John Norum An Exclusive Interview (from "Burrn!" Magazine, June 1995) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 3 years after the latest album ex-Europe & Don Dokken guitarist releases the new solo album setting 'another destination'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The second "Face The Truth" solo album of John Norum recorded together with singer Glenn Hughes was released in Japan in March, 1992. Right at that time he still was the member of the Don Dokken band but already was dissatisfied with his position and thought about parting ways with Don Dokken. Finally he refused to take part in the preproduction of the Don Dokken next solo album and returned to his solo career. But though he decided to continue as the solo artist it took him 3 years to remix the American version of the "Face The Truth" album, settle all the problems with the contracts and release the entire album in America. But all that didn't make him stop. The musical direction of his new "Another Destination" solo album goes into dark and rough sounds comparing to his previous melodic and hard-rock-oriented European style. But anyway, the album is still very emotional and the guitar playing also remains to be dramatic and emotional again while the vibrato also helps to transform the sacred feelings of his soul. Concerning this interview, I managed to talk to John Norum when he returned to Sweden from America to do some rehearsals before the tour. Here he told about his past, his blanks and the frustration he felt over the last several years in music business. M - Masao Fujiki J - John Norum M: Did you have a big blank until now since the release of the "Face The Truth" album? J: In fact I had too many contracts problems with the American "Shrapnel Records" company and the Swedish "Sony" one. Up to nowadays I never had an American contract but always thought about releasing my albums there. It took me 2 years to finally find the suitable one. Moreover I built my own recording studio in Los Angeles. There I rehearsed most of the time and composed about 20 songs for the new album. You can probably say that I had a 'long' holiday. M: When did the American edition of "Face The Truth" came out? J: January, this year and at the same time in Canada. But the American version differs from the rest of the countries' one. The track list changed and the cover is also slightly different now. That all was done especially for the American edition. M: Were there any remixed songs? J: Yeah, 5 songs were remixed and 2 were left behind the album. I personally never liked the songs like "We Will Be Strong" and "Still The Night" so I changed them with a couple of tracks from my EP "Live In Stockholm" released in 1988 or 1989. That very EP was never released in America so I added 2 songs from it to the new edition. M: Did you play any concert actually to support the "Face The Truth" album? J: No, not a single one. The album wasn't released in America so I simply didn't have the time to do that. You know, I live in America now so I wanted all of my albums to be released here. That's why I managed to find the record contract with "Shrapnel" but when all the necessary documents were signed it was too late to tour with that album. It already became an 'oldie' by that time. M: How did you sign the contract with "Shrapnel"? J: My previous manager did it for me. Well, the day before we started the negotiating with "Shrapnel" he brought my album to the American part of "Sony" in New York and they quite liked it there. But the problem was with the company's boss. That's that very lady who was the Glenn Hughes's lawyer back in 1985 and she knew everything about his drug problems... So when she saw the name of Glenn among the musicians list she didn't want to release the album at all. By that time everyone knew about the Glenn's drug thing and though he was one of my favorite singers of all time only due to that drug facts nobody wanted to release that album. My manager went to the other record companies' offices but the results were the same everywhere. Many companies liked my album but seeing the Glenn's name on its cover they refused to deal with me. I know that now Glenn himself feels much better but the dirty rumors about his past did him too much harm. The last person I established the connection with was Mike Varney from "Shrapnel" who promised me to release the album anyway. In fact I wanted to sign the contract with some big company which could make a solid promotion of my albums but the situation was rather disasterous. M: So when exactly did you sign the contract? J: Summer last year. The contract is about the release of "Face The Truth" and two more albums in America and Canada. M: You know, when the "Face The Truth" album was released in Japan you still were the actual member of the Don Dokken band. So when did you leave it? J: About 2 or 3 months after the Japanese release of "Face The Truth". I really liked Dokken so I didn't want to leave the band at all. That was the perfect band. Well, it didn't show up on the "Up From The Ashes" album because of its average production but our concerts were awesome. But then everyone left the band. Bassist Peter Baltes was invited to take part in the Accept reunion and second guitarist Billy While just left the band and returned to Taxas. Later our drummer left too and the ones to still stay there were Don (Dokken) and me. I hesitated about what decision I should make. But after the solo album release I finally decided to leave. The main problem of the band was that nobody wanted to wait anything for any longer. You know, we were always waiting for something because of Don. He is definitely a great musician and a brilliant person but he's also a big breaker. You can understand it judging from the time passed since the "Up From The Ashes" album till the new Dokken release. Consider that that's about 4 or 5 years which is too long. No matter how many separate things he did he could make it much faster. When I was the Don Dokken band member I also played in some other projects. M: You mean the band members got tired of waiting for something so the band split? But don't you think that Don himself wanted to split it up? J: I guess so. Don really wanted to work with his own band but you see, during the recording of the "Up From The Ashes" album it was quite obvious that the band's end is near. The solo parts of every member were finished a month after we started. Everyone