#50 SO LONG AGO THE GARDEN by Larry Norman (1973)

SO LONG AGO THE GARDEN by Larry Norman (1973)
MGM Records - SE 4942

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lightning rod

(noun)

One that is a frequent target of criticism or focus of controversy -Merriam-Webster

Well, he was certainly that.

Oh, he was many other things, too: singer, poet, musician, philosopher, songwriter, producer, photographer, pioneer, revolutionary, Father of Gospel Rock, and much more…but Larry Norman was definitely a lightning rod for controversy.

This is the first album of Larry’s to make this list. There will be many more, as his greatest creative output (by far) came in the 1970s. Yes, there will be many opportunities to applaud Norman’s legacy and laud his undeniable genius. But, alas, his life, career and ministry also require us to acknowledge accusations, misunderstandings, shortcomings, contradictions and controversies. So let’s just get that out of the way, shall we?

So Long Ago the Garden was released in 1973 as the second album in Larry Norman’s much-heralded "trilogy" of projects (which began with 1972’s Only Visiting This Planet and concluded with In Another Land in 1976). So Long Ago the Garden was perhaps Larry Norman’s most controversial work. The criticism came on two fronts: the lyric content and the cover photo.

The Larry Norman albums that preceded So Long Ago the Garden all contained songs that presented an overt Gospel message. The Outlaw was basically a 4-minute biography of Jesus Christ…there was I Wish We’d All Been Ready, which centered on the second coming of Jesus…while songs like Sweet, Sweet Song of Salvation, One Way and Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus were musical tracts to a lost world. But So Long Ago the Garden raised questions and created controversy because here was a pretty dark album, Larry’s fifth by my count, which presented more veiled content. It had more of a “secular” feel and appeal to it.

While most of his contemporaries were releasing records that just praised Jesus and invited others to do the same, Larry put on his Artist hat and took a more conceptual view. While Only Visiting This Planet was grounded in the present and In Another Land was looking to the future, So Long Ago the Garden examined the past and focused on the relationship between broken people and their heavenly Father. Instead of an overt evangelistic message, these songs explored the human condition and focused on sorrow, loneliness, and broken relationships. Meanwhile, the songs that did contain a more overt spiritual message were surreal visions and/or nightmares with meanings that were clear, perhaps, only to Mr. Norman himself! That didn’t help.

"These songs which examined The Fall were mostly written from the perspective of the scarred, and Larry’s public just could not take the idea of an artist taking on another persona to make a point,” explains British journalist Steve Turner. “To them, he was a backslider who had broken with his wife and was seeking fame (with those ideas being taken from his songs)."

Christian audiences in 1973 were unaccustomed to hearing songs written from the perspective of a fictional protagonist in order to present an over-arching theme and tell a story. As a result, rumors circulated that Larry had forsaken his faith in a quest for secular fame and fortune. Such was not the case, obviously.

In 2016, at the time of this writing, all of the hand-wringing over lyrics and writing style back in the early 70s seems completely overwrought, if not tragic. Today, audiences are much more open and sophisticated.

 “Lyrically, So Long Ago the Garden is one of Norman's more elliptical efforts in terms of its Christian references,” admits music reviewer Jason Anderson. “However, the message is quite clear. Just underneath the '70s British rock dialect and shimmering songwriting is a defiant sermon that staunchly proclaims Norman's identity as a devout Christian outsider.”

 Well, it’s quite clear today; not so much in 1973.

 Years later, Larry Norman himself reflected on the controversy, revealing his personal fondness for So Long Ago the Garden: “It is my favorite album, and one of the most banned and misunderstood albums that I've recorded. Christians don't seem to be as aware of, or as sensitive to, the dire state of humanity as they are about the pleasant growth of their Christian walk. So Long Ago The Garden was as definitive a statement as I could make about the emptiness of our lives without Christ, just how lonely and wretched we truly are. It was all a very premeditated and carefully written album.”

