I split a-ha's history in two parts for a reason. The a-ha of the 80's and early 90's are not the same band it is today. Sure they sing the same songs, and they almost resemble the boys the were. To me, the 'new' a-ha is a completely different more mature band. Every fan should try to forget who they were and look at who they are now.

Yet the past is important, it shaped them into the band they are today. I also know that not everyone are familiar with a-ha's past. So, here it is - the band's history.

The word a-ha was originally the title for one of Pål's songs. One day Morten went through Pål's notebook and came across the word. He thought it was a great name and suggested to the other two that they should call themselves a-ha.

They went through several dictionaries in different languages, and found out that a-ha is an universal way of expressing recognition and had a generally positive meaning. It was short, easy to say and different. After a couple of weeks the name stuck and thus a-ha changed from a word to a name. They are a meticulous band.

If ever there was a band that paid it's dues, it's a-ha. They knew they were good. That their sound was fresh and unusual. Convincing the rest of the world that they were the best thing since The Beatles was not that easy... at first. In January 1983 a-ha went in search of a record company. They approached and were rejected by Decca. Pål saw this as a good sign, after all, Decca was the same record company that turned down The Beatles.

A company called Lionheart got seriously interested in the boys. The day before they had to sign the contract with Lionheart however, a drunk Mags had a serious run-in with the London police and was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. He spend the night in jail, and the following morning Pål went to bail him out. Morten went to the meeting with Lionheart and lied through his teeth to explain Pål and Magne's absence, while he signed a-ha's first contract.

Lionheart turned into a hopeless case. The company was in financial trouble and didn't have the money to do much for a-ha. Unfortunately, when a-ha signed the contract, they had to cancel all their other agreements with other companies. They were stuck with a useless company that was wasting their time and money.

Things were unraveling fast. They lived in a crappy flat and were often without electricity. They couldn't work to earn extra money, because they didn't have work permits, and their money was running out. They lived on cheap home baked bread and bad fish and chips. They lost weight at an appalling rate, had fierce rows and were generally miserable. They decided to go back to Norway for a short time to earn extra money.

They returned to London and decided to give up on Lionheart. They went in search of a small recording studio, so that they could make new and better demos. They were not ready to give up.

They ended up in John Radcliff's rendezvous studio. After hearing only two of their songs, Radcliff took a special interest in the band. He introduced a-ha to Terry Slater who immediately knew that he came across something very special. He wanted a-ha to finish a couple of songs while he was in the USA.

With £200 from Radcliff, a-ha felt encouraged and when Slater returned from the US they presented him with Take on me and Living a boy's adventure tale. Slater was convinced that a-ha was gold and immediately formed a new company, T.J. Management with Radcliff. Finally, a-ha had managers and things were starting to look up.

Slater was influential and well respected in the industry. When he started to present a-ha to different record companies, they paid attention. Andy Wickham, a representative of Warner Brothers, was one of the first to hear a-ha play. He liked their music and their relaxed, confident style.

Slater invited other big record companies to listen to a-ha... not everyone was impressed with the three Norwegians. But, with the deadline approaching, Slater gave Warner Brothers the impression that other big names were interested in a-ha. Warner Brothers kept increasing their advance offer until they finally signed a-ha for £125,000. The contract was directly arranged with the head office in the US.

With a contract from Warner Brothers and renewed energy, the search for a good studio and producer began. Slater wanted a-ha to use Alan Tarney. a-ha ended up with Tony Mansfield, an expert in the use of computerized synthesizers. a-ha liked the idea at first, but Mansfield worked slowly and they started to fall behind schedule and musically the collaboration didn't work out.

Mansfield slaughtered Take on me. He took a beautifully simplistic song and turned it into a complicated machine. By the time he was done, you could barely make out Morten's voice somewhere in the background. a-ha hated it, and worked with Radcliff to remix the entire album. All this took a lot of time, but eventually they finished the album. Take on me, with a rather bad accompanying video, was released as a single in England. It flopped magnificently. They sold approximately 300 copies world-wide and peaked at nr 157 in the UK charts. It should be noted that the single did very well in Norway, peaking at nr. 3 on their charts and remained in the top 100 for 15 weeks.

In the mean time the US office of Warner Brothers took an interest in the boys. They kept hearing about this wonderful new band but didn't see any results. In the end they canned the first video and a-ha was given another chance to re-record Take on me. This time Slater's original choice, Alan Tarney, came on board as producer. a-ha went back to the studio to record a rough version of Take on me. While Tarney was out of the studio, Pål and Mags fiddled around with the synthesizer, in an attempt to go back to the original sound they had in mind.

Tarney returned to the studio, heard the result and liked it straight away. When the boys wanted to 'do it for real' Tarney informed them that the song was done. This is the version of Take on me that took the world by storm... well eventually it did.

