In Conversation with Will Hodgkinson, author of Street-Level Superstar

“I can't imagine Bruce Springsteen telling you about how he prefers to wee in the open rather than in a urinal. It's just not gonna happen, is it!” 

Interview by Emily Waller

Meeting journalist and author Will Hodgkinson at Rough Trade East one Friday afternoon in October, I find him easy to talk to. It's clear he has much admiration and affection for Lawrence (Felt, Denim, Mozart Estate), the subject of his new masterpiece (and Rough Trade Book of the Year) examining a year in the life of Britain's most singular musical genius who never hit the big time. Just as we are finishing up our conversation, the artist himself arrives to begin signing copies of the book. He and Will discuss the response post-publication and recent press including a five-star review in the Daily Mail. But they soon move on to other topics, including which is the best TK Maxx in London (Lawrence says he has visited them all) and the unpredictable shopping experience it throws up: when the goldmine of potential delivers handsomely on a one-off piece in your size at a fraction of the original cost vs the crushing disappointment of coming away empty handed. I could sit and listen to them all day.

But what is the price of a dream? Speaking to Will about his extraordinary year spent with the mononymous would-be pop star, it’s impossible not to be captivated - both by the eccentric tale of his subject and the journey that brought him to share it.

Do you think you can liken a biographer to the role of a music producer? Where they are responsible for arranging and mastering the songs, a biographer is sort of in charge of doing the same for their subject’s stories?

That's a very interesting question, I hadn't thought of it. I think a couple of things to remember: this is not a normal music biography, it's an observation, and it's based around this year we spent together. I think that the comparison bears out in the sense that if you're a producer, how much of yourself do you impose on the subject? So you get someone like Phil Spector, who always thought his idea was more important than the artist. But then you get, I don’t know, more modern producers, who I think would understand that the artist has some kind of unique vision, and that their job is trying to bring it out and shine a light on it in the best way possible. So I think with this, I definitely didn't impose my vision on Lawrence, but at the same time, the reason I want to do it in the first place was because he's such a fascinating character. The comparison is: Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins produced an album by Felt and said to Lawrence that he wasn’t allowed to come and hear it while he was mixing it, because he knew that if he did, he’d want to change it .I was gonna capture the person I saw, but when it came to writing it, I wasn't going to let him interfere. So I wouldn't let him read it and he kept hassling me until he’d read the whole thing and when he read it initially, he went crazy. But then very quickly, he loved it and so there was a trust on both sides, ultimately. It just took a while to get there.

What was your favourite day spent with Lawrence?

That's another interesting question. They're all so different. In a way, the best and the worst was Glastonbury. There's a couple of days, but there's one day in particular where everything, every aspect of Lawrence really shone out. The fact that he will make you incredibly nervous by not turning up on time and all the rest of it, his concept of how things are. For example, he's going “come and find me”, where we had, like, 10 minutes before he was due to go on stage. And I said, well, where are you? And he replied “in a field.” But this is Glastonbury! He had no concept of the size. He told me that I had to find him a cottage for no money and, you know, it'd be good if the rest of the band could stay there too. Incredibly, I did find him a cottage. I met these really nice posh people who lived right around the corner and they said sure, he could stay with them. And then, of course, he couldn't find their house. So that was very difficult. But the other interesting thing was his reactions to Glastonbury itself. So he hates nature, he hates crowds, he hates food, but he initially said he liked Glastonbury, that it reminded him of The Hobbit and that it was like where they all hang out for their annual festival. He was like a child, you know, remembering The Shire and having a nice time before they had to go off on their adventure. But at the same time he said, “I couldn't believe all the horrible food that people are gorging themselves on creating a horrible, big fug of aroma.” That's one of his lines to describe food! He just hates food and he hates people eating. So it was great because it was all aspects of Lawrence and he was in such an unlikely place as it’s so opposite to the kind of world that he operates in: urban, coming to Rough Trade, going to bookshops, all the sort of stuff he likes that doesn't involve big crowds and drunkenness. 

During or after this process, have you thought about whether you would, or could, ever tackle another person’s story via the same method applied to this book?

I've had three different offers. I don't really want to say who they are, but one of them wasn't right because he's not only quite mad, but quite violent and I thought I don't really want to get my head chopped off by this person. Another person was very, very wealthy, and I felt I'm not going to be able to do the things I did with Lawrence, where literally, the magic of the book for me was things like, when he had no money one day and he wanted me to help drag his sacks of coins to a machine where you feed it and get, like, 40 pounds out. With a wealthy, rich person you're never gonna get the reaction, the natural reaction of the world that you get with someone like Lawrence, because he really does wander in the world. I was talking about the world as much as I was talking about Lawrence; when he goes to Poundland, when the kids at the bus stop are shouting “fuck off”, you know? All this sort of stuff that I'm never gonna get with someone who has their own private driver. The other one was someone who read the book and absolutely loved it and I think kind of always wanted to be an indie maverick, like Lawrence, but actually was quite successful in other ways. I felt there's gonna be a reinvention going on there. So in answer to your question, I don't know if it's possible. I mean, I'd love to in a way, but could I do it? Could it be done with a famous rock star? Imagine me trying to do it with Jarvis Cocker, who's kind of similar in some ways in his creativity, but gets recognised everywhere. He is so recognisable and he's been very, very successful, so would he allow you to call up old girlfriends who tell you he’s terrible at sex or whatever? I don't think he would! Not to say that Jarvis is, by the way, but you know what I mean! I was so naturally fascinated by Lawrence and he is a friend as well, I've known him for 20 years. So, yes, I would really like to, but I just can’t think of anyone who would agree to do it with me, who I'd be fascinated enough by and would let me tell their personal truth. 

