“Don’t think. You’re not going to know what hit you.”

Morten, Magne and Paul were three ordinary Norwegian boys who suddenly became superstars. In The Swing of Things, the band, their manager, and the people around them talk about the pros and cons of being famous and their relation to the fans. Read outtakes from the book here.

“The fan hysteria that followed a-ha everywhere they went during the first years of their career was at a level you had to experience to believe. It was total, unadulterated madness. ‘Beatles conditions’ was the phrase repeated by those who experienced it, and it wasn’t far from the truth. Meeting the mob of fans at close hand was fascinating, but also scary. It was a wild, screaming, hydra-headed monster that tried to tear its quarry into tiny pieces.”

Author Jan Omdahl experienced the fan hysteria around the band in Brazil 1989:

“We’re ten floors above street level and a whole world removed from Rio’s impoverished, noisy reality. Only one thing disturbs the idyll: an odd, high-pitched sound that seems to come from the street below. I lean out over the rail to look, and the sound explodes into something between an ‘eeeeee’ and an ‘aaaaaa’.

It’s hundreds of young girls screaming hysterically, and they’re screaming because a-ha is staying at the hotel. When binoculars and zoom lenses reveal I’m not one of the three, the scream modulates gradually to a sort of low-frequency, sorrowful and slightly aggressive howling. ‘Oooooouuu!’ I’m not a-ha, and the mob below clearly thinks I might then just as well throw myself over the parapet. At least they’d get a little entertainment. The scream changes to a new and incomprehensibly loud ‘iiiiiaaaaaa’ a little later, when Morten Harket, wearing a striped T-shirt and black and limegreen cycling shorts, leans over to wave.”

Paul recalls the first years in London:

‘It took a half hour to get past the door to the apartment. They were all okay, but you couldn’t just walk right through them. After three years, you know, you’d get to know them a little. You’d be going out to buy something, and then you’d have to chit-chat for a half hour down in the doorway. Not autographs – they’d got those a long time ago. These people would be insulted if you thought they were there for autographs. They look at themselves as your close personal friends.’

Their manager Terry Slater has seen it all in the rock business. He knows all about what sudden fame does to young men. Paul, Morten and Magne each reacted to the shock differently, Slater says:

‘Morten liked it and experimented with it. He was Freddie Mercury. Paul thought he was smarter than he was, and thought he could manage the situation by putting the others in front of him. But he didn’t manage it. He perhaps was the one who suffered most under these circumstances. Magne was a little afraid. He was scared by the extreme changes. It was too much, too soon. Magne wasn’t weak, but sensitive. The flippant image was only a shield.’

Although they have devoured much of his privacy, Morten has always held his fans in great respect.

‘They are people. They’re individuals. I can’t allow them to be come a grey faceless crowd. Everybody enters into the music on their own wings. So it’s not just empty talk when I say I have a role as a middleman. They arrive with a palette coloured by their own experience, and contribute their own part. Many take this as a given, they don’t comprehend that these people are also a creative part of what we’re doing. I really value being able to participate in this collaborative venture. It can impart meaning in its own way.’

In the book you can read more about a-ha’s relationship with their fans, what their wives and girlfriends think about it, interviews with fans and pictures of the band with their fans. Read about how Morten, Magne and Paul dealt with sudden fame, and about being recognized even in the deepest heart of the jungle in the Amazons. On Friday, November 12, you will be able to order the book here on a-ha.com.