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Sursa: femalefirst.co.uk
Interviu datat 28.04.2006 "A-Ha's Morten Harket by Simon Thompson. Morten Harket was a poster boy for a generation of screaming girls. Those girls included acne-ridden teenagers right through to blue-rinsed grandmothers who couldn’t resist his fresh-faced charms and silky vocal stylings. Now, 21 years after their first hit, Morten and the other members of A-Ha - Magne Furuholmen and Paal Waaktaar - are back. And again, they are poster boys for a generation, but this time it’s the daughters of those acne-ridden teenagers and blue-rinsed great grandmothers. Morten, now 47-years-old, is still fresh faced, still has his silky style but now he has a fifth of a century of fond memories after a career that has taken him from Oslo to New York, London to Sesame Street. However, things could have been very different. Morten wanted to be a priest, but stopped his studies at the Theological Faculty in order to practice with a group called Bridges. But in 1983, he teamed up with Magne and Paal, created the group A-Ha. The video for 'Take on Me' took the world by storm and the single went to the top of the US Billboard charts - making them the first Norwegian group to ever achieve that accolade. However, Morten is not just about music. Over the years he has tried everything from conservation work to film making and painting to orchids. But after years of musical silence, 2005 saw the release of A-Ha’s eighth studio album, ‘Analogue’, and massive worldwide tour. ‘Analogue’ is their most mature album to date, however, they haven’t turned their back on their pop past. On songs like the title track ‘Analogue’ or second single, ‘Cozy Prisons’, plinking synths have been replaced with soaring sophisticated string sequences, but the catchy riffs and addictively sing along choruses are all intact. Morten confesses: "It feels very different now. We're signed to Universal, it's new to us and that has an effect on a number of things. In a way you get a chance to start all over. Between the three of us, we're in a process of change that we're somewhere in the midst of. There are so many variables between the three of us that are essentially strong assets, but they have to freely come into play." |
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_________________ You can close your eyes if you have to But the life goes on without you...
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Sursa: Metro.co.uk
Morten Harket Tanis Taylor - Tuesday, June 25, 2002 
MORTEN HARKET, 42, is the memorable frontman of Norwegian pop trio a-ha. With his chiselled cheekbones and mellifluous tones, he coursed through our charts and hearts with hits such as Take On Me and The Sun Always Shines On TV. After reforming in 2000, a-ha are back with a new album, Lifelines, and play a sell-out gig at the Royal Albert Hall tonight. Good god man, have you been in formaldehyde for the past ten years? Very nice of you to say so, but no. Actually, I've just been busy, staying interested and doing things I'm passionate about. What, no yoga, exercise or Botox? Nothing like that. My passions keep me young. I've just come back from a holiday in the tropics, where I was diving around a coral reef. Probing beneath the surface, I was struck by the harm and horror that man can inflict on his environment. Existential. Have the excesses of the 1980s been replaced by the environmentalism of today? I'm very interested in a lot of things - the planet, marine life, the tropics, insects and orchids particularly. I'm very lucky because my profile allows me to talk out about things that are important to me. And what a profile, may I add, on behalf of women everywhere. Do you still get recognised? Everywhere. Although we were out of the spotlight for more than 15 years, we still get mobbed. It's phenomenal in Germany and Japan; I get recognised at every turn. Britain remains loyal and in our native Norway we still have a very strong fan base. We're very fortunate. Was there ever any jealousy in the band? I happened to notice you've got 60 Web pages devoted to you, and Paul has a couple of picture galleries on obscure German sites. Well, you'd have to ask Paul. But no, we're not really about the image or the adoration. It's never bothered us. We've always been interested in doing our own things. If it bothers other people, that's their problem. Does the devotion still baffle you? Not really. I understand why people have such powerful reactions to the music. It moves them, sometimes to happiness, sometimes even to tears. Particularly if you're young and you have a lot of emotions and hormones going around your body, you react very powerfully and I understand that. So do you listen to music? No. The radio is just noise to me.I don't buy music or play it. I need that space for other thoughts. That's peculiar for a musician... Possibly. But I find lyrics quite hard, too. Sometimes, when I'm on stage and the music is going, I start thinking about other things and forget that I'm on stage and the lyrics I'm supposed to be singing. But that's never actually happened, has it? Oh, yes, at some stage in practically every show. But Mags and Paul reel you back in, don't they? We all tend to do our own thing on stage. But we've worked together for so long that it's kind of instinctive, we have a familiarity, a rhythm. How has the music changed? I think our music now has more of the essence of a-ha about it. We felt there was still a lot left to do after the 1980s. Then, I think, our record company had its own agenda. It wanted us to be a boy band and we wanted more control. Now, we're much more focused on doing the things we like. Was it all excess, drugs and rock'n'roll in the past? We missed out on most of that because our management tried to protect us from the unsavoury influences that came with the territory. They would terrify anyone who tried to corrupt us. Who's your typical fan today? I'm not sure. Only you, I think. We've always had a very strong gay following, which is really great. Our concerts are full of gay men, women who were girls when we were first big in the 1980s, some new fans and some straight men who empathise with our lyrics. What's the most obsessive thing a fan has ever done? Oh, I don't know. There were a lot of things but we were protected from the worst of it. Did you know Morten Harket is almost an anagram of Take On Me? No [uneasy]. Um, no, I didn't. It took me hours to work that out. That was pretty obsessive wasn't it? Yes, I believe it was. Are we about done here?" |
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_________________ You can close your eyes if you have to But the life goes on without you...
