Larry Norman

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Larry David Norman (April 8, 1947 – February 24, 2008) was an American musician, singer, songwriter, record label owner, and record producer.

He is considered one of the pioneers of Christian rock music and has sold more than 100 albums.

Early life

Larry Norman was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, and his mother, Margaret Evelyn "Marge" Stout, and Joe Hendrex "Joe Billy" Norman (born in 1925 in Nebraska). Joe Norman served as a sergeant in the US Army Air Corps during WWII and worked at the Southern Pacific Railroad while studying to become a teacher. The family attended the Southern Baptist church following Norman's birth. The family migrated to San Francisco, where they first attended an African American Pentecostal church and then a Baptist church, where Norman became a Christian at the age of five. Norman appeared on the syndicated television show The Original Amateur Hour in 1959.

Norman's father began teaching in San Jose, California, in 1960; the family lived in Campbell, California. Norman graduated from Campbell High School in 1965 and received an academic scholarship to major in English at San José State University. Norman was "flunked out of college and lost [his] scholarship after one semester.

Although Norman was able to play a variety of musical instruments, he never learned how to read or write musical notation.

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Career

Norman formed The Back Country Seven, which included his sister Nancy Jo and friend Gene Mason, who were still in high school. Norman continued to perform locally after graduating.

In 1966, Norman opened a People's Concert. In Pacific Grove, California, the Asilomar Conference Grounds was on display. He later became the band's principal songwriter, sharing lead vocals with his Back Country Seven bandmate Gene Mason.

People!

About 200 concerts in a year, including Van Morrison and Them, the Animals, Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Doors, the Who, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Moby Grape, and the Syndicate of Sound and Count Five. The band's cover of "I Love You" by the Zombies became a hit single, selling over one million copies and charting strongly in many countries.

Norman left People!

The band first appeared on Capitol in mid 1968, but they reunited with Mason for concerts in 1974 and 2006. Pete Townshend said that The Who's 1969 album Tommy was inspired by People's rock opera "Epic." However, Townshend has since denied the connection; however, the two have since been denied.

Norman left People! because "a powerful spiritual experience sent him into a snared mistletion of his life" [and] for the first time in his life, he received what he believed to be the Holy Spirit.

Norman went to Los Angeles in July 1968, after a job offer to write musicals for Capitol Records, where he "spent time sharing the gospel on the streets." "I walked up and down Hollywood Boulevard several times a day a day, greeting businessmen and hippies, as well as whomever the Spirit led me." I spent all of my Capitol Records' royalties starting with a halfway house and buying clothes and food for new converts." He began working with the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood and its Salt Company coffee house outreach program, where he explored and pioneered the rock-gospel style.

Several songs for the rock musicals Alison and Birthday for Shakespeare were written by Norman in 1968, both of which were performed in Los Angeles.

Norman and his companion Teddy Neeley auditioned for the Los Angeles production of Hair and were offered the roles of George Berger and Claude Bukowski, respectively; Neeley accepted, but Norman refused George Berger and free sex as the solutions to today's challenges; despite his own financial struggles, Norman rejected the role of George Bernard and Claude Bukowski. Norman created Love on Haight Street and a rock opera called Lion's Breath, which culminated in Capitol's re-signing Norman to record an album with the promise of complete creative control.

Norman's first solo album, Upon This Rock, was released by Capitol Records in 1969, and is now considered to be "the first full-blown Christian rock album." Several television evangelists condemned Norman, and Capitol deemed the album a commercial disappointment and dropped Norman from the label. However, his music has a following in the burgeoning countercultural movements. Following its introduction in Christian bookstores, the album's sales increased.

Norman was playing often for large audiences by the 1970s, as well as several Christian music festivals, including Explo '72, a six-day Dallas festival that has been dubbed the "Jesus Woodstock." Norman built a half-way house where he "housed and fed several groups of people," supervised their Bible studies, and carried them to church on Fridays and Sundays. Capitol also earned him $80 per month for polishing and refining Capitol songs. Norman created One Way Records in 1970, which became the first record label in the United States. On the label, he recorded two of his own albums, Street Level and Bootleg, as well as Randy Stonehill's debut, Born Twice.

