Larry Who?

The Father of Contemporary Gospel

Only Visiting This Planet

Larry Norman's most noted achievement is the album Only Visiting This Planet, 37 minutes of exquisitely written and produced folk rock on two sides of a vinyl disc. What made the recording a landmark was the rock music spoke about Jesus in a relevant way. Beyond the pat, mindless praise music that sells like hotcakes these days, Norman's music existed in the real world, not as a panacea but in agreement with the pain and, yes, doubt that keeps most of us, Christian or not, in its stranglehold. Norman's music was not entertainment for church folk but a validation of the many reasons so much of young America live their lives on only two of three rails, embracing only intellect and carnality while rejecting Christ in specific if not spirituality as a whole. Norman's writing starts there, acknowledges the fact that embracing Christ is a real stretch for most of us who have embraced religion all our lives without having had an actual relationship with God. Without ever preaching, Norman weaves stories and paints canvasses with sound, injecting ennui, humor and reason along the way. What you're doing is not working for you, his work concludes, Why don't you look into Jesus?

The rock genre aside, Norman's music is the antithesis of most of what we listen to. What most of us buy is poorly written and simplistic, designed to evoke emotion from Church Folk, i.e. religious folk. Norman was never interested in speaking to religious folk, although it was mainly Christians who paid the bills for him. Norman's songs are written to the unbeliever, trying to explain faith in a meaningful way. What he ended up doing, however, was leading people--mostly young people--beyond their religion and into a real relationship with Jesus Christ. This is also the main purpose of the PraiseNet: to lure Church Folk out of The Matrix and connect them, in a sincere and visceral way, to Jesus Christ as opposed to the Church Folk counterfeit relationship they have with the Elks Club they've allowed their church to become.

Conservatives receive such attempts as hostility and condemnation, though Norman condemns no one except, occasionally, himself. We get angry when our toes are stepped on. people rarely get alarmed over a lie, they get their butt on their shoulders when truth is presented. Truth is painful, uncomfortable, embarrassing to realize you've wasted your life playing silly Church Folk games when a purposeful and fulfilling life in Christ has always been available to you. I almost never hear black pastors use language like this. They use cryptology in their sing-along call-and-response, leading to an invitation to Christ which is routinely and inexplicably drowned out by loud Hammond playing and the choir singing, complete with some heavy-set sister howling into a mic. While the initiation is being given. This is the absurdity of our culture: our energy and emphasis is in all the theatre, all the opera. we exist to serve, to tell a very simple story: What you're doing is not working for you, his work concludes, Why don't you look into Jesus?

Norman's invitation can be heard, can be related to by the man on the street or even the youth in the church pew who have tuned Jesus out. People who don't know Jesus presume the church represents Him. Many churches do not. Many churches fail to represent Him well. Most of us, myself included, talk to non-believers about Jesus in very stupid ways. Most of us do not witness to anyone, never share Christ with anyone. We're afraid and embarrassed. We're clumsy and awkward and our frame of reference is exclusively the Church Folk bubble most of us live in. To my observation, there is little if any evangelism being taught in black churches. I got saved at a white fundamentalist summer camp. One of the very first things they did was teach me how to  share Christ with others. I have never, not once, seen this done at a black church. Few Christians can explain, with any economy or effectiveness, why a life in Christ is worth living. This is what Only Visiting This Planet does alarmingly well. It witnesses. It tells the story in a non-invasive, non-confrontational and meaningful way. Norman's Christianity does not exist inside the bubble. It exists on the street. In real terms, in step with the actual world. It has been lauded by dozens of critics and, by general acclamation, agreed upon as the best Contemporary Christian Music album ever made.

The Greatest Contemporary Christian Album Ever Made:
Inducted into The Gospel Rock Hall of Fame 2001.

In Another Land

This is an album 99% of black church folk have never heard of, but used, so-so condition copies of this CD are currently selling for $149 on Amazon.Com and others. I own the original vinyl album, which is worth considerably more and is safely stored away and will sell only after I’m long dead. This seminal work, considered to be THE definitive contemporary Christian music album of all-time, was created some 33 years ago by a man few people reading this will have ever heard of.

Larry Norman has been largely credited as the “Father of Gospel Rock,” a pioneer in fusing the message of Christ with wailing Stratocasters and pounding drums. His writing is some of the most intuitive and moving American art ever created, and his best work transcends musical trends and the passing of time. Clearly inspired by the legends of his day, Norman’s music sounded a lot like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell with some Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane tossed in for good measure. It was music I completely missed at the time because, well, I was black. Larry Norman wasn’t terribly popular with the brothers, and mom had James Cleveland and the Reverend Isaac Douglas and Inez Andrews blaring from the hi-fi.

I became acquainted with Norman on Steve Tomlinson’s father’s speed boat during a wonderful weekend at the family’s rented cabin in upstate New York. Steve brought along this mono cassette payer and started up this rock and roll that, once again, being black, was really not my cup of tea. But I was startled to hear this rocker talking about Jesus. And not only talking about Jesus but talking about, well, life.

