Mike Rimmer threw a whole heap of questions at the founding father of Jesus rock music, LARRY NORMAN.
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Okay, I've got one for you. I would change some albums. I would leave some songs off an album and stick another song on it or I would fight harder or you know, that's what the three things would probably be. Hassling with the record company, standing up for myself and getting a lawyer, going and demanding and accounting. I never had lawyers help me and so I would probably change that and make life a little different - yeah.
Do you have a sense of legacy from your years of ministry, writing and recording?
A legacy? I don't know what that is. A legacy, mm, something you leave behind? Yeah, I am going to leave it all behind! Because I'm not staying here I'm going some place better! I don't know about the legacy part because I mean, I think you can say Elton John's left a legacy cos I mean he's got tons of songs that are just really fun to hear and everybody else, major super stars, Rolling Stones, I don't know, what's their legacy? They left behind girls who lost their virginity, or gay boys or I don't know, I don't know what legacy means. If it means what you leave behind then yeah, I am leaving it all behind.
If you had to choose a single song from all the material you have released over the years to illustrate your music to someone who's never heard you before, what would you pick and why?
Wow, if I was going to demonstrate myself, like if I have any ability to write lyrics you mean? Maybe, I don't know, "Nightmare" that's got some lyrics. I think it's interesting but you know it has to all be explained in great detail to be understood in part so maybe that's not a good song. Oh gosh, even "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" you have to explain that to some people. Okay, "Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?" Yeah, that's kind of an argument, actually it's like you could stand there and say all those lyrics. You could speak them to the Church of the '50s, '60s and the '70s and it's actually a debate so I guess I would pick that one.
Tell me a little bit about the new UK distribution of Solid Rock CDs and how it all came about.
Okay, well Alan Gibson, who lives in England, contacted us and said that it's very difficult to get my music into England, because buying it from America causes problems that crop up with customs and bank charges, conversion rates, all kinds of problems like that that we're not even aware of over here. So we said, "Great, thanks Alan, you know let's set up a website. So we have a separate website in England, it's www.larrynorman.uk.com. It's completely separate from the American Larrynorman.com website. There might be a slightly different product offered. There's different visuals, different graphics, different texts and it's great. People won't have the hassle and they are gonna save money easily because of dispensing with all the problems that we were creating and not knowing it by only distributing it from America.
So thanks to Paul Shaw and Trevor King and Dougie Adam and Alan Gibson and Cross Rhythms, and everybody else that's helping us in many different ways. I appreciate it all, very grateful. God bless everybody and thanks for this opportunity to do an interview, I really enjoyed it.
The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.
Does anyone know what number he lived at in park lane carshalton in england. I got an autographed when I lived in California I've never looked back