Larry Norman's snakeskin boots
Religion (updated below)
A base moment in popular music history: Larry Norman Dotcom, online at larrynorman.com
Larry Norman invented Christian rock. He's currently not well, but he still gives occasional concerts.
A copy of his provocateur album cover – the one with him wearing snakeskin boots and standing next to an apple – is nowhere to be found on his website, which is a loss (but an opportunity for a cultural anthropologist to shepard a digital copy into the world).
Here's what the Larry Norman website says about the infamous cover (highlighting mine):
So Long Ago The Garden has been rebalanced, re-equalized and remastered. The cover artwork has been re-scanned and the back cover is a slightly different version from the "snakeskin boots" photo used before. At the time of its release, it caused quite a stir in the gospel community. They said that Larry was naked and that this was proof he had fallen away from God. Also, there was a lightning bolt through his name, and, after all, lightning was a sign of Satan and of devil worshippers, wasn't it??? Well everybody knows it's true. Everytime there's a thunderstorm and you see lightning, well, that's not a display of God's power through nature ... it's the devil. So run and hide and cry out, "The sky is falling," "The sky is falling."
He was mercilessly attacked in the Christian press, his concerts were cancelled and he didn't get a single concert until a year and half later when Noel Paul Stookey invited him to perform in concert as his opening act. During his absence from the stage he worked on plans to start Solid Rock Records and produce other artists who also had "no commercial value." Some of the people he felt led to help were on drugs so he spent time helping them with their personal life and bringing them to a converted lifestyle. In the end, Keith Green and Larry could not work together so Larry let him go. Randy became the next artist in line and Larry produced a top rate album for him.
During this time, Larry had also started a Bible Study in his living room. It had no name and was only for musicians and actors. But after six months, "The Vineyard" was chosen as a name and although there was plenty of proof that Larry had NOT walked away from God, he kept on experiencing "blackballing" by the Christians. Bible bookstores refused to carry most of his albums if not all of them, especially in the South and Midwest.
If Garden caused him a lot of trouble with the Christians, it also brought him a lot of respect and acceptance from less judgmental people. U2 was in the process of starting a band, Dylan heard both Planet and Garden and coincidentally started going to The Vineyard for morning Bible study. And Tower Records couldn't keep either album in stock. It received rave critical reviews from the secular press ... all the more proof to Christians that Larry was doing the work of Satan.
Don't you wish you could see for yourself what caused the fuss? (Trust me, it's nothing.) In the years since then, Christians have rehabilitated their opinion of Norman and have graciously acknowledged his achievment in furthering gospel music by presenting him with various life-time achievement awards.
Cross-posted in a slightly different form at Tales from the Microbial Laboratory (TFTML).
UPDATE, Thursday, September 27, 2007: Many thanks to Pastor Ray Fowler, who commented on this article over at TFTML and supplied a hyperlink to reproductions of Garden's front and back covers. Here's what Ray says about the album (highlighting mine): Well, as I recall, the problem was that he was naked on the front cover of the album. Even though you couldn't see anything (the blend with the lion and the jungle brush strategically covered the appropriate parts), most Christian record stores were not prepared to stock an album with that type of cover back in 1973. (I wonder if they would even be able to do it today!)
As you can see from the photos in the earlier link, some of the later releases cropped the photo much higher so that you just saw a bare-chested Larry instead of a fully naked Larry.
I think the album cover is pure genius. The theme of the album goes back to the Garden of Eden, and so Larry is Adam naked in the garden, and the lion is a symbol of God. The blend of the two photos puts the lion "inside" Larry symbolizing the fellowship man enjoyed with God before the fall. I also love the way Larry's hair and the lion's mane blend together in the photo.
The symbolism of the photo of the snake boots and the apple with the two bites taken out of it on the back of the LP is obvious enough.
Here are Larry's liner notes about the photos from the original 1973 LP:
"the album cover was photographed by me. the lion is a friend of mine. the other is a self-portrait shot at 5:30 in the morning in rhodesia several days after the zambian shootings. (nikon ftn fitted with a 135 mm lens. exposure 1/125 sec. at f2.8 on ektachrome).
the back cover i shot in england. i could only find green apples, so fingernail polish was used to make the apple red.
