Lawrence is the sort of man who believes The Mother And The Whore is the greatest film ever made. Now you may have heard of people who express that opinion, you may even come across a few of them in real life, but deep down you will always question their honesty. As this brilliant book by Will Hodgkinson demonstrates, Lawrence is an authentic character. His oddness is genuine, and so are his opinions. Lawrence truly loves The Mother And The Whore like no other film. He also believes Vic Godard is the greatest living songwriter. Oh and liquorice candy is the best food in the world.
One of the undeniable achievements of this biography is that you do not even have to be a Lawrence fan to be completely engrossed by the narrative. That I personally happen to love the man's music (Felt's Forever Breathes The Lonely Word, Denim's two studio albums and Go-Kart Mozart's On The Hot Dog Streets are all classics in my eyes) is a nice bonus, but really - you can't help but be fascinated by this strange, enigmatic artist who never washes his jeans, carries a WH Smith bag with him wherever he goes, drinks milky tea and dreams of writing the greatest pop song of all time. Bizarrely, we can all relate. No, seriously, we can.
Street-Level Superstar is not even an especially complimentary portrait. If anything, Lawrence is depicted as a difficult, exasperating man. Intriguing, too, but someone you would rather appreciate from a distance (Lawrence's preferred way of dealing with the world). He has a knack for driving other people insane (John Leckie lost it during the recording sessions for Back In Denim) and he seems to have a somewhat unhealthy relationship with money (embittered ex-girlfriend Michaela: "He loved rich people. They didn't even have to do anything for him to love them"). He is erratic and unreliable. "I was under no illusion", writes Hodgkinson in the final chapter of this biography. "His was not a life for any sane person to aspire". Throughout the book, Lawrence is full of painful self-deprecation but also pride in what he has achieved artistically. "When I was young", he says at some point, "I wanted to live in a matchbox". And this from someone who has spent most of his life pursuing the loftiest ambitions.
Basically, the book gives us one year spent in the company of Lawrence. During this year, we walk with Lawrence through London (and Birmingham, briefly - his hometown), attend his gig at Glastonbury and even the recording session for his latest world smash (titled "Deliveroo Delivery", how else?). And in the background, Will Hodgkinson goes through the man's entire life, from difficult childhood (in an area he hated, with parents he hated) to periods of frenzied creativity to rare friends (Pete Astor, Bobby Gillespie) to estranged girlfriends (both real and imaginary) to years of homelessness and obscurity to the 'grand' unveiling of his giant marble bust in a London gallery. It is quite an incredible story, and Hodgkinson succeeds in bringing the man alive, to the extent that you will be sad to let Lawrence go by the end of it. With his big shopping bag, his famous cap and his diluted tea (two thirds tea, one third milk) bought from Costa Coffee.
The writing is excellent all the way through, Hodgkinson's style is both humorous and poetic. "It was a glorious day in the city, one of those sunlit afternoons when being alive seems like a great idea. A perfect day, then, to go clothes shopping with Lawrence" (actually, a lot of space in the book is given to Lawrence's dressing style, the kind that puts shop assistants on guard). Or take this paragraph, for instance: "Not only did he never appear to eat anything, he rarely drank water either. The only sustenance appeared to come from the milky tea he liked to buy from Costa Coffee towards the end of our long walks. I, on the other hand, was a mere human, in need of water at the very least". Or when he writes about his personal favourite album On The Hot Dog Streets that opens with "Lawrence Takes Over". Hodgkinson calls the song "poignant because the chances of his taking over were by then as likely as his getting stuck into a cheese fondue".
Interestingly, towards the end of the book I started to see certain similarities between Lawrence and Mark E. Smith (who initially was quite generous towards Felt). On the face of it, he also tries to be an authoritarian band leader, stingy with money and unwilling to share writing credits. He also writes all the lyrics and does not play any instruments (you could, in fact, paraphrase the famous quote from Smith and say a Lawrence band is Lawrence "and your granny on bongos"). He also gives crazy instructions to his band members. Like he once told the bassist not to play the A-string and the keyboard player to avoid pressing the black keys. But herein lies that crucial difference. The keyboard player never stopped pressing the black keys, and the bassist kept hitting the A-string (he even suggests, half-jokingly, that Lawrence has no idea where the actual A-string is located).
But despite the failed guidelines, it was all very amiable on the car ride back to London. No bitterness, no threats. He was his usual Lawrence, drinking milky tea, avoiding small talk and writing that elusive hit single in his head. He even approved the draft copy of his biography without any major corrections. As Will Hodgkinson puts it at the very end of the book:
"Lawrence was something else entirely.
Lawrence was a street-level superstar".
