The demo was “dreadful” and the main riff drove the guitarist crazy – but with some inspiration from Yngwie Malmsteen, it became one of the biggest rock songs of the ’80s

If you've ever been to, well, pretty much any kind of sporting event, and stayed until the end, there's a pretty good chance you've heard it – that battle cry, siren song of a keyboard riff.

The song it kicks off its truly emblematic of its era – you think of the evil Ivan Drago pumping iron, getting ready to beat the hell out of the heroic Rocky Balboa in Rocky IV (even though, to be absolutely clear, it is not in that movie).

And funnily enough, when the guitarist whose shred heroics bring the song to a blockbuster peak first heard it, he didn't like it at all.

When Europe frontman Joey Tempest first presented guitarist John Norum with what would become the band's breakthrough smash, The Final Countdown, the latter was far from impressed.

The demo, Norum told Guitar World in a recent interview, was “dreadful”; hearing that legendary lick “over and over again” simply annoyed him.

Still, though, Norum knew a hit when he heard it, and set about giving the tune some muscle. And where better to get muscle than a pumping rhythm part brought loudly to life through a Marshall?

“I’m a huge UFO fan,” he explained, “so that galloping feel came from Michael Schenker’s playing on Lights Out.”

Europe - The Final Countdown (Official Video) - YouTube

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For the solo, Norum wanted to match that muscle with some fireworks – and found inspiration from a friend, and fellow Swede.

“The technique comes from Ritchie Blackmore, but at the same time, I was friends with Yngwie Malmsteen and we were hanging out a lot,” Norum says.

“My guitar style was a lot more frantic back then, but that’s the way it is when you’re in your early twenties. I played that solo on a 1965 Strat. I bought it in 1984 and it’s the only guitar I’ve kept from then. I paid, like, $900 for it, and today it might be worth $45,000.”

Despite Norum's original misgivings, and the disenchantment he felt at the fame The Final Countdown brought to the band (he left the group shortly after the release of the song and accompanying album of the same name in 1986, only to rejoin when they reunited in 2003), the guitarist has since warmed to it, and appreciates how the song has evolved since its release.

“It was originally in F# and it’s now in F, so it’s darker and doomier-sounding – not so square, like it was in the ’80s,” he says.

“Now, when we play it live, it sounds so much heavier. The reaction – you can see all these happy faces out there. I like it a lot more now than I did then.”

For the full Final Countdown story, plus interviews with the musical minds behind some of the best guitar-rock albums of 1986, pick up the new issue of Guitar World from Magazines Direct.