{"id":319336,"date":"2025-08-05T08:22:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T08:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/319336\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T08:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T08:22:13","slug":"the-real-story-of-the-final-countdown-by-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/319336\/","title":{"rendered":"The real story of The Final Countdown by Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe<\/a>\u2019s 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\u2019s calling card, while the album of the same name, has remained the group\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Both the song and album\u2019s birth went back a number of years prior to the group entering the studio. The group\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The group also shared an admiration for the arena rock<\/a> of Journey<\/a>, which came to play a major role in the musical direction of the album. \u201cWe\u2019d been listening to Journey a lot, and we loved the sound of their albums,\u201d recalls John Norum today. \u201cAnd Neal Schon<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt 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<\/a>. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Swiss Precision<\/p>\n

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. \u201cWe were there for about five weeks, and it was great,\u201d he says. \u201cIt 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I didn\u2019t 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<\/a> Stratocaster<\/a> and plugged it into a rental amp<\/a>, a Marshall<\/a> JCM800, 100-watt. I used a Boss<\/a> 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\u2019t seem to work in giving me the sound we wanted to achieve.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Journey On<\/p>\n

Once Norum\u2019s 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. \u201cWe went to San Francisco and mixed it at the same place where Kevin had mixed the Journey stuff, at Fantasy Studios in San Francisco,\u201d says Norum. \u201cAnd because that was the first time we, as a band, had been in the States \u2013 it was very exciting. After the album got released, it just exploded. It became number one in 25 countries, and we quickly started touring.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get success that quick, it goes so fast, and you don\u2019t really know how it works, how the business works and everything,\u201d he explains. \u201cSuddenly it\u2019s 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<\/a> band.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019s not what I wanted to do and it wasn\u2019t me and I didn\u2019t want any part of it. So, I quit.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/p>\n

Joe Matera is an Italian-Australian singer\/songwriter, guitarist, recording artist, music journalist and author. His writings and interviews appear in Guitar World, Guitar Player, Goldmine, Record Collector and Sound On Sound. As an author, he has written two non-fiction books, ‘Backstage Pass: The Grit and The Glamour’ and \u2018Louder Than Words: Beyond The Backstage Pass\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s The Final Countdown is one of the most iconic and beloved anthems of the 1980s. Its synth-…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319337,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[59119,2000,299,5187,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-319336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-artist","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-rock"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114975194698090456","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}