Larry Norman Says Good-Bye

When did you first feel called to talk to others?

When I was five I started witnessing to people in the street and my dad would talk to people too. I saw him talk to a sailor one day when we were getting ready to cross the street to our house and that really stuck with me. He also went to prisons and hospitals and he memorized Scripture so I wanted to witness to people too and I wanted to memorize the Bible.

So you’ve memorized a lot of Scripture?

I read great literature and I memorized so much of the Bible. It was helpful to witness to people if you knew Scripture. Sometimes the power that comes from the Scripture is that you’re telling them what you believe God has revealed without paraphrasing it and it has magical power to change lives.

How so?

Sometimes I’ll be really stressed out about something and my mom will call me up and say, “Larry, here’s a Bible verse for you” and she’ll just read it off and I’ll instantly relax. “Thanks, Mom. I just needed to hear that right now.” She is very good at sensing things, too, and she’s memorized so much Scripture.

How long have you been writing songs?

I started writing songs and performing them in 1956. I also wrote songs that I would [hide] from my dad because I knew he didn’t like most the songs I was writing, but they were good songs. I even recorded some of them years later, like “Moses in the Wilderness.” I recorded that in 1969, but I wrote it when I was a kid. I wrote it because of Sunday school and how kids cannot quite understand what’s being taught to them.

What opposition have you encountered?

My parents went to another church with some friends of theirs, and they had a guest speaker who led the congregation in a very quiet prayer. Then when he said, “Amen,” he pushed the button on a tape recorder which was plugged into the sound system and it blared out one of my songs. He said, “That’s Larry Norman and he’s leading thousands of young people to hell. If you find a record of his in your house, you need to burn it because it’s got demons in it. If your kids ever hear about Larry in concert, you’ve got to keep them home.” His website still explains why I’m not a Christian and why my music is of the devil. So I had that kind of trouble.

Why do you think you’ve had problems with other Christians?

I tell people stuff they don’t want to hear.

[At one of my concerts] I said, “You need to feed the poor. I know you’ve got money in your pocket because you’re not skin and bones so you’re eating. Somehow you’ve got food so you’ve got money. I know you’re going to buy some stuff tonight. You came to this concert. That cost you ten bucks. How many pairs of shoes do you have in your closet? How many Christian albums do you have? So if you’re going to feed the poor, I want to thank you for coming tonight and I love you. You’re my brothers and my sisters and I’ll be with you in heaven. I’ll stand next to you and we’ll rejoice in the Lord. But if you’re not going to feed the poor, please don’t give me any money. The poor need it; I don’t. So don’t buy my records tonight and don’t ever come to one of my concerts again unless God tells you to, because you’re supposed to feed the poor.”

So sometimes I would just say something that God put on my heart at that moment and I lost a lot of audiences.

Over the years, did you become more accepted as a Christian artist?

The Church finally accepted me in 1976, I think it was, and that’s just because I had so many songs people knew that the records stores said, “Okay, I’ll take a chance.” I did In and of the Land, which was such a mellow album. It’s really for Christians (none of the other albums were), but what do you say when the concept of the album is eternal life with God in heaven? … Of course they liked that album and the record stores sold it and it was Album of the Month for Word Record Club and it was the #1 seller for a long time.

So being a Christian doesn’t mean everything’s perfect?

One time I was talking to Elvis’s girlfriend and she was crying. She was at a Christian function and she was in the kitchen of this restaurant. I said, “Are you okay?”

She said, “Yeah, I just thought when I became a Christian everything was going to be better and people were going to be different, but the Christians are just the same as everybody else. I don’t know what to do.”

I sat down with her and just told her, “You’re right. Christians are the same as everybody else. But Jesus is different than anything else you’ll ever experience. So don’t look at Christians. Don’t worry about them. Just be who God wants you to be.”

In fact I’m so extreme about feeling that God does everything perfectly within this world that if you look in the mirror and you go, “I hate the way I look,” then you’re really telling God he made a mistake, and God did not make a mistake.

When you are witnessing, do you usually tell others who you are?

Posted on March 3, 2008 12:00 AM