Magne Furuholmen – uncut

“Life as an artist is about making a moment shine.”

by Sabine Clement

“I hope that you have everything you wanted,” Magne says when I push the ‘off’ button on my tape recorder. “I tried to say as much as possible, and spoke as fast as I could.”
I look at him, a slightly surprised smile on my face. How could he worry about having been too brief?

We had talked about live recordings, about how to impress your kids, about painting, writing, music, design, a-ha Network and even about underwear.

Or rather, Magne had talked, while all I did was occasionally throw in a question and woosh, he was off again.

So I assure him that I have covered most of the questions on my list, and that his answers have covered areas even far beyond that list. After all, I hadn’t really entered that backstage room with the intention to discuss his briefs. Oh no. In fact, my first question for him was shamelessly innocent…

____________

“Let’s take off with the most popular question of all…Now that a-ha is on tour again, how about doing a live album?”

“Well, if we’d known we’d sound this good after ten years, we’d certainly have made plans!” Magne laughs. “There are no concrete plans for a live release yet, but we will be doing a bigger tour next year. And at that point, I really think we should gear up for a proper live recording.”

“There are a lot of ideas floating around. If we’re gonna record live shows, we might either do it over a tour, so we can record many different concerts and then pick the best ones. Or we might do some stuff like invite people for a special show, like fans on the internet or something, and do one or two shows in a smaller format. Like a one-off of the normal tour, but especially geared for filming and recording. Because if you want to record and film shows like the ones we’re doing now, you really have to work the production around it. I think it’s probably better to just record the shows, but we’ll see.”

“What makes a tour interesting?”

“For me, actually, this whole tour has been much more interesting and much more fun than the other ones have been. I’ve been less nervous about it. It’s like… Well, ten years ago, I was young enough to do this, but now I’m coming of a long row of exhibitions, and the first couple of shows in Japan, and also these first couple of shows in Germany, I sort of walked on stage and wondered “Should I really be here?” But then I told myself “Get past that embarrassment! You chose to go up there, well, so go up there and you’d better fucking enjoy yourself or you have nothing to do here!” And that really works!”

“But really, when we get it all together on stage, and we have a good time together up there, then that’s the most important thing. Basically, good shows are what makes a tour interesting. Good shows followed by days that have some kind of… difference to them. Where you can do things that are related to it all, but in a different way. The only real problem with touring is that your mind is so focused that you don’t have a lot of time to explore other things, to write or to other stuff. I’d love to do more.”

“You took your sons to the Japanese concerts. How did they like it?”

“My youngest son never knew what a-ha was. There would be the odd news article, but until we started up again, there was really no focus on a-ha. There would be the odd reference, people being interviewed, saying “Oh, we were influenced by a-ha”, but that was it.”

“So for me, it was nice to give him this feeling of “Wow, what is this!?” They adapt amazingly quickly to a new situation. All of a sudden, they were on tour, and they were behaving like they’d done nothing else in their lives,” Magne smiles at the memory.

“Is there anyone you would like to impress with your music?”

“My two kids! I must say, there was this childish streak in me, to be able to impress my oldest son. He is at this age now where he’s like into bands, he’s got a keyboard at home and he’s getting into this whole thing, and well… You can say that Daddy is a pop star, but seeing is believing, isn’t it? So I took him with us, and after the concert, he came down looking like…”

There are moments when looks say more than words, and this is one of them. Lost for a suitable phrase, Magne tries to copy the expression on his son’s face from back then. With his boggled eyes and general look of total surprise and bewilderment, he puts down a very convincing enactment of someone who’s totally blown off the planet. I think it’s fair to say that the kid was impressed by the performance of ‘Daddy’s band’!

“I brought them down for the Hamburg concert as well, so they could see the bigger production,” Magne then continues. “And now, they’re kind of all blasé about it, talking like “I liked the Sendai gig, and you?” That’s the level it’s on, now.”

“But to impress in the sense that you want to leave an impression on someone… That is a strong driving force. To me, music, art, and a lot of the things that we gravitate towards as individuals, are all about being able to finish a monologue, without discussion. It’s all being able to take your idea – or vision, if you want to be pretentious – and follow this through to the end and then just let it go and say “Okay, that is it.” And there is no way that you can really argue with a painting or a piece of music. You can relate to it, but you cannot affect it, other than trying to write about it. There is no arguing with a picture on a wall, it has to be experienced, and it has to be someone’s decision to put it there.”

