Larry Norman
Larry David Norman ( born April 8, 1947 in Corpus Christi, Texas, † February 24, 2008 in Portland, Oregon ) was an American singer and composer. He was considered one of the most important pioneers of modern Christian music.
Life
Larry Norman grew up in the black ghetto in San Francisco and later explained that this was the reason why he could not do anything with the traditional white church music. He was a member of the rock band People!. This band released their first record in 1968 and landed in the top 20 on the U.S. charts with the song I Love You. Norman left the band in 1969 and released his first solo album, Upon This Rock.
Norman was one of the first artists who published serious modern music with Christian lyrics. In his published in 1972 song Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music ( German: "Why should only the devil the good music have " ), he laid the foundation for many other artists, in which he explained that you could very well live as a Christian can and can listen to rock or even play. The lyrics of the song is based on a quote by William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army. Later Norman was often referred to as the grandfather of Jesus rock. Billboard named him the most important songwriter since Paul Simon. In 1972, Norman made his debut as an actor in the second part of The Blob. In the seventies, Norman produced the first albums of his friend Randy Stonehill.
Norman founded in 1975 the record label Solid Rock Records. This published Stonehill Welcome to Paradise and albums by Daniel Amos, Tom Howard and Mark Heard's Appalachian Melody. He survived in 1978 only about a plane crash and suffered severe brain damage here, but completely ausheilten after years. During the twelve years that no studio album was released by him. Disagreement with his record label Word Records ended with the dissolution of the label Solid Rock Records in 1980. Norman moved to Europe and founded the label Phydeaux. In 1990 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Christian Artists Seminar. In the same year he was legendary seven concerts at Moscow's Olympic Stadium, each with 35,000 spectators.
In 1992 he suffered a massive heart attack. Surgery seemed pointless because the doctors assumed that he had no chance of survival. A surgeon dared the operation, appointed a new pacemaker and Norman survived. Longer trips and performances were him since nearly impossible. On 24 June 2005 Larry Norman gave his last official U.S. concert in Salem ( Oregon). As his health got better again, but followed after this officially last concert still more so again in 2007 concerts in Europe. There he made in Berlin, some of his last studio recordings and sang together with Sarah Brendel a two songs for her album Early Morning Hours. He lived most recently in Portland, where he died in February 2008 at the age of 60 years.
He was taken by the Gospel Music Association in the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001.