A few side notes:

I know other bands have recorded this song. I have noticed that in their renditions, it's fairly close to the original in most aspects. For mine, I only wish to keep the same key and a few of the motifs from the original. More or less turn it into something that's quite face-melting, with some recognizeable parts from the original thrown in. More like what "canon rock" did for Canon / D.

The original was 6/4, but the parts render quite nicely into 4/4 time, a whole number of measures anyway, without any odd time sig changes.

The bass, underneath this, would play the original bass line...descending D, C, Bb, and then finishing the motif on A.

It's in Dm pretty much the whole way through (A phrygian, actually). A very easy key to work with in double-drop D. Coming up with a soloing strategy will be the hard part, having to deal with 2 dropped strings, and a semi-strange key. Right now I'm toying with having the lead double the melody a la Vai, and then taking off into solos between melody sections.

Any helpful hints or ideas of anyone want to throw in on a collab (when I finally get my stuff together) let me know! I'll probably post the rhythm track on here anyway for you guys to mess with ;)