The Living daylights - A-Ha - 1987

 A-Ha

The Living daylights

A-Ha

Fonte: 80mania.com

Con il loro primo singolo "Take On Me" hanno scritto la storia del rock come pochi altri gruppi degli anni '80 hanno saputo fare. Dopo il ritorno senza precedenti di due anni fa, un'intera generazione di nuovi fans, oltre ai vecchi affezionati, è ora in trepida attesa del 

nuovo album. Il trio norvegese A-Ha è indiscutibilmente uno dei più grandi fenomeni nel mondo della musica pop. 

All'età di 10 e 12 anni rispettivamente, Magne Furuholmen e Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, nella loro città natale di Asker (vicino ad Oslo), sognano di seguire le orme dei loro idoli, i Beatles. Più tardi iniziano a fare musica, dando vita a varie band nella loro scuola. Dopo aver 

accumulato esperienze comuni e separate, i due si incontrano nuovamente formando i Bridges - il loro primo gruppo semi-professionsta - e fanno uscire un album costituito da brani composti da loro stessi. Ma Magne e Paul non si accontentano di suonare solo nei 

pub o nelle scuole. Ecco allora l'invito a Morten Harket – talento vocale del luogo - ad unirsi a loro per provare la fortuna e diventare delle star del pop ma lui non si dimostra interessato... 

Dopo sei mesi trascorsi a Londra, fanno rientro a casa delusi ma non si arrendono. Riescono finalmente a convincere Harket e ripartono per Londra - dove rimarranno per i 12 anni successivi – e lì trovano un'etichetta e anche i primi fans. 

"Take On Me", il loro primo singolo, diviene presto un successo internazionale, piazzandosi in testa a tutte le classifiche del mondo, grazie anche al rivoluzionario video trasmesso da tutti i canali musicali. Solo in Inghilterra non raggiunge la vetta della classifica, 

posizionandosi alla numero n° 2. L'album di debutto "Hunting high and low" risulta essere tra i dischi più venduti di quell'anno. Con il singolo successivo "The sun always shines on TV", caratterizzato da un epico arrangiamento e da un video che batte tutti i record di 

programmazione, anche il Regno Unito si lascia definitivamente conquistare dalla band norvegese. 

Il sorprendente successo del trio continua con l'album "Scoundrel days" (1986), che segna un passo avanti sia dal punto di vista musicale che compositivo. I nuovi brani come "Cry Wolf", "Manhattan Skyline" e "I've Been Losing You" fanno meno utilizzo del sintetizzatore 

e sono registrati con veri musicisti, convincendo anche parte della critica che si era dimostrata titubante nei confronti del primo album. Dopo il successo colossale del loro primo tour mondiale, il producer dei film di James Bond invita la band a suonare il tema 

principale,composto da Paul insieme al genio leggendario delle colonne sonore John Barry, dell'ultima avventura di 007 "The Living Daylight" (007 - Zona pericolo). Nel 1988 esce "Stay on these roads", presentando una band più matura e capace di produrre nuovi successi. 

"The Blood That Moves The Body" e "Touchy" si aggiungono alla serie di canzoni scritte da Waaktaar-Savoy & Co, e rimarranno popolari per molti anni. 

Con il celebre brano degli Everly Brothers "Crying In the Rain", la band per la prima volta 

apre un album con una cover version. "East of the sun, west of the moon" (1990) è un altro successo internazionale ed espande la popolarità del trio anche nel sud America. Successivamente all'uscita del secondo singolo "I call your name", gli A-Ha si esibiscono 

davanti a 200.000 fans come headliner al festival "Rock in Rio". 

Nel 1991 esce "Headlines and deadlines", una raccolta dei loro più grandi successi fino a quel momento, che include anche nuovi brani tra cui "Move to Memphis", che riapparirà 

due anni più tardi in "Memorial beach", così tanto acclamato dalla critica e contenente gli splendidi singoli "Dark is the night for all" e "Angel in the snow". A causa dei cambiamenti in corso nel mercato musicale, in seguito all'apertura al rock alternativo, all'hip-hop e 

all'esplosione della musica dance, l'album non ottiene i risultati attesi. Harket, Waaktaar-Savoy e Furuholmen decidono di fermarsi un attimo e di dedicare il loro tempo alle proprie famiglie e a progetti individuali. Magne e Morten ritornano in Norvegia e Paul si stabilisce a New York. 

