Another interview, this time from today's paper edition of VG. Interview by Thomas Talseth, photo by Terje Bringedal.
a-ha are tired of the pressure
a-ha feel that it’s tiresome always having to top old merits.
On Friday they’re playing in Trondheim, Saturday in Ålesund. The organisers claim to have sold 11.000 and 12.500 tickets, respectively, for the concerts, which both have room for ca. 18.000 people.
It looks like a small failure for our national pop treasures - it’s expected that Morten Harket (46), Magne Furuholmen (43) and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (44) play for sold-out venues wherever they go, especially in their home country.
- In Norway, it’s long been like everything we do, has to surpass the previous to a certain degree. But some may say that it’s ambitious to play on a football stadium in Trondheim, there aren’t too many Norwegian bands that can do the same anywhere, says Furuholmen.
Harket thinks back to last year’s free outdoor concert in Frognerparken, where 120.000 people came.
- [Before the concert] people were saying that an audience of 50.000 people wouldn’t be good enough. That’s completely wacked, how can it be a failure to play for 50.000?, Harket wonders.
The sales numbers of "Analogue", a-ha’s eight album, have not been as expected either. With just over half a million copies sold, it is several hundred thousand behind the two other albums the trio has released since their comeback in 2000. Furuholmen says that they wouldn’t be satisfied anyway.
- We have never been satisfied, except from our first album, but that was back in another time, says Harket.
Series of false steps
- If you look at it cynically, a-ha was only a success with the first album. The rest have been a series of false steps for twenty years, Furuholmen thinks.
- But this album re-opened the doors for us in England, Waaktaar-Savoy points out.
Earlier this summer they broke off the collaboration with manager Brian Lane, who was a crucial factor in bringing the band together again. Furuholmen explains that it is important for the band to change their business partners now and again.
- Brian does have the ability to cut through and keep things very simple, but maybe it got a bit too simple sometimes, says Harket.
Until this year, a-ha were the only Norwegians with a number one hit in the US. But this winter, the production team Stargate, consisting of Tor Erik Hermansen and Mikkel Eriksen, finally managed to repeat the success "Take On Me" had in 1985, as songwriters and producers of Ne-Yos "So Sick".
Magne Furuholmen doesn’t like the comparison. He feels that Stargate has more in common with the Swede Max Martin, who has made hits for artists such as Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys.
- Personally, that’s not music that I’ll bother to spend any time on. Success in itself doesn’t impress me, but success with something good, really impresses me. For me, Röyksopp is a much cooler story, for example, he says.
- There is one side of this business that’s pure industry, and one side that’s more about content, and then your own place is somehere between those two extremities. And we’re not in the same place as Stargate, Harket thinks.
Safe distance
In October and November, the trio will embark on this year’s last effort, a two week long tour of Russia with ten concerts. a-ha aren’t known for spending much time together privately - the interview you’re reading now is one of very few that they’ve done in the last few years - and they keep a safe distance between themselves when they are on tour. Morten Harket, for instance, doesn’t travel on the bus together with the others.
- I can’t be on a tour bus where I’m exposing my ear-nose-throat area, he explains.
- I must be able to control the air condition myself. Me and the band can’t afford that I become ill that way. Everyone else can be ill, but it doesn’t work if it’s me, that’s obvious. But this can very easily be interpreted like we can’t stand being around each other, which is pure nonsense, Harket says.
The apparently eternally young vocalist is more quiet about his relationship to Inez Andersson, Elin Tvedt’s manager, who he came together with to the premiere of “Lange Flate Ballær” earlier this year.
- I can understand that you’re curious about what’s going on, it’s possible that we are wondering about the same thing, he says - cryptically, but smiling.
- How long will it be until the next a-ha album?
- It will be a long time! We need to release some other albums before that. We are working on some different things, but we don’t want to say too much about it, Magne Furuholmen says.
Photo caption:
Enough nagging now: - The concerts in Trondheim and Ålesund are cultural events, not a gymnastic exercise. We’re not trying to set a new hundred meter sprint record, and after all there will be lots of people coming, says Morten Harket, with Magne Furuholmen (left) and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (right).