EARLY YEARS

JOHN NORUM was born on February 23^rd 1964 in Vardø, at the extreme northeast corner of Norway, on the Barents Sea only 40 miles from the Russian border, near the entrance to the Varangerfjord. Aged 1, his family moved to Sweden and he grew up in Upplands Väsby, a Stockholm’s suburb.

At the age of 8, he was a big fan of Elvis and Cliff Richard. Two years later, at the age of 10, he took his mother's acoustic guitar off the wall and she showed him some stuff to do with it. John learned quickly and soon got his own guitar. But it was only when he heard "Strange Kind Of A Woman" by Deep Purple that he decided to become a rockstar. Deep Purple wasn't the only band that drew his interest: Kiss was his biggest influence.

In the Seventies, Swedish society encouraged young boys to take interest mainly in sports, whereas music - Rock music in particular - was badly considered or even taken to be as wasted time; it was therefore necessary to struggle not only for the success but also against the mentality and the prejudices of society. Many people considered that of musical success as a Swedish hopeless dream; the market was really restricted and there wasn't space for young ambitious musicians, as well as the dream of having success beyond Sweden... It was almost impossible...

John Norum got his first band, the Dragonfly, at the age of 12, in 1976, the band took the name from the street he was living in, Dragonvagen - with the drummer Tony Niemistö and Stefan Kéry (a singer and guitar player who later joined other punk bands, as Råger Mår, in the early Eighties, with Håkan Jan Haugland on drums, later Ian Haugland). Their first  "live" performance took place in John's bedroom, and they had Kiss make-up on their face. The room was covered with tinfoil (!) and as his idol Kiss, he used some cylinders to create the smoke effect... Well, none could say John was a quiet boy*... When he was 14, his step-father Thomas Witt got John into recording with Eddie Meduza the leader of Eddie Meduza & The Roaring Cadillacs band, a Swedish rocker. He played the guitar solo in “PUNKJÄVLAR” (“Punk Bastards”), released as a single in 1978. John was a punk rocker himself, influenced by Sex Pistols, and the band he had  at that time was called Dog Wayst; his name on stage was Johnny Fuckfaster (awww man!…). At that epoch he really thought that he would have remained faithful to punk music, but thank God things changed, for essentially two reasons: Gary Moore and Thin Lizzy, who captured his interest and the main result was that John founded a new band called WC (oh Lord!...) together with his old friends, which were playing Covers of their favourite bands as Thin Lizzy, UFO and Status Quo: Tony Niemistö, Micke Kling and Jan-Erik Bäckström. Eddie Meduza's albums reached gold-status as soon as they were released so it was definitely an early success;  in 1979 John recorded two guitar solos (in "Punkjävlar" and in "I'm A Fighter") for Eddie's album "EDDIE MEDUZA & THE ROARING CADILLACS". The other big John's passion was the moto racing, passion that let him to know Joakim Larsson, who became a great friend. They were about 16 year old. A bass player, Peter Olsson, asked John to join a band with him and a drummer, Werner. The band at the beginning  worked as a trio, with John as singer and guitarist, then after two weeks the drummer went away and he was replaced by the Dragonfly and WC’s drummer Tony. Together they re-founded WC band. They got quite famous in the Stockholm area. The band got close to take part to  a TV-show, but to do that they would have had to change name - which of course they refused to do… Peter Olsson told his friends that the line up was ok but they needed a good singer. John thought of his friend Joakim, who was playing bass and singing in the band Roxanne. With Joakim the band was complete and they called themselves Force, inspired by the new UFO release "Force It". They started playing seriously at CentrumGården in Upplands Väsby, a centre for young people in which Peter was working and there they did their first show. Joakim started writing some songs of incredible quality, which was composed at home with the acoustic guitar and then played in studio with John's electric guitar. They started having a considerable repertoire: "Strange", "Midnight Show", "Black Rose", "H & H", and "Rock On" that later became the beautiful "Farewell" of the first Europe’s album. They also added a couple of Covers "Since You Been Gone" by Rainbow and "Lettin' Go" by UFO, the only ones they played during live performances, preferring to concentrate themselves on their own material. A little later, Force found another studio, Peter Olsson once again found an excellent place at the "Klockback" school, a school for people with mental retardation. The thought of a demo was more and more present, and the Brown Glenmark Study in Djursholm let them record some songs with Thomas Witt at a good price. But the quality wasn't as good as they thought, so they decided to wait for another chance. At the beginning of 1981 the band had internal problems, Peter Olsson left the band for personal reasons*, and the band remained without a bassist. While the band was in search for a new bass player, they recorded another demo in the same studio and Joakim was responsible also for the parts on bass. It was in this period that he started thinking that his name wasn't right and found a stage name suitable for him: Joey Tempest, taken from the Shakespeare’s "The Tempest". Now they needed a good bass player. John Norum asked John Levén, who was playing the rhythmic guitar in a local band in Upplands Väsby. He liked that guy very much – more for his personal qualities than for his ability in playing guitar - and he tried to convince him to play the bass. John Levén remembers when John Norum came to his home in a stormy night to talk with him about his project... John Levén thought for a while about it and then he decided to join the band as bass player! In this way, the line up of the group  that two years later would have been named "Europe" was complete. Force reputation was growing more and more, they started performing live oftener... In 1981 Force took part in a contest at the Underground Club, now closed, that was situated in Stockholm, in Sergels Square. They didn't win and this was a big disappointment to them, and not without consequences: in April of the same year in fact John Levén had an offer he couldn't refuse, a proposal arrived from Yngve Malmsten (better known as Yngwie Malmsteen), a famous guitarist in Stockholm who asked him to play bass in his Rising Force when they were about to record the single for CBS. John accepted. So there was an exchange of bass players, John Levén joined Rising Force and John Norum asked Marcel Jacob, Rising Force former bass player, to replace John in Force.

There was also a change of location, the band was authorized to use a room inside the palace of TeleCompany in Dragonvagen; rehearsals and the song writing became really serious... But Marcel Jacob didn’t remain for long with the band. He played in only two concerts with Force, one in Folkets Park and the other in CentrumGården.  Joakim and Marcel composed together "Black Journey Into My Soul" that is in the second album of Europe, "WINGS OF TOMORROW", renamed as "Scream Of Anger". Marcel took part to the "The King Will Return" song writing (he wrote the chorus beginning), contained in their debut album "EUROPE". It was just for three months, then both the bands Force and Rising Force got back their original bass players.

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* let’s pass over… J

Biography written by the webmistress. Infos taken from checked music sites.