Dopo quattro anni, in occasione della Presentazione del Premio Nobel tenutasi ad Oslo nel dicembre del 1998, i musicisti si incontrano nuovamente per esibirsi e decidono di ritornare a suonare insieme. Nel 2000, sette anni dopo "Memorial beach", la band fa uscire 13 nuove 

canzoni con "Minor earth major sky". L'album ed i singoli "Summer Moved On", "Minor Earth Major Sky" e "Velvet" si posizionano brillantemente nelle classifiche e presto arrivano i dischi d'oro e di platino. I tour in Germania e in Giappone fanno il tutto esaurito e sono 

seguiti da una serie di presenze ai festivals di tutta Europa nell'estate del 2001. 

Ispirati da questo straordinario successo gli A-Ha si spingono oltre con Lifelines, l'album che rivela una band più fresca e versatile ma nello stesso tempo più matura che mai. 

L'ultimo lavoro della band è "How can I sleep with your voice in my head", il primo album live della storica band scandinava pubblicato il 21 marzo 2003. Un live che può essere considerato anche come un greatest hits perché contiene tutti i più famosi brani a partire da "Take on me" fino a "Forever not yours".

Source: a-ha.com

It was about time that we reached out a little more,” says a-ha singer Morten Harket of the group’s new album Foot Of The Mountain. Released on 13 July on Universal Music Record Label (URML), the album marks a return to the classic pop sound that made a-ha one of 

the biggest acts in the world, selling 36 million albums in the process. As keyboard player Magne Furuholmen explains, “It’s an album that incorporates the key elements that first defined the band: soaring vocals, synth hooks, yearning lyrics and melodic melancholia.” Or 

as guitarist and principal songwriter Paul Waaktaar-Savoy puts it more simply: “I think we got a great collection of songs this time around.”

Written and recorded in various major cities – from Oslo, where the band formed in 1982, to New York, where Paul now lives – Foot Of The Mountainis, in Morten’s words, “predominantly a synth-based album”. The ten new songs carry echoes of the band’s early 

signature hits: ‘Take On Me’, ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ and ‘I’ve Been Losing You’. As Magne explains, “This is a potent and vibrant album – it has a vitality. Morten has an incredible voice – one of the very few instantly recognizable voices in pop music. And that 

voice is most effective in a synth-based musical landscape. For me, this album was about helping Morten come into his own.”

“Each song has its own identity,” the singer adds, “and you try to capture it in the best possible way. The challenge is to figure out what direction to take. A song like ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ is a good example. It’s essentially a ballad but we put a pounding 

beat to it – it turned into a power track. With this album, we tried different versions of the songs, but in the end we came back to synths. It’s how we started out in the ‘80s before we became more interested in acoustic and analogue instruments. This is a return to synth-based thinking.”

“Making a more technology-based album was easier said than done,” Paul admits. “It’s a long time since we’ve made an album this way and things have changed somewhat since!” In the past, a-ha took an experimental, even eccentric, approach to recording. Paul cites 

‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’ – a UK number one single in 1986 – as a good example of the group’s anything-goes ethos. “Back then, we did all our own programming, often just firing off notes on a synthesizer that you would play for your dear life as the track went 

down!” He adds with typical understatement, “With the new album, it took some time to get used to current working methods.”StianAndersen_a-ha_2008 magazines A-ha-tutupash

the-band A-HA_First-Gold a-ha8 One thing that hasn’t changed is the emotive power of a-

ha’s songwriting. “This is an unashamedly passionate album,” Magne says. “It’s uptempo but not exactly upbeat. Upbeat means happier – and I don’t think this is the case.” As Paul explains, “It’s a happy/sad kind of thing. You can change how a song comes across to the 

listener, as we’ve done many times in the past, by giving a song the opposite arrangement to what you’d expect. But songwriting is by nature introspective, and that’s where I come from. Writing is for me is the hardest part but also the most enjoyable. You might spend 

months searching for that missing verse or the title that you think defines a song. But when it comes together, there’s no other feeling like it.”

