There’s been so much written about the controversial and eccentric life of Larry Norman that I don’t even think I can adequately scratch the surface here. Norman has often been described as “the father of Christian rock music” and whether or not that title is accurate I’ll leave to historians. What we do know is that Norman was one of the first artists to perform rock music with a decidedly evangelistic tone. His albums in the late 60’s and early 70’s were a foothold into a culture that believed it was impossible to both follow Jesus and have long hair and play an electric guitar.
Norman appeared at Cornerstone from time to time. Here’s some footage of the start of his show at Cornerstone Festival 1985.
Larry Norman played a couple of times at the festival in the 80’s before taking a lower profile in the 90’s. He returned one last time to Cornerstone Festival 2001 for a mainstage appearance and a surprise reunion with Randy Stonehill. Norman, in failing health due to a heart condition, passed away in 2008. I don’t know that I would say I’m a huge fan of his music, but I am glad I got to see him in concert once before his death. I’ll discuss his performances at 2001 more when we reach that era.
Larry Norman’s classic album Only Visiting This Planet is available for download at amazon.com mp3
My first exposure to Norman was probably with the endless flamewars over the man in rec.music.christian back in the day. (I want to say that Bob Wiegel was involved in a lot of those, and those discussions were some of the things that prompted me to figure out how to work a killfile in my newsreader (good old “rn”).
I was definitely too late into CCM to really appreciate Norman – he’d already kind of fallen off the radar by the time I was starting to listen to Christian music in the mid to late 80s, and especially by the time I started to get any kind of sense of the history of the genre. It’s a shame that his legitimate contributions to Christian rock are kind of overshadowed by all the eccentricities. (Didn’t he claim to have discovered U2 at some point, or is that just a legend? I think the stuff about Frank Black of the Pixies being a fan of his is actually true.)
Anyway, the video’s fun – kind of Dylan-esque vocals over blues-rock. Nothin’ wrong with that. 🙂
I think my first exposure to Norman too was all the crazy flamewars about him on rmc, which has always colored my impression, probably unfairly, about him.
I think the Pixies thing is true… I’d never heard about the U2 story.