65
Only Visiting This Planet
(recording, 1972)
Christian music need not be polite.
Such was the conviction that led Larry Norman to wed hard-edged lyrics and contemporary rock music with the message of the gospel, and the result of that conviction was a series of albums that changed the face of Christian music. The second, and arguably the greatest, of these albums was Only Visiting This Planet. When the needle dropped into the groove (for these were the days of vinyl LPs), listeners soon realized that they had never heard religious music that sounded quite like this. It was a record that had attitude. Sure, these were songs that addressed issues of God and faith and salvation without any hesitation, but they also explored racism, poverty, drug use, sex, and the state of rock-and-roll music.
It was a mixture that some Christians could not stomach. Most of these songs could not be played over the sanitized airwaves of religious radio, as Norman was addressing topics not deemed appropriate for polite, pious conversation. The music had—gasp—a beat, and was performed with electric guitars, drums, and an occasional saxophone, not the normal acoustic guitar and piano sound that passed for contemporary in churches. Then there was that long blond hair and those faded jeans that graced the album cover—couldn’t he have at least put on some nice clothes to have his picture taken? Christian bookstores often refused to stock his records, or if they did, kept them under the counter, only available upon request. Even those Christians who liked rock music as a genre (maybe secretly) would not have dreamed of combining it with religious words.
Only Visiting This Planet opens with “I’ve Got to Learn to Live Without You,” a mournful, radio-friendly pop song about lost love without any specifically religious references, making an immediate statement that Norman believed that a Christian could sing about all the issues of life, not just religious ones. But its follow-up, “The Outlaw,” leaves no question about where Norman stands. This acoustic guitar–driven ballad celebrates Jesus as one who stands outside and against the system, one who cannot be domesticated and is so often misunderstood. Then Norman gets personal with the listener as he roars into “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus?”, a song that is unapologetically evangelistic but also realistic about the struggles people face in their lives that bring them to a point of need. His images evoke the pain of life and wrongheaded attempts to salve it, with phrases such as: “Sipping whiskey from a paper cup / You drown your sorrows till you can’t stand up,” and “Gonorrhea on Valentine’s Day / And you’re still looking for the perfect lay.” Jesus, says Norman, is the only answer to our searching, which is the theme of the following song, “Righteous Rocker #1.” And side one closes with his earnest, apocalyptic, post-rapture ballad, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” the one song from this album that did get wide distribution among Christian audiences.
Album cover for Only Visiting This Planet by Larry Norman, Solid Rock Records [LarryNorman.com]
With the first side of the record calling his listeners toward faith, the second side engages social injustice as it is seen through his eyes of faith. Norman’s superbly imaginative songwriting stands up to comparison with some of the artists from whom he had learned his craft—Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney. “I’m the Six O’clock News” is an antiwar song as seen through the eyes of a callous television reporter. “The Great American Dream” is a particular highlight of the album, a catalog of the ills confronting modern society, including racism, poverty, loss of privacy and freedom, and misplaced priorities (spending money on NASA missions to space while ignoring the problems next door). “Pardon Me” is a gentler-sounding song that reminds us that free love comes at a great cost, and “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” is a rollicking, ’50s style musical rave-up justifying the use of rock music in the service of God. Its opening lines express the direction of Norman’s artistry: “I want the people to know that He saved my soul / But I still like to listen to the radio.” What he is hearing on the radio is the theme of the closing song, “Reader’s Digest,” which skewers the hypocrisy and dead ends (sometimes literally, in the case of deceased artists such as Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin) of the musical idols of his era, and closes with these tongue-in-cheek lines, “What a mess this world is in, I wonder who began it / Don’t ask me, I’m only visiting this planet.”
Only Visiting This Planet came crashing into a Christian subculture that was beginning to feel the effects of the Jesus Movement—a fast-growing revival among hippies, street people, and ex-druggies. The traditionalists, who sought to keep guitars, drums, and any kind of modern sounds out of the church, were fighting a losing battle against a younger generation who wanted to use the music they loved to sing about the God they loved. Norman was at the forefront of this movement, and his songs were an example of how music could be relevant and up-to-date while at the same time espousing a traditional evangelical theology. Clearly, Norman was less interested in inspiring and entertaining the faithful than in sharing the answers he had found with nonbelievers. Sadly, he was never fully embraced by either camp. He was too sacred for sinners and he made the saints squirm uncomfortably. So he forged his own artistic path.
