Norwegian superstars a-ha reflect on their career

When you’ve sold more than 100 million albums and been in the Guinness Book of Records for performing to the biggest paying audience in music history, you might think you’ve reached the pinnacle of your careers. Yet Norwegian superstars a-ha continue to make history four decades after forming in Oslo.

The iconic animated video for their 1985 hit Take On Me passed the billion-views mark on YouTube in 2020, second only to Sweet Child of Mine by Guns N’Roses, and heart-throb singer Morten Harket reckons they could have been even bigger.

Today Morten and fellow band members, guitarist Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen, admit to having become spooked by their huge success – after racking up hits like No 1 smash The Sun Always Shines On TV, Cry Wolf and Stay On These Roads – and sabotaging their own career.

“I have no doubt that a-ha were always destined for success. But we could have been much bigger than we are,” insists Morten.

“We didn’t want to be too big for its own sake. Our internal dynamics meant that, once we reached a certain level of fame and recognition, we kept stopping it.”

Magne adds: “We were never in music to have a decade-long party. We’re nerds. We worried about where success would take us, and being on the cover of teen magazines like Smash Hits seemed really dangerous to us.

“We all thought, ‘Oh no, we’re going to be seen as a boyband’.”

Rather than capitalise on their success, a-ha began making more complex music. Comparing their own ambitions to The Beatles’ move from pop to the psychedelic sound of their later years, Magne laughs: “At the start of a-ha, we were singing She Loves You, then we made our version of The White Album straight after.”

That doesn’t mean the trio weren’t fiercely ambitious when they started out.

Friends since they were teenagers, Paul and Magne recruited the older Morten when they needed a singer willing to join them in travelling from Norway to the UK to attempt to break themselves on the international music market.

Paul, 61, recalls: “Coming from Norway was a negative at the start – it was the least hip place to be from – but that turned out to be good later on, as some countries liked that we weren’t American or British. Once we did less well in typical music countries, we got a second wind in places like South America.”

That’s the understatement of the year: in 1991, when the fourth album East Of The Sun, West Of The Moon had only reached No 12 in the UK, a-ha played to a staggering world record crowd of 198,000 fans at Brazil’s Maracana Stadium.

The band release their 11th studio album, the moving True North, today and in recent years have revived their UK career where they now regularly headline arenas again. An appearance on the soundtrack to hit Ryan Reynolds movie Deadpool 2 also helped introduce their music to a new generation of fans.

But Morten admits he still finds their celebrity challenging. The singer has been with Inez Andersson, his former personal assistant, for 18 years but insists finding love was hard. “My voice goes straight to people’s hearts, souls and minds,” explains Morten, 63. “You build a relationship with people through that. That’s the power of music. But on a one-on-one basis, being in public is more or less impossible, because I’m just a guy. Away from my voice, that’s all I am. So it’s virtually impossible to build a relationship with almost anyone.”

By contrast, both Magne and Paul met their wives before they were famous.

Magne, 59, acknowledges his high school sweetheart Heidi kept him grounded during a-ha’s mega fame, saying: “There’s nothing like a relationship with someone who’s seen you before everyone starts telling you you’re so great. My wife has been an anchor in the raging sea for a long time. I’m very grateful for her patience and keeping the fort at home while I was out rummaging around the world, doing what a-ha do.”

Those worldwide travels began when Take On Me reached No 2 in the UK and topped the US chart. It had flopped on its first release in 1984 but was given a new mix and that legendary video, in which Morten yanks his girlfriend into a hypnotic black-and-white animated world.

Director Steve Barron painstakingly drew 3,000 frames over three months for the video, a process which the band believe has kept it fresh for generations of fans.

Paul explains: “Because the video is handmade and doesn’t use any computers, it sits in its own little space. It’ll never age badly, as there’s such an innocent feel to it. Also, there’s not too much of us in it.

“When we first released Take On Me it had a cheap and horrible video that was just of us. You got sick of watching us in it, but the animated video is light on its feet and Take On Me was the perfect song for that style.”

The Eighties saw a-ha’s success cemented when they were picked to record the theme to 1987’s James Bond film The Living Daylights, starring Timothy Dalton as 007.

But the experience was soured when they fell out with long-time Bond composer John Barry.

The band had been unaware they would have to write their theme with Barry, who loathed a-ha so much he dubbed them “Nazi youth”.

Magne recalls: “Doing The Living Daylights was a super-exciting prospect. We were honoured to be chosen, but we were really nervous about allowing John in, because we always wrote on our own.

He expected a lot more deference and respect from us. We were tall, dark and confident in what we e d e — ge wanted. The relationship deteriorated as recording went along and we weren’t exactly always on the same page.”

The song was still a hit, reaching No 5, but there was a further twist when a-ha were too busy touring

Japan to attend the red carpet London premiere of the 007 film.

Magne admits: “Not turning up to the premiere was taken very badly by the Bond bosses. They bumped our song from the film when it was released in the US. It had nothing to do with our relationship with John Barry, we just thought, ‘We’re in Japan and people have paid to see us.’ We didn’t think of the ramifications of staying on tour. There’s a mixed bag of emotions around our Bond song, but I’m glad we got to do it.”

When a-ha split for seven years in 1993, Morten and Magne moved back to Norway, while Paul and his American wife Lauren headed to New York, and now live in Los Angeles.

Father-of-five Morten is still in Norway, but admits: “I miss living in England. I love the English countryside and the English mentality. Britain is top of the world in many different cultural aspects, and you’re such a funny people.”

The singer goes as far as to name French & Saunders, Monty Python, Smith & Jones and PaulWhitehouse as his favourite British comedy stars, enthusing: “I take to English comedy more than Norway’s. It’s so witty.”

Morten and his bandmates have needed their sense of humour in recent years when a-ha’s disputes with each other have become increasingly public.

They split for a second time in 2010 for five years, and True North was recorded in just two weeks, to help ensure they didn’t get embroiled in studio rows. Recording the album was filmed by director Stian Andersen for a documentary film, also titled True North.

Paul admits: “It’s very annoying when people focus on our bickering, but it’s understandable. But plenty of bands don’t really do anything new and their flame dies.

“In a-ha, we always have tons of new ambition. Everyone is keen to try new challenges. We always feel we can do it better and differently. That’s one thing we all agree on.”

Magne adds: “Personal agendas have come in a lot more in our later days. But our musical talent is always there. I live on the premise of, ‘Would I die happier if we’d made this new music, than if we hadn’t made it?’ The answer with True North is yes, completely.”

But a-ha’s dynamic is summed up by Morten.

Paul and Magne are the trio’s main songwriters. Does that mean Morten is the diplomat? “No,” he laughs. “I’m the executioner.”

• a-ha’s new album True North (Sony) is released today. Its accompanying film, also called True North, is out now