There had, theretofore, always been a kind of musical separation between church and state, where the secular artists of the day could talk about love and life and emotions and feeling, but the Gospel musicians talked only about God. Rock acts like The Beatles sang about the war and politics and injustice and poverty, while acts like Clara Ward and James Cleveland and The Mighty Clouds of Joy sang about God in flowery and unrealistic ways I could not relate to. They used all of this code, this Church Folk language, and made absolutely no attempt to express any practical application of a relationship with Jesus Christ to my actual life. Gospel music was always escapism, The Other. A beautiful art form, but one that left me wondering what all the fuss was about. I'd rather an artist record five minutes of relevant application than sit through an hour of this praise stuff. Praise is all we listen to, all we write. praise is absolutely meaningless when you're homeless or sick or troubled, when you're being hunted by bullies or abused by loved ones. For me, even today, 99% of commercial Gospel music is utterly useless because the music exists, along with the artists who create it, inside The Matrix, the Church Folk bubble. Precious little of it ever deals with reality or serves any practical purpose to help people understand why a relationship with Christ is important.

Some of my favorite music of the period came from the enormously talented (just ask him) Norman Whitfield, the genius producer behind The Temptations’ best work. A popular and successful R&B group, the Temptations didn’t really become a vital and moving part of Americana until long-time producer (and notorious self-promoter) Whitfield talked Motown CEO Berry Gordy into releasing Psychedelic Shack, a monstrous R&B groove with a killer anti-drug message. From that point until Whitfield’s self-destruction (after he made his face the largest image on the cover to Masterpiece), the Temptations became not only a great R&B band but a vital part of the social fabric of the time, preaching to both black and white audiences about everything from the ecology to the war to poverty and the breakdown of the African American family.

Hearing Larry Norman, this strange, long-haired white man, applying some of the same social consciousness to the context of Christian faith seemed odd to me. I mean, Christians weren’t supposed to sing about the war. Weren’t supposed to be concerned with politics or injustice. Gospel music was this benign disconnect from reality. It was an escapist medium where grown men wore very loud, shiny orange suits. The lyrics were largely meaningless beyond the quick buzz you got off of worshipping God. But it was music largely without relevance to the life we actually lived or the world we actually lived in. It prepared us for the pearly gates but it did absolutely nothing to inform or inspire or even unite us as a people dealing with political and social challenges.

The first thing I noticed about Norman was that his album really wasn’t a Gospel album. It wasn’t a dance hall record, either, but it shocked and unnerved me that the first cut I heard off of the album, The Six O’clock News, didn’t mention Jesus or Christianity even once. Nor did Pardon Me, a riveting treatise on the shallowness of sex without love and, by extrapolation, love without God. I’ve Got To Learn To Live Without You was a song that not only could have been a top 10 pop hit but, by rights, should have been. And it had absolutely nothing to do with church and Jesus, except for Larry’s own extrapolation of the song having been intended as a reference to The Great Rapture. Norman had, by his account, intended I’ve Got To Learn To Live Without You to be the first cut of the album, and his most famous song, I Wish We'd All Been Ready, a perennial CCM anthem, as the closing song, thus setting a tribulation era context for the album as a whole. But ABC records insisted non flipping the album over so the collection would begin with the harder-hitting Six O'clock News (and, I actually agree with them).

There, on the lake, I fell in love with Norman's music. And my life was transformed because I saw the potential for music that dealt with real-life challenges and issues, and presented Christ as the reasonable and rational solution. I wasn’t much of a rock fan, but the concept changed me forever. When people meet me, especially when I had shoulder-length hair like Norman, they’d know, immediately, that I just wasn’t like most anyone they’d ever met. And they’d ask me why my hair was so long or who my inspiration was. I’ve rarely told anyone about Larry because, frankly, most of us church folk have never heard of him and wouldn’t be interested to know. And I’ve spent these several paragraphs waxing on about Larry to give you better context abut Larry and, frankly, about myself.

Christopher J. Priest
24 August 2008
editor@praisenet.org
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Larry Norman Website
New York Times Obituary
Entertainment Weekly Obituary

Footnote: It's worth noting that the R&B equivalent of Only Visiting

This Planet is Tonéx's landmark recording, Oak Park 92105. This recording may no longer be available, as Tonéx re-edited the album (renaming it 92106), and the compromised, censored version lacks the power of his original vision. Oak Park is less focused than Planet, but it achieves, brilliantly, the very same goal: making Jesus relevant to the kid on the street. Speaking to both street kids and church kids, Tonéx weaves a complex and at times painful semi-biography that is hugely compelling and thought-provoking. It forces you to assess your relationship with God, the things you're doing in The Matrix-- the Church Folk Bubble--and demands of you a resolution. This is, in essence, what a sermon is supposed to do: challenge more than entertain. Oak Park is simply an amazing work, which, of course, meant it was soundly ignored by the mainstream. I have no way of knowing if Tonéx knew Norman or was aware of his music, Oak Park sounds absolutely nothing like Norman, but the power of its witness resonates with Norman's masterpiece, making Oak Park 92105 the greatest Urban Gospel recording ever made.

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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