#whats wild is rak came to this realisation only after

[laurenkmyers]

[theseventeenthcentury-blog1]

New Musical Express 17 February 1996

LOOK BACK IN WRANGLER

His friends said his house smelt! His dad deserted him after a caravan holiday! And nobody ever understands the dysfunctional, heart-felt lyrics of his novelty Euro-electropop. LAWRENCE, aka DENIM, has a good old whinge to TED KESSLER about life, love and the trials and tribulations involved in recording his latest offering, 'Denim On Ice'. Agony and ecstasy: DEREK RIDGERS

The happiest day of Lawrence's life was when he came home from work to find his mum had finally killed the dog. And in the same week that his dad left home! How brilliant is that?

God, did he hate that dog. They all did: his mum, his sister, the rest of the village. Even his dad might have, but he'd stopped talking to Lawrence five years earlier so he couldn't be sure. Its fair to say, though, that dog had ruined Lawrence's life.

It wasn't just the smell of the thing; although, if we have to draw up a list of the beast's faults, that'd be top. He smelt so foul that Lawrence hadn't been able to bring his mates home since the day he'd returned from school, aged seven, with a friend who'd walked into the hallway and yelled, "Phroooar! What's that stink?"

Well, you know what kids are like. That was it. He'd have to do the visiting now. Everyone In the village thought he lived in a slum anyway. He wasn't going to let on that it ponged of a vicious dog that behaved like a mad pig.

So, when his mum woke to find his dad had left in the night, She decided to have the dog put down. Lawrence thought it was the coolest thing she'd ever done. He'd lost faith in her long ago when her response to his musical ambitions was, "People like us don't join groups", but, for a moment there, he'd seen a glimmer ...

When he moved away from Water Orton to live the life of an artist in the dull lights of Birmingham he cut all links to his mum. But killing that dog, man, killing that dog was very cool. Your dad splits but he leaves his dog so your mum kills his dog. Hmm ... maybe Lawrence had been a little harsh on her for that comment about his career ... Maybe there hadn't been a mistake at the hospital and maybe Lawrence really was related to his mum ... Maybe not speaking to her for the past 14 years was a little extreme ...

THE RACK by the sink is filled with freshly washed '70s RAK seven-inch singles, and although there is a pint of milk and a vacuum-sealed jar of nuts in the fridge, the only real source of nourishment in this kitchen is knowledge, because all the cupboards are filled with books. The living room has an armchair, a television, a stereo and cardboard boxes filled with old music magazines and the odd bit of fan mail. In the bedroom there's a futon, a swivel-chair and a tape-player. That's it. It's an immaculate, spartan, first-floor flat in a bold blue yuppie block overlooking the Thames by Tower Bridge. Now, who could live in a place like this?

There are two likely candidates: Luke Goss, former drummer with teen sensations Bros, and Lawrence, the most singular, visionary, driven and quietly ridiculed songwriter in contemporary British pop (Jarvis Cocker, Mark E Smith and Morrissey included). Since Luke Goss moved out a couple of months ago, Lawrence (he dropped his surname because it sounded too similar to two other singers: one in a '70s moody rock combo, the other in an '80s pop group; he keeps it a secret ... but it's Hayward) is the only pop star wannabe currently left in the block.

During the '80s Lawrence toiled with Felt, his labour of love, achieving his aim to release ten wildly contrasting albums (from guitar-fed indie angst to spooky jazz instrumentals to melancholic rock) in ten years. When Felt split he made for New York and returned with a new project: Denim. The idea for Denim was to mix his memories of the '70s with modern social comment and set it in a brash electronic '90s pop context. It would sound nothing like Felt, or indeed anything.

Denim's first album, '92's 'Back In Denim', was greeted with critical acclaim (nine out of ten in the NME), vilification (promotional copies were ritually burned by the missionary-position hacks) and commercial indifference. Lawrence, who'd hoped for pop worship after a decade of intense underground reverence, blamed 'Back In Denim's moderate sales on his then parent label London Records' insistence that the album be independently distributed. Now, he admits it may have been a blessing.