Paul wrote the majority of the new songs: five co-written with Magne, four written alone. He also experimented with some new techniques. ‘Riding The Crest’ – described by Paul as “an electro blues” – was inspired by Arcade Fire’s use of the 12-bar form on their 2007 album 

Neon Bible. ‘Real Meaning’ was a happy accident: an idea that came spontaneously when Paul called home from Russia and was greeted by his answering machine. “As a joke I started singing away and this song fell out,” he laughs. “I meant every word, though.” And 

on ‘Start The Simulator’, Paul employed a novel lyrical style, drawing on the technical jargon of the Cold War era’s Space Race. “The basic idea,” he says, “was to make a song using only technical terms and phrases, and still make it very emotional and personal. There is 

such poetry in the old Apollo manuals: “switch to Omni Bravo” and “the bright ejector blanket”. It was quite a hard song to record as it changes both time signatures and keys as it goes along. What sounded so simple on the piano got very quickly complicated when it was 

translated to a full arrangement. I think we got there in the end though!”

There are also three songs that reflect Paul’s emotional connection to his natural and adopted homelands. ‘Shadowside’, he says, “feels quite Norwegian – in the melody, the 

chords and the mood”. ‘The Bandstand’ reminds him of his first trip to New York City in the early ‘80s, before a-ha were famous. “Songs are like a photo-album – they can really send you back. And this one reminds me of arriving at Port Authority with $35 in my pocket, 

sporting really high, yellow, almost see-through synthesizer-hair, wearing a tiger-shirt and a brown suit, looking like an alien!” And the album’s title track, ‘Foot Of The Mountain’ – fashioned from two previously separate songs, one written by Paul, the other by Magne – 

examines one of the fundamental conflicts of modern life, the pull between nature and big-city civilization: for Paul, the buzz of New York City versus the beauty and isolation of Norway. “It’s the dilemma of loving a city life, yet secretly wondering if we’d be happier being surrounded by open fields and sweeping mountains.”

“New York has been my home for 15 years now and I still find it thrilling,” Paul says. “We spent five weeks in Hoboken recording the first draft of the album. I was bringing in tons of instruments, arriving every morning with new toys, like old synths and string-machines, 

omnichord, stylophone, Moog guitar, Mellotron, guitars in every shape and size…” According to Magne, “The time spent in New York was definitely important for this record.” Morten concurs. “It’s always good to get away from everything else and focus on the album. 

The energy of the city may have had an effect on the music. But we didn’t complete in New York – we had to go back to Norway just to let things cool off a little and then pick it up. And we did – we nailed it.”

BMI_London_Awards_15oct13 a_ha_band concert AHA_NewsPics_10162013

morten9 knighthood1 Foot Of The Mountain is another landmark in the 25-year recording career of a-ha. “We’ve had a very strong response to all our albums in the 

later years since 2000,” Morten says. In particular, the group’s rock-oriented 2006 albumAnalogue – their debut for Universal Music – was highly acclaimed in the UK press and led to Q magazine bestowing its Inspiration Award to a-ha. “That was a great feeling,” 

says Paul. “To have such good response in the country where it all started for us, and to hear kind words coming from critics and colleagues, really gave us a boost.” In addition, a-ha have been named as a key influence by rock superstars Coldplay, whose bassist Guy 

Berryman is currently working on a new project with Magne. “Coldplay have played an active part in a causing a reappraisal of the band,” Magne says. “Chris Martin is one of a generation of musicians who grew up loving a-ha, not for the image, but for the music.” 

“The value of the respect is the same no matter where it comes from,” says Morten, “because it means you’re communicating with somebody out there. In this case it was a teenager called Chris Martin. He was reaching out for music and a-ha became part of his story.”