The New York Times had a fine story the other day about country-music superstar Alan Jackson. No, honest. Read it for yourself. It covers all kinds of territory, including his gospel album that turned into a surprise hit.
Then there is the book that his wife wrote for a major Christian publisher.
Mr. Jackson’s flexibility may have been tested last year when his wife, Denise Jackson, published “It’s All About Him: Finding the Love of My Life” (Thomas Nelson). It’s a graceful book about how their marriage, which began in 1979, was saved by her renewed Christian faith (that “Him” isn’t a “him”), and it found its way to the top of the New York Times best-seller list.
She reduced the juicy parts to a five-word sentence, putting the matter plainly without divulging any details: “Alan had not been faithful.” Asked about the book, Mr. Jackson said, “We’re as happy as we’ve ever been.” But Ms. Jackson’s conclusion in the book, though optimistic, is more bittersweet. The final chapter is called, “Happily Ever After, Even When We’re Not.”
Obviously, Jackson is way too big a star to be a “Christian musician.” One of the implications of the piece is that — to paraphrase Bono — Jackson is a musician who is struggling to be a believer.
So there are musicians who are Christians and then there are contemporary Christian musicians. Those in first group are part of the real music industry and the second are tied to their own niche industry. All of this makes me think about the death of Larry Norman, an edgy rock pioneer. This week, many journalists accurately called him the father or one of the fathers of Christian rock. But some implied that he was linked to the while CCM niche industry. I think you could make a case that he fought the CCM establishment throughout his long and, at times, troubled career.
I was talking about this with a friend of mine, journalism professor Michael Longinow of Biola University, and he said he wanted to write something about the media coverage of Norman. Of course, I said, “Bring it on.”
So take it away, Dr. Longinow:
Death often brings more questions than answers. That was true this week as Christian music legend Larry Norman passed from this life and journalists attempted to unravel what this singer and songwriter really meant to the post-60s generation — and the cash-rich genre that came to be known, toward the end of Norman’s life, as Christian Contemporary Music.
Like many of the angry rebels who Norman set out to bring to Christ, his own musical and life legacy was as much about pain as passion. Randy Stonehill, a friend of Norman’s who came to faith through Norman’s life and music ministry declined an interview request from Christianity Today this week, opting instead to post a statement on his own web site Monday — within hours of Norman’s passing — saying that a tragedy of Norman’s life was his inability to maintain relationships.
“I’m not sure he understood himself completely,” said Stonehill’s site. “This issue
became apparent in the way he consistently seemed to ‘derail’ relationships throughout his life.”
Part of the enigma that was Norman was his tireless pattern of song-writing, music promotion, performing and touring — tied, as it was, to his penchant for not telling the whole truth about where he was going to be next. Perhaps because he’d hurt — or been hurt by — those he trusted, Norman made himself a moving target.
“There’s a possibility that he’s living in Thailand and this is all a ruse. That might offend a lot of people, but that’s how he was,” David DiSabatino told Christianity Today. “I don’t believe that, but then again, if you told me that’s where he was, I wouldn’t bat an eye.”
DiSabatino, who bills himself as an historian of the Jesus rock era, is completing a documentary on Norman. A 2006 documentary by DiSabatino looks at the life of Lonnie Frisby, a conflicted Jesus People musician associated with Calvary Chapel who, with Chuck Smith’s help, is credited with nearly single-handedly launching the Jesus People movement in the 1960s — a movement in which Larry Norman was an influential, if at times reluctant, participant.
Chris Willman, of Entertainment Weekly, had perhaps the most thorough and stylish look-back at Norman (nice photo of Norman in what looks to be Trafalgar Square, being attacked by pigeons) of any written in week after the songwriter’s passing. Willman deftly placed Norman in the paradoxical landscape that was 1969 by noting that when Norman’s “Upon This Rock” hit American turntables, the Christian music scene had little that appealed to the young in evangelical churches who were being mesmerized by the rock-and-roll revolution that had been underway for more a decade. Willman writes:
For quite a few years, the sum total of the Christian rock genre was pretty much Larry Norman. It may be difficult now — at a time when bands like Paramore find wide acceptance in both the Christian and mainstream worlds (and almost a quarter-century on from the advent of Stryper) — to remember a time when there was no such thing as CCM, and when, if any such thing did pop up, it was greeted with distrust and scorn on either side of the evangelical-pop divide. The Beatles were about to break up, yet the cutting edge of Christian music was still represented by the folksy-choral records made by Ralph Carmichael, better known as Billy Graham’s musical director. Then along came an unsmiling, almost sneering guy who, like Johnny Cash, usually dressed all in black, though, unlike Cash, he had whiteish blond hair down past his chest. And he was singing about salvation and the rapture, with humor and sass, in a voice that clearly owed a lot to Mick Jagger’s cocky intonation. In the church vs. counterculture world of the ’60s and early ’70s, this officially counted as cognitive dissonance, and maybe it still does.