Posted by 3Dsound at Saturday, September 22, 2007 9:50 AM 
Categories: greatest hits, rock music, Christianity, pop music, religion, Larry Norman
Tags: greatest hits Christianity rock pop music religion Larry Norman
Categories: greatest hits, rock music, Christianity, pop music, religion, Larry Norman
Tags: greatest hits Christianity rock pop music religion Larry Norman
I attended a seminar run by Larry Norman at the Sydney Opera House in the late 70s. Larry said that the original photo was only to his navel and that he was in his swimming trunks at the time. He said that the MGM art department had painted in the lower bits without his consent and had also added hands since his hands were not in the original photo. The apple on the back cover was painted with nail polish. The front cover has a background of clover (not easily seen on later versions). My copy of the lp was destroyed accidently by a fellow Christian musician who was also a dj at the time (David Ellis). He preplaced it with a copy given to him by Barry Maguire (of "Eve of Destruction" fame).
This album is by far Larry Norman's best musically. Larry has also influenced artists such as U2.
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Thanks Mike for the info. What I remember from the mid-70s is that Christians turned against Norman, and I was never completely sure why, although I remember hearing the stories about how he'd turned away from God -- They were stories shared in between listens to recordings from his concerts (casettes that were really entertaining). I guess I never understood why they disliked the album cover so much. I don't recall ever hearing that the problem was his alleged nakedness.
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Please take a look at the comment left over at my site last night, based on your post:
http://talesfromthelaboratory.typepad.com/tales_from_the_microbial_/2007/09/larry-normans-s.html#comment-104284974
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I had been a believer about a year when I heard of Larry, purely by chance. I picked up an LP of his called "Friends on tour" from a library. In those days many libraries in London had LPs....Anyway, I didn't think much of it. This was '86. Anyway, I discovered a couple of christian bookshops and when I saw they stocked LPs, I became a frequent visitor !! I didn't have a clue who was who in christian music. In fact until then I didn't know rock or pop was even played by christians so I went thru a great discovery period and as there were no publications or anyone I knew that could help, I journeyed alone ! Then one day, I saw this outrageous cover of some blonde naked bloke flying thru the sky and it was Larry Norman on the cover of "Upon this rock". It appealed to my sense of the absurd and so I bought the LP and it was great, just my kind of stuff. I love that '64-'83 period in popular music. So I was well into Larry and had even turned some friends onto him when just at the end of that year, I saw "So long ago the garden". I bought it simply coz it was him. I thought the cover was pretty good though not as arresting as Upon this rock. It was only when I read Steve Turner's brilliant "Hungry for heaven" that I got the cover imagery. I'd never associated it with nudity at all !! Upon this rock is far more upfront in that regard. But even with that one I didn't even think of it as smutty. I was genuinely surprized to discover in Turner's book that the cover of 'Garden' had caused such a furore. The back cover I got straight away, or at least I got the apple connection. Only a few days ago did the explanation of the boots come to me from an old Norman interview I discovered. I didn't really associate them with snakeskin...The more I look at the cover, the better it gets.
But I absolutely adored the music on the album. It is for me his best effort by far and I think he recorded some utter classics, especially in his '69-'74 heyday which for me was his peak. The song structures are brilliant, all the lyrics (especially 'Be careful', 'Nightmare' 'Baroquen spirits' and 'Christmas time') are fabulous, incisive, mysterious, pain & angst ridden and humourous, the tunes are so hummable and singable, all the instruments well heard and arranged and played with great little riffs, short memorable solos and deceptively clever lines and all the vocals are excellent, whether exuberant, laconic or half spoken. He even makes a melodyless, 'unadventurous' half talked dirge like "Nightmare" into an exceptional stream of consciousness powerhouse unparalleled in christian art. Some of it was based on a real dream and much of the lyrics on the LP seem to be rooted in his experiences, either those that had happened or were to come. Sadly prophetic ?
All in all a fabulous Lp and to top it all, it has what for me is far and away the best set of liner notes I've ever come across in my life. It is, cover, music and all, the complete artistic statement.
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You need a better handle, "grimtraveller." Your post makes us understand how much Norman's music meant to those who heard it.
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