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Interviu tradus de catre acelasi Jakob (cu multumiri pentru promptitudine si momentul alocat) , interviu cu Morten acordat unui ziar norvegian:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - 100% proud of a-ha … but now Morten Harket wants to fight on his own 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 fabricate 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. ------------------------- Interview by Stein Østbø. Translation by Jakob. (interviu preluat de pe WOTM) |
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_________________ You can close your eyes if you have to But the life goes on without you...
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Un foarte "delicios" interviu aparut in ultimul numar norvegian al revistei "Elle" , avandu-i ca protagonisti pe tatal Morten si pe fiica sa de 15 ani, Tomine.
Enjoy! 
(multumiri lui Karen care ne-a pus din nou cu promptitudine la dispozitie interviul tradus)... Daddy's Girl What is it that makes the bond between father and daughter so special? We have asked four well-known girls to describe the relationship they have to their similarly well-known fathers ----------------------------- Scatterbrained soulmates Tomine Harket (15) is the youngest child that Morten Harket (48) has together with his ex-wife Camilla Malmquist. There was a time when she saw her father almost as much in the media as in real life. But she has still decided to follow in his footsteps as a performer. On stage they are both focused, but otherwise they are often in their own world. ELLE: What kind of father is Morten? Tomine: Let's see... Morten: Don't mind me now, even if I'm sitting here and listening. Tomine I won't. Let me think... He is a good father. Even if he's very busy, he always tries to find time for us. And all holidays are set aside for the family. Daddy is engaged and very present when we are together. And of course he's VERY philosophical. There's always something he wants me to learn, I get a lot of heat for being scatterbrained, for example. Morten: Yes, that's something that I often have to bring up, because I recognize myself really well there. ELLE: Do you have many similarities? Morten: You are very similar to me there, Tomine. I was also very absent-minded when I was in school. If my thoughts had begun to wander, which they did all the time, I wouldn't be able to get back to reality, the school bus had left by then. Tomine is also often in her own world. But I also have to say that she is very present when she needs to be: Tomine is on a professional level when it comes to being on stage. Then she's right in, right on and at the very center of the events. Tomine: We are both stubborn and have clear opinions. That's also why we discuss so much. All the topics that we talk about turn into discussions in one way or another. But we never argue. ELLE: What are the biggest differences between the two of you? Tomine: I talk before I think, while he talks while he's thinking. That's why it's so boring to listen to him sometimes, he he. Morten: Yeah, the sound of my voice sends her right into a sleepy mode. By the way - to this day I have never been able to play through a whole song for my girlfriend Inez before she falls asleep. And that's not because the songs are particularly long or sleep-inducing. Tomine:Huh? Poor you, is that true? Ouch. ELLE: What kind of daughter is Tomine? Morten: She is kind and caring. Surprisingly so, actually, because the behaviour between her and her brothers has always been about developing other qualities than kindness toward each other. Between them, there is a complet lack of thoughfulness. Towards others, on the other hand, they do good things. ELLE: What is the most important thing you have learnt from Morten? Tomine: I think it's difficult to point to anything in particular, because I learn from everything that both mom and dad do, and how they behave towards others. Because they are the ones who have made me into who I am today. ELLE: What has Tomine taught you Morten: Tomine often reminds me of where I come from, and that I sometimes should have a look at everything I have decided and established [as truths] since I was at her age. For what does it help what I have to say if I don't manage to reach through [to people] with the way I deliver it? ELLE: Do you fall for guys who look like your father? Tomine: Ehh, I don't think so. When I like a guy, my thoughts aren't exactly "wow, he looks like daddy!". But I like the style he had in the 80s, I'll admit that. With the ripped jeans, leather jacket and big hair. ELLE: Did you get to spend enough time with Tomine while she was growing up? Morten: I don't feel that I have spent too little time together with her, but I could still have wanted more. I believe that those who really know me, also know