Among the earliest to note Norman’s passing was Bullypulpitnews.com, a blog run by media-watcher and producer Mark Joseph (a fervent critic of CCM) in Southern California. Joseph’s obituary for Norman ran on huffingtonpost.com on Tuesday. It took other media a day or two to catch up.
National Public Radio posted an unsmiling photo of Norman on Thursday, from what looks like the 1970s as a teaser to an interview with Charles Norman. In that interview, Norman’s younger brother recalled growing up with a big brother bold enough to grow his hair long and write about sin in ways that transcended metaphor.
Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day
And you’re still looking for the perfect lay
Why don’t you look into Jesus
He’s got the answers
“Stuff like that that shocked uptight Christians,” said Charles Norman.
And he was right. Many Christian bookstores — primary outlets for tame Christian music in the era when Norman was exploding on the music scene — refused to carry his music. Not that this bothered him, outwardly anyway. Rejection became a kind of ongoing theme of Norman’s life. His style almost invited it.
Veteran mainstream music writer Steve Turner, in a Norman obituary for Reuters that ran in London’s Guardian newspaper, said Norman “ploughed an often lonely furrow as a solo artist who tried to combine the thrill of the Beatles and Rolling Stones with the spiritual insight of C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesteron.”
For more mainstream media reports, see Reuters the Oregonian, and the San Jose Mercury News. As a rule, the mainstream played up Norman’s status as a converted secular rocker who put Christian rock on the map in ways that got the attention of such rock pioneers as Bob Dylan, Pete Townshend, Fleetwood Mac, Van Morrison, U2, Petula Clark and (wait for it) Sammy Davis, Jr.
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Comments (11) |
March 2, 2008, at 8:32 pm
[…] NEW:Â Terry Mattingly provides one of GetReligion’s characteristic around-the-room’s of the media’s coverage of Larry’s passing […]
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March 2, 2008, at 9:12 pm
[…] NEW: Terry Mattingly provides one of GetReligion’s characteristic around-the-room’s of the media’s coverage of Larry’s passing […]
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March 2, 2008, at 11:23 pm
You absolutely must get/rent/watch FRISBEE. But don’t just watch the feature movie; there’s another hour-and-a-half of outtakes on the DVD that could be a whole second movie all to itself. If even half of what’s on the DVD is true, then Calvary Chapel and the Vineyard Church both owe their start and growth to Lonnie, which means that Lonnie was directly or indirectly perhaps the single most influential Christian of the last 3+ decades. And like William Seymour, he has been nearly forgotten.
F-A-S-C-I-N-A-T-I-N-G.
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March 3, 2008, at 2:59 pm
I am a long admirer of Larry Norman’s, say, second generation admirer. Tho I can feel the (justified) frustration behind Randy Stonehill and DA’s Terry Scott Taylor… Larry Norman tried to do too too much, and when he was stricken with health issues in the late 70s, a lot of friendships broke apart. He was a great enigma.
I still hold that Larry Norman was the Father of CCM, because not everything Larry recorded was rock… much of it was folk, much of it was pop. I also hold that The Electric Prunes’ _Mass in F Minor_ holds the distinction of being the first recorded Christian Rock album (and _Agnus Dei_ was even sampled in _Easy Rider_)… but that particular album had zero influence on the evangelical community, not to mention was almost a one-person mutiny on a band that fell apart afterwards…
And I also recommend FRISBEE, and found it mesmerizing, if the subject matter interests you.
Can I just mention that my ironic introduction to Larry Norman’s music was hearing “Watch What You’re Doing” being played as background music, for an anti-rock-music made-for-VHS documentary?
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March 4, 2008, at 6:46 pm
There is great concern that the documentary by David DiSabatino will be decidedly negative. DiSabatino’s initial release of Frisbee contained music by Norman, music which was included in the film without his permission. The resulting brouhaha left the two much at odds with each other, and the conflict was never really resolved before Norman’s death. DiSabatino has been rumored to plan to use the documentary to slander Norman and his legacy.
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March 5, 2008, at 1:03 am
Roscoe,
Like everything else in Larry Norman’s life, the truth is often the very reverse of what he said. I am a friend of his first wife, a woman he slandered. … I know DiSabatino, and he was a fan of Larry’s. What Larry did to him was wrong, and DiSabatino was indeed mad, but that documentary was slated to happen well before Larry did what he did. DiSabatino has an email to Larry outlining the treatise of the film, and it was only when Larry found out that Stonehill had been interviewed did he start to slander and jerk DiSabatino around. Like he did with everyone in his life. I can’t wait for this documentary to come out!
