The fame I had was impossible for any human being to deal with, says A-Ha’s Morten Harket
“THE internal squabbles in A-ha have been well documented,” says Magne Furuholmen, keyboard player with the Norwegian trio.
“So it was trying to find a solution to how we could make this album without ripping each other’s throats out.”
The band are about to release their stunning 11th studio album, True North, which was recorded as live with an accompanying film.
It’s all about the influence of nature and the ocean on their music.
And a new album is something both Furuholmen and singer Morten Harket declared categorically they would never make in A-ha The Movie, which was released earlier this year.
“I didn’t feel like we had to make another album. As long as we add something valuable to our legacy at this point, that in itself is enough,” says Harket, 63, as we meet in a central Oslo hotel.
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“But Mags presented his songs and they were a really nice collection, so I was in.”
For guitarist Pal Waaktaar-Savoy, who says he is restless if he’s not writing songs, a new album was important.
“I was all for it as it adds to the pool of songs that we have under our belts,” he says. “How many bands have been making new music for the time we have?”
Interviews with A-ha are conducted separately, which means I chat to Furuholmen on Zoom from his cabin in the mountains, while I speak to Waaktaar-Savoy on the phone from his home in Los Angeles.
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“Working separately has been very much the typical A-ha of the last decade,” adds Harket.
“We are very different, but we are three. And all three of us need to feel that we are free to do whatever feels right.
“I don’t take part in the writing. I don’t want to muscle my own stuff in between Pal and Mags. It doesn’t really work, so I’ve stopped doing it.
“As a singer it’s how I interpret things and engage in their songwriting. It’s how the music speaks to me.
“I write for my solo work but for A-ha it works better like this.”
Furuholmen and Waaktaar-Savoy say that they always have Harket’s unique falsetto in mind when they are creating songs.
Waaktaar-Savoy says: “I’m always writing but I have to pick from the stuff I’m working on which will fit Morten’s voice.
“And working with the Arctic Philharmonic Orchestra changed everything. It was a different approach and an intense working period of three weeks.”
The live performance of True North was filmed in Bodo, just north of the Arctic Circle
Furuholmen, 59, revealed that the idea of a film to accompany the album was inspired by Bruce Springsteen’s Western Stars.
He said: “I’d just watched the Springsteen film and thought about how one of the better experiences for A-ha in recent years was the MTV Unplugged in 2017 when we had re-examined our old songs.
“It had been a creative process where the band felt very much aligned, trying to achieve the same thing. We had a communal spirit.
‘We are very different’
“When A-ha The Movie was released, we felt it was all about success and our relationships, and the music was not really given enough focus
“So my idea was to perform something new. It wasn’t clear that it was going to be a new album at first but then taking a bit of a cue from Springsteen this became a musical letter from A-ha in 2022.
“One thing that we’ve supported in recent years is the climate crisis, new technology and ventures that have a philanthropic aspect.
"Morten has a keen interest in biology and biodiversity and the situation we’re all in, and as we’re Norway, we put it into a historical context about how Norway came to be the nation it is. That all inspired this project.”
Waaktaar-Savoy, 61, adds: “There’s always so much about us bickering instead of the music but making the A-ha movie we were each being told the other was talking s**t about us, so that stirred things.
“But a lot of bands have packed it in sooner — we keep at it.”
The gorgeous Bluest Of Blue was the song that began the album for Furuholmen.
He explains: “It’s a forward-thinking message to the younger generation, including my children and prospective grandchildren.
“Then, Between The Halo and The Horn has abstract imagery of a world at odds
“A lot of maritime metaphors crept in and the ocean has been so important to Norwegians in the past. It’s very dangerous but it’s also where Norway drew its incredible riches from.” Bluest Of Blue was also the track that attracted Harket’s interest.
He says: “It felt wrong not to do anything with it so I started working on Mags’ pieces and it became a project.
“He was inspired. Pal was working too but doesn’t share in the same way. He is more careful about presenting anything until things are ready to go.”
