- Title: GERMANY: 80'S BOY BAND "A-HA" RELEASE NEW ALBUM AND TOUR GERMANY
- Date: 1st January 2001
- Summary: FRANKFURT, GERMANY, (RECENT) (REUTERS) SCU (SOUNDBITE) (English) PAL WAAKTAAR "In one way we never changed I think, it is kind of frightening you know, but at least the music has changed, but in a way it's the same people, they're very much the same personalities I think. But the exciting part of this album is that we haven't, we've done so much different stuff in the mea
- Embargoed: 16th January 2001 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: FRANKFURT, GERMANY
- Country: Germany
- Topics: Entertainment,General
- Reuters ID: LVA76XRAOPXJTZC3PP0Z6TGPKL1F
- Story Text: They were the boy-band of the eighties. Three Norwegians with big hair and ripped jeans hitting the charts with 'Take On Me' and 'The Sun always Shines On TV'.
They've skipped the Nineties and dived straight into the new millennium with a new album and a new single. Reuters caught up with them in Germany to see if they're older and wiser and what their hairdo looks like.
You can't remember the Eighties without remembering A-Ha. They earned eight MTV awards and had eleven top ten singles in the US and Great Britain.
Well they're back now, trying their luck second time around with their new single "Velvet" and new album 'Minor Earth Major Sky'.
Pol Waaktaar says
"In one way we never changed I think, it is kind of frightening you know, but at least the music has changed, but in a way it's the same people, they're very much the same personalities I think. But the exciting part of this album is that we haven't, we've done so much different stuff in the meantime, that we don't really know each other any more. So, it's almost like being in a new band, and in a way that gave us a fresh feel in the studio."
They may have been apart for a while but performing together again came fairly easy. And the fans may all be a bit older now but still remembered the Norwegian trio with the big hair.
AH-a's new album went straight to number one in Germany after just one week in the record stores.
"I think a lot of people have a better memory of A-Ha than we thought they had, I mean we were left with a slightly bitter after taste in our mouth because our legacy was seen to be forever linked to this kind of 'take on me', we were sort of dragged back to the beginning of our career, which is not terribly exciting after a while. So we seem to have picked up a lot of people who are coming to the group for the first time and that's obviously great, that's a luxurious position to be in if you can attack an audience without the luggage of previous, previous history. But in a sense it's been reconciled, so you have the old fans, who sort of, and we feel the kind of recognition from people who were perhaps a little more skeptical in the eighties and new fans who find what we do exciting", says Magne.
But what about the tensions that lead to the group's original split? Magne says "Morten's position at this point is that he has songs he's written, not with us, and understandably he's forty years old, he wants to get the opportunity to have his own material heard and it hasn't been a painless situation to do it, but we've kind of had to accept that new voices are not necessarily all bad and I think people listening to the record won't necessarily, not all of them anyway, see the album as a very split record. On the contrary, they'll see it as a more inclusive record, because it also absorbs material that he has done."
Morten says
"A-Ha is based on Pol and Magne's song writing, so for me to come in from the outside is an alien element almost and that takes time, also for me, because I respond to what A-Ha is and whether something I come up with works with A-Ha is something we have to find out altogether, like we do with what they write. I mean Pol has got 'Savoy' as well and Magnes has got a lot of projects going to, so we have too much going, that's a problem for us."
But whatever tensions there may be, the three seem genuinely surprised at their recent success.
So surprised that they're targeting the whole world now - with a new tour. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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