 It should be noted that many people now suspect that all of this talk about art and themes and concepts and The Fall and the Human Condition, blah, blah, blah, was a bunch of hooey. Just more spin from Larry. Many people suspect that several of the songs on this album were actually based on real-life experiences and directly related to Norman’s marital difficulties (which were not known to the general public at the time). We report, you decide.

The other controversy had to do with nudity.

You read that right. Nudity.

I’m guessing that Larry Norman is not on the short list of artists you’d like to see naked on an album cover. But that’s exactly what he was accused of.

Due to the artistic photography and design used on the front cover of So Long Ago the Garden (or SLATG), some people insisted that the cover revealed a naked Larry Norman. They were just certain that his pubic hair was visible in the photo. This “shocking,” “provocative” album cover was taken as further proof that Norman had “fallen away from God.”

In the words of Lee Corso, “Not so fast.”

Could it be that the offensive “pubic hair” was nothing more than a patch of grass from a photo of a lion? Could it be that the blending of the two photos created a false impression that was entirely unintended?

"The cover did feature a seminude Norman with a photo of a lion superimposed on his skin,” explains author John J. Thompson. “The symbolism -- an Old Testament prophecy referred to the Messiah as 'the lion of the tribe of Judah,' and C.S. Lewis' Narnia series made a Christ-like figure out of a lion named Aslan -- as well as the obvious insinuation of Adam in the Garden of Eden, flew over the heads of many people, who focused instead on a patch of grass that they thought was covering Larry's nether parts."

Was Larry completely naked when the picture was snapped? Who knows? Who cares? It’s obvious, from the album title and the symbolism used on the back cover – an apple and snakeskin boots – that Larry was standing in for Adam on the front cover. As such, it would’ve looked awful strange for him to have been wearing a jacket or T-shirt or, oh, I don’t know, a football jersey. To my eyes, a shirtless Larry was impersonating Adam on the front cover of SLATG and doing a darn fine job of it. As long as I don’t see genitals, I’m cool.

The end result of the controversy was that many Christian bookstores refused to stock the album, and many of Larry’s concert dates were canceled.

Larry Norman’s career was replete with such controversies. Some were misunderstandings by a legalistic and paranoid fan base, some are hear-say and may never be fully adjudicated, and some were most definitely of Larry’s own making. His stories about past career decisions and events were sometimes exaggerated or, one sometimes got the feeling, made up entirely. He constantly felt the need to link himself to well-known secular stars, again relating stories that were at the very least embellished. “Norman never crossed a bridge he didn’t seem to burn behind him,” Andrew Baeujon wrote in SPIN magazine. He seemed to have broken relationships with all of the Solid Rock artists he discovered and/or produced…sometimes because of personal issues, sometimes as a result of business disputes. I sat across the table from one of the artists who had been in Larry’s Solid Rock stable, saw the pain on his face, and watched tears leak from his eyes as he recounted the wrongs that he felt had been done to him. And this was some 4 or 5 years after Larry’s death. The wound still hadn’t healed.



Larry with the old Solid Rock gang

As you are probably aware, a “filmmaker” released a documentary on DVD several years ago, claiming to set the record straight and call Larry to account for all of his failings. The release date, coming so soon after Norman’s death, was at best unseemly. Production values were sub-par, but the film was at once fascinating and heartbreaking for any Norman fan. It reminded us at times of why we were so attracted to him in the first place and why we still love him so. But it also put meat and skin on the bones of accusation, innuendo, and rumor. Numerous former protégés and colleagues were happy to go on the record accusing Norman of lies, paranoia and all sorts of financial treachery. He was accused of intentionally taking false credit for the “One Way” sign. He was charged with manipulating people and fabricating an aura and a mystique that was completely inauthentic. The fact that Larry Norman later married (and subsequently divorced) the first wife of his one-time best friend, Randy Stonehill (the subject of Randy’s classic Song for Sarah) was shocking to many. But the saddest revelation from the movie – one that as far as I can tell has been substantiated – is that Norman “had a baby out of wedlock” (the irony!) in the late 1980s and never adequately supported or even acknowledged the child.

