Larry Norman — here we go. Again.

On a bitterly cold winter night in 1984 Larry Norman gave a concert to a packed gymnasium at the Winkler Bible Institute. Today Winkler is a thriving agri-industrial city in southern Manitoba, roughly a 90 minute drive from the Winnipeg International Airport. At that time, however, it was a small Mennonite enclave.

Norman had performed there before, a year earlier. The first concert was stock Larry Norman — a standard setlist peppered with the usual Norman anecdotes (“I played for the President. It was nice. He smiled.” (Flashes toothy Jimmy Carter rictus, audience laughs); reads ingredients off a packet of artificial creamer, (audience laughs) etc. He’d given a version of the same concert at the Pantages Playhouse Theatre in Winnipeg the summer of ‘82.

This night was different. Norman came out with his nylon-stringed guitar and launched the show with familiar toe-tapping crowd pleasers. But when he moved to the piano he seemed determined to stay there, singing one after another of his oddball dirges — including “Pardon Me.”

Late in the concert he took the mic and said, “I heard some rumours. About me.” There followed quite a list of behaviours that this group of mostly Mennonites would indeed have considered scandalous — “That I divorced my wife. That I divorced my wife, after she took off her clothes and posed for pictures in a magazine,” etc. The list grew longer and more tawdry. He pointedly never addressed any of the allegations, but went on at length excoriating The Church (sic) for trading in gossip and slander.

Finally someone in the audience piped up. “Hey Larry — how about some more music?”

“This IS music,” Norman insisted. “This is music for the soul.”

Norman did eventually return to actual music. He wrapped up the night with a few more songs and a “Thank you.” People in attendance applauded politely, and left with the impression that the entire concert had been about something other than the concert.

I was a Larry Norman devotee at the time. This was the first I’d heard any of these crazy stories. If Gregory Thornbury’s biography of Norman is to be believed, pretty much every “rumour” Norman trotted out that night was a fact.

Which is all to say: Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music: Larry Norman & The Perils Of Christian Rock is one weird trip.

But before I get into the text let me be candid.

My wife and I have been married for just over a quarter-century. And — here comes the candour, get ready — in those years we have had some tense discussions about household finance.

Now: how many of those discussions do you suppose I or my wife felt compelled to record on a reel-to-reel tape recorder?

Thornbury was given access to the fabled Norman “archives,” including at least one such tape where Larry beseeches his then-wife Pam to take responsibility for her spending — among other fraught, potentially marriage-ending, behaviours.

Norman was a notorious hoarder. In amongst the piles of ephemera and detritus of Norman’s lived life — epistolary exchanges, napkin scrawlings, and press clippings by the bale — are these reels of recorded conversation. Apparently Norman brought this monster to every discussion that could potentially conclude in being chiseled out of his fiduciary due — or any other scenario that could benefit from a Larry Norman performance.

From this bloat of self-obsession Thornbury pulls together a portrait of a man whose ambition and artistry and depth of cultural penetration was truly remarkable. Thornbury’s portrait argues against  Norman’s cultural legacy amounting to little more than a quickly forgotten footnote. That this is nevertheless so is due chiefly, Thornbury posits, to the milieu Norman stubbornly worked in and with — American “John 3:16” Evangelicalism.

Norman devoted his life to the cause, whilst rubbing the fur the wrong way and putting a two-handed grip on Evangelical third-rails like integration, the environment, GOP loyalty, etc. Evangelicals never troubled themselves to return the devotion, instead pillorying Norman whenever he stepped outside the box. Sure, he had his faults — his need for control occasionally resulted in overreach, and it appears there may have been at least one indiscretion that, uh, occurred after years of frustration with his reckless peers, perhaps borne (an attentive reader might suspect) out of jealousy over former-BFF Randy Stonehill’s effortless way with the ladies. But Norman's insistence on being a prophet in his own house was finally the element that did him in.

Eyeh — Norman's attitude won't have helped cement the legacy he was hoping for, I will agree. But another portrait emerges from Thornbury’s telling — unconsciously, I suspect — which lies closer to the shadow-portrait Norman painted of himself 35 years ago in Winkler, Manitoba. The dude wanted desperately to believe his own press. All of it — the uncompromising evangelist; the cultural pioneer; the “close, personal friend to the stars”; the reckless lover; the scamp who, broken, crept back to the foot of the cross; the mysterious figure at the centre of unseemly rumours we hadn't heard about until he showed up in town, alone; the beleaguered soul who begged The Church to stop gossiping; hey, over there — the cross! repeat. In other words, The Compleat Larry Norman Myth.

Two-thirds into the book I was wondering why anyone not invested in this scene would be the least bit interested in this perpetually self-aggrandizing clown. MSM gave Thornbury a lot of lurv, but while the book is competently written I had to force myself to finish it. One major reason — it’s not 1984 anymore. And brother, there is a shit-ton of Larry Norman rumours. Characterising the man as “occasionally difficult” is a kindness beyond absurdity.

But the music! Bob Dylan digs it — he said so, right to Norman’s face, in an airport! Black Francis is a fan! Attention must be paid!

Guy in the middle's a fan -- that's worth something, no?

Hey, that is an argument I am up for. My three favourite Norman albums are (in descending order) Only Visiting This Planet, Something New Under The Son (Norman flat-out apes post-Exile Stones here, but he does it well, it’s catchy) and In Another Land. If you're new to the man, see if you can make it through any of those.

Or stream the singles. Start with “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” If you want to quit after that, go ahead. That one song right there is the grand total of Larry Norman’s legacy on American — indeed, Global — Culture At Large. It is a superficial reading of a miniscule clipping from a first-century Christian text. Yahoos like Norman have been interpreting it this way for 2000 years, and for 2000 years Christian theologians have decried that interpretation as crap theology, but it is the most contagiously viral religious meme you will encounter anywhere.

If that’s your idea of art you’re welcome to it. I prefer “Song To A Small Circle Of [Really Glamorous] Friends,” but never mind. Either way I call this sort of thing “religious kitsch” and Evangelical Protestants produce a staggering abundance of it. So it goes — the firmware they opted into renders them, as it did Norman, incapable of better.

Footnote it is.

End-notes: my reaction to Larry Norman's passing; my review of David DiSabatino's Norman doc Fallen Angel, which summoned a prompt "schooling" from one of Norman's toadies.