I'll Miss You Larry

When I was just a young kid my dad pastored a church near Grand Rapids, Michigan. On of the songs that it seemed every singing group sang was "I Wish We'd All Been Ready." My dad liked it so I challenged him.

"Do you know who wrote that song?"

"Yeah, some long haired Jesus freak," he responded.

It took the air out of my argument. I was hoping I could shock him by the fact that the song was written by a rocker who was really out there at the time. Instead I crawled back to my room to listen to more of his music.

In my mind Larry Norman was the father of Christian rock music. He was tremendously talented and had a knack for writing songs that were edgy and enduring. I recently heard someone ask for best song lyric lines. Most of the ones I could think of were from Larry.

There were a few other good musicians in the genre after Larry but for a long time it was filled with some pretty lousy music. People listened to it because it was so called Christian music and it seemed that as long as you put "I love Jesus" in it you cold get away with writing bad music. I actually stopped listening to most Christian music because it just wasn't that good.

Larry went through some pretty heavy struggles in the last 30 years of his life. I won't go into any of that but I did catch him on a Youtube video not long ago and it was great to see the old Larry on stage. It seemed he was touring in Europe quite a bit but I don't really know for sure.

The news reports are that Larry passed away yesterday morning. I feel a sense of loss even though I haven't followed him that closely for a long time now. He was talented, original, passionate and always seemed to be able to stay focused on Jesus. There is some mighty good music in heaven today. He was a righteous rocker. Sorry devil, you lose.