"A lot of the ideas I had for that record have since been very successful for others, although if you weren't paying attention it might have not seemed that way," he says wryly, on the edge of his bed. "But having seen what's happened to Jarvis, I may have been on the wrong track thinking I'd like to be famous. I'd like to be in the charts, but I'm not likeable enough to be a pop star. My views just aren't mainstream."

Next, he set about composing an even poppier follow-up called 'Denim On Ice', but last summer, halfway through recording it, his girlfriend called a halt to their four year on/off relationship, causing Lawrence a major crisis.

"I didn't even think of it as a relationship until she ended it, but then I totally changed my mind. It had been trouble recording the album before then, because it'd become really expensive and we were on a budget, but when she left it became double-trouble. I re-wrote a load of the lyrics and had to postpone doing the vocals for months."

What has eventually emerged is a cheesy pop album which sort of fuses Ian Dury with '90s Euro pop, and sounds like nothing you've ever heard, intertwining lyrical themes as diverse as pub rock ('The Great Pub Rock Revival': Lawrence imagines it's him versus the world when the NME endorses a Pub Rock revival next year), oral sex ('Grandad's False Teeth': when Lawrence's girl goes down on him, it's like she's wearing grandad's false teeth — she says the same of him. Walthamstow Kids Choir on one chorus) and junkies ('Glue And Smack': "When I wake in the morning/I greet the day with a smile/I pump stuff into my body/Then I reel around like a child"). When first aired in the NME office, some sat in awed wonder, others tried to throw the stereo from the window.

"I'm not surprised, becaust novelty has never been hip with people who think they're involved in serious music. I love music so much, I've had to form a novelty band because rock'n'roll is dead, It's over. As a serious art form, It's finished. All your heroes have blown it. No-one liked The Beatles during punk because there was so much else, but that's what 15-year-olds are into now. Electronic music has taken over and rock'n'roll will never have that force. Lyrically it will, if only someone out there could write. Why can't I make a record like Kim Wilde's 'Kids In America', but in a hip way?

"But I'm not wasting my time, I'm trying to do something new. Novelty music with a real social and personal comment on top. It hasn't been done before. What I liked about Lou Reed and Bob Dylan were the brilliant lyrics, but after 'Desire' why didn't Dylan use synths instead of saxes and soul backing singers? He wore flares, didn't acknowledge the new wave, and that dated him. It would be easy to do more Felt stuff with traditional instruments, but where's the challenge? Why not let the kids hear something different? But I'm not copying anyone. No-one does what I do. It's lonely out there."

LAST SUMMER, prompted by that girlfriend thing and the problems that recording 'Denim On Ice' provoked, Lawrence started thinking about his folks. He thought about his mum killing the dog, about his dad leaving home and about the fact that he hadn't spoken to his mum for 14 years, or his dad for nearly 20. He was approaching his mid-30s. They could die soon. He wrote his dad a letter.

It was a long, respectful, warm letter that asked why his old man had suddenly stopped talking to Lawrence when he came back from a caravan holiday.

"He wrote back, saying, 'Don't dwell on the past, son, look to the future!' That was it. It was so cold! My sister rang me and said, 'He's so happy you wrote!' I was, like, 'You want to read what he's written!' I went to see my mum and we talked about her washing machine. The emotional things of the past 15 years had been exhausted in 45 minutes. Didn't even mention the dog.

"It just made me realise how utterly alone I am. I feel totally isolated. I don't have a social life because I've got no rapport with anyone. I never bring people back here and get off on records because nobody shares my taste. I just sit here doing ... nothing, thinking.

"But I'm not alone. There's a whole generation of lonely, disaffected people out there and if they need someone to identify with, it's me, because I don't clock off. I don't get changed at seven and go down the pub because I don't even drink. Drinking's what old men do, and I've never wanted to be one. I think you can be a kid forever, gaining wisdom along the way. Life's a good journey, though, it's the one proper journey ..."

Time for the next leg. Lawrence is off to the studio to record a B-side ("It's called 'Wendy James' and it's pro: it's the one that will finish me off for most people") before rehearsals for Denim's Pulp support slot begin. He may feel like pop's Vasco Da Gama endowed with Howard Hughes' social skills, but the next album's already planned ...

It's called 'Denim Take Over'.