WHO IS LARRY NORMAN?

This is taken from A Moment In Time and Footprints In The Sand CD booklets. Another very comprehensive article on an introduction to who Larry is and what he is all about can be found here. Updated information is available and will be posted here shortly.

Larry Norman recently celebrated over 40 years in music. He has been called "the father of Christian rock" because it was he who first combined rock and roll with Christian lyrics back in 1956. He received the C.A.S. Lifetime Achievement Award several years ago. Previous to that recognition, Contemporary Christian Music Magazine compiled a vote from a national poll of different critics and writers who named Norman's Only Visiting This Planet record the most significant and influential gospel album ever released in the field of comtemporary Christian music.

He started writing songs when he was a child and performing them in public at the age of nine. With the emergence of Elvis Presley, pastors raged from the pulpit that rock music was from the Devil and could never be used by God. Larry felt differently - that rock music had evolved from the black gospel music of American slaves; that God didn't need to use rock or any other kind of music. God had used the cross.

Larry continued to confront the evangelical community with his own personal vision of what best communicated Christ's love to the Sixties generation. He signed with Capitol Records in 1966. Making three records, he left after releasing his landmark album Upon This Rock. He next signed with MGM and released Only Visiting This Planet and So Long Ago The Garden. His style of music had been controversial for almost fifteen years before the Jesus Movement sprang up. Even his own father did not like his son's music, but when others began to write songs which were similar to his - things finally began to change. Time Magazine recognised him as the most significant artist in his field and Billboard Magazine called him the most important writer since Paul Simon. Coincidently he was written up by Christianity Today at the same time and this finally silenced his father's protestations. Although on stage he often appeared to be daring an audience to like him, this enfant terrible - the "bad boy of Christian music" - began to be perceived differently.

Upon This Rock was banned by the majority of Bible Bookstores for two years. Only Visiting This Planet remained in limbo fo over six years. Finally, in 1975, after the explosive success of In Another Land within the Christian community, Larry created The Compleat Trilogy, a three-record boxed set of Planet, Garden and Land which included a book explaining the work he had been doing. He was told by the "mother company" that the gospel community wasn't ready for his previous two albums and that, frankly, none of the in-house staff or executives "understood" Planet or Garden anyway.

Upon leaving MGM Records in 1974 he had started his own label, Solid Rock Records. His first recording, Orphans From Eden, was never released. His next album, In Another Land, was executorially censored by the "mother company" which insisted on removing any music they felt was "too negative" or "too controversial." When his 1976 album Something New Under The Son, net with similar censorship, he took off on a seven-month world tour and wrote Voyage Of The Vigilant. The idea was to combine live concert performances with on-the-road hotel room recordings and stop-over studio sessions whenever foreign studios were available. This expansive tour was covered by journalist Steve Turner and chronicled by photographer D.C. Riggot. Larry toured with a rock and roll band and also performed solo sets throughout America, Canada, Australia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, and more exotic locales like Israel, Lebanon, India, Hong Kong, and Japan - but with songs like "Three Million Gods," and "Cats Of The Coliseum," discussing the Hindu religion and the early martyrdom of Christians in Rome, this album was not acceptable because it was considered too "avant garde." So Voyage Of The Vigilant was never released. Larry's joyous trashcan symphony Le Garage Du Monde, The Young Lions' Spirit And Flesh ensemble work and Steve Scott's Moving Pictures were all considered too far over-the-edge for the American youth gospel market and never released.

So for what proved to be only a very short time, Larry produced other artists he had discovered in obscurity. Each of their album releases had been successful, both artistically and commercially. This "golden age of Solid Rock" was still in full flower, and Larry was getting ready to sign with Warner Brothers when he was involved in the airplane accident of 1978 which injured his spine, neck, and skull - and caused him partial brain damage. This started him down a very different road. His farewell song from Voyage Of The Vigilant proved to be self prophetic in a way other than he had intended and his brain damage silenced his literate voice for the next twelve years. His plan had been to let his contract run out uppon his return to America, but now he was unable to carry out his plans to move to Warner's.

In 1978 Larry started Street Level Records as an alternative label to release albums which Word had no interest in distributing. With help from Paul Lindner he distributed Street Level Records to stores in America and Europe. After contracturally enduring two more years of musical censorship and unreleased albums with the "mother company", he started Phydeaux Records - as in "Fido." Larry joked that "if Christian music was going to the dogs, then he wanted to remain on the cutting edge." Phydeaux, Inc. was not a counter-measure to, but a step-in-sync with, all the bootleg tapes of his material that had been circulating. In response to illegal bootlegs like Leyton's Live At The Mac, Larry decided if collectors wanted "bad-sounding" live recordings he would pick some rarities from his own archives. He chose Roll Away The Stone - And Listen To The Rock and The Israel Tapes. He had many better sounding live recordings but thought kids wanted something more rough for their bootleg collections. He also released several high quality studio compilations but was unwilling to release a "proper record" to the stores. He was standing as far away from the industry as possible and was also enjoying the distance. Basically, he was ignoring the American distributers who had for many years ignored him. Phydeaux helped distribute Street Level Records on behalf of Street Level Prod., Inc. to stores in Europe and America and also by direct mail. Through the mail he found that he could go directly to the people who well and truly understood music and his ministry.

When critics attacked his Phydeaux catalogue for not keeping up with the fads and trends of the current gospel industry, Larry laughed. He had been ahead of his time for years and had his music censored and banned because of it. Now he was no longer interested in making his albums available to the stores.

Larry continyed to travel extensively through other countries, coming back to America occasionally to report on his adventures. The airplane accident had made him seem friendlier and more accessible than during the intensity of his earlier years. He started inviting his audiences out to restaurants after the concerts - not to continue preaching but to listen to the stories of their lives, and their experiences. Although he remained at odds with the gospel music industry, avoided Christian television, granted few interviews - and still to this day receives almost no gospel radio airplay - he seemed plesantly resolved to this impasse.

At the beginning of the `90's his father sold Phydeaux, and Street Level Records came under the umbrella of CCPC. After Larry's heart attack in 1992, Larry sold Solid Rock to help pay for his medical bills.

Since 1992, Larry has retired from touring because of his heart problems. He now spends his days in Oregon. His world tours and rock and roll days are over, he concedes - but he also hopes that if his health permits it, he may in the future attempt a sit-down solo concert now and then.

Check Out LARRY'S DISCOGRAPHY