In 2004, the British journalist Chris Heath spent more than a year shadowing Robbie Williams’s every movement for his book on the singer, Feel. If this was above and beyond the usual requirements of a biographer, you could see why he thought it might pay off. We tend to be fascinated by success, and the cost that fame can exact upon the individual. And so who better to take such an approach with than both the biggest pop star of his generation and the most self-critical?
The music writer Will Hodgkinson clearly took note, because now he has done something similar, albeit with a singer the vast majority of us will never have heard of: Lawrence. But then navigation of failure is far more interesting than the navigation of success. It’s easier to relate to, too.
Like Lulu (and Sting, and Jedward), Lawrence goes by no surname. Back in the 1980s, he had a glimmer of cult appeal with his indie band Felt, and then again a decade later with Denim. But his records never sold, and so Lawrence was forced to retreat into the margins, to count his scars and convince himself that glory really had been his for the taking – if only.
Hodgkinson, who has previously written about 1970s novelty pop, elected to spend four seasons trailing Lawrence largely because he’s a fan. If Lawrence considers himself a genius, Hodgkinson willingly concurs. But he is also fascinated by what it is that makes an artist an artist, particularly an overlooked one. What kind of mindset is required? How much belligerence? Street-Level Superstar is essentially a pop version of Withnail and I after “I” has gone off to become famous.
Lawrence, 63, today lives alone in a council flat in London, in reduced circumstances, perhaps, but with his vision undimmed. He exists on a diet of crackers, milky tea (the proportions of which must be correct), and a particular kind of liquorice that he fears Poundland has discontinued. He hasn’t had a girlfriend for decades, as he tends to find fault with them. One ex’s face, he tells Hodgkinson, was “too round”, another had bad breath. Whenever he has amassed enough two pence coins, he takes them to the bank to exchange for notes. From this he derives satisfaction.
For the purposes of narrative structure, Hodgkinson – who is terribly patient with his wayward subject – treads the streets of London with him, window shopping for clothes Lawrence can’t afford, and gently unpicking his biography as they go. The son of a Birmingham market stall trader, Lawrence laments the fact that Felt’s gloriously jangly 1985 single, Primitive Painters, wasn’t a hit, but shrugs off his current situation. “I’m a lonesome figure,” he says. Winningly, Hodgkinson reaches out to a couple of former paramours, who don’t always remember him fondly. “He couldn’t sing to save his life,” one tells him. Another laments the absence of lust. “I wasn’t testosterone-heavy,” Lawrence concedes. “I was a two-minute wonder.”
They walk and talk a lot. Though not everything he says is necessarily worthy of commemoration (“if you saw a cat from outer space, it would be a hairless cat”), his single-mindedness is fascinating. A songwriter does not need success to remain a songwriter, and if penury does frustrate him, then this is merely collateral damage. There may be a mental health label for such extreme and unwavering focus, but Hodgkinson – a writer, not a psychiatrist – doesn’t reach for it.
Lawrence recalls the pain of watching former peers such as Jarvis Cocker go on to soar, and the time in 1997 when he was convinced that Denim’s Summer Smash looked like becoming a hit until Diana, Princess of Wales died in a car crash, and radio promptly removed the song – with its unwittingly insensitive title – from the airwaves. “What happened next,” Hodgkinson probes. The answer: “I had a mental collapse.” There is more to add here, surely, but Lawrence doesn’t offer it, and Hodgkinson elects not to pry.
Gamely, Lawrence still hasn’t given up the the good fight. His latest outfit, Mozart Estate, currently has just 1,785 streams per month on Spotify, so that elusive hit looks set to remain just that.
With Street-Level Superstar, however, Hodgkinson has performed an immense kindness. To be the subject of an actual biography can only bolster Lawrence’s opinion of himself. Many “geniuses” are not appreciated in their own lifetime, and this may prove his ultimate fate, too. So be it. At one point, Hodgkinson wonders why he doesn’t just give in and get a proper job?
“I am a songwriter,” Lawrence tells him. “It is what I must do. However long I have to sit in this room with no money, no matter how many times the police break down my door to check I’m still alive, I cannot admit I’m not an artist.”
Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson is published by Nine Eight Books (£22). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
