Lawrence Livermore (nè Hayes) is a seminal American countercultural figure, punk rock musician, record producer, and author, best known as the co-founder of Lookout Records and editor of Lookout magazine.

Through the 1960s and 70s, Livermore took part in a number of countercultural movements on both coasts, as well as in his home state of Michigan. Livermore began to attend punk rock shows in the San Francisco Bay Area. Having grown disillusioned with the hippie movement, and with urban life in general, he moved to a remote mountain wilderness area known as Spy Rock intending to, in his words, "start my own civilization." There, he worked diligently on farming and his zine, Lookout. What started in 1984 as a DIY xeroxed newsletter crafted out of his solar-panel-powered cabin, by 1995 had developed into a 64-page magazine with an international distribution of 10,000 copies. Acclaimed by figures such as Alexander Cockburn and Herb Caen, Livermore’s writing often uses personal experience as an entry point. The eclectic content of Lookout ranges from forerunning debates on environmental issues to anti-corporate exposès, from punk rock music “scene reports” to reflections on the history of the counterculture. The magazine also served as a forum of discussion on local issues in both Mendocino and the East Bay punk rock scene.

It is indeed in the San Francisco and East Bay punk rock commons that Livermore found the closest manifestation of the underground, anti-authoritarian, and artistic community that he had longed for since the 1960s. Starting in 1986, Livermore was one of the earliest organizers and volunteers at the non-profit, all-ages, collectively organized music venue Gilman Street Project. In the following decade he played a key role in developing the autonomous cultural apparatus of the East Bay punk scene and, through his writing and his work as a record producer, in shaping punk rock subculture in the United States and abroad.

In 1987, he co-founded Lookout Records with David Hayes, in order to document and distribute the music scene that had emerged out of Gilman. The label went on to produce seminal punk rock and pop-punk acts such as Operation Ivy, Green Day, Spitboy, Crimpshrine, The Mr. T Experience, Yeastie Girlz, and Screeching Weasel. In 1997, he retired from Lookout Records and moved to London, where he lived until he relocated to New York City in 2007.

As a musician, Livermore formed and played in The Lookouts (1985-1990), whose 12-year-old drummer, Tre Cool, went on to play for Green Day. In 1992, Livermore, Chris Appelgren, and Patrick Hynes – his partners at Lookout Records after David Hayes’ departure in 1989 – formed the pop band Potatomen. The band recorded and toured until 2000.

From 1987 until 1994, Livermore was a columnist for Maximumrocknroll, the de facto punk bible of the 1980s and 90s, and from 1994 to 2007 wrote a monthly column for Punk Planet magazine. An avid essayist and reporter, he was also a contributor to a number of underground publications, including but not limited to Absolutely Zippo, the Anderson Valley Advertiser, Tales of Blarg, and the seminal queercore zine Homocore. In 2013, he published his first book, Spy Rock Memories, followed by a second volume, How to Ru(i)n a Record Label: The Story of Lookout Records in 2015.