“If you decide on life as an artist, one way or another, one of the important things is to make moments shine. Whether you stand alone in a workshop, or you stand in front of ten thousand people, you have to really try to make moments shine. That is the main ambition. And I think ‘shine’ is a better word than ‘count’ – although not for the song, obviously – because you have to make the moment more than it is. It’s not the old ‘carpe diem’ or ‘seize the day’ type of thing, it’s actually making moments stand out. And make them stand out, help them to make stand out. Also for yourself, because when it doesn’t stand out for yourself, it’s not very likely that it will stand out for other people and leave an impression upon them.”

“What do you think can be done to conquer the States?”

“If I knew that, we would have been there a long time ago,” Magne smiles. “We all love America, in different ways and for different reasons. One of those reasons is the musical history of America. When we grew up, our influences came from the UK and America, mostly. And I think we obsessed about it on the last three or four albums. We wanted to have it back. We just felt that we were underrated and that we should have been out there, and we just didn’t understand why were not out there.”

“I think that, considering America, we made one fatal strategic error in the early part of our career. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, and it’s nothing to be proud of either, but we refused to have after-show parties for journalists, deejays and industry people. And these people are the ones who put out your records.”

“I don’t think that this alone is what killed our career in America, but deejays do have a lot of power. And not just deejays. When the record company sets up something like a tour, they want to meet the band, they want to introduce you to their families. It’s part of the culture. But we said “It’s too hard, we can’t do it. We can shake hands, and then go home. But no parties, and no families.”"

“So will you have to do the parties this time around, then?”

“I don’t know. To be honest, you do as much as you can anyway, anywhere in the world, so it’s not a big difference. I think we were lucky to get a break in America the first time around. But then we didn’t do what the record company told us to do: concentrate on America and forget about the rest of the world. And that has obviously a lot to do with it.”

“Do you think there is also a difference in style, in sound, between Europe and America?”

“Sure, absolutely. But sound is a strange thing. You make a record that sounds different, and then it becomes number one, and things change. In the first few interviews in America, we were seen as an alternative group, we were compared to Cock Robin and bands that were making kind of left-field pop music from abroad. And then all of a sudden, we break it big and we’re called mainstream. Same record, only four months later. Different perspective. And perspective is always interesting.”

“We would love to get a hit in America again, but it’s not an obsession for me personally. Not anymore. I think we have a good shot, we have a single that is on a soundtrack, we have a new record company that really likes the band and likes the record, and they’ve told us that we are a high priority act. So, we’ll see. We’ll do our bit. I don’t think we’ve ever refused to work.”

“When will ‘Minor Earth, Major Sky’ be released in the States?”

“I heard it would be out in February. But in this business, I wouldn’t put my money on anything.”

“Is a-ha Network an attempt to break away from the power of the industry, to gain more control?”

“Well, to put it like this: it is something our record company is looking at with some kind of a raised eyebrow, like “What the hell is going on?” And they’re not exactly sure that it’s a collaborative effort. They’ve seen the Napster situation getting out of control, and now they see Madonna getting millions for her streaming rights, and they’re worried. So they don’t like a-ha Network. I don’t fucking care, to be honest.”

“It is a little bit about taking back control, creating your own channel. I think it’s good. I think that in the future, if you have an effective site, when you have full bandwidth and digital TV and all that, when you have your own media station in your own name, then, obviously, the record company starts to become rather redundant. Because they don’t sell music. They think they sell music, but they sell plastic.We sell music, we produce music, and the big publishing companies make sure that artists make their money. So that’s gonna be a much more important factor: how do you make sure that bands can fund what they’re doing, in a logical way?”

“Do you see this as a new version of the Beatles’ Apple?”

“When we started this, we were thinking, what is this? Is it a new Apple, or is it just a boring branding situation where a-ha becomes like a Björn Borg brand that you stamp on things.”

“Like on underwear.”

“Yeah, right!”Magne laughs, then puts on a mock serious face. “Although, I think my underwear is pretty cool. We could sell it.”

