(VG, 21. Oct 07)
Interview by Stein Østbø.
Translation by Jakob Sekse
 

Oslo/London (VG): Twelve years after his first [international] solo album, Morten Harket takes a self-imposed truce from the ongoing war with his a-ha-brothers to fight creatively with just one person - himself.

- My experience is that all creativity is about trying to find the balance between order and chaos - the point of intersection where things start to break apart, enabling things to be created. That's how it is for me now, as a solo artist, and those mechanisms are the same for a band, Harket says in this exclusive VG-interview.

Now he's entering into the creative war alone. Because he's also in the middle of a war when he's together with Paul Waaktaar-Savoy and Magne Furuholmen in a-ha. He says so himself.

- Of course we are at war! That's why we're here. But the media seems uninterested in what's actually happening, he says.

Morten Harket's new solo single is coming in a couple of weeks. The album will be ready early next year. He shakes his head in resignation when talking about the Norwegian media’s fascination with any conflicts between the a-ha members when the band is on a break.

- Misses the target
- That ever-present discussion about friendship completely misses the target. a-ha has never been about friendship. But that doesn't mean that we aren't friends! We just don't need to sit on each other's laps to know that.

Harket is referring to media stories about inner conflicts in the band before the release of almost all the a-ha albums - conflicts that quite simply are necessary conflicts of opinion in any creative process, he feels.

- There are so many strong, divergent views within the band. Therein lies the weakness of a-ha. Our potential can be reduced to only those things that all three of us can agree on. We'll end up polishing something that hasn't completely emerged yet, Morten Harket says.

- The dynamic within a-ha is hard, sharp, strong, dead boring, dominant and at times submissive, but it needs to be there. It isn't by chance that the three of us make up a-ha. All artists enter into a strong state of agitation, and seek toward the point of chaos where everything nearly breakes apart, in order to create something that completely lives up to its full potential.

- a-ha haven't managed to reach that point yet?
- No, absolutely not. But there is reason to believe that we can reach it!

- Does that mean that you aren't 100% satisfied with any of the a-ha albums?
- None of us are. But I am 100% proud of the band and what we have achieved. And we're still working on it. But it isn't a pretty sight, and it shouldn't be either, Harket says with a smile.

Proud Harket
Twelve years after the [international] solo debut "Wild Seed", he now has enough songs to fill at least two more albums in addition to the upcoming album "Letter From Egypt". This will be an international release, just like "Wild Seed" was originally supposed to be.

- I am proud of "Wild Seed", but it originally dealt with very provocative themes, not least because of "Gospel From A Heathen". That song ended up being removed from the album, because of nervous reactions in the Warner-system. With my own experience, I could also see dangerous signals about dissolution within Warner Music internationally. I understood that the album was going to be lost, so I withdrew it [from more promotion]. I didn't want to go down that route, even though I had just been to Mexico, received a great response and been upgraded to Warner's main priority in Latin America, the 48-year old says.

Early in 1998, Morten Harket was ready with the follow-up to "Wild Seed". Right until the Nobel concert producer Odd Arvid Strømstad managed to convince a-ha to perform for the first time in four years.

- We were in reality way too busy with our own projects. There was nothing to indicate that we would re-form. We were tricked back together in a peculiar way, Harket says with a smile.

- The response from the audience was totally unexpected - it had such a warmth, a feeling of them reaching out to us, like an attempt to make contact. There was a respect in that. Unexpectedly, Magne then took a trip over to Paul in New York and started to mess around with some demos. That was the start of it. When the three of us met each other with the right chemistry, it would be wrong of me not to contribute my part. So I chose to wholeheartedly devote myself to a-ha again back then, and suddenly it turned into a new 8-year period!

Standing in front of a new, international solo release, this time on Universal Music, he feels a good tingling in his body.

- It feels like I have been in a monastery for twelve years. Now it's time to step out into the light again and continue what I started on back then.

Norwegian song
Morten Harket's first single will probably be a cover version of a song by the Norwegian band Locomotives.

It was originally entitled "My Woman" and can be found on the Locomotives album "Albert" from 1999. Morten Harket's slightly re-written version may be called "Movies". He first met Locomotives by chance on the street in Trondheim already in the early nineties.

- I was struck by how they had "dreams" painted across their faces. They were high on enthusiasm and energy. "My Woman" was among the songs they played for me, and I thought: Wow, this feels like my song!, Harket says.

Right afterwards, he went home to write a song on his own as a direct response to the one that Locomotives had played for him.

That's how "A Kind Of Christmas Card" was born - Morten Harket's big single success from the "Wild Seed"-album in 1995.


Photo caption 1:
- I am interested in pop music that stimulates beyond just the instant feeling. That's what challenging about pop music, says Morten Harket, who goes solo again. Last week he visited photographer Jim Lee in London to take new pictures in connection with "Letter From Egypt". The album will be released early next year.

Photo caption 2:
- The album could just as well have been called "Letter From The Future", says Morten Harket about "Letter From Egypt". Here he's in make-up with Adam de Cruz before a photo session in London.