Larry Who?

The Father of Contemporary Gospel

Before O Happy Day

Let me try and connect the dots: in the late 50’s Larry Norman fronted a band called People which was signed with Capitol records. People had a big hit, “I Love You,” but Capitol refused to allow Norman to title their album, We Need A Whole Lot More Jesus and A Lot Less Rock & Roll, so Norman ultimately left the group, which fell apart without his writing talent. Norman signed with Verve/MGM, releasing startling, unprecedented rock music with Christian lyrics. While hardly shocking now, this stuff was reviled as Satanic by conservative Christians, and Larry was ostracized from the mainstream of Christian circles. Meanwhile, the Christian content was so offensive to the secular retailers that nobody knew what to do with him. Norman recorded one secular album for MGM, So Long Ago The Garden, but, while not overtly Christian, the obvious Christian themes were still off-putting.

Getting nowhere fast with the record labels, Larry formed his own, Solid Rock Records, and eventually worked out a distribution deal with Word Records, which was emerging as a leader in contemporary Christian music. Word heavily edited Norman’s content, and Norman lost a bunch of fights with them, finally releasing the final part of The Trilogy, In Another Land, in 1976. Compared to his earlier work, In Another Land, while still high-octane Norman, had clearly been de-clawed by Word, and the relationship was not a happy one.

Now, follow me: in 1969, Edwin Hawkins released "Jesus, Lover Of My Soul" as a single. Pop radio stations and listeners soon discovered the record's B-side and the song— “Oh Happy Day”—simply exploded, becoming one of the earliest contemporary Gospel hits ever released. Norman’s 1960’s innovations helped break down barriers to permit a cultural revolution in Gospel music, as more and more Christian artists began experimenting with contemporary styles. Not quite rock—that was going too far. But slowly, a quiet revolution had begun. “Oh Happy Day” was released into that turbulent Vietnam era environment, where it found acceptance and success.

Which, in turn, created an opportunity for a young preacher’s kid named Andraé Crouch. Crouch built on the modern stylings of Hawkins’ hit, carving out his own R&B sound in the early 70’s before landing his own deal with Light records, Word’s black artist label, in 1974. It’s hard to conceive now, but Andraé Crouch was openly reviled, rebuked from pulpits, for his aggressive mixing of R&B and Gospel lyrics, a mix which became more aggressive with each successive release. 1977’s “Perfect Peace,” with its acid wah-wah’s, Brecker Brothers horn section, Joe Sample piano riffs and Psychedelic Shack urban groove, was the final proof that Crouch had in fact backslidden, and pastors around the country just ripped the singer to shreds from their pulpits—even while quietly adopting a classic anthem Crouch cleverly placed on the album’s B-side, "Soon and Very Soon," and adding Crouch classic “The Blood Will Never Lose Its Power” to their hymnals.

Larry Norman made Edwin Hawkins possible, who made Andraé Crouch possible, who got Walter Hawkins his record deal, and Contemporary Gospel simply exploded from there, with even the conservative James Cleveland moving toward contemporary styles toward the latter days of his career. The Winans crystallized the signature sound still dominating the charts today, a sound refined all the more by Commissioned, whose lead singer, Marvin Sapp, now has the hottest album on the charts.

Larry Who?

Norman In Africa: I used to wear my hair just like his.

Lonely By Myself

I met him once after a show. I was in journalism school and had a press pass, but didn't need it. Larry routinely came out after a concert to meet people and pray with them. He wasn’t a fan of autographs, but he’d spend a few minutes with you. He’d pray with you. He was short, and had the most amazing blue eyes ever. A quiet intellectual, a thoughtful and devout Christian, he changed my life in profound ways that are difficult to explain. I don’t claim to be nearly as creative as he, but he reoriented my thinking about Christianity, about the church. In many ways, I blame him for making me such an outsider. But, see, once your eyes have been opened, it’s very difficult to fit in again with business as usual. The last song I recorded, before I just got to the point where I was sick of being in the studio, was a quickie cover of one of Larry’s songs, “Pardon Me.” It was for a demo for a 13-year old girl who was terrified of the lyrical content—which was why I wanted her to do it. I didn’t use any sequencers, just kind of stayed up all night and slapped it down real quick. Larry’s recording is much more fragile, just an acoustic guitar and sad violas. The isolation in his original struck me as how lonely awareness and discovery can make you. The bible teaches us that to whom much is given, much is required. Solomon, a man who pursued wisdom all his life, who had seven hundred wives, was ultimately, likely, a lonely and misunderstood person. Discovering truth, connecting with God in a real, visceral way, awakens both your instinct and your intellect. And it makes it that much harder to go back to being ignorant. Wisdom often makes you an outcast. Creativity can brand you as a nut.