“But what is setting up your own website about… Basically, I think it’s about being able to do things without the consent of everybody else. I also think this makes it more on equal terms with bands that have less power, in the terms of industry power, so it’s a fairer image. I prefer to be more on that level.”

“All we want to do is reach people. If we can do that more effectively through the internet, and through our own kind of a-ha channel, I think it is worth pursuing it.”

“My first thought when I heard about a-ha Network, was: when did a-ha become corporate?”

“In a way, we have been amazingly corporate, but it’s been a corporation of no-sayers. It was like, you had an idea, and the other two in the band said “Mmmm, no.” It takes a hell of a lot to bring ideas to fruition in this band. And I am at this stage in my life, and I know Paul and Morten are too, where we’re starting to think. “Fuck it, we’re not gonna get millions of chances of just waiting everything out, and if I want to do something, I just do it. If I want to do a video for the website, I just do it, and if you don’t like it, well, I’ll pay for it, I don’t care.”"

“You start with something you really love. Like Richard Branson starting the Virgin Megastore, because he knew he could sell something better, or he had kind of like an idea… You get to this point that you just want to be creative and do things. That’s why we set up a-ha Network, so they could take over the corporate side. They can look after the business, and we can be creative. And what they do, is based upon what we do anyway. They can’t do anything, unless we produce music, films, videos.”

“The same with merchandising. It’s not like merchandising is a passion of mine or that I am more greedy than ten years ago. In fact, I don’t even need to do it. But I just get really irritated if we have shit merchandise. And we always had! I want it to be cool, I want it to be something that I would wear, I want it to be something that I would look at! So yeah, I did the design, partly because I like designing, and partly because I just want to make sure that it is not embarassingly bad. It’s very simple. And if people think that that is like a corporate attitude, well, whatever it takes to get things done right, you know!”

“If I hear you talking like this, then it sounds as if you guys are planning to continue for a long time.”

“That probably depends whom you are asking and at what time you are asking,” Magne smiles. “But I’ve come to the conclusion that if we can make it work, if there is space for everybody – for Paul with Savoy, for Morten and his solo project, for me and my exhibitions and continuing my line of thought and method of working – then there is no reason why should put an end date on a-ha.”

“And even through this Network thing, if we start to promote things that we like, if we start to produce other records for other artists, for me that is like… you want to leave something that can live on without you. So a-ha Network can be that, it can make a-ha live on, even when we are doing other things.”

“It’s like when you put children on this world. You know it’s gonna go on after you, and that is a good feeling, if you raise them the right way. If they turn into shit bags, then you feel like shit yourself for the rest of your life, but if you do it well, it gives you a good feeling and it puts things in a nice perspective.”

“Is there a danger of ‘interest of conflicts’ between a-ha and the expression you seek as individuals?”

“I think that it is rather naive to think that we can do things that conflict with a-ha, without asking, or telling the others what we are planning to do, or without clearing it with everybody involved. Flexibility is a difficult thing. It would be completely preposterous from me to hold exhibitions in every city we go to and invite the fans to the shows. I’m sure I would sell a lot of paintings, but to me, as a person, I wouldn’t do it.”

“Having said that, this doesn’t mean that it is wrong for Paul to use the a-ha momentum for Savoy. I think it is only fair that he is doing it! It is so close to what he is doing, and for Morten it is the same thing. But I think it has to come at the right time. For all of us, being in this band is about making sacrifices. So, if we can be open about it, if we can make it work, and then a-ha will last.”

“How do you feel about the image that each of you has?”

“People have a tendency to stereotype. I don’t know what they think about me nowadays, but I used to be ‘the joker’ in a-ha. What a great thing that is,” he sighs.

“I probably did my share of skateboarding – I actually ran on stage once with a skateboard – but unfortunately, that was like at the first show of a-ha’s career, and that’s not really the time where you think about your image. All these sticker things… I can accept things, but I cannot accept that what I did in the eighties is seen as less important in the history of a-ha. It’s not like Paul was the songwriter and I was the clown, and we were nothing else beside that.”

“Of course, there is a little bit of truth in everything. I am probably more of a spiritually greedy person, who likes to go in many different directions. Paul is very focused, and Morten is, well, Morten,” Magne laughs. “And the thing is, I’m not trying to deny any of it. But I’ve come to the conclusion that all that matters is work. And you gotta do the best you can, and create the best circumstances for you to function.”

