the videos

a-ha’s videos have played an important part in bringing the group to the attention of the record-buying public. It was the inspired combination of cartoon and regular film in the now ‘classic’ video for ‘Take On Me’ that was the decisive factor for a-ha’s success in the USA and the rest of the world.

‘Take On Me’ also exists in another video version, a version that most of those involved would prefer to forget. It was shot in the period the guys were constantly commuting between London and Oslo, waiting for The Big Breakthrough. Suddenly, they were informed that a video was under production. Once on set, they couldn’t believe their eyes: they had their own trailer as a dressing-room, another one for relaxation, and yet another one that served as a restaurant. The studio was a dream: with all the most sophisticated and expensive photographic, lighting and sound equipment.

The initial concept was that the video should present the boys rehearsing. Eventually, it was decided that there should be some girls in the audience… a-ha weren’t too sure about that. They didn’t want to be part of the ‘bring in the dancing girls’ attitude which was so prevalent in rock videos. But the powers that be had already made up their mind…

In one scene, Morten was supposed to be ‘auditioning’ at the microphone stand. Suddenly, Mags came storming out of the restaurant trailer and trying to catch his breath, told Morten what had happened. He and Pål had been sitting innocently having a meal, when a group of girls, as a joke, provocatively waltzed in and began to undress. Mags and Pål tried desperately to ignore the whole thing and continued eating, when some of the naked girls started leaning over their plates. Things got even worse when Mags tried to turn around, and his face ended up in the bare behind of a girl who was bending over to pull up her fishnet stockings! At this point, Mags had fled.

The boys’ collective reaction was: What in the world are they trying to do to an innocent song like ‘Take On Me’? Apparently, the record company’s bright idea was to prove to the world that a-ha were normal, red-blooded males. They didn’t want them to have the sexually ambiguous image of so many of the pop groups of the time. As the filming proceeded, a-ha grew more and more uncertain. The ending was supposed to show a crowd of girls storming the set while a-ha escaped into a waiting limousine. A few girls were then supposed to sneak into the car, stark naked. And then a-ha were to be seen ‘getting friendly’ with the girls as the car drove away from the camera.

It didn’t work. The boys weren’t willing to put up with it. To top it all, after a-ha had left (or, to be more correct, after they had been thrown out), the set was used for a hard-core porno film with the same girls – some of whom were professional striptease dancers and mud wrestlers.

“We felt sorry for the girls,” Morten says, although he, too, had found himself in an embarrassing situation when one of the girls had purposely pulled off her sweater and shoved her breasts into his face.

“You see,” he goes on, “a lot of the girls were hopeful seventeen year-olds who wanted to be models, and dancers who needed the money. They weren’t into the heavy stuff.” He shrugs it off as just a strange episode in their career. “I think someone took pictures during the filming, with naked girls holding us tightly around our chests. Mags just froze… he didn’t know what to do with his hands! It was a terrible video – the first one – our ‘Blue Movie’.”

But things were to improve. Warner Brothers’ Senior Vice President, Jeff Ayeroff, wanted to put his new ‘blue-eyed boys’ in an innovative form of video. It all came out of an old idea he had, a combination of cartoon and regular film. Michael Patterson had created a unique form of animation which could be called a work of art: ‘Commuter’. In black and white, with a technique far beyond the traditional children’s cartoons like Fred Flintstone and Donald Duck, it contained figures moving restlessly and showed portrait likeliness, flickering, searching.

Ayeroff introduced Patterson to video director Steve Barron, who had developed a reputation as the best in the business after his video for Michael Jackson’s ‘Billy Jean’. Ayeroff explained that he wanted a story about a comic strip character who comes to life and takes a girl back with him into the comic strip. “Don’t be concerned about the story in the song. The song is strong enough to stand on its own. What we need is a video that can attract attention independently of the song. We have a good record – now we need a good video.”

Four months and about £125,000 later, Barron and Patterson showed up with the final version of the video for ‘Take On Me’.

Each of the guys in a-ha has his own charm and personality, but together, they form an effective visual unit. Their appearance was decisive in Ayeroff’s willingness to go all the way for a-ha. They could wait to exploit the boys’ natural good looks — ‘Take On Me’ was strong enough on its own. Therefore, it was therefore an advantage that the video was primarily in cartoon form – what did those boys really look like? When the viewers finally got to see the boys from close up, no doubt was left as to their visual appeal and attraction.

In video number two, for ‘The Sun Always Shines On TV’, it was decided to focus more on the guys’ faces. The job was again assigned to Steve Barron and his Limelight Production Company and two days were set aside for a-ha to film in London. They didn’t need more time, because Steve Barron had prepared everything thoroughly. He had found the perfect location – an old vacated church, St. Albany’s, just outside London. Fifty men had worked for almost a week to get it ready.

High scaffolding outside the church supported enormous flood lights which lit up the whole church and threw gloomy patterns through the stained glass windows. The church itself was filled with 650 dummies of the sort you would normally find in department store windows. At one end hung a huge painting of another church, so the effect was that of an endless church hall. On the stage, instruments and microphones were set up. Around this area – behind bars, under the pulpit, between pillars – dummies sat properly clad in tuxedos, holding the instruments of a classical orchestra. The mobile walls with hundreds of stone faces carved in relief didn’t exactly brighten the somber surroundings. Smoke machines intensified this atmosphere while Steve Barron guided the camera up and down, capturing the group’s faces from every conceivable and inconceivable angle.

It were two days of constant filming with the boys miming the song, first separately and then as a group. The only interruptions were new rounds of make-up, some breaks for food and occasional rest periods. Again they had their own trailers for eating, sleeping, relaxing and dressing. It was all filmed in black and white and then hand-painted to achieve the special effect. As a natural outcome, this was an expensive video, there were no short cuts about it. When you have a number one hit behind you, a powerful follow-up is essential.

Videos have been especially important for a-ha. When the final version of the video for Take On Me was finished, Jeff Ayeroff really knew he had a winner. The video was so sensational that Warner Brothers decided to release the video before the single. It was distributed to TV stations and shown to people in the music business for weeks before the single was released. As a result, everyone in the business in the USA was talking about a-ha before they had the remotest idea of who, or what, they were. The video itself had created the necessary ‘buzz’ to make people in the music industry and in the media sit up and take notice.