the degree of presence I have had together with my children. ELLE: Did you miss your father a lot? Tomine: Yes, I did. I felt that I didn't see him enough. But we talked a lot on the phone when he was out travelling, and that helped somewhat. I still miss my dad a lot. If I see him on TV, and haven't seen him myself in a while, I'll start crying. In the past, if someone just mentioned the word "daddy" to me, the tears would start flowing, so it has gotten better. But I feel sorry for dad, because I know that he really makes an effort to spend time with us - it just isn't that easy to combine a music career with his role as a father. Morten: Some may ask why I still bother to continue being an artist? For me it's about the fact that I find it meaningful to be in an area of opportunities where I can be in a dialogue with society - in an extended meaning of the word. I have sort of been given a speaker's platform, a position where I can communicate. In today's world we'll listen in many layers, and on many levels. Some will hear noise and foggy talk when I say something, but the real communication that I'm leading is going on in secret. ELLE: Is there something you would have done differently if you had the chance, Morten? Morten: I would have wanted more time with the children. These days I make sure that it never is too long between each time I see them. I used to be more blunt in that area before. There are probably periods from when Tomine and her big brothers were small that I would have handled differently today. Besides, there is a bigger understanding for family considerations now than it was for only 15-20 years ago. But if there is a big TV-broadcast in London, I have to be there. One time I had to rent a private jet to get back in time for my youngest son's confirmation. I arrived at the last minute and didn't get a chance to be part of the preparations. That was not a good experience, and it wasn't a coincidence that my manager was fired only three weeks later. ELLE: Has there been a difference between the roles of "mother" and "father" in your home? Tomine: I have mostly grown up with my mother, but my dad definitely doesn't take on the mother role when I am at his place. Morten: There are fundamental differences between a mother and a father, and it's a silly idea that these roles will ever become similar. The process that's been going on in the name of equality between the sexes in this area, is artificial. That doesn't mean that I think the issue is wrong, there is actually a lot about it that I feel is right, but it still becomes respectless if you try to erase the differences between man and woman. We should rather try to celebrate the unique qualities in the different sexes. ELLE: How often do you see each other these days? Tomine: Usually every other weekend. Sometimes more often, other times more infrequent. Morten But we are together when we are together. I have a job which means that I have to travel a lot, so it's been important for me to be flexible in connection to when I have the children. In my job as an artist it's difficult to maintain regular schedules for child visitations, and Camilla has always been very understanding towards this. But we have travelled a lot together - both with and without her. At times we have lived a kind of nomadic lifestyle. We have even brought along teachers on some of our trips, so that the children wouldn't miss out on their school work. ELLE: What's the best thing about being a father? Morten: The hunt for the mother! Tomine: Daddy, behave! Morten: I'm only joking, but being a father provides you with feelings that run so deep within you that you can't relate to them unless you are a father yourself. Because of that it's difficult to put these feelings into words. Tomine: But you must really like children, since you have so many? Morten Yes, of course, but I don't really like the idea of planning and regulating when you're going to have a baby. If we get pregnant, that's a gift I will receive with joy. Having a child is a part of life - if you're so lucky that you're able to do it. ELLE: What's the best thing about having a father? Tomine: I guess that would have to be his wallet...just kidding. The best thing about having a father is probably that you have a father at all. Because there are many who don't have one. ELLE: What is your future dreams for Tomine? Morten: My only dream for her is that she will find her own way, and gets the opportunity to develop the sides of her that she finds stimulating. That she finds her own potential - independent of direction. But the most important thing is that Tomine gets the opportunity to enjoy life!" |
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_________________ You can close your eyes if you have to But the life goes on without you...
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