On 2008-03-01 05:42 PM, Dave Hollandsworth wrote on the Yahoo Jesus Music board,
"Someone (Greg from Portland) just sent me this... "
"What a gathering! Perhaps 500 (?) of us poured into a church in Salem, Oregon this morning to pay our respects to Larry. As we entered we were>handed 'circus programs' (instead of a boring pamphlet) that read:
"Larry Norman Presents: A Going Away Party."
We were also handed an "admit one" ticket, a sheet of paper on which we were to write notes to Larry's family, most notably any future grandchildren.
Also, depending on which door you entered by we were given an _Only Visiting this Planet_ (Inducted Into The Gospel [Music] Hall Of Fame 2001 version) or _In Another Land_ (30th Anniversary Edition) CD.
It was a gathering of friends, family and fans alike.
As people caught up with one another organ music filled the air. Then, all of a sudden...SCREEEEEEETCH! It was the sound of a record player needle ripping across vinyl. And then his voice that brought to mind these words he wrote: "I ain't knocking the hymns,
Just give me a song that has a beat.
I ain't knocking the hymns,
Just give me a song that moves my feet."
The organ music was designed to be a "funeral march". So much so that I commented on it to a friend who attended the service with me.
The screech was followed by Larry's voice singing: " I don't like none of those funeral marches
I ain't dead yet!"
What followed was a wonderful montage of music, photographs, and videos of Larry throughout his life. Friends and family spoke and there were a few performances. After it was all over we ate hot dogs, popcorn and Cracker Jacks and M&Ms. A party! Just like Larry wanted.
Thanks to Charles and Kristin for your efforts! I'm thinking of you.
There were few industry people there. I recognized Alex McDougal (drummer on Larry's 1979 tour) and Dan the keyboard player from his 1986 tour. Donnie and Michael Gossett from Salvation Air Force were also in attendance. I also saw one reporter.
Some of the most memorable moments for me were:
The Program cover
A pastor from Portsmouth who started his first speaking segment with a word given to him by the Lord: phenomenal. Larry was phenomenal because he served a phenomenal God. He also sang (he was the first to admit that he doesn't sing well) the first song he heard Larry Sing "Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation." he encouraged us to join him on the choruses.
An old school friend of Larry's, said that we live life as a dash. When you look at a gravestone you see the birth year and year of death separated by a dash. The years are not important, it's the dash that is important. Larry had a great dash.
Kristin Norman (Charles' wife) and her musical partner in the Fjord Motor Company sang a few Norwegian folk songs that Larry enjoyed accompanied by a saw player and later Larry's brother, Charles Norman.
Larry's sisters, Nancy and Kristi sang a song that Larry wrote about a trip to the circus to end the tributes.
The pastor from Portsmouth closed the speaking moments off reminding us that we need to live our lives out loud.
After this, we got to do a karakoe (following a bouncing ball until the guitar solo) to "The Rock That Doesn't Roll". Everyone was singing, and a few tears were flowing as well. The closing photo and video montage was amazing. "The Sun Began to Rain" was played over photos of a Larry up to about age five. The slightly older Larry was backed by one of Larry's rarities--can't recall the title.
Then "Looking for the footprints" backed late teens/late 1960s photos. Then the seventies and eighties and photos and video footage.
The photo that they left us with was one taken from behind Larry during a performance, from about where the drum kit should have been. It was black and white and all you could see was spotlight on Larry and Larry standing with his guitar. I suspect it was from the seventies but could have been any time early in his career. See you there Larry.
I know my kids won't believe this and my grand kids won't fathom this, but when I was a little guy, living in Fort Thomas Kentucky, the sky was so clear, I could see the Cincinnati skyline from the picture window in my living room.
I didn't have to carry a cellphone so Mom could find me. 'didn't need to. At supper she would open up the back door and yell, "Markie! Supper's Ready!!!" I could hear her 4 blocks away.
One of the greatest smells in the world was pumping leaded gas into the tank of your car. It was worth the 25 cents a gallon price just to enjoy that lovely smell.
Let's talk Mercury. We used to have this wonder drug that Mom would paint on all your scrapes and cuts. It was called Mercurochrome. It was also called Merthiolate in it's generic version. Back then we didn't know what generic meant. Mercurochrome was not nearly as dangerous as Iodine. That was what Grandma put on my Mom's scrapes and cuts.
It was highly poisonous when ingested. However Mom knew not to drink it. Mercurochrome contained a key ingredient called Merbromin which contained traces of Mercury. This was the same Mercury that is found in silver dental fillings of that era. Leaded gas, no pollution control devices on cars and poisonous medicine and paint.........Ah! Life in the 1950's was good.
Larry Norman was a Jesus Freak long before there were Jesus Freaks. When most of us were listening to rock music in the late 1960's and 1970's, Larry was writing music about The Rock. He became a standard bearer for a whole generation and gave us tunes to go with the words.
He stumbled along the way. But don't we all? It's a journey. Larry held true to his God and to his art. He was the real deal. He was the good seed that grew and flourished.
Larry went home to be with The Lord this past Sunday morning.
Here is Larry's own last words.
I feel like a prize in a box of cracker jacks with God's hand reaching down to pick me up. I have been under medical care for months. My wounds are getting bigger. I have trouble breathing. I am ready to fly home.
