When he was in his early teens, he learned rock and soul songs on an acoustic steel-string guitar. Through friends, he learned about blues, jazz, flamenco, and classical guitar. After he heard "
Tears" by
Django Reinhardt on the radio, he decided that this is how he wanted his guitar to sound. At seventeen he formed a string trio and had his first professional job. In the 1970s, Larsen worked mainly as a painter. He started the
Hot Club de Norvege in 1980 with guitarists Per Frydenlund and bassist Svein Aarbostad. They had a hit record when they performed with pop singer
Lillebjørn Nilsen. Larsen started the label Zonic Entertainment to record musicians who have been influenced by
Frank Zappa. They recorded the album
Strange News from Mars.
Symphonic Django was released in 2008 by Storm Films, which also produced a documentary about Larsen and guitar virtuoso
Jimmy Rosenberg titled
Jon & Jimmy. In 2012, the documentary won the Dutch
Edison Award. After eight years of research, his book on
cosmic dust in urban environments –
In Search of Stardust: Amazing Micro-Meteorites and Their Terrestrial Imposters – was published in 2017. In 2020, he appeared in
Werner Herzog's documentary film
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds where he demonstrated the methods of sampling
micro-meteorites from urban environments. == Discography ==