Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence by Will Hodgkinson (Nine Eight Books 2024)

Chapter 1 Temple Fortune

"Golders Green," said Lawrence, "is the worst place in the world when you need to piss."

We left the underground station in this north London neighbourhood, which has been home to the city's Orthodox Jewish community since the 1950s, and found the public toilets closed, abandoned, isolated by a dirty grey wire fence.

“This is the only area in London where you can’t find a hedge or tree just a little ways away to let off steam,” Lawrence said, dragging his narrow frame from the hall to the street with surprising speed. The wind gently stirred the black curtains of hair on either side of his baseball cap. “The last thing you want is to be caught pissing in a hedge in Golders Green. In certain parts of south London it wouldn’t be a problem, and I could write a book about it. But you have to be respectful here.”

Lawrence had first visited the neighbourhood a few years earlier. He had taken to taking long walks through residential areas, without a map and without a clear objective, to clear his mind and find solutions to his problems and, above all, ideas for new songs. Perhaps Golders Green would provide him with the inspiration he needed for that elusive success he had been chasing since 1980, a success capable of transforming his life and immersing him in a glorious bubble of fame and money. One day, while walking around Muswell Hill, he noticed a sign that said “North Finchley”. All he knew about the neighbourhood was that the teenage punk group Eater came from there, so he decided to do some research.

—“Let’s see what the place where Eater came from is like,” I thought. It turned out that Finchley was a very residential area. From there I came to Finchley Central, and eventually ended up here. And I fell in love.