Randy Stonehill (L) with Larry Norman

Now…the older we get, the more grace we seem to extend to pastors, teachers, politicians, artists, and everyone else around us. Because we become increasingly aware of our own propensity to sin and do evil. It’s a condition that’s been with us all of our lives. We were born that way. I have close personal acquaintances that have made a royal mess of things where their private lives and relationships are concerned. I’m sure you do, too. At age 30 I found myself a separated and soon-to-be-divorced Christian radio DJ whose wife was working as a waitress at a strip club. [At least she told me she was just a waitress. I never visited the club to verify that.] My point is that we all live in a fallen world. Things get very messy. Relationships turn really ugly. None of us is above or beyond waking up one day and finding ourselves in what feels like a really bad Jerry Springer episode. Not me. Not you. And not even the Father of Christian Rock and Roll.

The silver lining is that God’s gifts and callings are without repentance…His grace is truly amazing…and His mercies are new every morning. He tapped a young man by the name of Larry David Norman on the shoulder in the late 60s and gave him a job to do and the tools with which to get it done. In spite of whatever demons Larry wrestled with, in the end, he was, at least on some level, true to his calling and faithful to point a lost and unbelieving world to their only hope of salvation.

 

Ok, let’s say you’re Larry Norman in 1973. (Just go with it.) There’s really no “Christian Music Industry,” no Christian radio to speak of. You’ve already released what is generally regarded to be the first Christian rock album ever. You followed that up with 2 cult classics filled with amazing songs. You performed in front of up to 200,000 people at Explo ’72. You then released an album that would end up in the freakin’ Library of Congress as "the key work in the early history of Christian rock." What do you possibly do next?

Why, So Long Ago the Garden, of course!

Larry Norman entered AIR Studios in London, England on August 7, 1973, to make this record with The Triumvirate, a very capable British production team comprised of Rod Edwards, Roger Hand, and Jon Miller. By October 1^st the sessions were complete and MGM Records was in possession of what reviewer Ken Scott says are “some of Larry’s most fascinating, enigmatic and personal songs.”

Now, it should be stated that this album, like so many others in Larry’s discography, has been released and re-released, packaged and re-packaged, on multiple labels with multiple cover graphics, with different song orders and different bonus tracks. That’s typical of a Norman album. Standard operating procedure. For purposes of our discussion, I’ll be following the track order found on the 1973 MGM release SE 4942.

According to Larry, he was somewhat victimized by the record company (wasn’t he always?). He charged that MGM forced him to drop several more Christian-oriented songs, including If God Is My Father, I Hope I'll See You In Heaven and one of several versions of Righteous Rocker, among others, in favor of songs that would be more palatable to a general market audience.

“The record company, obviously, was more concerned with commerce than art,” Larry charged in a 1991 interview. “They wanted Fly, Fly, Fly and Christmastime on the album. These songs were B-Sides, recorded for singles. I was of the old school from where the Beatles had come, believing that singles should be recorded for single release and that albums should not contain the singles but be works of art, separate unto themselves. I tried to keep the polished ‘commercial’ singles separate from the artistic music made for the album, as I intended with I Love You during my days at Capitol Records. It was disappointing to me when the music was mixed together in the same format.”

Good Lord…how would he react to life in the digital download era? I don’t imagine he’d be too keen on it. 

SLATG opens with the poppy, upbeat Fly, Fly, Fly, a song about a man who is excitedly on his way to see his true love. Musically, the distinguishing features on this track are the electric piano performance and some gorgeous, reverb-drenched harmonies that Larry overdubbed on the song’s bridge. The protagonist in this song is looking forward, with a lot of love and some help from above, to spending eternity with his ‘baby’ in Heaven, ‘locked in each other’s arms.’ 

