Photo: Ian Pollard/GRTR!

August 2009, Featured Artist

John Norum is one of the great unsung guitar heroes of melodic rock. He formed Europe with Joey Tempest in 1979 and achieved great success with that band in the late-1980's culminating in the massive worldwide hit 'The Final Countdown'. John got increasingly frustrated with Europe's commercial synth-pop rock and left the band in late-1986.

Throughout the 1990's he pursued a solo career and the resulting albums featured Norum on vocals and guitar and guests including Goran Edman (Malmsteen) and Glenn Hughes. Several albums included Thin Lizzy cover versions, reflecting that band's influence on his guitar playing and music.

Whilst his solo recording career has been lower-key, his melodic style of metal-flavoured rock brought him to the attention of his peers and he joined Don Dokken for his solo album 'Up From The Ashes' (1990),  recorded ''Long Way Home" with Dokken (the band) and toured with them in 1997, replacing George Lynch, and again in early-2002.

By the late-nineties there was talk of a Europe reunion and an appearance of the original band members at a Millennium celebration in Sweden led directly to a new album 'Start From The Dark', released in September 2004.

Europe's latest album 'Last Look At Eden' is released in September 2009. The band play the Bloodstock Festival on Sunday August 16.

John Norum at Bloodstock, August 2009 (Photo: Ian Pollard)

Podcast

The podcast features additional interview material, where John talks in more depth about Dokken, and the new Europe album. Sign up for our RSS feed which automatically lets you know of the latest additions.

"Our interview was only going to be 20 minutes, but you can't cover a career in such time. After each set of 20 minutes (and there were four of these) we kept getting the bleeps and John's management thought I was writing a book! John was really cooperative though, and it is good to tell his story aside from that of his band Europe." (David Randall)

Album review

Gig review

Podcast (Pete Feenstra talks to Joey Tempest)

Europe website