God Only Knows

The legacy of Larry Norman, who inspired Dylan, U2, and the Pixies BY ANDREW BEAUJON

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C _were are worse epitaphs than “Father of Christian Rock.” There’s “Guy ho Invented Those Subscription Cards That Fall Out When You Open Magazine,” for instance, or “Uday Hussein.” But for most rock fans, hristian music is a nasty trick played by the Devil himself—rock’n’roll ithout the sex and drugs or, God forbid, humor.

Maybe that’s why Larry Norman, who’s considered to have invented the genre, hated it so much, or at least the industry it spawned. “I love the church and my sisters and brothers,” Norman said in 1989, “but I didn’t always feel welcome. And church never felt like home.”

The feeling was mutual. Norman, who died February 24 at age 60 of heart failure, never crossed a bridge he didn’t seem to burn behind him. He left his first group, People!, claiming that Capitol had forced them to change the title of their 1968 LP from We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus and a Lot Less Rock and Roll to the more rack-friendly I Love You. Many Christian bookstores refused to stock his 1973 album So Long Ago the Garden because of rumors that Norman was naked on the cover—he had superimposed a photo of a lion in a field over himself, leading some to believe the grass was pubic hair. And while Norman was a prodigious developer of talent, grooming quality Christian artists such as Daniel Amos, Randy Stonehill, and Keith Green, he broke with them all due to business or personal disputes.

But Norman’s musical accomplishment was never in question. He came to prominence in the Jesus Movement, a media-imposed name for disillusioned hippies who found a home in evangelical churches in the early ’70s. Those churches were conservative, but they embraced the screaming guitars and pounding drums that the new members of their flocks demanded. Norman’s 1969 psychedelic masterpiece “I

Wish We’d All Been Ready” evinced the amateur theology and paranoia that permeated the movement, describing life on earth following the Rapture. “Children died / The days grew cold / A piece of bread / Could buy a bag of gold,” he sang in a keening voice, as delicate acoustic guitar figures danced over piano, strings, and Partridge Family–style harmonies. The imagery and refrain—“You’ve been left behind”—had a lasting impact on evangelical pop culture, but more important, the song was full of deeply weird artistry.

And it was weirdness with reach. Norman’s Bible study group, the Vineyard, grew into a community of about 600 congregations and was the entry point for Bob Dylan’s late-’70s Christian conversion. If you’ve been to church camp, you’ve probably sung his “Sweet Song of Salvation” around a fire. Norman even

popularized the “one way” signal—you know, the finger pointing upward—so beloved of professional athletes. And he was an influence on the members of U2 (Bono, the Edge, Larry Mullen Jr.) who attended a Christian fellowship in Ireland early in their career. According to Jay Swartzendruber, editor of CCM Magazine, when Bono met with a group of Christian-music luminaries in Nashville in late 2002, the first thing he asked was whether Norman would be attending.

Pixies singer Black Francis discovered Norman’s music in his early teens, when his family got “heavily involved in evangelical church activities.” A Hendrix and

Beatles fan, Francis appreciated that
Norman’s work wasn’t “white and
uptight” and that the singer didn’t
proselytize. “The philosophy was
there,” he says, “and I was, at that
time in my life, fully supportive of the
philosophy. But I appreciated that he
was, you know, cool about it.”
Black Francis met Norman at an
early Pixies show at the Roxy in L.A.,
and the two stayed in touch. He was
struck by the company Norman
kept—“the studded-nose-ring dude
who did porno soundtracks with
his porno-actress girlfriend, people
obviously not part of his circle.... The
Christian church makes a big deal out
of the fallibility of man and that the
ideal course is to be ‘Christ-like.’ In my
humble opinion, Larry was the most
Christ-like person I’ve ever met.”
Before his death, Norman was
working on an album with his brother
Charles, who records under the name
Charles Normal. It was to be a cover
of Lee Hazlewood’s 1964 cult classic
Trouble Is a Lonesome Town. Francis
sang on it, along with his nine-year-
old son. Indie label Arena Rock
Recording Company will release a
Norman compilation on May 27. “I
can’t believe no one’s done it before,”
says Arena Rock’s owner, Greg Glover.
“He means as much to me as a John
Lennon or a Paul Westerberg.”

“[Norman] is pretty much credited as being the first to ever marry legitimate rock’n’roll, the whole spirit and

vibe and lyrical depth, with the message of Jesus being the savior of the world,” says Doug Van Pelt, editor of Christian-rock magazine HM. With Norman’s death, “even his critics might be regretfully acknowledging his contribution to the scene.”

Like his life, Norman’s body of work leaves behind more questions than answers. The most enduring question was the title of one of his early songs: “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” It’s one the industry that prospered in his wake is still struggling to answer convincingly.

Andrew Beaujon is the author of Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock (Da Capo).