Same Old Story presents a much more cynical view of love over a solid pop arrangement and musical performance. If you stop for a moment and put yourself back into the Jesus Movement milieu of 1973, I think audiences from that time can be forgiven for being a little confused, hearing Larry sing lines like these:

Well it's the same old story and you know just how it's gonna end
You're gonna wind up losing so there's no reason to pretend
But you go through the motions and you tell her that you'll never part
You say your love will last forever but you know she's gonna break your heart

At a time when other Jesus Music artists were putting out songs like Jesus Is The Answer and Clean Before My Lord, Larry Norman was singing You're in love with the lady and you know she's gonna break your heart. Which isn’t wrong or evil, but is somewhat depressing and does stop short of offering hope through Jesus. We have the benefit in hindsight of knowing that he was playing a part, so to speak, and singing from the point of view of a fictional person (or was he?)…but you have to put yourself in that time period to truly appreciate how different this approach was from what was typically being offered by other Christian artists of the era.

Larry was still trying to explain it as late as 1980: “I alternated songs. One song would talk about a man trying to find satisfaction and true love, and expecting a woman to somehow fill all of his needs and be his whole world. The next song would be about a man looking for something, and he doesn't know what it is. We know it's God, and he knows it's something like great universal love, but he can't find it, and it causes him Ecclesiastical despair.”

This theme continued on Lonely By Myself, a song that began quietly with Larry’s perfectly measured falsetto but gradually built into an epic, piano-based, power ballad. Larry reportedly saw the words Isn’t anybody out there? Doesn’t anybody care? spray-painted in the New York subway and was inspired…

If I could find someone who really cared for me
someone to share my love and keep me company
If could find someone I'd let them take control

and in exchange for love, I'd give my very soul

It's such a lonely life
I almost cry each night
cause faith has put me on the shelf
I get so lonely, so lonely by myself

If I could find someone who'd really love me right
they'd make my life complete they'd make my soul shine bright
I've looked around the world I've walked down every street
still, I can't find no one to give me what I need

Resisting any temptation to resolve this crisis with easy answers, Larry instead ends the song asking Who can I turn to? Is there anybody there? Doesn't anybody care?

“Despite the censorship problems which butchered the album, 'Garden' remains a beautiful record,” wrote reviewer Dougie Adam. “Ballads such as It's The Same Old Story and Lonely By Myself have well-crafted arrangements devised by Larry alongside George Martin and The Triumvirate production team.”

Lonely By Myself was supposedly recorded using the same mellotron The Beatles used on Strawberry Fields Forever while Paul McCartney was in the next room recording Live and Let Die.

Lyrically and musically, we turn a bit of a corner with Be Careful What You Sign, a rock and roll track that has been described as “wonderfully eerie.” The song recounts a really weird dream that Larry has said represents “a choice between God and Satan.”

Reviewer Ken Scott described Be Careful What You Sign as “slow, swampy funk-blues” that grows “better and better with each listen.”

Wrapping up Side One is Baroquen Spirits, another melodic song about a troubled romantic relationship. According to Norman, it was about “making a choice between your own integrity, or giving up your integrity for things like love – whatever momentary, ephemeral things that we look to for lasting happiness.”

The album’s liner notes tell us that SLATG was recorded on a 24-track quadrophonic console built for George Martin and installed in Air Studios, London. Larry Norman played guitar, piano, arranged and co-produced the album, and sang most of the harmonies.

Other details revealed in the “linear notes:”

• Drummer Mike Giles quit the band King Crimson and joined a musicians’ union before signing on to play on SLATG. He played Ludwig and Hayman studio kits on the album.

•Malcolm Duncan and Roger Ball from Average White Band played saxophones.

•Dave Wintour played a Fender Precision Bass with Rotosound strings through a Traynor Bassmate amp while wearing new shoes.

• GuitaristMickey Keene played an Epiphone Crestwood with “super slinky strings” through a Supro amp with 12-inch speakers while wearing a Marks and Spencer t-shirt (Marks & Spencer is a major British retail clothing company).

•Graham Preskitt played violin but had to get a new one because his old one was stolen outside of Broadhurst Gardens the day before the session.

Who but Larry Norman gives you that level of interesting detail? Ya gotta love it.

Additional musicians include Randy Stonehill on guitar and background vocals, Bob Brady on piano; Rod Edwards on keyboards (including Wurlitzer electric piano and MiniMoog); Graham Smith on harmonica; Dave Markee on bass; and Roger Hand on percussion. The Hollywood Street Choir is credited with adding extra background vocals (most likely on Soul Survivor).

