LAWRENCE: A CREATIVELY RESTLESS JOURNEY

It’s been a busy few years for Lawrence, one of the UK’s greatest ever lyricists and frontman for seminal bands Felt, Denim and Go-Kart Mozart.

All ten Felt albums have been re-issued; there’s been a new Go-Kart Mozart album and accompanying tour, an international retrospective exhibition as well as receiving the Q Maverick Award (which is given to musicians who’ve inspired cult worship). Jez Collins talks to Lawrence about his creative Restless journey.

Born in Birmingham, Lawrence and his family moved to the outer suburbs of the city following a violent crime near their house when he was just seven years old. Plucked from his close-knit community of friends, Lawrence’s primary objective from day one was to escape from his new home in leafy Water Orton. It would be a few years before he could do this so he immersed himself in books, music and film, eventually teaming up with the classically trained guitar virtuoso Maurice Deebank to form Felt, one of the great indie bands of the 1980s.

Long-time fan Jez Collins of Birmingham Music Archive meets Lawrence at his second home; Fix Coffee on Whitecross Street in London.

It’s a sunny day and all seems well in Lawrence’s world. Coffees ordered we make our way over to Lawrence’s flat. Once inside I feel instantly at home, partly because the flat features so prominently in Lawrence of Belgravia, the beautiful and sensitive portrayal of Lawrence by his friend and filmmaker Paul Kelly, partly because I’m drawn to Lawrence’s books, arranged in order across a number of shelves so that the spines create a multi-coloured and mesmerising mosaic (the records, of which there are many, are next to be rehoused from their plastic prisons).

I take my seat and try not to be distracted by the stunning views across London.

I mention seeing Go-Kart Mozart in 2018 and wonder how he felt being out on the road again. “This is the best version of the band, it’s the best time to see us. I’ve worked with three musical geniuses, Maurice Deebank and Martin Duffy in Felt and now Terry Miles, who’s Martin’s cousin, in Go-Kart Mozart. When you’re in a band with musicians like this you feel safe and formidable on stage, you can take anything on. We practice a lot and we’re professional. I’ve never had an ‘it’ll be alright on the night’ type attitude, I don’t like that. Me and Maurice would practice for hours and hours perfecting our sound and music. I’ve always been professional, even when I had day jobs in the cellar or the warehouse. I made sure it was clean and tidy and all the boxes were in neat rows. I always wanted to be the best.”

J: It seemed like you were having fun up on stage.
L: I could never understand those lackadaisical bands. Why bother being in a band? When we come off stage and we’ve made just one mistake, I miss a line or something, we beat ourselves up. It’s a great unit and I really like it as it has an end date.
J: An end date?
L: Yes. One more album and touring until the end of the festival season and then that’s it. I need new projects all the time. It will let people catch up with us.

J: I was astonished by Mini Mart. It had elements of Music Hall, of classic musicals, pop, glam, electro and electro-glam but it deals with important subjects such as depression, execution, poverty, drugs. What was the thinking behind the album?
L: I loved musicals before I loved the Velvet Underground. I was brought up with them. Mom and Dad listened to Radio 2 so it would be all melodies and musicals. Musicals are the hardest songs and music to write and I wanted to write them as good as the ones I was listening to. I think with Mini Mart I got there, it’s got that Lionel Bart type thing. This is what I’ve been striving towards. Hollywood and British Music Hall have phenomenal songs and they spoke about the issues of their day. Songs of great sorrow, politics, complex things to write. It’s taken me a long time to get there and Mini Mart is the epitome of that for me so I’m glad you saw that. Lionel Bart, Marie Lloyd, very British, amazing people.

J: How was the reception to the album?
L: It’s odd. When we play Relative Poverty the first time, people sing along and I’ve always wanted that, it’s a great feeling that something you’ve written is being sung and it’s got that double meaning. And people singing with joy ‘When you’re depressed’. It makes you smile. I think we’ve reached something with Go-Kart Mozart.

J: It’s interesting that you say that as I always thought Felt were uplifting.
L: With Felt it was uplifting and I wanted people to be moved. If you don’t get over the barrier of being recognised though it’s very hard. And it was hard to convey what we were trying to do as a support band. There was no apparatus behind us and this is why I wanted to be on a major. I’d go and see (Echo and the) the Bunnymen and they would have light shows or a screen and it makes a difference. You need a bit of infrastructure, some money behind you. And Felt missed this.

J: Felt seemed quite singular though, if you were on a major would it have been different?
L: It depends on your A&R. Roddy Frame and Steven Duffy sailed through the 80s, they did it really well. Roddy had an A&R man who looked after him, we needed that.

J: So why didn’t it happen?
L: Down to John Peel. If he liked you, you made it. He just didn’t like us. If we’d have been lucky to be a John Peel band it would have been a different story.