The Warner Brothers office in England was so upset with the US office's interference that they withdrew from a-ha. When Take on me, accompanied by another appaling video, was re-released in England, the London office refused to support it. A second time, the boys were disappointed. Take on me flopped again, peaking at nr 154 in the UK charts.

The boys were disillionsioned. Around them, things were starting to fall apart. The people who risked everything for them, and believed in them from the start, were heavily affected by a-ha's failure. They saw people's lives being destroyed, and took this very personally. They decided to split up for awhile

Pål went to visit his girlfriend, Lauren, in the US. He was sure that a-ha was about to lose their contract with Warner Brothers, and decided to find out what was going on. He was very surprised when the person he spoke to informed him that a-ha was now their top priority group.

Three weeks before the third release of Take on me their revolutionary video was aired. The video, mixing animation with real life images, was completely different and technologically advanced for its time. There is no doubt that this brilliant video helped Take on me's climb up the the charts.

In July 1985, the single was released, entering the US charts at number 91. In August, a-ha went to the US to start promoting their debut album Hunting high and low. In September, while a-ha is in the states, Take on me is released again as a single in the UK. This time it enters the charts at nr. 55 and peaks at nr 2.

On 9 October 1985 a-ha heard that their song was number one in the US. After three excrutiating years, they had finally done it. They have reached the top.

a-ha had a bigger impact on the music world than many people will admit. They have influenced rock bands like U2 and modern pop bands Keane and Coldplay have admitted that they were and still are big a-ha fans.

In late 1985 no one knew that a-ha will take the world by storm. Expert marketers went to work on creating the a-ha machine. Looking back, maybe the record company should've taken a different approach. a-ha was very much marketed as a boyband. They were seen as such by many, and because of this, they were never taken seriously.

Still, who cares what the world thinks while the record company can make money? A lot of the fans who stayed with a-ha when others moved on to greener pastures, became annoyed with the way the record company marketed a-ha, and later even more so when it seemed they lost interest.

But this all happened later.

Back then, a-ha was something so unique that it was impossible not to notice them. They were fresh, different, wonderfully innocent, quirky, charming and very handsome. Morten climbed trees, Mags charged around on his skateboard and Pål quietly watched them with an indulgent smile. They had a youthful exhuberance that was hard to miss. In the beginning, this shined through in their photos and videos. They looked like three little boys who were let lose in a candy store. "Look at us, we're famous!" Yet, they also seemed kind of detached from the whole fame thing. Almost like it didn't touch them. It was already romantic enough that they came from a place like Norway, and imagine, they're such complex individuals. This only added to the mistery that surrounded the band.

They had a huge appeal with teenage girls, and the mothers loved them. They were the exact opposite of what was seen in the media at the time. Clean-faced, innocent and conservative with old family values. Morten told the world that he didn't believe in sex before marriage, and that family was the most important thing in the world. The mothers lapped it up, if anything, they probably loved the boys more than their daughters. Probably for the first time in rock 'n roll history, a band came along that everyone approved of.

Not since The Beatles, did a band create so much hysteria. For more than a year a-ha dominated the music world. Take on me and the album Hunting high and low remained in the US and UK top 100 for months. Finally they proved that they are the best.

They won award after award for Take on me and, in the UK alone the album, Hunting High and Low reached platinum status 3 times. Six million copies of the single and more than 8 000 000 (8 million) copies of the album has been sold around the world.

1986 was a busy year for a-ha. The world was still on a Take on me high and a-ha was still raking in awards for it, when they released their second single in January of that year, The sun always shines on t.v. It shot up the charts, making it to nr.1 in the UK, but peaks at nr. 8 in the US. Over the next couple of months a-ha releases 4 more singles, Train Of Thought, Hunting High And Low , I've Been Losing You and, Cry Wolf, (each with an accompanying video) and their brilliant second album, Scoundrel Days - all this while on tour

And that's just the musical side of things. Through it all, they still had to promote the tour, the albums, their singles, attend award shows and make adverts.

Until 1986, a-ha never performed together on stage. Their first live performance together, was in February of that year at the Grammy awards. In June they arrived in Australia for the start of their first world tour.

According to Mags, their first couple of shows were horrendous. Although everything sounded good, and Morten's voice was perfect, they didn't have much stage experience. They charged through the shows, completely forgetting to interact with the audience.

They learned fairly quickly, as one does when thrown in the deep end of things, and Morten soon proved to be a natural. He's a strong 'front man' and has a very commanding presence on stage. If at all possible, a-ha's popularity soared.

In July a-ha visited Japan and in August they were back in the states for their much anticipated American & Canadian tour. This turned out to be a-ha's first and last tour in the US. They did not return until almost 20 years later for one show in New York. A few hours before their first show in Canada Morten had to go to hospital to have a blister, that formed on his vocal chords, popped. The show started an hour later, but they still performed.

The 1986 leg of the tour ended on 31 December and resumed again on 3 January 1987.