George Martin recorded the album. Bill Price served as engineer, while Gareth Edwards was assistant engineer. The record was mixed by Tony Scotti and mastered by Tommy Vicari.

Side Two opens with a real treat. From 1992 to 2007 I hosted and produced Rock of Ages, a Christian rock radio show on a 100,000-watt mainstream classic rock station in Greenville, SC. Every December, when the time rolled around to mix in a few Christmas songs on the show, I always chose Christmastime by Larry Norman as our official on-air start to the holiday season every year. It’s a rollicking rocker that uses humor to deliver a stinging blow to commercialism. Written by Norman, with some additional lyrics by Randy Stonehill, it was first recorded on Stonehill's Born Twice album in 1971. One reviewer noted that it has a certain “footloose, Rolling Stones swagger.” In the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music, author Mark Allen Powell asks, “Who but Larry Norman would begin a Christmas song with the words, Santa Claus is comin’ and the kids are getting’ greedy?”

In his review of SLATG, Dougie Adam says the next song, She's A Dancer, demonstrates the same quality that marked George Martin's work with The Beatles on songs such as Yesterday, Michelle and For No One. “Larry's vocals fit the songs perfectly,” he writes, “and the combined effect of the songwriting, arrangements, and performances is a strong one.” The strings on this track are mesmerizing.

She's a dancer in the garden
And she dances with the flowers
In the early morning hours
When the wind shifts
And the fog drifts
She's a dancer

She's a dancer and she knows it
Everywhere she goes she shows it
Condescending
Not pretending
No regretting
Nor forgetting
She's a dancer

And on my early morning walks, I often find her
I sit pretending that I'm looking at the paper

It has been suggested that although the pronoun ‘she’ is used in the song, it’s really autobiographical for Larry, offering glimpses into a difficult period in his adolescence, growing up in the Bay Area and struggling with self-expression (since dancing was considered a “sissy thing” to pursue). Others have interpreted the song more broadly, taking it as a lamenting of the loneliness and separation brought about as a result of The Fall…resulting in the isolation that we all can sometimes experience.

Up next is the gospel-flavored Soul Survivor, another song that in hindsight seems like an obvious description of challenges Norman was facing in his personal life:

My life was good when she was hanging around
My love was flying so high and free
But when she left my dreams came tumbling down
Now I’m the soul survivor of this tragedy

I’m trying so hard to forget my pain
And leave my past behind
But when your life is suddenly filled with rain
You keep remembering how the sun used to shine
And I can't stand the loneliness, the constant emptiness
Why has unhappiness come into my life
I spend my mornings walking and thinking
And cry my evenings late into the night

I never knew that things could go so wrong
Until this happened to me
If you're in love you better hold on strong
Or be the soul survivor of this tragedy

I’m the soul survivor of this tragedy
Oh yes I need somebody's sympathy
Don't leave me here alone, don't let me be
The soul survivor of this tragedy

 Well, praise the Lord!

I’m sorry…I don’t mean to make light of it, it’s just that as I listen again to the album, all of this negativity is beginning to pile up and cause me to feel quite depressed. SLATG is definitely an album that serves up more questions than answers, that’s for sure. Author and historian John J. Thompson has written that this album “reflects on the nature of the human condition. The songs deal with characters knee-deep in the madness of life without God."

SLATG saves the best for last. The record’s undisputed highlight is a song called Nightmare (AKA Nightmare No. 71 and Nightmare #71). It’s been called “the grooviest apocalyptic song ever written” and “a homage to Bob Dylan with mega-bizarre dream sequences.”

It’s a blues-rock shuffle that is more spoken than sung and it’s filled to the brim with symbolism galore. A deep Google search will reveal what hidden meanings people ascribe to this song. I won’t go into all of that. I’ll just say that it’s an ingenious work of art that is at times fun, prophetic, funny, confusing, and frightening. It’s one of the key songs from the early 70s that established Larry as a serious prophetic voice to his generation.