I’ve read the extra chapter, where Sian Pattenden examines the aftermath of the book and it’s so fascinating to get this added insight, particularly this sort of push-pull as to whose book it was. I can imagine there were some very tense moments, but certainly you seem to very much admire that for all Lawrence’s particulars, he is very open to the “mask being off” and the spotlight focussing on all aspects of his individual self?

OK, so we did have lots of arguments, but they were all about tiny details; crazy details, like things that nobody ever in a million years would see. We had a two-hour argument about the location of a hat shop in Golders Green or Stamford Hill, arguments about tiny things that no one else would care about, but he did. But then he absolutely didn’t mind at all about Michaela, his old girlfriend, saying he had zero talent, was a terrible boyfriend, really bad in bed with nothing going for him whatsoever. He was like “yeah, that's true!” So that kind of stuff is remarkable. I think having known Lawrence for quite a while, my main worry about doing the book was unreliability, because I've had so many conversations where he was in a worse state and also he can be very controlling. He said at the beginning “I don't want you to mention my surname.” That’s fine, but then he didn’t want me to talk to other members of Felt and I thought, oh I don’t know about that. Then I thought, well I’m doing a portrait of Lawrence and it's his vision, so it’s ok. Other people who come into it kind of come into it naturally. The girlfriends, I felt, were interesting enough, and I just thought, well, I'm not doing the definitive story, you know? It's almost like a novel, which happens to be true; it's not a definitive book, it's a portrait of a year. So we sort of agreed on that. There are lots of things he told me along the way, like “no use of the word ‘just’”, crazy things like that. So we did have battles. What really did surprise me when we were walking around was that no subject was really off the table. I can't imagine Bruce Springsteen telling you about how he prefers to wee in the open rather than in a urinal. It's just not gonna happen, is it?! So that was amazing and for me, what really makes the book, that you're dealing with someone who really has a very different approach to life. 

“Lawrence, for better off or worse, really has had the bravery to go down his own path, and that path's been really bloody difficult… ultimately it has resulted in totally unique art and whether you like it or not, you can't say that anyone's making records like Lawrence.”

My view of the modern music industry is that being authentically unique is increasingly challenging - it’s difficult to find, it’s certainly difficult to fake. Is there any ending where Lawrence’s legacy could be viewed as actually rather successful: successful in not giving up and successful in being wholly unique?

I think maybe it's beginning to happen now and he's 63 years old. It kind of went in waves. In the 80s I was too young to see Felt, but I get the impression they were a cool band, not big, but cool. In those days, you had a system for alternative music: there's the NME, all these independent labels and it was very much separate from the world of Top of the Pops. Lawrence kind of discovered this world and knew that he could operate within it. It's an attractive world, it's like The Velvet Underground world, there's a model there. I think the big change came in the 90s, when Britpop came out and suddenly all these alternative people wanted to go to private clubs and they wanted to act really sexist when before they'd been very sensitive. And they wanted to be lads, you know, they wanted to be like Oasis, most of the middle class, indie, nerdy student types. It's almost like everyone had to buy into this world where they were into football and drinking and taking coke; it's all celebratory and we're all in it together. In a way, I think there's a big hangover from that…it was sort of the end of the idea that you could be underground, and that could be a really good place. The funny thing about Lawrence is that he's so alternative in his mindset, but he's always saying he wants to be right at the heart of the mainstream. He wants to make a record with Charli XCX, you know? But I think that that's all part of his underground mentality, really, because he knows ultimately that he's not a normal person. So I think that's all part of it and yeah I do think it's true, it's very hard for people to hold onto their vision. Something one person said to me - I think it was Lawrence’s guitarist - he said that there's a million things you can do with your life and, especially as you get older, most of us feel that we must conform. We must settle down, we must get a mortgage and stuff. And Lawrence, for better off or worse, really has had the bravery to go down his own path, and that path's been really bloody difficult. It's been very poverty stricken and very lonely. But ultimately it has resulted in totally unique art and whether you like it or not, you can't say that anyone's making records like Lawrence. So I think his legacy is gonna be really good, but it's like Van Gogh, in his lifetime it’s gonna be really hard. 

In the extra chapter, Lawrence says he wanted to call the book ‘The Price of a Dream’. How much has this experience taught you, or challenged what you thought you knew, about the price of a dream?

The price of a dream. So this is the thing I thought a lot about with Lawrence, whether it's a sacrifice or whether it's something that you've got no choice in. And my conclusion ultimately, was that Lawrence had no choice but to go down this path. But what is the price of a dream? It's huge. Lawrence had a very particular vision and what that meant was that he wasn't going to have a family in the normal sense as it’s such a difficult thing to maintain, he probably wasn’t going to be rich because to do it this way, it is going to be non-commercial. It could do a lot of damage to his mental health, it could do a lot of damage to his physical health, but the funny thing was that none of it was really like an indulgence. It wasn’t like hedonism, it was very much like, almost like a monastic, “this is how it's gotta be”. Normally people have a vision of that when they're talking about religion and spirituality, or morality. So I think the price of a dream was huge, but the rewards are huge too. He paid the price of a dream, but maybe the reward of his dream is finally paying off.

Rough Trade Book of the Year 2024

Street-Level Superstar, A Year With Lawrence

Limited signed copies + extra chapter exclusive to Rough Trade are available now.