John Norum was born on February 23rd 1964 in Vardö, northern Norway, and grew up in the Swedish capitol of Stockholm and is one of the co-founders of the band Europe, yes THAT Europe. I can’t say I’m a fan of Europe but I did actually see them live once as a support act for Bon Jovi at the Milton Keynes Bowl back in 1989 along with Vixen and Skid Row, who by the way were awesome, but John had temporarily left the band and was playing with Don Dokken, he had been replaced by Kee Marcello. Anyway there is no mistaking even from Europe’s biggest hit “The Final Countdown” that John has long been a formidable guitarist so I was interested to hear what his solo record would be like.

I didn’t really know what to expect with this album as I’ve never heard any of John Norum’s previous 6 solo albums but as soon as I saw the cover I was intrigued and did a quick Wikipedia lookup and realised that the boy on the cover is John’s only child Jake who was born in 2004, I also found out that 4 years later John’s wife died. This album is dedicated to the memory of his wife Michelle Meldrum Norum (founder and lead guitarist of Swedish metal band Meldrum). Due to this sad turn of events and the album title “Play Yard Blues” I expected this album to be a deep and tormented journey dealing with John’s painful 2 years that followed. In fact this album is nothing like what I had expected, there is a lot of positivity in the lyrics on this bluesy rock record such as “When Darkness Falls” which is a pretty straight up rock track with some funky overdriven Wah playing and like “Let It Shine” seems to talk about his personal healing. Incidentally the intro to “Let It Shine“, the album opener, has a very similar tone and funky feel to the intro of Guthrie Govan’s Sevens, although that is the only similarity it takes on more of a Hendrix style when John starts singing, it also has a great Wah drenched solo. There are moments when this album kind of sounds like a mixture of Cream and Santana, like the track “Red Light Green High” and “Over And Done“, John’s vocals sometimes sound like Jack Bruce and the guitars have that 60′s feel with the Vibe and Wah. There are a couple of tracks that depart from the Blues-Rock style and just hammer the rhythm home, “Born Again” is a good example which is the kind of track you can imagine in one of those films about pimped Nissan Skyline’s racing each other through the streets of Tokyo!

There is really only one actual Blues track which is the album title “Play Yard Blues” which has some great playing and lovely blues guitar tones and is the only instrumental track on the album. My Catalinbread Pareidolia does a great job of creating this type of swirly guitar effect.

If you are a fan of 70′s style rock with big beats and blues-inspired funky guitar riffs then check this album out, you can hear streaming versions of all of the tracks on John’s site – http://www.johnnorum.se so you can try before you buy!