Street-Level Superstar

Will Hodgkinson spent a year walking around London with Lawrence, the reclusive former frontman of Felt, Denim, and Go-Kart Mozart, using the walks themselves as the device that draws out a notoriously guarded subject. The book moves chronologically through Lawrence's career and covers real difficulty without turning it into spectacle: homelessness, a psychiatric hospitalization, and heroin addiction are handled with what reviewers called sensitivity rather than sensationalism, though more than one review wished the addiction material had been given more room. What comes through most clearly is Lawrence's total, almost self-sabotaging refusal to compromise his artistic vision even as it cost him the mainstream success he plainly wanted.