My brother Charles is right, I won't be here much longer. I can't do anything about it. My heart is too weak. I want to say goodbye to everyone. In the past you have generously supported me with prayer and finance and we will probably still need financial help.
My plan is to be buried in a simple pine box with some flowers inside. But still it will be costly because of funeral arrangement, transportation to the gravesite, entombment, coordination, legal papers etc. However money is not really what I need, I want to say I love you.
I'd like to push back the darkness with my bravest effort. There will be a funeral posted here on the website, in case some of you want to attend. We are not sure of the date when I will die.
Goodbye, farewell, we will meet again.
Goodbye, farewell, we'll meet again
Somewhere beyond the sky.
I pray that you will stay with God
Goodbye, my friends, goodbye.
My good friend Randy Moody recently sent me a package that contained some recording made by people who played at the Jesus House.
The Jesus House was located in the Mt. Healthy neighborhood of Cincinnati Ohio. In the early 1970's when the Jesus Movement was very much a part of this nation's culture, the Jesus House was a wonderful place to go, listen to live music, hear about God's love for His people and study the Bible.
As a young man I loved to go there on a Saturday night, sit on the floor and listen to whoever was playing music that evening. Quite a few times I happened to be the musician, either doing a solo or with my friend Doug Abbott playing upright bass. Later on I played along with Kent Odor and a few other friends.
Those were great times and Randy tape recorded several different folks and this brought back a flood of good memories. It was so nice to hear Mike Wilshire's voice accompianied by his old 1940's Martin 00-17 mahogany guitar. Mike was joined by Mike Haviland and Paul Niehaus, who I almost forgot about. I recall bumping into Mike Haviland at Lammar's Music Store on Walnut Street in Cincinnati and discussing soprano saxaphones. Also on the CD's were some songs by Prodigal from back in the day.
Covenant was another group that frequented the Jesus House. My buddy Kent Odor lived at the house and Kent, Bob Clarke and Wayne Burns performed for a while as a trio and they were included. A very young Rich Mullins played the big old out-of-tune green Jesus House upright piano and made it sing and his songs gave you goose-bumps.
I made a couple of observations from listening to this music. First of all was just how young we were and how we were filled with so much energy and devotion. A lot of the songs were so moving and showed our young faith. Mike Wilshire had such a beautiful voice and was an excellent fingerstyle guitarist. However some of the tunes were slow and moody. But that actually reflected the warmth of the Jesus House.
Anyway, I have gone through my box-a-old tape cassettes and reel to reel tapes and discovered a pretty good old collection of my songs. I'm going to duplicate that tape and send it to Randy.
I've also got the urge to put together a definitive collection of songs that I have written through the years. So I have repaired my ancient Ensoniq synthesizer and made all the apropriate MIDI connections to my Yamaha DX100 and RX something-or-other drum synth. It took about a week to remember how to work the sequencer and another week to remember how to play keyboard. Well...I'm not really a keyboard player, but I know enough from music theory to play chord inversions, passing notes etc. So far I've pieced together five songs that have taken up all the sequencer memory. Now I have to dump those and dig out my old 4 track recorder and play the guitar and vocal parts. Then I'll put together some more songs in similar fashion and get them on tape. It's an enjoyable work.
My area of the world at one time was a large settling place for citizens of the Deutshland that immigrated to the New World to start their live's anew. Jews, Protestants and Catholic all arrived for various reasons and settled in Cincinnati and the surrounding suburbs.
I still am familiar with folks that return to Germany once a year to visit their kin. Here is a view from an older German regarding the current state of the world. The fellow whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our attitude toward fanaticism. "Very few people were true Nazis" he said, "but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies destroyed my factories." We are told again and again by "experts and 'talking heads' that Islam is the religion of peace, and that the vast majority of Muslims just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the specter of fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam. The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march.
It is the fanatics who wage any one of 50 shooting wars worldwide.
It is the fanatics who systematically slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave.
It is the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honor kill. It is the fanatics who take over mosque after mosque.
It is the fanatics who zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and homosexuals. The hard quantifiable fact is that the "peaceful majority", "the 'silent majority," is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live in peace, yet the Russian Communists (Karl Marx and assoc.) were responsible for the murder of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant.
China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists managed to kill a staggering 70 million people. The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And, who can forget Rwanda, which collapsed into butchery. Could it not be said that the majority of Rwandans were "peace loving?" History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all our powers of reason we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated of points: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence. Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up, because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will have begun.
Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans, Serbs, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians, and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not speak up until it was too late.
The Hollywood Left would lead us to believe the Islamic revolt in Iraq and Afghanistan is another Viet Nam. That we are only fighting for control of oil. They are hoping that President Bush is Nixon. They are longing for those old days of protests and civil disobediance. They are clueless. The current war, the current situation has everything to do with religious fanaticism, the oppresion of all who do not follow Islam and the forcing of Islamic rule on the world.
As for us who watch it all unfold; we must pay attention to the only group that counts; the fanatics who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, at the risk of offending, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious is contributing to the passiveness that allows the problems to expand. This is really why our troops are overseas protecting our shores.
On 2008-03-01 05:42 PM, Dave Hollandsworth wrote on the Yahoo Jesus Music board,