but Don. It took him 8 months to record his vocals parts. And we all were just waiting for him. Well, the mixing process was already on the way but it had to be delayed... Don wanted to analize all the things he did. I even played some guitar parts on the demo tape to the new Dokken album! But it took Don 4 years to complete it while my own "Face The Truth" album was finished in 4 weeks! You can see the difference. Finally I understood that the new Dokken album will be released only in 2 or 3 years. However, the same thing also happened with me. (laughs) But my situation needs the special comments. The work on my new "Another Destination" album was finished long before its release. It happened even in summer of 1994 but I had to wait for about a year due to the contract problems with "Shrapnel" and "Sony". I almost lost my temper and couldn't return to my old guitar-playing style. I was so busy with that business stuff that I even stopped enjoying the guitar-playing at all. So I practiced for too long time to lean some different styles of playing guitar. M: What do you think about the Dokken reunion? J: I suppose that it was a good idea. I heard 4 or 5 songs from the demo tape but not the final version. I think it sounds great. When you spend 4 or 5 years working on the new album it's remixed many times but the result is perfect. The same thing happened to Dokken. I was the big fan of this band since its starts and still like it. George Lynch is really awesome and Jeff (Pilson) and Mick (Brown) are also good. They seem to to enjoy being together but their quarrels still go on. (laughs) M: So when did you begin composing songs for the new album? J: About 8 or 9 months after the Japanese release of the "Face The Truth" album. At least when I signed the contract the new album was complete and ready to be released. I composed about somehow 20-25 songs and selected the best 11 from them. All the songs were written with various people in various times. A couple of songs were written together with Billy White who still remains one of my friends. Moreover I do like his playing very much. Also many songs were written together with singer and keyboardist Kelly Keeling. And I think it was a great idea to work with a big number of people who all influenced me. But that's absolutely my style and my kind of music though the album isn't filled with just my own songs. I guess it does only good for me working with many musicians especially when composing music and writing lyrics. M: Can you tell us who played on your new album. J: OK. The drummer is Gary Fergusson who played in the Hughes/Thrall project. That's when I first heard him and quite liked his style. He also played with Gary Moore on the "Run For Cover" album and with Glenn Hughes on the "Sing The Blues - L. A. Blues Authority (Volume II)" album. Bassist Tom Lilley was sometime the member of the Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood solo band. I know Tom from Gary Fergusson. The man played 5-string bass and reminds me of Tony Franklin. Kelly Keeling is the ex-Blue Murder singer who I know for about 2 or 3 years. I always wanted to play something with him so one day I called and said, "I have many songs so why not writing lyrics to them together? You could also play keyboards if you please." M: Did you sing all the tunes? J: No, we parted the vocal parts with Kelly. The album consists of 8 vocal and 3 instrumental tracks so me and Kelly sing 4 songs respectively. I wanted to find a person who could sing just like I do. And guess Kelly is the man who suits me fine concerning the vocal parts. My voice changed too much since my first solo album ("Total Control", released in 1987) and I guess it was a good change. We parted the vocals to fit them to the songs. You know, I really like to sing but it's quite hard to sing and play guitar at the concerts. The guitar shocks me with its energy and that's what I noticed at my first tour. It would be the satisfaction overload doing both things together. So when there's a separate singer in the band he can sing and I can concentrate on the guitar. And everyone knows that I sing only slow and bluesy tunes so I guess I'm not a heavy metal but blues singer. That style suits me more than hard rock. The same thing is completely different with Kelly who is the hard rock singer. That's why everything turns out simply perfect. This album has many different styles presented on it. It contains instrumental acoustic songs, pretty heavy and melodic hard rock sounds and even some blues rhythms. Right until now I played only hard rock music but it became quite boring soon. So I wanted to play something different. Personally I think that this album contains only one awesome song but that's alright. At the very beginning I liked them all but then I thought that I could leave this or that one behind the album. The same thing happened to "Face The Truth" where I took 2 songs off the American version. I guess the album is 95 per cent complete but it still sounds very spontaneous. That was the first time I recorded the whole album live. At first we recorded drums, then bass, then lead guitar and finally the re-recorded rhythm guitar. And only at the end we added vocals and keyboards. We played everything together so all the album tracks were completed in 3 days. Quite quick, yeah? That's why on this album you can hear us very well because we recorded everything in the live atmosphere. Though there was some blowouts we left them as they are. We didn't think of considering every sound recorded there and just wanted to express our feelings which are much more important than the complete album itself. So we played every song about 2 or 3 times and then chose the best version. M: Listening to your new album I thought it sounds darker than ever and the recording aura seems to be quite melancholic, doesn't it? J: Yeah, you're right, the album is pretty heavy. And moreover the songs are even heavier than before. We tried to tune our instruments differently this time. The songs in which we tuned the 6-string guitars up to E or D became really heavy. Recently most of the bands who tune their instruments higher sound much heavier than ever whatever the music style it is. But we don't follow the trends, I just like this sound. You know, Zakk Wylde did the same thing in the Ozzy Osbourne band. That's how we tried to play that way in some of these new songs. While recording the song "Spirit World" we tuned 