Norman first visited England in 1971 where he lived and worked for many years. In London's AIR Studios, he recorded two studio albums, Only Visiting This Planet and So Long Ago the Garden. Visiting "was supposed to reach the flower children disillusioned by the government and the church" with its "abrasive, urban reality of the gospel," which has often been ranked as Norman's best album. The unveiling of Garden in November 1973 caused controversies in the Christian press, due to the album's cover art and a few tracks in which Norman took the persona of a backslider.

Norman created Solid Rock Records in 1974 to produce Christian artists "who didn't want to be absorbed by vinyl pancake making, but who wanted to make something 'non-commercial' to the world. Randy Stonehill, Mark Heard, and Tom Howard all made music on the label for musicians, including Randy Stonehill, Mark Heard and Tom Howard. Norman also worked with several artists on other labels, including Malcolm and Alwyn, Bobby Emmons, and the Crosstones, Lyrix, James Sundquist, and David Edwards. Solid Rock's releases were released under ABC Records, but the company was later moved to ABC subsidiary Word Records. Norman established the Street Level Artists Agency in the same year.

Solid Rock and Word first published Another Land, Norman's third album and his best-selling album, on his career's career, in 1976. Norman recorded the blues-rock concept album Something New Under the Son shortly afterward, but it will not be released until 1981. Norman formed Phydeaux Records in 1980 to release his albums following clashes with Word over Something New and several other projects.

Norman was hospitalized while landing a plane at Los Angeles International Airport in 1978. Norman said he suffered mild brain damage as a result of the cabin's roof, but that this caused him to be unable to finish projects or concentrate artistically. In 1991, William Ayers wrote: "As family, friends, and followers watched his life spiraled downward." He was unable to record a bonafide album from 1978 to 1986 [recorded in 1986]. He never thought he'd be healed.

Norman performed "The Great American Novel," "a Dylanesque protest song" for US president Jimmy Carter and about 1,000 people at his Old Fashioned Gospel Singin' concert on the south lawn of the White House in September 1979.

Solid Rock's company manager, Philip Mangano, and several Solid Rock artists orchestrated an intervention with Norman in June 1980, which resulted in his resignation. Randall Balmer, a religious history scholar, attributed the company's demise to "idealism, marital, and financial naivete, as well as shifting musical preferences."

Norman moved to England in late 1980 and established Phydeaux Records, a company that sought to contend with the bootleg market by delivering rare items from Norman's own archives. Before returning to the United States in 1985, he signed a distribution contract with British label Chapel Lane and released several albums. Norman's work on an anthology project based on his lifetime in Christian music, starting with the release of the album "The History and the Chronology of the United States"; however, the scheme came to a halt when the project's president was arrested for check forgery and the company's merchandise was confiscated by the FBI.

Norman signed to Benson Records in 1986 and released the album Home at Last in 1986, but the album was not released until 1989 due to legal difficulties. Despite widespread coverage, the album was heavily criticized, and Norman himself dismissed the album as "just a series of tapes I had," despite the fact that he was "completely thrilled" with Benson's support. Norman was named recipient of the Christian Artists' Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989.

Norman received the blessing of a church of London's Elim Way Fellowship while visiting another musician at the end of a February 1991 tour. Norman said that God repaired the injury to his brain and that he was able to function once more through this prayer. He collaborated with his brother Charles on the album Stranded in Babylon this year, and has been lauded by both critics and followers as one of his finest works. The Tourniquets will reunite in 2001.

In order to raise funds for medical expenses arising from heart disease, Norman continued to perform and record albums through his later years. On August 4, 2007, in New York City, he performed his last official concert.

Norman had a turbulent relationship with the wider Christian Church and the Christian music industry throughout his career. "I love God and I follow Jesus," he wrote in September 2007, "I love God and I follow Jesus but I don't have a fascination for the churches' organized folderols." Norman's music addressed a variety of social topics, including politics, free love, the occult, wartime journalists' passive commercialism, and religious hypocrisy that were not within the scope of his contemporaries. Norman, who was defending his music's confrontational style, said, "My main concern is not to entertain." But if your art is boring, people will disregard your message as well as your artwork." He wrote that Christian music generally referred to "sloppy reasoning, derogonest metaphors, and bad poetry" in the 1980s, and that he had "never been able to get over the shock of how bad the lyrics are."