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March 5, 2008, at 12:22 pm
[…] Others have posted their comments, eulogies, and curiosities on Norman since his death on February 24th at age 60. Christianity Today gave him a sober sending off, and GetReligion offered a take on Norman’s life by Biola University’s Michael Longinow. I’m not sure what choir, save my own, I’m speaking to here or why I’m writing, but I feel a bit of a personal tug/loss that I can’t let go. As Entertainment Weekly’s online blog put it in relation to the album, “It didn’t sell much, but whatever born-again kids there were out there with Fender guitars all had a copy and wore out the grooves.” Indeed. In the late 1970s, my friend David and I spent many late night sleepovers listening to Norman, and the then early voices in the Christian rock scene, including Randy Stonehill (Welcome to Paradise was the album to listen to), Daniel Amos (Shotgun Angel), and Pat Terry Group (Songs of the South). A decade later in college, Norman’s influence was still felt as my buddy Patrick and I would sing some late-night wild renditions of “Why don’t you look into Jesus?” (even after we’d sipped some whiskey from a paper cup). […]
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March 8, 2008, at 10:46 am
Like everyone of us, Larry Norman was a human being. I was not his friend but he was one of mine. I became a Christian a year after his first album (Upon This Rock) was released …and I loved almost everything else he did.
It is instructive that God limited Larry’s influence in his own lifetime. Its, perhaps, not because of anything he did or did not do, but because of our (we fellow humans) tendency to idolize and exalt that which is not God. Larry was a Rock Star in an age when Rock Stars become exalted and imagined to be things we cannot expect anyone to really become. That said, Larry’s influence can only be measured with great difficulty. But to those of us who loved him, he could have become more than he deserved to be, at least in our eyes. God is wise and the impact of Larry Norman’s ministry will be felt for a LOOOOONG time to come even if not everyone knows that he was chosen for this work.
-BH
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March 11, 2008, at 1:23 am
Interesting site!
You can catch some of the actual meetings on you tube with Lonnie Frisbee and the early days, and I was around in California some years later for the “afterglow” of those times, crazy times. It was hard to know how to handle all of that and sort it all out, especially since in the early days there wasn’t a lot of Biblical knowledge going around, we just loved Jesus! Keith Green was another person who, while passionate and influential, had his life cut short. As a friend who lived at Last Days with him knew, he was intense in many ways that were just not good, as I’m sure Larry and Randy in their lives were/are all too familiar with. Keith wanted a plane ride, wanted 12 people in it when only 6 should have been it it, and against his pilot’s better judgment, insisted on it, and the rest is tragic history.
But that’s what forgiveness is about, eh? We are stubborn, we are selfish, insecure and we want our own way: While these truths about us can be ugly, it’s not why we’re saved: we’re saved because of Jesus and because He loves us, because we EXIST. Period. As a musician, I think I understand a bit of the difficulties of trying to harness all of the ideas, passions, frustrations and idealisms these guys might feel into a “holy little package” and you know, it just doesn’t work so well most of the time, never mind having the whole world watching and keeping score. The only means that seems to bring any freedom is to be open and authentic and admit our mistakes and be free about saying we’re sorry, and having a lot of grace with one another.
Larry Norman wasn’t perfect, but you cannot argue that the man had guts and he was radical for Jesus, and I am very thankful that we were blessed with him here with us for a time. And I KNOW he is where he has longed to be since he was a boy…home with daddy. Peace, Larry. You fought the good fight.
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March 19, 2008, at 9:47 am
All,
DiSabbatino is an opportunistic manipulator and a wolf in sheeps clothing who made the mistake of trying to get Larry’s trust then manipulate Larry - and since Larry rightly called him on it, and rightfully forced DiSabbatino to remove Larry’s unauthorized music from the “frisbee” movie, David DiSabbatino has been on a vendetta to hurt Larry Norman while alive… and now is blogging & interviewing in several posts sometimes under false names (yet his accusations and writing style are unmistakable) and bent on trying to ruin Larry’s good reputation post homecoming.
Look at Larry’s life and the thousands he brougth to Christ - while even the briefiest of studies of DiSabbatino’s activities will show him for what he is.
Please do not subsidize the accuser - pray for God’s protection for Larry’s family & honor, pray for deliverance and repentance for “DD”.
You will know them by their fruits…
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March 31, 2008, at 10:14 am
Norman was the real deal. Rest is peace, dude. Gonorrhea definitely transcends metaphor, LOL.
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