Disclaimer: I'm not a fan of this song. It was however a vehicle for practicing a few things: keeping rhythm for all instruments, practicing rhythm guitar, recording and mixing backing vocals and playing guitar solos. It turned out to be a surprisingly guitar heavy recording having 4 different tracks.

Lead guitar

The solo is iconic and it sounds deceivingly simple. Problems appear when you have to speed it up to the tempo of the song. Then your fingers start hurting because of the double bends. To counter these I made two compromises. First I replaced my high G, B, E strings with ones from an 8 gauge set to make them easier on the fingers. Then I converted the double bends of the B13 position (C to E) to two single bends on B13 (C to D) and B15 (D to E). This made it possible for me to practice the solo enough to be able to record a decent performance. So now my black Variax is a bending guitar.

Rhythm guitars

My guitar teacher and I picked this song to develop my rhythm guitar playing skills. After recording several demo performances within a few weeks I thought that it would be cool to build the song into a full cover.

I recorded 3 tracks:

1. The most prominent rhythm which alternates mostly between D minor and G but whose strumming pattern is really important to get right.

2. Rhythm accents during the chorus.

3. Overdriven guitar track that follows the notes of the verse vocals and uses open string chords as a pad for the chorus.

Vocals

The melody is relatively simple and there aren't many different notes to hit. I still asked my vocals teacher for guidance because there are complexities around the high-pitched screaming chorus and the second verse. The original recording has a children's choir which I replaced with two additional tracks: one in head voice and the other with what I believe is up by five notes from the main vocals line.

Bass

I tried replicating the original performance and focus on correct timing.

Keyboard - rock organ

During the guitar solo there's an organ pad to give it a more airy sound.

Drums

A simple drumming pattern overall yet the focus is on keeping the rhythm steady. It's an older recording and I just noticed that I'm holding the drum sticks incorrectly instead of just between two fingers and more towards a third of the sticks for a more balanced feel.