LARRY NORMAN - (Sub)Urban Hymns
You probably haven't stopped to think about it, but somebody had to do it
first. Somebody had to brainstorm the idea of introducing God to rock 'n'
roll, giving birth to the often strained marriage of aesthetics known as
Christian rock.
That person is Larry Norman, and his brainstorm came more than 30 years
ago. And though he's living in the relative calm of Salem, Oregon, he still
records at home and commutes to Los Angeles to complete a new album.
Norman has long professed the "controversial" viewpoint that rock
'n' roll wasn't the music of the devil, but in fact the music of African-American
culture. With his band People, Norman mixed hard rock with a Christian message
and the hard-hitting social commentary of 1966.
It confused the hell out of folks and eventually got him in hot water. "Nobody
had ever mixed the ideas of God and politics in rock music before,"
Norman said. "The church found it objectionable because they thought
God and rock 'n' roll had no business together. And those who weren't church
people thought it was strange. It was too rock 'n' roll for the conservative
Christian community, and too Christian for the rock 'n' rollers."
That didn't stop People from cracking the Top 20 on both the Billboard and
Cashbox charts in the late '60s, and it certainly didn't stop the majority
of Christian music and book stores from banning Norman when he went solo
in 1968. It wasn't his approach to subjects like sex, politics, racism and
war that bugged the Christian community, it was the fact that he had the
audacity to address them at all. "I was too radical," Norman said.
"I was really pretty genteel about it all, but I hadn't really considered
the church as an audience. I wasn't trying to appeal to them. I didn't really
want them to listen.
"Like the song 'Why Does the Devil Have All the Good Music?'--that
was in defense of rock. It really came from the black church, and I guess
saying that offended the white church. A lot of people down South thought
I was attacking their way of life--people down there who called themselves
religious but who also beat up blacks and burned crosses on their lawns."
By 1976, the ban on Norman's records finally let up, but not before he'd
felt the wrath of the holier than thou. "They didn't think I was a
Christian," he said. "There were books on that whole (Christian
rock) culture written by conservative Christians, and I was the only one
that got picked on. They said I was a tool of Satan and that I was deceiving
young people. I was just a mellow guy who was into poetry more than groupies."
These days, Norman produces a bundle of artists world-wide, he's struck
up a close musical friendship with Guns 'n' Roses keyboardist Dizzy Reed,
and his tunes have been covered by artists as diverse as Petula Clark, Sammy
Davis Jr. and Frank Black, who's said to be a big fan. But it's his decision
to leave the glitter of Los Angeles for the peaceful green of Oregon that
really makes him give thanks. "Oregon freaked me out when I was first
flying over it. It looked like Norway, and I thought, 'I didn't know any
place in America was this beautiful.' It was over for L.A., baby. I just
was wondering, 'Why am I still living here?'"
All contents (c) Andre' Hagestedt
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