1,5 tone higher so the sound became lower and heavier. And it influenced our recording aura. M: It's strange you didn't play any Thin Lizzy cover this time but left it for "Sunshine Of Your Love" by Cream and "Strange Days" by Humble Pie. J: OK, I played Thin Lizzy covers on all of my solo albums but now I decided not to do it again. I wanted to play something else and moveover there were no more Thin Lizzy songs I wanted to play again. But you know, no matter what I say now you can possibly find the Thin Lizzy cover on my next solo album! (laughs) My new album was already released in Sweden and everyone started discussing this problem saying to me, "Why didn't you play any Thin Lizzy cover?" OK, of course many bands already played "Sunshine Of Your Love" but all of them just stuck to the original version. However I wanted to produce there some other feelings, tuned my guitar higher and played the entire song much slower than the original version. Also the arrangements became heavier and the whole song sounds pretty close to Black Sabbath. Now I don't think that it really was a good idea. When the mixing process was under way I see Living Colour performing this song in on of the TV programs. That was their first single from the new album. That's when I thought that they managed to create the completely different version which is much better than mine. So for now I think that I'd better threw it away from the album. Also I don't like my vocals in that song which are quite mild. M: What songs do you sing on the new album besides "Sunshine Of Your Love"? J: "Strange Ways", "Inside" and "Half Way Home". That's all the songs I don't like on the new album at all. (laughs) Comparing this album to the previous one I think that here and there I could do it even better. Well, the rest of the songs are sung by Kelly. The backing vocals we sung together. M: You'll come back to America after the Scandinavian and European live concerts, won't you? J: No, I'll go straight to Japan afer the European concerts. My previous album failed to make it in America so I don't like it at all and that's the last country I want to tour through. Japan is the most interesting country for me concerning my music and tours. For a long period of time rock music was popular in Japan more than in Scandanavia. Now many Scandinavian people enjoy listening to pop music and every band or single musician sings in Swedish which is pretty weird for the lyrics. But still my records are still in demand and that represents the good enough hard rock situation there. However my albums are selling quite slow in Sweden while in Japan they always were in big demand. So the tour'll start in Scandinavia, continue in Europe and then we're finally going to Japan. The exact dates aren't settled yet but I promise to play some stuff from the "Up From The Ashes" and "Face The Truth" albums. So I have a big number of songs to play. If the Japanese tour comes true I'll record there the live album like I planned before. Also the band line-up will change for the tour. Kelly Keeling who sang and played keyboards on the new album will stay with me but the bassist will switch for my old friend and companion from the Europe times, John Leven. See, I didn't see him since "The Final Countdown" world tour. Ex-Electric Boys Nicholas Sigwell will be the new drummer. He's the best drummer in hard rock and he's got the greatest bass drum I ever saw. So we're going to record the live album with this perfect line-up and will let our fans hear the old and the new stuff live. When we started rehearsaling for this tour I soon realized that we sound ever heavier than the new album itself. Don't ask me about the reasons for it, I don't know them. Maybe it happens due to our vikings' origins. M: So is it a solo project or the band? J: Well, it's the band which uses my name. (laughs) By the way, the same thing was with Don Dokken. When signing the contract I controlled the whole situation so the record company wanted to have my name printed on the album cover. But I wanted to add the band's name after my own one. That could be great because I can later take my name away and use that new band's one. Many famous bands did the same thing long before. For example, Ritchie Blackmore's Rainbow later became Rainbow and David Coverdale's Whitesnake later became Whitesnake. Nowadays we all think about the suitable name for our band. Also don't forget about Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force. M: Many fans would like you to reunite with Joey Tempest again... J: You mean the Europe reunion? M: No, no, maybe some kind of project together. Would you do something like this again? J: Well, we just worked together. I played some guitar parts in one song for the Joey solo album. We managed to create a very good thing and you gotta listen to it. However it has nothing to do with the music I play. It's just the awesome pop music album but I guess the song we played together is probably the best one on the whole album. It sounds like a poppy blues version of Eric Clapton. It turned out really great but we won't play live together again, maybe just jam sometime. M: Is the Europe reunion possible with you? J: No, not now but we'll probably play together in the 21st century! Many years will go, we'll get much older, couldn't play anywhere else and reunite and play together again! (laughs) Until that time I don't wanna do it. We have different tastes in music with Joey and it was easy to see when we recorded the "Wings Of Tomorrow" and "The Final Countdown" albums. Joey always prefered pop music while my favorite music is hard rock. So it hurt me too much that Europe switched to pop music. We wrote many songs together but that poppy sounds spoiled the whole thing. And that was one of my reasons for the split. At that time I wanted to play something heavier, something like Van Halen or Dokken. Well, as you know Dokken released there "Under Lock And Key" album when we released "The Final Countdown" one. So the entire Dokken album became one my favorites and that was the kind of music I wanted to play back then. Imagine how happy I was to get the phonecall from Don who wanted me to play together with him. Concerning Joey, maybe he'll continue playing pop music. I don't know a thing about his future plans. I personally would like to play something less poppier, maybe in the Black Sabbath vein. ------------------------------------------------------------------------