Recording Career (continued)
By the early 1970s, Norman was performing frequently for large audiences, and appeared at several Christian music festivals, including Explo ’72, a six-day Dallas, Texas, event which has been called the “Jesus Woodstock.” Norman established a half-way house where he “housed and fed various groups of people, supervised their Bible studies and drove them to church on Fridays and Sundays”. He earned $80 per month from Capitol for polishing and refining songs for Capitol artists. In 1970, Norman established a record label, One Way Records. He released two of his own albums Street Level and Bootleg on the label as well as Randy Stonehill’s first album, Born Twice.
In 1971, Norman first visited England, where he lived and worked for several years. He recorded two studio albums, Only Visiting This Planet and So Long Ago the Garden, in London’s AIR Studios. Released in 1972, Visiting “was meant to reach the flower children disillusioned by the government and the church” with its “abrasive, urban reality of the gospel”, and has often been ranked as Norman’s best album.
The release of Garden in November 1973 was met with controversy in the Christian press, due to the album’s cover art and some songs in which Norman took the persona of a backslider.
In 1974, Norman founded Solid Rock Records to produce records for Christian artists “who didn’t want to be consumed by the business of making vinyl pancakes but who wanted to make something ‘non-commercial’ to the world”. Norman produced music on the label for artists including Randy Stonehill, Mark Heard and Tom Howard.
Norman also worked with several artists who were signed to other labels, including Malcolm and Alwyn, Bobby Emmons and the Crosstones, Lyrix, James Sundquist and David Edwards. Norman signed a deal with ABC Records to distribute Solid Rock’s releases, but was later moved to ABC subsidiary Word Records. In the same year, Norman founded the Christian artist booking agency Street Level Artists Agency.
In Another Land, the third album in Norman’s trilogy and the best-selling album of his career, was released in 1976 by Solid Rock and distributed through Word. Soon afterward, Norman recorded the blues-rock concept album Something New under the Son, but it would not be released until 1981.
Following clashes with Word over Something New and several other projects, Norman started Phydeaux Records in 1980 to release his albums.