All About Manchester

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Don't believe the hype. Anyone old enough to remember the 80s will tell you that there's very little worth salvaging from a decade of big permed hair, shoulder pads and cheesy pop tunes - which makes the current trend for all things 80s an unfathomable mystery to people over 35. There are, of course, some exceptions to the rule and Nordic pop stars A-ha, the original 80s band, are one of them. The man behind the trio's catchy keyboard riffs, Magne Furuholmen, speaks to All About Manchester ahead of their M.E.N Arena gig.

It was the decade that gave the world MTV, Live Aid and synth-pop. It was, of course, the 80s, and Norwegian outfit A-ha, with their chiselled cheekbones, catchy pop tunes and legions of lovestruck fans, were instrumental in helping to shape its sound.

The band formed in 1982 and first broke onto the scene in 1985 when their single, Take On Me, went to number 1 - with a little help from its ground-breaking music video. Their debut album, Hunting High and Low, became an instant classic. Since then, A-ha have toured 33 countries, from the USA to Lebanon, and sold almost 40 million albums worldwide.

This autumn, Morten Harket (lead vocalist), Magne Furuholmen (keyboardist) and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy (guitarist) make their return to the limelight with their ninth album, Foot of the Mountain, which comes four years after A-ha's previous album, Analogue.

Although it harks back to the 80s synthesiser sound that propelled the trio to international stardom, Furuholmen is quick to point out that Foot of the Mountain is not just a nostalgic nod to the past. "We did dig up a few of the old synths, but it's more a case of bringing that into the future than going back," he argues. "We look at it as taking something from that time with us going forward. The fact that it coincides with a resurgence of the 80s as filtered through new artists is incidental, because we started working on this album three years ago. So we're trying to follow what makes sense in relation to our own career."

But how does Furuholmen feel about the current 80s revival? "I think it's quite exciting, with new artists like La Roux having a fresh take on the 80s," he says. "I don't think bands like us can really do that because we were there the first time around so it's a different thing, but whatever works."

The band last toured the UK in 2005, the year they were awarded the prestigious Q Inspiration Award at a star-studded London ceremony, and had U2, Coldplay and Keane citing them as influences on their career. That same year, they made history in Oslo with 120,000 fans turning up to their Frognerparken show. Obviously expectations are high for their new tour, which brings them to Manchester on Nov 3 - a tour that will see them reclaim some of the territory that was decidedly theirs.

"This is going to be different from last time," enthuses Furuholmen. "We have a different band setup and a much more electronic direction. On the last couple of tours we pulled the more electronic-sounding stuff from the early days to the more acoustic direction of our mid-career. This time we're pulling the mid-career songs more in the electronic direction of this album, how we did things way back. I think we can safely say we helped shape the sound of the 80s, and reintroducing some of the synthetic soundscape has given us a real jolt of inspiration."

Inspiration cannot be easy to come by when you've worked in a band for 27 years, but there's clearly something powerful holding the trio together after all this time. "I think a feeling of unfinished business," offers Furuholmen. "A feeling of rediscovering the joys of working together and the privilege to be able to go out there and still sell out arenas...it's quite an addictive thing."

"Surely you must also like each other a little bit?" we ask jokingly, but Furuholmen doesn't laugh. Instead, he gets philosophical. "There are very few other areas where you get people working together who also grew up together as childhood friends. Most people cut that cord, but it's different when you are in a band. When you go into a room together you are always reminded of that football game, where one tackled the other one and the other fell and never forgot. There's a lot of luggage that you bring with you. So it's about learning to accept and to be together with all the kind of differences, and that's what makes it interesting. It's like a sociological experiment."

Nowadays, the three members of A-ha don't even live in the same country (Waaktaar-Savoy is based in New York), so whatever luggage they carry around with them does not clash very often. However, it must make it difficult to create music together, right? Wrong, according to Furuholmen. "It makes it necessary to schedule, make appointments to meet, but we're all very capable of recording separately and we all have studios in our homes. Basically the danger with that is that you end up recording a lot of stuff separately and the album ends up sounding like too many different things. So that was one of the efforts this time; to break it all down and start together, sit together, write together and record demos together. We made a conscious effort to bring the band back to its core."

Foot of the Mountain reached number 5 in the UK album charts, which suggests that there are still big things to come for A-ha. But what has been the proudest moment of their career so far? Furuholmen considers the question for a long moment. "The Q Awards," he finally decides. "Getting an inspiration award and being hailed by our peers as being inspiration for a current generation of British artists is a payday of sorts. It's a very good feeling to realise that you left people with something more lasting than smash hits and cheesy pictures.

"There's been a resurgence in interest in the band's music spawned by people like Chris Martin, U2 and other very credible, serious artists, who are pointing to our music legacy as something of importance. To have Kanye West do Take on Me in the middle of his show makes you feel it was a worthwhile thing to do."

The keyboardist is happy to recall the not-so-proud moments, too - the things that the band would gladly change if they could do it all over again. Top of his list is the massive over-exposal of the trio in the media in the early days, which put their music in the background and their cheekbones in the foreground. "I think we would probably be much fiercer in limiting the use of photos, be less flirtatious with the media, be much more controlled in the way we were perceived. And I think we would have success happen on the second or third record as opposed to the first."

Finding success too soon may be a small inconvenience, but Furuholmen is fully aware of how privileged A-ha have been. They have the distinction of being the first Norwegian band to have a number 1 song in the US and they are to date the most famous Norwegian band in the UK. "Why have Swedish bands been more successful abroad than Norwegian bands?" we ask, praying to God we've not hurt his national pride.

Furuholmen has obviously thought about this question before. "Swedes have always been unashamedly commercial and I think Norwegians have a slightly more sombre and melancholic trait, which is quite evident in our musical legacy. But I think we've managed to kind of trick people into listening to quite introvert and dark material thinking it's much lighter than it is by way of how we arranged it. And also Morten has that effect that anything he sings that's introvert comes out more extrovert."

It's no surprise then that he mentions The Smiths when asked what he knows about Manchester. "The proud musical heritage of Manchester is undeniable; we've all been influenced by it," he adds. "But also, growing up in Norway, we all knew about Manchester United and Manchester City. In fact, I remember very vividly that Manchester City used to be bigger than United when we were very young. But Morten and I were Stoke City fans." Now that's a surprise.

The boys have grown up and no-one is pretending to be 20 any more. But if you are lucky enough to see them perform live, you'll realise that time has been good both to their music and to their cheekbones.

A-ha play the M.E.N Arena on Nov 3. Tickets cost £27.50 & £37.50 and you can book by calling 0844 847 8000.

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