Description
Roll Away the Stone is a live album by the American singer and songwriter Larry Norman, independently released on Norman’s own label Phydeaux Records in 1980. Featuring Larry Norman live in Chicago in 1978, backed by a live band consisting of various musicians connected to Larry’s indie label Solid Rock Records.
This album commemorates the wild and wooly tour of LARRY NORMAN and his band across America and Canada. Featuring MARK HEARD on rhythm guitar when he wasn’t doing concerts of his own … JON LINN on lead guitar … TOM HOWARD on piano … ALEX MACDOUGALL on drums … and DAVE COY on bass. Sometimes RANDY STONEHILL joined the tour to play guitar and sing and sometimes BILLY BATSTONE (SHAZAM) played bass when Dave wasn’t available.
This album contains ten songs from a three hour concert. It is reproduced exactly as the audience heard it, with no studio overdubs, no stereo enhancement, noise gates, etc. It is raw, real, and electronically unretouched.
TO BE PLAYED AT FULL VOLUME [note featured on the back of the LP sleeve]
Larry at his noisiest, in concert doing raw unprocessed full-blown rock and roll, with Mark Heard on rhythm guitar, Jon Linn on lead guitar, Tom Howard on piano, Dave Coy on bass, and Alex McDougall on drums. Several songs from In Another Land, as well as «Jonny’s Blues», «Soul On Fire», «Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music», «I Wish We’d All Been Ready», and a couple from the soon-to-come («Watch What You’re Doing» and «Let That Tape Keep Rolling»). No studio polish here – more the feel of a good soundboard tape. Crank it! [Ken Scott, The Archivist, 4th Edition]
Roll Away The Stone, Solid Rock Re-issue, 2003
When this was released on vinyl in 1981 through Phydeaux it was one of the first live albums to emerge and sounded far better than the bootlegs enthusiasts had been acquiring and three songs had yet to be released as studio versions («Watch What You’re Doing», «Soul On Fire», «Let That Tape Keep Rolling»). Now with umpteen other live albums available on CD and with all of them sounding sonically better and with better performances than ‘Roll Away The Stone’, this album will really only appeal to completists. For the CD issue we are treated to an eight page booklet which explains partly why the album sounds as raw, rough and ragged as it does plus a few new photos from the 1978 Chicago concert that album is taken from. Despite its sonic faults ‘Roll Away The Stone’ is said to be the only surviving archive of the Solid Rock artists playing together live and on that basis alone a few will no doubt to check it out. Some attempt has been made to improve the sound quality for this CD re-issue but to these ears at least this one falls a long way short of Larry’s best live work with other bands. [Dougie Adam, Cross Rhythms, March 2004]
LP tracklist:
Side One
A1. “Jonny’s Blues”
A2. “Why Don’t You Look Into Jesus”
A3. “The Rock That Doesn’t Roll”
A4. “I’ve Seached All Around The World”
A5. “Watch What You’re Doing”
Side Two
B1. “Soul On Fire”
B2. “Shot Down”
B3. “Song For A Small Circle Of Friends”
B4. “Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music”
B5. “Let That Tape Keep Rolling”
B6. “I Wish We’d All Been Ready”
Note: Simultaneously released on cassette and 12-inch vinyl LP by Phydeaux Records. Re-issued on CD by Solid Rock Record in 2003. Available at Bandcamp: https://larrynorman.bandcamp.com/album/roll-away-the-stone
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