John Norum: Don Dokken - "When some nights" SOLO (take 2)

Описание: N O R U M...!!! Continuing our all Swedes week here @Blood,Shred&Tears with Europe's Axe Slinger John Norum.

Great soloing from John all the way through that first Don Dokken solo album released in 1990.

For me these were John's best years:
starting with these Up from the ashes sessions followed by the awesome Face the truth album and also the Face it live disc a few years later.


Solo highlights (in Dm):

0:08 = some nice opening notes after that initial double stop implying Dm7.

This opening lick sounds like something a pop guitarist would do and in effect, the whole underlying chord progression sounds pretty poppy/Bon Jovi-ish to my ears.
Me like.

0:12 = nobody covering this solo on YouTube gets this next part right.

Took some doing but I eventually figured out this whole melody is played with tapped harmonics on the G string.
Nice touch, John.

0:16 = tasty pentatonic lick immediately followed by a typical Norum turbo blues speed lick employing stretch pentatonics.

0:24 = beautiful, beautiful pinch harmonic bend on that first chord.....I live for this shit, man!!!

The same goes for that whole following passage with all the emotional bending and a lot of it has to do with that special pedal chord underneath.

The notes of that particular chord are f-a-d with the bass going from A to Bb to B ending with a C chord.

Just like in the intro to The Police's Every little thing she does is magic you could certainly try and give some kind of theoretically correct name to the resulting chords but you'd just obscure the fact that it's actually a pedal chord with an ascending bass.
Much clearer.

0:30 = totally impressive speed run (although personally for me it could've done without the harmonizing :-)

0:31 = after the melody is restated higher up John finishes us off with yet another very fast alternate picked lick way up in the highest neck region.



Superb solo.
Weren't these eighties rock guitarists just the best ever...?! *


I plan on returning to this album on a regular basis trying to recreate some of Norum's solos but it's gonna take a while since for most tracks I have to start from a blank page, transcribing every damn note myself.



Let it rip,
Peter.


Your appropriate answer would be:
"....yes Peter, they most definitely were...!!"



John Norum - best albums (in order of personal preference) :
1. John Norum - Face the truth
2. John Norum - Face it live '97
3. Europe - Wings of tomorrow
4. Don Dokken - Up from the ashes
(5. Europe - The final countdown)
(6. Europe - Europe)