Larry Norman was born in Texas in 1947 and moved with his family to San Francisco at age three, where they settled in the Haight-Ashbury district. He loved the music of Elvis Presley, and also the music of the Black Pentecostal and Baptist churches where his parents attended. He embraced Christianity at age five and began writing and performing rock-and-roll songs as early as nine. In the mid-60s he joined a band called People! and became one of their principal songwriters. The band’s cover of “I Love You” became a hit single, selling over a million copies, but Norman quit the band on the day their first album was released due to creative and religious differences.
His first solo album, Upon This Rock, was released without much fanfare in 1969, but managed to attract criticism from some quarters of Christianity, while being embraced by members of the growing Jesus Movement and getting some limited distribution by a Christian music company after Capitol Records dropped him from their roster. He recorded a couple of independent records that he released himself, then got a contract from MGM for Only Visiting This Planet.
Only Visiting This Planet was the first of three albums that Norman referred to as his trilogy. It was followed up by So Long Ago the Garden (1973), which took a more oblique and poetic approach to dealing with issues of faith, and was, like its predecessor, very well produced and performed. When neither of these albums sold well in the general market, it effectively ended his recording career in that world.
In 1974 Norman founded Solid Rock Records, which he saw as an outlet not only for his own music but also for talented artists who needed a break. Musicians such as Randy Stonehill, Mark Heard, Tom Howard, and the band Daniel Amos all created exceptional albums for the Solid Rock label. Solid Rock Records were released into the Christian music market through a distribution deal with Word Records, and the third record in Norman’s trilogy, In Another Land (1976), was the initial release of his new label. It became his bestselling record and stands alongside Only Visiting This Planet as his highest artistic achievements. Its impeccable production, creative songs, good humor, and theme about the last days made it more accessible and less controversial to the Christian audience than his previous releases.
These three albums, considered as a conceptual unit (for these were the days of the concept album), are an unparalleled popular music exploration of the sweep of the biblical story, from the fall through the struggles of this life and the hope that lies beyond. The writing, the music, the designs of the covers all sent a message that Christians could produce rock that was as artful and relevant as the best.
Sadly, Norman produced only one more unquestionably great album, a stomping blues-gospel-rock record called Something New Under the Son (1981). Clashes with Word Records, and his own tendencies toward sabotaging personal relationships, led to the demise of Solid Rock and the founding of another record company, Phydeaux. But while he recorded some interesting records, none of the subsequent releases had the production values or conceptual vision he had shown in the creation of his trilogy. Norman claimed that this decline in creativity was due to a mild brain injury he had sustained during a rough landing on an airplane, which had damaged his ability to focus on further projects. He also had legal and personal conflicts with some of the artists with whom he had worked, and his marriage ended in divorce. He later testified that his concentration issues were healed during a prayer meeting, after which he settled back into performing, creating some new music, and tinkering with the vast catalog of songs he’d recorded over the years. He died of heart problems in 2008.
Norman’s legacy lives on in the world of contemporary Christian music, though few have managed to combine artistry and zeal as effectively as he did. He once complained that most Christian music was crippled by “sloppy thinking, dishonest metaphors, and bad poetry.” He wanted to achieve something more than providing “safe” entertainment for those who wanted to avoid secular rock, saying, “If your music is boring, people will reject your message as well as your art.”1
Larry Norman could never be accused of being boring. In 2013, Only Visiting This Planet was chosen as one of twenty-five recordings to be inducted into the Library of Congress National Recording Registry, which represents the richness and diversity of American musical heritage. In their written statement about Norman, those who had given him the award applauded him as one who “commented on the world as he saw it from his position as a passionate, idiosyncratic outsider to mainstream churches.”2 Chris Willman, music writer for Entertainment Weekly, wrote that “he really could’ve been a star if he were singing about something other than Jesus.”3 But with Larry Norman, that is unimaginable.