Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? : Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock

The authorised, untold story of the first Christian rock star, the rise of a billion-dollar industry, and the friction between Evangelicals and mainstream American culture. Today, Christian music is big business, with festivals around the country, dedicated radio stations, and billions of dollars in sales per year--while also inspiring parodies from shows like Seinfeld and South Park. But it all started with Larry Norman, a rising star of the late-'60s rock world who was opening for Janis Joplin, the Who, and the Doors when, one day, he decided that he wanted to sing about Jesus. Where today's Christian artists tend to make "Christian" versions of whatever is popular on the radio, Norman was motivated by a conviction that you could play guitar, grow your hair long, and still make music for Jesus. He was a talented guitarist and songwriter whose albums were produced by major labels and played on mainstream stations. (A novel gesture at the time, and one that caused the famed televangelist Jimmy Swaggart to denounce Norman's music as "the new pornography.") Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? follows Norman's quixotic quest to make good Christian art, his comings and goings with the major players of the '70s rock world, and the rise of today's Evangelical Christian subculture, which eventually cast Norman out as a pariah. As Paul McCartney once told Norman, "You could be big if you'd just drop the Jesus stuff." But despite having been an outcast in his own time, Norman's legacy lives on today, being cited as a key inspiration for acts as diverse as U2, the Pixies, Guns N' Roses, and Sufjan Stevens. More than a book about Norman, this is a book about the rise of the Evangelical culture as we know it--and the fault lines in American culture that define our society to this day.