The New Cue #411 September 6: Lawrence, Street Level Superstar.
"He complained of not being able to make friends with the Hasidic Jewish community..."
Good morning,
Welcome to The New Cue. We’re currently undergoing some renovations, so apologies if you trip over any unfinished ideas. We’re developing half-remembered conversations, creating new moods, generally undergoing extensive vibe refurbishment. Bits keep getting underfoot.
First thing we did was knock down the old Friday Recommender edition. We’re now rebuilding it, and therefore pausing all paid subs for one week while we finish our deliberations in private. You probably won’t notice any difference when we’re done, but please humour us.
We do have one thing out this week to Recommend while we’re away, though, and that’s Will Hodgkinson’s book about Lawrence of Felt, Denim, Mozart Estate: Street-Level Superstar. There’s an interview with Will about that below. You can listen to this best-of Lawrence playlist I made a while back to accompany our own Lawrence interview while you read.
We’ll keep feeding your need for prime TNC content on Monday by revisiting our chat from earlier this year with Lily Fontaine, the singer and guitarist of newly-crowned Mercury Prize winners English Teacher, and then we’ll see you next Friday.
Cheers,
Your pals at The New Cue
Bibliomaniac
Your guide to the best in music-related new books.
Book Title: Street Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence
Author: Will Hodgkinson
Publisher: Nine Eight
Pitch us the book, Will: A year in the company of Lawrence, Britain’s most eccentric cult hero. After five decades of bad luck, bad judgement, homelessness, addiction and all out despair with his bands Felt, Denim, Go-Kart Mozart and Mozart Estate, Lawrence set himself a new goal: to become the world’s first pensioner pop star. I followed him as he aimed for the stars but ended up in a series of dull suburban enclaves, all the while trying to come up with the one thing that would transform his life and envelop him in a glorious bubble of money and fame: a hit.
Describe the writing process:
Each week, generally on a Friday, I met up with Lawrence as he went about his business. One day involved helping him drag sackfuls of 1p and 2p coins to the bank to exchange for £38.50. On another occasion I returned with him to his childhood home in Water Orton, near Birmingham, as he tried to work out why he was the way he was. I was observing how the world reacted to him and how he reacted to the world, asking him questions about his life that he might or might not answer along the way. Then I went home and spent all weekend writing up the chapter, which I refused to show Lawrence because he is a total control freak and would have fiddled about with it to death. Eventually, I had no choice but to let him read the manuscript. That’s where the problems started.
Tell us your favourite anecdote in the book:
The first rule Lawrence gave me was ‘no anecdotes,’ which I reacted to by including this one. In 1986, Felt were on the verge of big things and were booked to perform a showcase concert in West London before A&Rs from all the major record labels. Shortly before they were due on-stage, Lawrence decided to take a tab of LSD, thinking that it would be a good way to loosen up and perhaps have an out-of-body experience as well. Half an hour later, he stared at the roomful of people standing before him and said: ‘Why are you all looking at me?’
Sometime during the second song, the back wall of the venue started to melt away. He told the lighting engineer to turn the lights down until the whole place was cast in blackness. Then he refused to play a note until everyone turned around to face the back of the room. When they didn’t comply, he told them to ask for a refund. ‘Go talk to that guy over there,’ he said, pointing to the promoter, Jeff Barrett of Heavenly Records, who was busy slamming the lid on his metal money box and getting out of there as quickly as possible. Felt were not offered a record deal.
Describe your relationship arc with the subject over the book’s course:
Initially it was great. One of us would suggest a place to go to or a thing to do, and although there were times when I got annoyed with him, like when he didn’t turn up, refused to answer his phone and wouldn’t respond to my hammering like mad on his door, for the most part he was superb company and very funny indeed. On our first trip together, to Golders Green in north London, he complained of not being able to make friends with the Hasidic Jewish community. “I go up to the men in big hats and say, ‘Gentlemen, hello,’” he told me, throwing his arms open wide. “And I get nothing back.”
Some of the more painful subjects took a while for him to open up on, and sometimes he would have a tantrum about one thing or another, but his worldview was so unique that I knew I was getting gold. Then he read the manuscript. We had a massive fight after he suggested spending a day on each chapter so he could go through it with me and make endless changes. Obviously I wasn’t going to do that, so we had a crisis meeting at the publishers. After much shouting and gnashing of teeth we made an uneasy truce, and now he loves the book.
And credit to Lawrence: he never complained about old girlfriends saying how awful he was, or me writing about his various character flaws, or any other of the horrible ways in which I have portrayed him. He was more likely to complain about, say, the exact location a photograph of the Sex Pistols in 1976 was taken. We had an hour-long argument about that very subject, actually.
Can we see you in live book promo action: You sure can. Lawrence and I will be at Rough Trade East on September 6, Resident in Brighton on September 12, and I’ll be at Trades Club in Hebden Bridge on Sep 14 and the Tangled Parrot bookshop in Swansea on Sep 28. More to come, hopefully.
What’s next: Have you got the number of a good therapist?
Will Hodgkinson.