In the late autumn of 1985, when three young, clean-cut, talented musicians and songwriters stormed the airwaves with their memorable single ‘Take On Me’ (complete with cutting-edge video), it wasn’t the overnight success everyone assumed it was. Rather it was pretty much a last chance for A-Ha, who had already seen the record twice sink like a stone before its third release, helped by generous MTV airplay for the now legendary promo, pitchforked the group into the megastardom league and onto the bedroom walls of thousands.
Pal Waaktar (guitar, vocals, main songwriter) and Magne ‘Mags’ Furuholmen (keyboards, vocals) first played together in Bridges, who in 1980 released an album in Norwegian called Fakkeltog (translates as ‘torchlight’), a rarity surely worth a small mint today if one was lucky enough to uncover it. Two years later they split from Bridges and recruited Morten Harket as singer to form a new band. The name came about purely by chance; Pal had scribbled ‘aha’ in his bulging lyric book and Mags saw the word, had a flash of inspiration and - complete with hyphen - A-Ha were born. They moved to London in 1983 in the hope of breaking into the big time, or as Pal and Mags simply put it in a 1985 Record Mirror interview, “We hoped we’d be pop stars within three weeks and it took three years”. Under the management of Terry Slater, A-Ha’s first release was originally a demo titled ‘Lesson One’ but remixed and revamped turned into ‘Take On Me’ and was issued on Warners in September 1984. It completely died a death, even though the track was perfectly in tune with the burgeoning electro-pop scene of the 80s, and a re-issue the following summer met the same fate. A-Ha returned to their homeland disillusioned and directionless.
Things changed forever later that year when a newly commissioned video for ‘Take On Me’, now remembered for its clever use of live action seamed with animation, featuring Morten as the leather-jacketed hero of a comic strip being pursued by a biker gang, began serious rotation on MTV, and it proved to be the group’s much-needed big break; the single went to number one in the US, while in Britain it was released for the third time and went to no. 2. The follow-up single ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ hit number one in January 1986, and in that year A-Ha had four more Top Ten singles; ‘Hunting High And Low’, ‘Train Of Thought’, ‘I’ve Been Losing You’ and ‘Cry Wolf’, while the albums Hunting High And Low and Scoundrel Days both peaked at number two. Suddenly A-Ha were huge; after struggling for a long time and getting nowhere, they were teenage pin-ups and their catchy synth-pop and clever lyrics helped lay to rest the ancient jokes about Norway’s musical heritage amounting to no more than scoring ‘nul points’ in the Eurovision Song Contest.
After a minor slowdown in 1987, A-Ha’s audience widened further with their James Bond theme ‘The Living Daylights’. The track, co-written by Pal and Bond maestro John Barry, was a Top 5 hit in September of that year and was followed in the spring of 1988 by the third album Stay On These Roads, containing further hit singles such as ‘Touchy’, the bouncy ‘You Are The One’ and the sumptuous title track. The chart positions may not have been higher but A-Ha were still up there with the rest. |
