The morning of March 14 I checked my RSS feeds from Christianity Today and saw the headline, “Larry Norman, 'Father of Christian Rock,' Dies at 60”.
I was crestfallen. I read the article and realized I was actually really late in getting the news. He died on February 24! I knew he had been sick for some time (in actuality he hasn’t been healthy at all for years), but it still took me by surprise. I read the summary of his odd life and sat there for a while. Then I went downstairs and told my wife the news.
I couldn’t help it; I cried when I told her. I always feel like a moron when I cry at celebrity deaths. It’s happened only twice before. September 2003 was horrible. Warren Zevon died on the 7th and Johnny Cash died on the 12th. I cried over both of them. For me that was the week the music died.
Then I took out my IPod and played Larry Norman music for 3 days straight. Now I’m down to a few times a week.
I’ve thought a lot about him in the last few weeks. He always puzzled me. I would read things he said about his life and think, “he has to be making this up.” At times he came across as grandiose; sometimes he seemed paranoid. And a lot of his music was really not that good, especially the later stuff. Granted, he was not at full capacity when he made it. I still bought it though, and even in the midst of the mediocrity I would always hear elements of the brilliance.
I’m very relieved people have been honest in writing about him after his death. One person quoted in the Christianity Today article said, “Norman was unpredictable and often exaggerated stories.” On his web site, Long time friend Randy Stonehill says, “I knew Larry Norman perhaps better than anyone, yet to this day I'm not sure that I really understood him completely. For as brilliant and insightful as Larry was, I'm not sure that he understood himself completely. This issue became apparent in the way he consistently seemed to "derail" relationships through out his life.”
I never met Larry Norman but he changed my life. When I became a Christian he was Christian music. There was nothing else. And since then he has been the standard by which I assess all other Christian music. Which is why I don’t like a lot of it. He taught me what it could be.
