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Friday, August 24, 2007
I'VE GOT TO LEARN TO LIVE WITHOUT YOU
Larry Norman
Only Visiting This Planet
Phydeaux : 1972
[Buy it]
RIGHTEOUS ROCKER #1
Larry Norman
Only Visiting This Planet
Phydeaux : 1972
[Buy it]
WHY SHOULD THE DEVIL HAVE ALL THE GOOD MUSIC?
Larry Norman
Only Visiting This Planet
Phydeaux : 1972
[Buy it]
READER'S DIGEST
Larry Norman
Only Visiting This Planet
Phydeaux : 1972
[Buy it]
What I know about Contemporary Christian Music could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. I didn't like it when I was young, since I was Jewish, and over the years, as I have gotten older and remained Jewish, I haven't exactly acquired a taste for it. I have always liked gospel, though, and while the difference is partly musical--gospel struck me as better music, for the most part, closer in sympathies to the acoustic blues and raw R&B I liked and less like the wimpy rock and pop I didn't like--I think the distinction was also one of race and time. I saw gospel as African-American music that resided in the past, was clearly distinct from me culturally, and as a result posed no threat to my somewhat tenuous teenage beliefs. Contemporary Christian, on the other hand, might have snuck in the door dressed up as rock or pop. Wham! before I knew it I'd be changed, and how would I explain that to my parents? I will concede that this makes no sense.
In high school, I was driven home from school by a kid who was at least a loner. He didn't listen to CCM. This is a bit of a detour. Be patient. He listened to The Wall almost constantly. I think the cassette was glued into his car stereo. Even when he wasn't singing along with the radio out loud, I could tell that his mind's mouth was singing along silently. He hung out with another kid with sideburns, and another one who was freakishly tall, and a third kid who was some kind of Christian stoner. That third kid was the first one to mention Larry Norman to me. He didn't say much, that kid. For all I know, those could well have been the only two words he ever said to me: "Larry Norman." I had no idea what he was talking about. It wasn't until more than a decade later that I saw a Larry Norman album in a record store. I bought it out of curiosity, played it once, started to get that same creepy feeling I did whenever I heard CCM. I held my breath until I could get it off the turntable and never went back.
Age has made me less superstitious about these kinds of things, and in recent years I've developed a kind of fascination with Larry Norman, the Dylan of CCM (or maybe the John Lennon of CCM, or the Elvis of CCM, or the John Fogerty of CCM). Born in Texas and raised in a black neighborhood in San Francisco, Norman had a childhood filled with gospel records and initially viewed rock-and-roll as a kind of inappropriate borrowing of black music. He got over his resistance, formed a band (People!), signed to a major label (Capitol), had a hit (“I Love You”), and then went solo, where he made his name with a quartet of albums in the late sixties and early seventies: Upon This Rock (1969), Only Visiting This Planet (1972), So Long Ago The Garden (1973), and In Another Land (1976). As a solo artist, he was a double outcast. As a result of his religious themes, he was too square for traditional rock audiences, and as a result of his appearance (he looked less like a Christian singer and more like the long-lost brother of Johnny and Edgar Winter) and his love for rock-and-roll, he was too outré for traditional gospel audiences. A quick look at the artists who have covered his songs--Petula Clark, Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Black, and Cliff Richard--illustrates how hard he was (and still is) to categorize.
And yet, he's also easy to categorize. Norman is, for the most part, a shameless thief in the temple of classic rock; Jesus may be the main divinity behind his work, but Dylan, Lennon, McCartney, Clapton, Rundgren, and the other rock giants of the era aren't far behind. The first song on his best album, Only Visiting This Planet, is a strong midtempo piece called "I've Got to Lean to Live Without You" that opens with a direct quote from "Let It Be." It could be explained away as a clever reversal of rock's history of filching from gospel, or for that matter an homage to George Martin's AIR studios, where Norman was recording, but the rest of the album is every bit as kleptomaniacal. "Reader's Digest" is an update of "Subterranean Homesick Blues." "Oh How I Love You" is like a Plastic Ono Band outtake, if John Lennon had been David Gates. And on "The Outlaw," Norman adopts a Neil Youngish vocal and somehow nicks the melody of Young's "Pocahontas," which wouldn't be released for seven more years (the Young, of course, steals its melody from Carole King's "He's a Bad Boy"). It's not surprising that Norman is trying to locate himself among the rock giants of his era, though his doggedness is sometimes exhausting. The entire enterprise is redeemed by his likable vocals and his talent as a lyricist, as well as by those occasional moments when he successfully co-opts the debauched narcissism that made seventies rock so insufferable, and so great. The fifties-flavored "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music," which is almost comically full-throttle, damns other religious music as sodden and self-important. "Why Don't You Look Into Jesus" plays like a meaner, sharper version of one of Elton John's early-seventies roots moves:Sippin' whiskey from a paper cup
You drown your sorrows til you can't stand up
Take a look at what you've done to yourself
Why don't you put the bottle back on the shelf
Yellow fingered from your cigarettes
Your hands are shaking while your body sweats When Norman shifted his frame slightly more into the secular realm, the results were songs like "Righteous Rocker #1," which not only sounds like Leon Russell but name-checks him:You can be a righteous rocker or a holy roller
You could be most anything
You could be Leon Russell or a super muscle
You could be a corporate king
You could be a wealthy man from Texas
Or a witch with heavy hexes
But without love you ain't nothing Paul McCartney, who is aesthetically referenced in many songs and explicitly mentioned in one ("Song For a Small Circle of Friends," from In Another Land, which also makes proselytizing appeals to Clapton and Dylan), once said that Norman could have been a huge star if he had gone secular. I'm not sure if that's true. For starters, he was a huge star, at least in his genre. Also, he benefited immensely from living in a parallel universe. Had he gone up against Dylan, Young, and Lennon directly he might have met the same fate as, say, Emitt Rhodes, and been dismissed as an imitator rather than an innovator.
In 1978, at the height of his powers and about to sign with Warner Bros., Norman was in an airplane accident that damaged his neck, skull, and spine and caused brain damage that kept him out of the studio and off the stage for twelve years. In the nineties, he began a comeback, mostly in Europe, and recorded a few well-received albums before his health deteriorated again due to heart trouble. Norman has been near death several times, but he has recovered each time and still occasionally performs. In early August, he played a rare show in New York, at Calvary Baptist Church. I could have gone. Maybe I even should have gone. I didn't go.Labels: ben, CCM
posted by Ben
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