Norman was disapproved of Christian musicians who were unable to perform in secular venues or to "preach" between songs. He also slammed Christian music in America as "commercialization of Christian music," including the role of copyrights and licensing.

"It's certainly no exaggeration to say Larry Norman is to Christian music in the same way John Lennon is to rock & roll or Bob Dylan is to folk music," Christian rock historian John Thompson wrote in 2008. Norman was praised by Thompson for his contributions to the field as a performer, a producer, and a businessman.

Norman influenced a number of emerging punk and experimental rock artists in the late 1970s and 1980s. Larry Norman was "an early influence" on the post-punk band U2., according to documentarian Larry Di Sabatino. When Bono met in 2002 with a summit of Christian musicians in Nashville to raise money for an African aid effort, he specifically wanted to see Norman. Bono sent flowers to his funeral on Larry Norman's death. Bono wrote, "Eternal singer, also immortal," Bono said.

Larry Norman appeared at his "first of many" punk rock shows while touring London in 1977, including Richard Hell and the Voidoids, the Damned, and the Dead Boys, according to Charles Normal. Norman said that although he initially disliked some of the lyrical literature, he was nevertheless supportive of it and its youthful energy, which he regarded as preferable to disco.

Norman introduced his younger brother, Charles, to the style, as well as the music of the Sex Pistols. Charles was the lead guitarist for Executioner, a Bay Area hardcore punk band. Larry paid for Executioner's first EP in 1982, on the condition that they also record one of his songs. Larry Norman started to visit celebrities from the Los Angeles punk scene, and eventually recorded tracks with former Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones. "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" Norman also released a live recording of a punk version of "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?"

Larry Norman, the Pixies' frontman, referred to him as his "total idol" as a youth, whom he attempted to imitate. The Purple Tape, the band's first demo, was supposed to feature a recreation of Norman's "Watch What You're Doing," but it was never released. (You know He loves you, He's on pilgrimage, right?) a lyric from the song ("Come on pilgrim, You Know He loves You!" The name of Pixies' 1987 EP Come On Pilgrim was developed from the word. During the Zoo TV tour, Black was eventually introduced to Norman by U2 staff. "Six Sixty Six" by Frank Black and the Catholics of Black's post-Pixies band covered Larry Norman's song "Six Sixty Sixteen" by the Catholics. At Norman's "farewell" performance, Norman and Black performed a duet of "Watch What You're Doing," and the two were reportedly working on an album together at the time of his death, as well as Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse.

Norman is credited to Steve Camp, Carolyn Arends, Bob Hartman, TobyMac, Mark Salomon, Martyn Joseph, and Steve Scott as influences. Norman's songs have been covered by more than 300 artists.

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Awards and honors

• 1973: One of three named as Best New Male Artist of the year by Cashbox.
• 1989: Awarded the Christian Artists' Society Lifetime Achievement Award in a surprise ceremony at Estes Park, Colorado.
• 1990: CCM magazine voted Only Visiting This Planet as "the second-greatest Christian album ever recorded".
• 2001: Inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.
• 2001: Only Visiting This Planet was selected as the No. 2 album in CCM Magazine's The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music.
• 2004: Voted into the CCM Hall of Fame by readers of CCM Magazine.
• 2007: Inducted into the San Jose Rocks Hall of Fame, both as a member of People!, and as a solo artist. At that time Norman reunited for a concert with People!
• 2008: Honored at the 39th GMA Dove Award ceremony in Nashville, Tennessee.
• 2009: Honored in a tribute segment at the Grammy Awards.
• 2013: Only Visiting This Planet was one of 25 sound recordings inducted for 2013 into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, that preserves as "cultural, artistic and/or historical treasures, representing the richness and diversity of the American soundscape." A statement by the Library of Congress called the album "the key work in the early history of Christian rock," describing Norman as one who "commented on the world as he saw it from his position as a passionate, idiosyncratic outsider to mainstream churches."