John Norum - Interview With Europe Guitarist For His ‘Gone To Stay’ Solo Album.

Photo: Tallee Savage

John Norum Interview

By Paul Davies

An original founder member of Europe, the Swedish rock band that is, and not the continent of, prolific guitarist John Norum seems to have never rested on the many laurels that he has garnered during his illustrious and successful musical life as a solo artist and band member. As winners of Sweden’s Rock-SM contest for emerging bands in 1982, it’s now nigh on forty years since Europe's eponymous debut release. However, it was Europe’s third album, The Final Countdown, that propelled them into super-stardom with the ubiquitous album title song single selling over ten million copies and still counting. Moreover, it’s four decades in which Norum has busily been involved in nine Europe albums, leaving the band in 1987 and returning for the millennium, a Don Dokken solo and Dokken band album, a dalliance with UFO, and keeping parity with Europe, his current solo album Gone To Stay is also his ninth solo release to date. Gone To Stay appears to be an oxymoron of an album title as John explains the meaning behind the album's title: "Well, it's basically a kind of a love story. It’s kind of like relationships not going too well, a little bit up and down, but it's a relationship love story." While stressing that it has no relevance to his private life, it's also a self-produced album by Norum who has had many mentors - Kevin Elson, Max Norman Ron Nevison, David Cobb, and Kevin Shirley to name but a few behind the desk luminaries - producing album recordings he's been involved with over the years as he tells me: "Yeah, I've done it for so long now. I've picked up so much stuff from these guys I've been working with over the years. So, I know pretty much what to do." Dead time is a highly creative time for some, especially for John Norum's restless spirit as he details the recording process of Gone To Stay: "It started with covid, and Europe had a lot of gigs like two months in the States touring with Foreigner and suddenly everything got cancelled. So, I thought, I just can’t sit here doing nothing, so I started writing some songs and went into the studio are began recording and that's how Gone To Stay started." Recorded at Coupled Music Studio and Soundtrade Studio, Stockholm, Sweden, as a highly respected musician, the Norwegian born Swedish native John has a tight core of musician friends he can call on who all brought their A-Game to this recording: "They're friends of mine who live here in the neighbourhood and we are only about 10 - 15 minutes away from each other so it's very easy," John continues, "They're people that I've known forever and my co-producer and drummer, Peer Stappe, has worked with me for sixteen years now and there's Fredrik Bergenstråhle on bass." From this trio of musicians Norum has created a melodic hard rock recording that rivals, if not betters, anything he has created previously as a solo artist. He also has the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra delivering grand musical gestures on the power rock ballad Norma a song about Marilyn Monroe and Tell The Truth (Revisited). These show-stopping epic songs fully display Norum’s musical abilities and his undoubted pull to bring in and fully involve world class musicians.

Spooling back down the years, John had a revelation revisiting an old track from his second solo album 1992's Face The Truth. It’s a rock milestone album of stunning performances across classy material that he recorded featuring former Deep Purple legend Glenn Hughes who contributed to many of the album's deep cuts. "That just happened by accident. Really! I was goofing off in the studio before I was supposed to do a solo on one song," reveals Norum. "I was just playing it and the engineer says, 'what's that'? Well, it's an old song. So, we're just recording kind of like one minute then afterwards I just put it away and forgot about it. A few days later, I listened to it, and I got the idea to go back and do a totally different version of it and that's what we did, and it came out great." John adds: "I actually prefer this version to the original. It was supposed to be a bonus track for Japan because the Japanese always want to have a bonus track. But then I had an instrumental song, and they picked that one because they're guitar fanatics and they liked it. So, I gave them the instrumental song and I put this one out for the rest of the world." John also sings the vocal on this version instead of Glenn with impressive results. I ask him how it felt to track his vocal on this classic Glenn Hughes voiced song: "He wrote the melody and lyrics to the song thirty years ago, so I changed the melody slightly, but not too much, so it's not exactly the same as the original version. I didn't want to send it to him before the album comes out because I didn't want him to go in and do the same thing as before or a funky version of it." No stranger to using his voice, John enjoys singing as he reveals to me: "It's a lot of fun. I've always been singing as I enjoy it. My family says I'm like a walking jukebox at home. I always walk around singing the same old songs because it's good for the soul." John expands upon his love for singing: "I had been singing along to Elvis records when I was younger and a lot of David Bowie stuff in the 70s. I've been doing it for a very long time, kind of professionally, I guess, because I've sung on some of my previous solo albums even though I had other singers work on the majority of the songs.” The album contains a hard-rock cover version of David Bowie's Lady Grinning Soul. Clearly Bowie's influence is evident on John Norum's internal jukebox of tunes: "I've always done like one cover on each album because I think it's fun. It's just fun to record covers and try to make something different out of them and not just cover it the same as the original. I've done some Thin Lizzy covers in the past, but I've never done a David Bowie cover." John is a big Bowie fan and Lady Grinning Soul is his homage to this dearly missed rock idol: "This is a tribute to David Bowie one of the greatest artists of all time and one of my favourite singers of all time because his voice was so unique and had so much character. He wasn't this typical screamer that was around in the 70s, he was unique in that way. I really like his hard rock stuff like Aladdin Sane and Diamond Dogs."



