Christian rocker Larry Norman launched genre

Posted: 3/14/08

Christian rocker Larry Norman launched genre

By Kristi Turnquist & Grant Butler

Religion News Service

SALEM, Ore. (RNS)—Christian rock lost one of its pioneers when Larry Norman, 60, died of heart failure Feb. 24 at his home in Salem, Ore.

“We’re receiving thousands and thousands of e-mails,” his brother, Charles Norman, said.

“Every time I read one, it’s from someone who says he changed their life. He met them somewhere, and he bought them lunch, or they were on drugs and meeting him turned them around.”

Norman’s death brought renewed attention to his role as a pioneer in what’s now a thriving category in the music industry.

Norman’s 1969 solo album, Upon This Rock, is “considered pivotal in the development of Contemporary Christian music,” according to the Billboard Guide to Contemporary Christian Music.

Norman was born April 8, 1947, in Corpus Christi. His family moved to San Francisco when Norman was young, and he developed an interest in the music of Elvis Presley.

He accompanied his father on Christian missions to prisons and hospitals, and was inspired to write rock songs that included spiritual messages, Charles Norman said.

Norman had his biggest commercial hit as the lead singer of the folk-rock band People! The band’s cover version of the Zombies song I Love You peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard chart in June 1968.

In later years, Norman started his own independent label, recording additional solo albums while discovering other Christian artists.

Larry Norman was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001, and for all his influence, Norman was ahead of his time with his mixture of blunt lyrics, rock rhythms and Christian message.

“I’m sure he was surprised at the resistance that he got from the church,” Charles Norman said. “But he wasn’t trying to address them. Like a pioneer having to hack his way through the woods to blaze a trail, he met a lot of resistance.”

In a message posted on his website, written the day before his death, Norman said he knew death was imminent.

“I feel like a prize in a box of Cracker Jacks with God’s hand reaching down to pick me up,” Norman wrote, adding that he planned to be buried in a “simple pine box with some flowers inside.”