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| The Unknown Story Of A-ha With Thanks to Fernanda Jacqueline Van Der Feer |
| Morten Harket talks about 20 years of arguments, power plays and bitter conflicts. - by Bernt Jakob Oksnes The Unknown Story of a-ha "IT IS POSSIBLY A DARKER and more complicated history than you had expected, but it is a truer history." So begins author Jan Omdahl his The Swing of Things. The biography of a-ha that will be published next Thursday is full of large and small exploding bombs of information. Naturally it deals with the a-ha adventure. But it deals mostly with the things the fans never got to see: Musical disagreements and power plays, fights about money, and working while feeling like wrecks. About band members who barely speak to one another, and physical collapses. MORTEN HARKET THUMBS THROUGH a 20-year-long pop adventure. He sits in a room at the Colosseum Park Hotel in Oslo, and guides us through photos that never have been shown before. Many of them are the band's own. He speaks quietly and with feeling, about the photos. But mostly about the memories. The fine, the strong, the hurtful, and the wrenching. Then he stops. Norway's biggest pop icon suddenly shudders. "The biggest mistake we have made is that we've let our pride play too big a role." In the book Harket says that it is an 'improbability' each time the band gets together. To Magasinet he explains: "The picture of disagreement, it is a natural part of cooperation. We have a gateway to something magical when we work together. It is more important than the nonsense about conflicts." But he acknowledges that something more lies within the relationship between himself, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and Magne Furuholmen than that which has so far come out. "We are three demanding, independent types who raise the bar high where it concerns both ourselves and a-ha. We have never been any boy scouts. Nothing is hidden in this book. It is an honest biography. We felt that if we were going to speak out, then we had to do it all the way. This was the goal of the author, the publisher, and ourselves - that for once and all we would try for a balanced view of what we are, to empty all the boxes. That was the only way we wished to tell the story." The result is a statement that to a large degree is characterized by conflicts, grating personal chemistry and frustration, distance and suspicion. OMDAHL DESCRIBES the trio as a band that is driven beyond what it would otherwise be capable of accomplishing by a peculiar mix of negative and positive energy. At the same time, the book is a celebration of Norwegian pop's largest success of all time. Seven studio albums and one live album. 27 million albums sold overall. 63 #1 hits divided between 27 countries, 13 top 10 singles in England, 409 concerts, and a world record in attendance of 196,000 at Maracana Stadium in Rio in 1991. "We have not been thankful enough. If you are discontent, as we are, you dig a labyrinth that you don't find your way out of. And there you find nothing," says Morten Harket to Magasinet. In the book, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy says the problem has not been big scandals. But he talks about "mindfucking." And calls their relationship to one another a "viscous, Ibsen-like thing." Author Omdahl has had several meetings with the band members over the last two years. He has also been with them on tour. "When I first got them to sit themselves down, got to know them and got them to talk, it went fine. They had confidence that I wouldn't make too much a mess of it. I have had a critical, but empathetic look at a-ha," says Omdahl. "I haven't been afraid of talking about the unpleasant things. This is a-ha, for better or worse. A history they never before have told," he says. TO MAGASINET Morten Harket says: "The conflicts and pride have mostly to do with the facade of the band, not so much with its content. Conflicts are not dangerous. We must simply deal with them, dare to find out what is at the bottom of them. I have an unshakeable belief in the others' capacities. Even though they can say a lot of strange things, the tension is a creative room for us." "I have an ability to sense things that will come. My suggestions are always made with good intentions. I am not out to trample anybody. Rather, I want to put my finger on something. And so I can sometimes hit a nerve. It makes it tense, and exciting." IT HAS BEEN TENSE for 20 years now. The fan hysteria that reigned over a-ha the first years of their career was of a caliber that one almost had to experience to believe," says the author. In the end, Morten became ill from the pressure. He could suddenly fall asleep at the dinner table, and had symptoms of a depressive reaction. "You meet yourself (a wall). Because I didn't collapse mentally, I had a physical reaction to the stress, a kind of breakdown. I have managed to avoid this since then. After this experience, my body installed new parameters for measuring stress," he tells Magasinet. He becomes steadily more emotional as he talks about the boundless a-ha adventure. "I understood from an early age that I would be famous. And I felt it when I met Paul and Magne - actually from the first moment I saw them play. Paul and Magne felt it, too." IT IS DIFFERENT NOW. The three were never even in the same room during the genesis of the last studio album, «Lifelines.» Even Morten's manager, Sverre Flatby, who played a central role in the reformation of a-ha, says straight out in the book that a-ha are a "virtual" band. The band is an idea about something, that none of them have time to carry out. He says also it is a shame that they'll never manage to make their best album. Morten Harket in no way agrees. "It can very well be that the best lies in front of us." Also author Omdahl still believes in a-ha. "There are limits to how long a band can exist before it becomes a parody of itself. But a-ha is not there yet. I am convinced that they should go one more round," he says. "a-ha is another entity entirely, something Paul, Magne and Morten as individuals and solo artists don't manage to be," he says. That there has even been a comeback was a result of difficult negotiations, among others about the division of income. MORTEN HARKET REVEALS his complexes in this book of 400 pages: He, as Norway's biggest pop icon, says he always has been a little unhappy with how he looks. At the same time he tells about how he has, over 30 years, lived with the role of 'sex symbol,' and how he has tackled it. He has done it by enjoying 'girls' as if they were objects. Harket also lifts the veil a little on his upcoming solo album, on which he works with major international producers. Harket means his potential as a solo artist, commercially speaking, doesn't trail behind a-ha's. But first a-ha must agree on their vision for their eighth album. But it is monstrously difficult. "Don't you guys in a-ha still not talk to one another, Morten?" "Of course we talk together. But words are often not enough. We communicate about a broad spectrum of things. Among Norwegian men today, we three in a-ha are among those who actually HAVE shown that we communicate," Morten Harket says to Magasinet. |