A-Ha's Morten Harket

28-04-2006 15:10

Do you resent being marketed as a sex symbol?

No. It’s the way it is. I don’t care. It’s a natural part of the scene. I don’t mind it know if people still think that way, but I don’t take it in. It’s flattering but… I just know that we would have had an easier run and a different run if hadn’t been that way. There was so much pressure on not wasting an opportunity. To be honest, the record company didn’t really know how to deal with us because we were so many things and still are so many things but I think that’s another reason why we’ve lasted. It’s played to our advantage. That’s why we can come back and play sell out concerts in the UK without even releasing record. We toured the country in a few years ago when we hadn’t released anything for years - and didn’t plan on releasing anything.

That must have felt good.

It did. We played the Royal Albert Hall after not doing a UK concert for 10 years and there was not a spare seat in the house. It was amazing. There was no record company to back it, no promotion. We weren’t even being played on the radio. It was amazing for us and a very humbling, heart warming thing. We thought it was one off then it was suggested we stay on and played Wembley so we played Wembley. We thought the person was mad but 11,000 people turned up. That doesn’t happen just because a teenager bought a poster and stuck in their room in 1985. It’s something else entirely, and we really appreciate it.

Is there a part of still being famous that you don’t like?

The fuss. It really eats up your time and your personal space. Being fussed over. We just want to please our fans and play our music. There’s no need to be all fancy. I deal with it though. You have to.

What have been the high points and low points of your career?

The only low point is when you feel like you’ve wasted your time or your opportunities… not that I can think of one occasion where we did that, even after over 20 years of doing this. High points are to feel the warmth of strangers, especially on an individual level. Every fan has a story, every person has something they want to take away from a concert or an album or from meeting us. We never just play to a crowd, we try and make it personal, but to get that back is something that I appreciate. I appreciate the fact that the fans appreciate us appreciating it too.

Has a fan ever done anything that you’ve found weird?

Weird is relative but there this one guy that I met when I was in the thick of the Amazon in a gold mining village. He had groomed himself to look like me in every aspect, EVERY aspect. It didn’t stop there either because when he met me he freaked out! He ran off in the jungle. Anyway, he came back and we had a chat in his bar where he invited myself and friend in for a evening of free drinks - although he did eventually send us a bill at a later date! He kept telling me, ‘You are the greatest. You are the greatest.’ He’d pause in the middle of every sentence and just keep saying that to me over and over again. His English was terrible because he’d learnt to speak the language from old A-Ha songs on the radio, so his whole vocabulary came from our lyrics. He also had this girlfriend who was a huge fan of mine and she was only with him because he’d made himself look just like me. Then she left him and he got another girlfriend who was also a big fan of A-Ha… but she was blind… so could never see what he’d done to himself. They eventually got married. It was all very bizarre.

So is there one song or one album that you’re most proud of?

No, not really. They all have stories behind them, they all have their high points and low points, some lived up to their potential and other didn’t but it doesn’t mean we’re any less happy with them. Each album and song seems to have come into it’s own at some point in our career, they’ve all had their time to shine, so to pick one song or album is impossible really.

You did ‘The Living Daylights’, but if you were asked to do another Bond theme song, would you do it?

We would love to but we would have to be clearer about what was expected of us. Last time, the filmmakers expected us to be in London for the film’s premiere but we never really told that and so we were all off doing other things at the time - I think we were on a big tour in Japan - so we couldn’t make it over to London. They couldn’t believe that we would not show up and so it turned into a bit of a circus with everybody wondering why the band who did the theme tune weren’t at the opening of the movie. Some people said that we didn’t care - but that wasn’t true. We would have been there and wanted to be there but our conscience wouldn’t let us cancel our shows in Japan and disappoint all those people. That wouldn’t have been right. But we would love to do another Bond theme definitely. It would be an honour.

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