“Did those circumstances change, within a-ha?”

“Paul and I used to write much more together. I didn’t write lyrics, I only wrote two or three lines, and I then couldn’t finish it up. And the mistake I made was that I looked at what Paul was doing and tried his method of working. Once I was out of a-ha, I started to find my own method. Writing lyrics is not necessarily the easiest form of expression for me, but these days, I do have songs lying around that I have finished the lyrics on, and that wasn’t the case before.”

“This also means that I don’t need collaboration so much anymore. I like to collaborate, I think that working with other people brings out great things. I wrote ‘Little Black Heart’ just at the end of the break-up of the band, and there was a middle piece missing, and then Paul came in and wrote this piece that we put in the middle. And to me, that makes it a complete and really good song, with lots of different emotions in it.”

“It was more or less the same with ‘Minor Earth, Major Sky’. Verse and bridges, and then boom, chorus. Two different parts, two different writers. To me, it is a great feeling to be working together like that. I really enjoy it, but Paul has moved to more of a collaborative effort with Lauren, and Morten is collaborating with Håvard [Rem] and other people, so then I’m pretty much left to my own devices. Which is not a problem, but it’s different from how it used to be.”

“You have once said that visual art and music are not so different. If you had to paint ‘Minor Earth, Major Sky’, what would it be like?”

“I’ve never really thought about that…,” Magne muses over the question. “It’s kind of like its own painting as it is. A sound painting. Ideas come to you, either in the form of words, or in the form of sounds, or as visual impressions. And taking away the lyric problem: I think both music and pictures are kind of a universal language. Both have a wordless communication, the ability to transcend language barriers. There seems to be no need to put one form of communication into another.”

“Although, it’s true, I have experimented. I tried painting jazz records by Chet Baker [the ‘Everything happens to me' series - SC] and I tried to make sounds to artworks, at Elektra Sonus and also for a project of one of my friends, Kjell Nupen, who is quite an established painter in Norway. We discussed doing some sounds for an exhibit of his, sounds that would underscore the feeling of the exhibit. But it’s not like you can automatically turn one art form into another.”

“For me, the title ‘Minor Earth, Major Sky’ was such an image in itself… And I had been looking for that image. I had been scribbling all sorts of words on a piece of paper, almost like a game. And pairing them, like minor/major, earth/sky, black/white… All those words that were like antonymes. And the most unusual one, the one that created the most unusual image in my mind, was ‘Minor Earth, Major Sky’. It was actually Paul who said: “Oh shit, that’s an album title.” Now that I think of it, I don’t know if he meant it like “Shit, Magne has found the title, the bastard,” he laughs. “But that is what you are looking for, you sorta try to come to an unusual imagery, whether it is sound or words.”

“You’ve been playing with visual art and music for several years now. Do you think a-ha could do the same?”

“Yeah! I already have a really original and cool program in my mind. I think it’s gonna be for the next tour. Kind of fusing the artworks and the music in a quite direct way, not so designed, but more like a piece of its own. And I definitely think that a-ha can do it. Both Paul and Morten have a very strong visual sense. So we could definitely do it. Only, the main problem with doing anything out of the set rules, is that you have to get consensus. And in the band, that is like the hardest thing to get.”

“To be honest with you, one of the reasons we haven’t been more successful – although I’m not complaining – but I think we could have been a lot further if we had allowed every idea to breathe a little before we put our own stamp on it. Somebody comes up with one idea, and the other two immediately put it down. That’s like the dynamic of the group, you all kind of push it a little down. And if it’s not strong enough to survive by argumentation and being pushed really hard, and then it turns into kind of like a personal thing. Because if you’re really unsure about the idea, then you’re not gonna push it under those circumstances – even when it’s a great one. And I’m not just talking about me here, I’m talking about all three of us. I’m as big a sinner as everyone else. But this is our real problem. We are not always good at cultivating things that are different from what they used to be. And I think that’s something that is changing now. We‘re changing. We have to.”

Text and content of this interview (c) by Sabine Clement
Images (c) by a-ha.com
No part of this interview may be reproduced without the written consent of the copyright holder.