J: Visual aesthetics and representation of the band seem very important to you?
L: Yes. It’s so important. If it looks wrong, if I go into a record shop to buy an album and the sleeve looks wrong on a record I won’t buy it anymore. I think ‘my gosh’, it puts me off. When I was a kid I‘d go by the artwork first, it’s that sixth sense about it. Aesthetically, now it’s all correct. When I was in the Cherry Red office (the bands’ record label), I saw Amazon reviews and I saw about four of them. Three of them said they didn’t like the box we put the CDs in. They said it looked like a 90s techno record. I wanted to go around everybody’s house and explain that it’s one of the most important Felt artefacts, that it’s a facsimile of the Master’s box for the very first single, Index. When I sent it off to the pressing plant, the bloke there said ‘are you sure you want to press this? It sounds terrible.’ and I said ‘yeah, of course I do’ and they said ‘usually you’d have a master tape’ but I didn’t know what they meant. So they transferred it onto master tape and when they sent the master back they sent it back in this box. So the box is a facsimile of the box they sent Index back to me, and all I’m trying to do is give fans rare artefacts from the archive. So the boxes are full of posters and ephemera to do with the band artefacts from Felt’s history, so it all makes sense. So to read some person saying ‘Lawrence has ruined everything by putting it in a box like a 90s techno record…’

The Felt re-issues are putting Felt higher up the ladder, it’s lovely to do that. I can get the sleeves and albums in order although it won’t make me money or famous. I want to be famous for writing great music, writing great lyrics, not famous for being a celebrity but famous for being an artist.

J: But aren’t you this already?
L: There are fans around the world, we are a cult band but I’d like it to be broadened out. I do notice that I’m getting bigger. The film (Lawrence of Belgravia, 2011) had a big impact. We reached a level where I was recognised on the street for the first time and the re-issues will help again.
I’d like to experience things that only people with money experience; I want to go on a private jet. Really, I do. Sack off the bus and tube. I’d like a driver and access car – that heady world. I’m not saying you’d lose me in there, I’d just like to observe and comment on it, that’s what I’m interested in. I don’t want to be in an indie ghetto, that’s never been my intention. I never understood why people would say if you went to a major in the 80s you were a sell-out. I never understood it. If you’re in a band you want to be the best, the biggest, sell a lot of records. I’ve read loads of interviews with bands who have new records out and they say ‘I don’t care if it only sells one copy’. Hold on a minute. I care. I don’t want my record to only sell one copy. I’ve read that quote a million times. That for me is not on. I’m at the completely other end of that spectrum. I don’t think there is anything wrong with being ambitious. In America they don’t have this thing the British have of apologising for being famous or rich. How many times have you read: ‘Yeah, but I’m still working class’? I’ve read it a billion times. It sickens me. This kind of attitude of always having to explain yourself.

J: Felt. Denim. Go-Kart Mozart. That is a fantastic trio of bands to be part of.
L: I want to be the one artist that has hardly put a foot wrong. So when we talk about Scott Walker we usually like the albums 1 to 4, and when I was in Felt I was mad on Mike Nesmith’s solo albums, but what I’m talking about really is 1970-76. Usually we like certain periods, so the biggest one is people like the Velvet Underground but don’t like Lou Reed. But hopefully, with me, it’s a new kind of artist where you can like everything, I hope. It’s all relevant, it all makes sense, you can follow it through like a proper artist, like Jack Kerouac books.
I’ve got a book of lyrics coming out, that’s why there’s no lyric’s on the releases at the moment. I want all my words together in one pocket-sized paper book; portable and easy to access. An overview of a life’s work like a poets anthology, from the beginning until now. I want to make a film, write a book. I’m writing a play at the moment. I have an idea but can’t say anything yet but I want it staged at The Royal Court Theatre on Sloane Square.

I also want to be in a film by Andrea Arnold or work with her or have a bit part. She made Fish Tank and American Honey. When I saw that film it was a game changer. I just feel the way she approaches her projects, I just feel close to her, she gets an idea and then makes a film. I like the way she works. American Honey is the best film of the century, I love it so much. I’ve never had that feeling before, I need to work with that women. Even if she said can you just write a song, or I’ll even sweep the set, you can have the broom, I’ll do that. I think she’s just an amazing artist, I feel a connection to her work. Film and music work together for me. I used to go to the Triangle in Birmingham on my own, we used to call it the Art’s Lab. Late afternoon viewing with three other people there and I’d fantasise, I’d come out of the cinema and be that person. I’d see all those films and that would become the Library in my head.

I tell Lawrence that I think he should put himself forward to be the UK’s Eurovision entry. I tell him how much I loved Sebastien Tellier’s entry a few years ago and how perfect it would be – a fitting Brexit goodbye. To my surprise, Lawrence replies saying he’d love to write one and recalls how watching Roy Wood’s entry in 1972 (Songs of Praise, it wasn’t selected) legitimised Eurovision for him. He leaves me with a tantalising thought.

He’ll write the song and ask Jarvis to perform it. How could we possibly lose?

As we say our goodbyes I’m reminded of part of Lawrence’s speech as he collected his Q Award.
“A maverick will see the beauty in ugliness and respond to it in a positive way.” It’s a perfect summation of Lawrence and his ever forward moving musical and creative journey. Long may it continue.

All the Felt reissues and Go-Kart Mozart’s Mini Mart are available from Cherry Red

Words: Jez Collins
Photos: PP Hartnett