The remarkable heavy guitar sound that John generates throughout this career-best landmark solo release is not without its idiosyncrasies as he details: "I mainly use Strats. I have a 1972 reissue Strat made in 2004 that's fantastic. It's made in Japan and it's like the best-sounding Strat I've ever played. It's just incredible. I found it in a guitar shop where they had all these original 60s and 70s Strats, and new ones as well, and I went through them all and this one just blew them all away. It was £500! It's crafted in Japan as it says on the back. It's incredible. The Japanese are very into details and that's the main one I use. However, I use a Gibson Flying V '57 reissue on one song and a Gibson Les Paul '58 reissue on the David Bowie song." Like these classic guitar reissues, Norum is an aficionado of classic rock (he also confides to me that he occasionally listens to Celine Dion and Simon Garfunkel when at home) that finds its way into the music he creates. This solo release, like all his previous albums, loudly resonates with John’s personal musical tastes: "I'm old school. My influences are like everybody else in my generation who grew up in the 70s: Phil Lynott, UFO, Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Frank Marino and David Bowie of course.” Impeccable old-school tastes but I ask him what new bands and new music he listens to? “I don't really listen to much new stuff as nothing new and exciting has come out for the last twenty years,” Norum emphasises. “It’s just the same repeat of the same old stuff all the time when it comes to the metal scene or hard rock or whatever. The last band that I really enjoyed, and thought was great, was Audioslave. That was a great band, great songs, great riffs and Chris Cornell was a fantastic singer but other than that it’s the guys from the good old days for me.”

Photo: Tallee Savage

The influence of David Bowie further punctuates my conversation with John as he tells me what's rubbed off on him from this ultimate chameleon-like artist: "I'm a huge David Bowie fan and I don't want to do the same thing over and over again. I like different flavours on the album; not only bone-crushing, hard rock, or metal. I like to mix it up with a couple of slow things and different styles but that is in the rock style." The videos for the singles so far lifted from Gone To Stay visualise the fun Norum had to put this album together as he remarks: "I don't have to shoot videos, but they're quite fun especially when I'm dressed up like a Viking. I really enjoyed doing that for the Sail On video. It was supposed to be shot in a studio. We found a real Viking ship.” The Nordic gods seemingly played their part on the day of the shoot as well: “We were lucky that day because there was a storm outside. If it had been a sunny day, it would have been no good. It turned out great and it's one of my favourite videos ever." The video for the current single, One By One, combines both of John’s passions for music and cars. It shows him arriving in a black Ferrari before strapping on his Strat to belt out power metal chords on this song featuring Age Sten Nilsen’s smoky vocals.

With the final countdown arriving for Europe to return to America to fulfil some live shows in December, John also seems to be relishing the prospect of airing some of Gone To Stay’s tracks on some solo live dates: "I have a couple of shows in Sweden that I'm going to do on my own with some friends of mine. It's just having fun and I haven't played some of those songs for like twenty years now. So, it would be fun playing live now and having a new album to promote at the same time." With Europe’s fortieth anniversary arriving and John’s new album release, Gone To Stay seems to sum up John Norum's continuing plans to keep the music flowing from the studio to the stage.