New a-ha book due out this fall

The journalist and writer Jan Omdahl has been working on a new book about a-ha for more than a year. The working title is “The Swing of Things: 20 år med a-ha” (20 years with a-ha). It will be published by Håkon Harket’s publishing company Press this fall, probably around September/October.

“The book will have a lot of private pictures,” Omdahl says. “We have been digging in suitcases, drawers and cupboards, and come up with pictures from the whole career. There will also be earlier non-released pictures from well-known photo-sessions, such as cover pictures, and we will show the pictures that have not been used for different reasons. The pictures will show both the glamorous as well as the non-glamorous side of the band.”

This book will be different from everything that already exists about a-ha, according to Omdahl. He has been in contact with the band several times through their whole career. He visited them when they lived in London in the eighties, and he has been paddling with Morten in the Amazons. He has visited Paul and Lauren in New York, Magne in his studio and Morten in his cabin, and done several interviews for the book. Omdahl has also traveled with the band during several of their tours.

The book will not be an ordinary biography, but it will be an intimate look at the band. It will be theme-based, with each chapter containing important sides of the band’s story, such as life on tour, and the band’s relationship with the media. There will also be comments from Morten, Magne and Paul on all their records. “There has always been a very high level of tension in a-ha, and in the book the guys will talk about this friction within the band, that has both positive and negative sides. I want to tell the story about the special, sometimes strained, but unique collaboration between the three guys,” Omdahl says. “The friction between them is also what has always driven them forward – they always had something to prove to each other.”

It will be a book that a-ha fans will enjoy, as well as a book of general validity about life in a pop band. The publishing company is working to find solutions on translation and international distribution, and they will try to co-operate with the a-ha fan network.