Lest we forget the father of Christian rock

By D.S. Martin and ChristianWeek | November 15, 2008

Could country music forget Hank Williams; bluegrass, Bill Monroe; rock 'n' roll, Buddy Holly or baroque, Bach? The music industry thrives by always offering us something new and by making sure we have long memories.

The only form of music suffering from amnesia is contemporary Christian music. Turn the calendar back three short decades to the early days of Christian rock, and one figure stood head and shoulders above the rest—Larry Norman.

Today it's almost impossible to find his CDs in stores; Christian bookstores carry almost exclusively new releases. Something should be done, the new generation—who are being turned on to rock acts from the 1960s and 70s—have a chance to discover Larry Norman.

Norman began his recording career as a member of the band, People. They recorded two albums for Capitol Records; the title track of the first, I Love You (1968), hit the Billboard top 20.

Capitol also released his first solo album Upon This Rock in 1969. Even though it arrived at the perfect time to be embraced by the new "Jesus People" counterculture, it was far too radical for the conservative Church of the time and far too Christian for the world at large.

Listening to Upon This Rock almost 40 years later one encounters a confident rocker who sings about serious spiritual subjects, yet with his tongue often in his cheek. It's no wonder the linear-thinking fundamentalist community had no idea how to take him. Songs such as the ironic "I Don't Believe in Miracles," or the dark "The Last Supper" (not about the same subject as the Da Vinci painting) were alienating to those already predisposed to consider such secular-sounding music as evil.

In 1972 the famous jazz label, Verve, released Larry Norman's masterpiece, Only Visiting This Planet. It's even clearer here that Norman did not intend to pander to the Church. He freely sings of drugs, alcohol and the free love youth culture. The blatantly evangelistic song, "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus?" begins: "Sipping whiskey from a paper cup / you drown your sorrows till you can't stand up..."

On this album you can see how Norman at his best can stand beside such contemporaries as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Van Morrison and the Rolling Stones. For me as a teen, Larry Norman was a lifeline that brought together the two seemingly contradictory loves—God and rock 'n' roll.

Norman's 1973 album So Long Ago The Garden is also an outstanding record, although more disjointed than its predecessor. It contains his two inspiring, Dylanesque poetic dreamscapes:

"Nightmare" and "Be Careful What You Sign":
"I was walking down the road when I bumped into you
You stopped me, you touched me, you looked me in the eye
I had a feeling that you knew me; I decided you must die..."
Not your typical gospel music.

By 1976 Norman was more aware of how to reach his real audience. On In Another Land, released on his own Solid Rock Records label, he announced that this album was part three of a trilogy. The production was smoother and the lyrics more-consistently about faith. He stretched them, however, with its follow-up. Something New Under The Son is a raw-edged, Rolling Stones-influenced blues album recorded the following year, but which didn't surface until 1981.

Unfortunately after this Norman's output was inconsistent. His health problems, including a brain damage suffered in a 1978 plane crash, meant his best creative work was behind him. Still, he was often able to show a live audience what all the fuss had been about. I still have the 1979 ticket-stub from the magic night Norman walked onto the stage at a Daniel Amos/Randy Stonehill concert at University of Toronto's Convocation Hall.

He died last February, after a long battle with heart problems, at age 60. In the Internet age we no longer rely on the whims of distributors. Much of Norman's back catalogue is available at www.larrynorman.com. Now would be a good time to discover Larry Norman, or to discover him again.