The real story of The Final Countdown: John Norum explains why Europe’s biggest hit made him quit the band in disgust
Europe’s The Final Countdown is one of the most iconic and beloved anthems of the 1980s. Its synth- laden riff, underscored by hard driving guitars, bass and drums features a melodic guitar solo that shreds like no other courtesy of Norwegian born guitarist John Norum, who laid the solo down in 15 minutes. The song went on to become the Swedish group’s calling card, while the album of the same name, has remained the group’s most enduring and most commercially successful to date. Not bad for a song that Norum initially at first hated, but later came to embrace it.
READ MORE: Why have we forgotten the greatest female guitar heroes? The pioneering women who shaped guitar history
Both the song and album’s birth went back a number of years prior to the group entering the studio. The group’s vocalist Joey Tempest had earlier recorded a bare bones demo of the track on a cassette tape with plans to use it as an opening piece of music to open the group’s concerts. Having filed it away in the cupboard, it was only when the group were undertaking writing sessions for the album, that Tempest revisited his old demo and brought it to the band.
The group also shared an admiration for the arena rock of Journey, which came to play a major role in the musical direction of the album. “We’d been listening to Journey a lot, and we loved the sound of their albums,” recalls John Norum today. “And Neal Schon is one of my favourite guitar players too. And because of that, we wanted to work with producer Kevin Elson who produced those Journey albums in the late Seventies and early Eighties. We thought Kevin Elson would be perfect for us because we wanted to get that kind of Journey sound.
“At the time Joey and I were doing demos of the songs at his house. We had maybe four or five songs, and I was putting down some guitar solos and stuff like that with one of those little Rockmans. After that, we got Kevin to come out to Sweden and we did pre-production for the album for about two weeks, and then we moved to Zurich, Switzerland to begin recording at Powerplay Studios.”
Swiss Precision
The Swiss picturesque environs provided the perfect setting for the group to focus on the music and for Norum, capturing his guitar sound at its best. “We were there for about five weeks, and it was great,” he says. “It was out in the countryside, and we were living there too as they had bedrooms and stuff so we were working constantly just focusing on the music with no outside distractions. I remember pretty much just playing guitar all the time and Kevin got me a great guitar sound too.
“Because I didn’t really have that much knowledge about how to dial in a good guitar sound, he kind of dialed it in for me. For the album, I used my 1965 Fender Stratocaster and plugged it into a rental amp, a Marshall JCM800, 100-watt. I used a Boss Super Overdrive and a Boss DS-1 Distortion together. Though we mixed them together, most of the gain came from the amp. And using those two Boss pedals together proved to be a good combination. We did try using each pedal separately, but it just didn’t seem to work in giving me the sound we wanted to achieve.”
Journey On
Once Norum’s guitar sound was put to tape, and recording sessions ended, the band along with producer made their way over to the west coast of America to begin mixing, which again, had ties to Journey. “We went to San Francisco and mixed it at the same place where Kevin had mixed the Journey stuff, at Fantasy Studios in San Francisco,” says Norum. “And because that was the first time we, as a band, had been in the States – it was very exciting. After the album got released, it just exploded. It became number one in 25 countries, and we quickly started touring.”
But success became a double-edged sword for Norum. While the commercial success gave the band the world at its feet, for Norum though everything had become less about the guitar, and more about fame and its excesses. Instead of solidifying its standing as a hard rock group, with the guitar as its primary driving force, Europe had now morphed into purveyors of synth-pop rock. This led to Norum facing a career crossroads.
“When you get success that quick, it goes so fast, and you don’t really know how it works, how the business works and everything,” he explains. “Suddenly it’s like you have to get up and do the interviews every day from morning till night, and TV shows and get on early flights and all that stuff. And the fact that the keyboards were taking over a lot more, we had become more like a pop band.
“I hated that whole bubblegum image with the big hair and the spandex pants and that whole eighties image. Then some guys in the band got really big headed, and just doing the sex and drugs and rock and roll thing way too much and drinking every day, all the time. I was constantly waking up with a hangover, and finally came to the realization that this life was not for me. It’s not what I wanted to do and it wasn’t me and I didn’t want any part of it. So, I quit.”
Norum went on to enjoy a prolific solo career though, while Europe would soldier on until 1992. A decade later in 2003 the band reunited with Norum back in its ranks, and far-removed from the excess of their 80s pomp, the band remains active today on the touring circuit with plans for a new album, and a reputed return to their classic sound, currently in the works for a late 2025 release.
The post The real story of The Final Countdown: John Norum explains why Europe’s biggest hit made him quit the band in disgust appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