Waaktaar-Savoy adds: “I can’t present my songs until they sound like they are in my head — it’s not a jam session in the studio.
“I have lived in the US for a long time now and so have learned to work alone, my way.
"I’m pleased with this album as I’ve toyed with a 1970s, Brazilian sound I wouldn’t normally. I’m pleased with the expanded chords and rhythms on songs like Bumblebee and Hunter In The Hills.”
For a band who supposedly loathe each other, they have managed to stick together for nearly 40 years since forming in 1982.
They took a hiatus in 1994, got back together, then announced they would split in 2010 but returned with a second comeback in 2014.
Furuholmen says: “We are extremely privileged in the sense that we have an audience that has followed us through thick and thin. The pandemic allowed us to write this album both for our own sanity, and to give something to the fans.”
Since emerging from the comic book pages of their Take On Me video in 1985 the band have been adored internationally and have sold more than 100million records.
In 1991 they set a Guinness Book world record by playing for the largest paying audience in the world — 198,000 people at the Maracana stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
But their image as pop pin-ups was not how the band enjoyed being portrayed.
“We went along with it in the ’80s but from the early ’90s we kind of felt that we failed our music in many ways by feeding into the sort of pop idols,” admits Furuholmen, also a successful visual artist.
“Fame was confusing. We were young men who went from nobodies to the centre of attention wherever we went. We had people running after us. We were ducking, diving and calling the police for help. It was entertaining, but taxing.
“We all suffered from the perception of the band in the early days which lingered for quite some time. One of the reasons I went into visual arts, and we all had solo projects, was to reset. We tried to get away from the stereotyping.
‘Massive privilege’
“Morten, obviously, bore the brunt of fame. He was the centre of attention and in interviews people were more curious about his biceps or hair than A-ha’s actual music.
“But later, bands came out as fans — and people that you wouldn’t necessarily expect like Morrissey, and we were huge Smiths fans.
“And Noel Gallagher, The Stone Roses and Coldplay. Kanye West used to dance to Take On Me during his show.”
Waaktaar-Savoy says: “When we heard all these nice things it was after we’d taken a break. I said, ‘Maybe we should stay away more often’.”
Furuholmen and Waaktaar-Savoy are easier to chat to about the old days.
The laid-back Furuholmen laughs at the ridiculousness of being in the spotlight while Waaktaar-Savoy says coming from Norway, they always felt like outsiders, so success was a dream come true.
But for Harket, who hasn’t lost his chiselled good looks with age, the obsessive fans were often too much to bear and he says the attention was “exhausting”. And it still is.
“It’s never really stopped,” he says. “It’s always under the surface for me and it’s impossible for any human being to deal with it.”
Self-deprecating throughout our chat, Harket still doesn’t seem comfortable talking about the days when he was voted The Sexiest Singer Alive and Most Fanciable Male across the teen mags.
But he surprised fans by appearing on The Masked Singer as Viking last year and says: “I did it because I really, really didn’t want to do it. That’s why I did it.”
A-ha finished a world tour including festival dates in the summer but there aren’t any plans to tour True North.
Waaktaar-Savoy says: “After the pandemic, we had to finish off tours that had been postponed and play other dates.
“We have just come back from a huge haul and so no-body wants to talk about touring right now.”
For Harket, singing live isn’t as enjoyable as he’d like it to be due to his distinctive voice.
“How I sing takes the joy out of it for me,” he says. “Singing live is a complex demand so I can’t share my voice how I want to. It’s disheartening.”
Furuholmen seems more positive about their live show experience.
He says: “I think the best times that we had in the last 20 years have been on stage. If Morten found a way of getting pleasure out of that situation, I would be open for playing live.
“It’s a massive privilege to be able to do what we love, and we have to adapt and find ways to do it without negativity.
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“I’ve learned not to say that this is the end. I’ve done that enough and had to swallow my words every time.”
- Film and album True North are out on October 21.
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A-Ha - True North
