertines if we did," he says of the possibility of recording his next album with Rossomando. "I haven't really thought that far ahead."
Meanwhile Rossomando is satisfied to take this job as far as it will go. "I don't know what I'm going to do whenever this ends," he says, "but I'm definitely going to see it through to its fruition."
The Libertines perform at the Paradise Monday night at 8:30 with Radio 4. Tickets are $12. Call 617-931-2000.