Meet Larry.

Gospel Rambling: Liner notes from Only Visiting This Planet.

Hymn To The Last Generation

And that’s why I’m spending so much time talking about him. I’m not arrogant enough to say that if there was no Larry Norman there’d be no Marvin Sapp—God will bring to pass what He chooses. But he chose Larry Norman as a vessel to open doors. Marvin Sapp will sell more records this year than Larry did in his entire life. But we can trace Sapp’s success, his opportunity, right back to Norman’s living room. And, surely, this web ministry would not exist were it not for the profound impact Norman’s life and ministry had on mine. Larry Norman died in February of 2008 from complications from heart disease. Broke and uninsured, he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to raise money for a heart transplant.

Larry Norman

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Biography by Jason Ankeny
All Music Guide

The founding father of Jesus Rock, Larry Norman wed the rhythms of pop music with the spiritual and social outlook of Christianity to create a kind of flower-power gospel—while his efforts were instrumental in shaping the sound and themes of contemporary Christian rock, Norman never enjoyed the commercial success or acceptance afforded to his musical descendents, admitting his sensibilities were "too secular for the Christians and too Christian for the secularists." Born in Corpus Christi, Texas on April 8, 1947, Norman was raised in San Francisco—a devout follower of both Jesus Christ and Elvis Presley, as a boy he regularly sang original Christian-themed lyrics over his favorite rock and roll records, and in 1959 even appeared on the CBS television variety series The Original Amateur Hour. In 1965 Norman co-founded the Bay Area psychedelic group People!, which a year later signed to Capitol and scored a minor hit with the single "Organ Grinder"—a subsequent cover of the Zombies' "I Love You" yielded a U.S. Top 20 entry, and in early 1968 the group began work on its debut LP. However, around this time a number of Norman's bandmates embraced Scientology, and when Capitol resisted his entreaties to title People!'s debut LP We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus and a Lot Less Rock and Roll—the album instead hit retail as I Love You—he left the group and mounted a solo career.

Capitol nevertheless agreed to release Norman's solo debut, 1969's Upon This Rock—the album vaulted him to iconic status within the growing Jesus People counterculture movement but earned the scorn of the conservative Christian establishment, and because secular pop radio wanted nothing to do with the album, either, Capitol soon cut its ties with the singer. Norman resurfaced in 1972 on MGM, issuing the landmark Only Visiting This Planet, commonly cited among the most influential Christian rock records of all time—the first chapter in a three-album trilogy retelling the story of creation, fall and redemption, it was followed by So Long Ago the Garden and In Another Land, and together the LPs represent the creative zenith of his career. Upon leaving MGM in 1974, Norman's founded his own Solid Rock Records imprint, releasing his own material as well as albums by Christian acts including Randy Stonehill, Mark Heard and Daniel Amos—he also launched The Vineyard, a Bible study program for musicians and actors that at one point welcomed Bob Dylan, who later embraced Christianity and released a series of Norman-inspired spiritual LPs highlighted by 1979's Slow Train Coming. Secular performers including Van Morrison, John Mellencamp and the Pixies' Black Francis later cited Norman as an influence as well, and more than 300 artists covered his songs, among them Sammy Davis Jr.

By the early 1980s Norman's Capitol and MGM efforts were out of print, and as a thriving bootleg market mushroomed around his music, he formed a new label, Phydeaux Records, in an attempt to regain control of his catalog. He issued more than a dozen new LPs in the decade to follow, a staggering number of them live releases, and while his productivity was never in question, his latter-day material was wildly uneven, and often derivative of his most acclaimed records. Poor health dogged him, and over time his behavior grew increasingly erratic—diagnosed with bipolar trauma, Norman often claimed he was drugged by the KGB during a 1988 tour of Russia, and in 1992 he suffered a heart attack, spending the remainder of his life in and out of hospitals. In 1995 he was the subject of a tribute album, One Way: Songs of Larry Norman, which featured contributions from CCM superstars like dc Talk, Audio Adrenaline and Rebecca St. James—in 2001, Norman also earned induction into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, entering alongside his boyhood idol Elvis. He officially retired that same year, although in June 2005 he returned long enough to play one final concert in Salem, Oregon, his home for more than two decades. A day after posting a message on his official website that he felt "like a prize in a box of Cracker Jacks with God's hand reaching down to pick me up," Norman died of heart failure on February 24, 2008—he was 60 years old.

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