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Larry Norman -> Larry Norman -> Tribute to Larry
Post Info TOPIC: Tribute to Larry
Bill Faris

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Tribute to Larry
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It's hard to know where to begin when thinking about what someone like Larry Norman means to a man of my age at this time in my life.  Larry caught my eye like a shooting star when I was still just a kid in my mid-teens.  It was a time when he was pioneering the use of rock music to communicate the message of Jesus and Christianity to a searching culture.  I can remember listening to Upon This Rock, his seminal Capitol Records release that is often considered the first real "Jesus Rock" album and feeling like I was hearing an important dispatch from the cutting edge. Guys like Larry were already where I wanted to go in life.  Their recordings, concerts and writings were not just things I "listened" to, I STUDIED them, ABSORBED them as if they were training manuals on how to see the world. I saw Larry play live a number of times over the years that followed, first in Grady Gammage auditorium at ASU in the early '70's.  As he often did, he stood there that night with his gut string guitar exhorting the sound man to "turn it up -- it's rock 'n roll" before launching into Why Don't 'Ya Look into Jesus? or Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation.  It was his between-song banter that really stood out, though.  Larry had attitude.  He criticized us Christians and our "churchianity" with a smile and a sneer.  He made us answer questions as to why we treated one another, God and the unreached the way we did.  He kept insisting we keep it simple and real.  He was controversial.  He was provocative.  He demanded that we think about the new ground he was breaking for us all and not just follow blindly.  I always loved it. The last time I saw Larry was many years ago at Biola in the gym.  It was a little ironic because I had been invited to go by Lynn Doyle, my failed spiritual Big Brother's estranged wife.  A few others were with us.  Larry's band was very strong and I can honestly say it was one of the five best concerts I've ever seen.  That night, I heard the song Messiah for the first time -- the one that goes: "Messiah took this world by force..." and culminated with him playing the role of the people of the earth as he let himself loose to shout out in a shimmering, plaintive cry: "Messiah???  Messiah!! MESSSIIIAAAHHH!!!!"  Hearing it in my head still gives me chills. Over time, Larry became kind of a charicature of himself.  There was always another "lost tape" that got found and released, always another "must have" album that I never felt I needed to have.  He got divorced (there were lots of rumors as to her part / his part).  His friendship with his best friend Randy Stonehill ended in a rather public riff though, years later, it seemed to have mended some.  He retreated from the public eye and Christian rock music kept morphing farther and farther away from his experimental, raw, non-commercial sensibilities.  Once in awhile he turned up here or there like some refugee who had wandered into the present from the past -- his hair still long, straight and blond and all dressed in denim.  His steel-eyed observations about the church, life and Christianity were starting to sound a little more frayed at the edges.  But, if you looked closely enough, the brilliance was still there. A couple years ago, I started visiting www.Larrynorman.com regularly and watching his little videos and catching up on the latest news.  His health has been bad -- even critical -- for years.  I knew he couldn't go on forever.  Still, the part of me that is still the admiring fifteen-year-old teenager never forgot that the man was one of my heroes -- okay,one of my idols -- at a time when I needed some new people to look up to.   I realize that many of you, including my own children, will never really understand what Larry meant to me because I didn't talk about him alot.  Yet, while I feel melancholy at the thought that he has now passed on, I am also grateful to have had someone like him as a fixture in my life -- even at a distance.   It's not easy being a pioneer -- and Larry Norman was nothing if not a pioneer.  You take hits, make mistakes and suffer misunderstanding.  But Larry broke ground anyway, and that matters -- it matters more than most people will ever know.   Goodbye, Larry.  Goodbye, Mike.  Goodbye, Lonnie.  Damn, if you people still don't have the power to make me cry. Bill Faris

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Anonymous

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Hi Bill,

Many of us saw some of Larry's weaknesses, as you describe them. But that was the whole point. His music is about being a Christian in the world as it is, not as we would like it to be, and struggling with our own failings.

I regret many of the sad times he went through, for his sake, but I'm glad he was honest about them. And noone who reads the tributes on this board could question for a second the impact he had!!!!!!!!!!!!

Adam

P.S. I have three copies of So Long Ago The Garden and they are all different. It's worth buying a few extra Larry recordings just to see the development of his creative process!!!

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