Ich habe einen sehr interessanten Artikel über Morten zugeschickt bekommen. Ich denke, den solltet Ihr auch mal lesen, deswegen habe ich ihn abgetippt:
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Daily Express, 29.7.1995
Comeback - by Michael Cable
A-HA, YOU MIGHT SAY, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MORTEN HARKET?
Pop stardom left him a wreck, but now he's going for solo success
As Robbie Williams walks out of Take That complaining about the pressure and Matt Goss reveals the harsh truth about Bros, former a-ha pin-up Morten Harket confirms that teenybopper superstardom is not always all it's cracked up to be. At the peak of the Norwegian group's success in the late Eighties, the pressure of life at the top had reduced him to a physical and nervous wreck.
"It got to the stage where I was exhausted by it all," he recalls. "My body was covered in boils. I lost all sense of taste and I went colour blind. Everything sort of dried out and I felt like an ashtray. I felt 96 years old and I was through with life.
"It can kill you, you know. It's what killed Elvis - the demands of the public and the media. If you don't understand to control it and when to pull away, it will get you one way or another. I needed the breakdown to get myself sorted out."
Seven years after a-ha's string of eight Top Ten hits started to dry up and with the group on what looks likely to be permanent hold, a revitalised Morten, 35, is ready to re-enter the fray as a solo artist. As he prepares to release his first single, A Kind Of Christmas Card, and debut album, Wild Seed, he is well aware that, in commercial terms, a-ha are going to be a hard act to follow.
"But that doesn't worry me," he says, "I don't feel under any pressure to match their success. I'm not interested in competition or comparison. As long as this album works well enough for me to be able to carry on, I shall be satisfied."
He has no desire to experience the hysteria that surrounded a-ha in the days of hits such as Take On Me and The Sun Always Shines On TV.
Stardom was something Morten had dreamed of from the age of 17. But when it came overnight eight years later with the worldwide chart-topping success of a-ha's first 1985 single Take On Me, he and fellow members Pal Waaktaar and Mags Furuholmen very quickly became disillusioned.
Morten says. "I used to have the most beautiful girls turning to jelly at my feet wherever I went, but I never took advantage. It would have been too easy. I always found the idea of hunt and the kill more appealing. So I ended up not pulling the birds. I can say that with my hand on my heart."
He is married to Swedish actress Camilla, with three children aged from two to six, and says: "We enjoyed the attention and success at first. It was fun and there were some great moments. But we were never after success simply for its own sake. The music was important for us. We were saddened that we were not allowed to develop. Too many people became dependent on us and we became like a pop factory, churning out record like hamburgers.
"Yet being out there as public property, a celebrity, demands so much that you need to be doing something you really believe in. After three years, we had already enough."
The last straw for Morten was when he ventured up the Amazon to escape from the attention of the fans. "I was staying at this little inn in a tiny place miles way from anywhere," he recalls. "I went up-river in a canoe to an Indian village. When I came back the place was packed and suddenly there was chaos all round me. I could smell what was going to happen even before we came around the corner in the river and saw all these people. By then I had developed a sixth sense of that sort of thing.
"It was like full-blown paranoia, except that it was real. That was what broke me. I crashed after that. People started describing me as reclusive when actually I'd had a sort of break-down."
After three multi-million-selling albums and two world tours, this moment marked the beginning of the end for a-ha. From then on, their records peaked lower and lower in the charts here, although they remained a major attraction in South America.
It was there, as he sang to 200.000 people at the Rock In Rio festival of 1991, that Morten decided to call it a day. "I went on stage in front of this huge crowd who had been waiting for us for 12 hours and I felt absolutely nothing," he says. "I had to ask myself, 'What is it you want? It's never going to be bigger than this'."
He decided to reinvent himself although, as he smoulders bare-chested in font of the camera for pictures he hopes will help to launch his solo career, one wonders what exactly has changed. "For a start, I'm helping to write my own songs which I have never done with a-ha," he says proudly. "There is one song inspired by Bosnia and another by the political situation in Timor, which I have strong feelings about. There is also a song about a 23-year-old prostitute on Sunset Boulevard written before the Hugh Grant business."
He claims to have drastically changed his outlook on life since feeing himself from the group, which is why he has no problem in perpetuating the smouldering pin-up pose that was so closely associated with a-ha. "I have learned not to take myself so seriously," he says. "I don't think I'm good-looking. But I've learned to play along with it. So, if that's what they want, let them have it."
He and Camilla divide their time between homes in Hampshire, Sweden and Norway but may soon move back permanently to Scandinavia. The suggestion that, with three young children, Morten must be enjoying a happy and settled family life prompts the swift response: "Simply to get three kids doesn't necessarily mean you're happy. I have to put a stop to that idea. This is part of the chaos that I need now." Asked if he plans more children he says: "I don't know. Nor do I know with whom. I don't want to know, don't want to fix things. That doesn't mean that I want to live in a promiscuous way because that doesn't appeal to me. At the same time, I feel that I could mount virtually any woman in the world. My sex drive is very strong, stronger than most men, I think."
This can hardly be music to his wife's ears? "Oh," he says, "she doesn't mind when I say things like that although she probably would mind if I went out and put it into practice.
"I want to live life to the full, but you don't do that by bonking around. Yet I am turned on by a lot of women."
So how does he control his urges? He laughs. "By looking at them from their bedroom wall, perhaps."
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