In the span of 6 minutes and 20 seconds, you’ll hear references to John Wayne, Billy Graham, Hollywood, the San Andreas Fault, tsunamis, Atlantis, Shirley Temple, Guy Kibbee, Bill Robinson, Harpo Marx, pollution, conservation, overpopulation, Helen Keller, Errol Flynn, Ronald Colman, birth control, space travel, abortion, swingers, violence, urban blight, substance abuse, J. Edgar Hoover, the JFK assassination, and Elmo Lincoln.

It’s an amazing song, but as Nightmare fades away, I’m left with a troubled, unsettled feeling. Maybe that’s why this was always considered by most fans and critics to be the weakest album in Norman’s famed trilogy. It is, however, indispensable for any student, fan or collector of all things Norman.

Once the SLATG sessions were in the can (a little record company lingo, there) the recording was submitted to MGM. The official story is that financial problems at MGM prevented the company from promoting the album. It didn’t get the push it deserved. Norman also felt that MGM was interfering artistically by dictating song choices, so he left the company and later started his own label, the iconic Solid Rock Records. It was just as well…not long after this decision, MGM Records folded due to financial difficulties.

Larry Norman was an eccentric visionary whose mix of religious, political, and social themes helped spark a movement. He is perhaps the individual more responsible than any other for creating the “Christian rock music industry,” although to hear him tell it, that was never his intent. He would later be accused by those who knew him well of lying, cheating, infidelity, paranoia and even psychological disorders. The Church and the CCM industry kept him at arm’s length. But there is no denying the impact that he had. Time Magazine called him “the most significant artist in his field.” Over 300 cover versions of his songs have been recorded by both Christian and secular artists. He played the White House, Olympic Stadium in Moscow, The Hollywood Bowl, The Sydney Opera House, The Palladium, Royal Albert Hall, and lots of places in between. And he was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001.

Larry Norman died of heart failure on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008 in Salem, Oregon. He was 61 years old. 

With a Norman release, one could always look forward to the album packaging. There were usually lots of photos, an interview, and what Larry called “linear notes.” I will close this post with some of those notes, penned by Larry himself, from the album So Long Ago the Garden. His was always a different take…a unique perspective that caused one to think…

i have been here for a while, watching, thinking. it seems that the world is becoming increasingly more complex. we earn more money but the money becomes worth less. we discover new medical cures but the diseases develop new and more virulent strains which are immune to the medicines. we locate new sources of food yet millions of people starve while grain lies rotting in rat-infested storage houses.

perhaps there was a time when life was easier and there was less non-essential information to contend with; a time when man lived simply and accurately. i don’t remember, and no one I speak to can remember. perhaps it was before our time; perhaps before people were so obsessed with time.

today people synchronize their watches. they talk of time travel and light years. they talk of traveling at the speed of light to other galaxies. they boast that we have landed man on the moon when we have never even successfully landed man on earth. well, we did once, but then we killed Him.

once we lived with houses built with our own hands and ate food grown in our own fields, and walked wherever we wanted when we traveled. but people decided they wanted a “better” life, so now we are a civilized people replete with the conveniences of technology. we now have industrial pollution and automobile exhaust (to breathe), factory waste (to drink), and pesticides and plastics (to eat).

science has presumed to replace God, with chemistry our high priest, technology our bishop, and the atom bomb our pope. scientists say that soon our laboratories will create life. but to what end? society will do little to nurture it. governments do little to protect it. and business disregards it altogether.

i sometimes find myself wondering…did man evolve from the animals after all? or did man become an animal all by himself?

i’m not a pessimist. i’ve just been thinking, that’s all.

Fun Facts:

• The song Nightmare #71 mentions silent film star Elmo Lincoln. Lincoln has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7042 Hollywood Boulevard. Norman's Solid Rock Records office was next door at 7046 Hollywood Boulevard.  

• Larry shot the back cover photo in England. He says he could only find green apples, so fingernail polish was used to make the apple red.  

• From the liner notes: “To be appreciated fully, this album must be listened to at a loud volume and the album must be looked at in bright sunlight to bring out the deep greens of the garden.”