IT will be greatest hits all the way when Norwegian pop stars A-ha perform in Newcastle next week.
Morten, Pal and Magne are calling it a day as a band with a farewell tour which sees them at the Metro Radio Arena on Tuesday.
I think you could call it our swansong,” lead singer Morten Harket tells me.
“This tour is really about the audience that we are playing for and what they should be entitled to expect. A retrospective, looking back on 25 years it has to include all the hits really – and doing that you fill up the night really!”
After nine albums and sales of more than 36 million worldwide, 2010 will mark the end to the expansive career of the pop greats.
“We’ve never really planned ahead the things we do. We respond to what we believe in,” continues Morten.
“A-ha has always been a quest about the songs – about writing that song, about getting that song, cutting it. The reason we got back together again 10 years ago was we felt our potential wasn’t really met, we hadn’t fulfilled what we were there to do and we’ve kept going from there and all of a sudden we are looking back on 25 years. It’s a huge chunk of our lives.
“It’s been a fantastic career, we’ve been very fortunate to have all this. We are privileged in many ways.
“The emotional aspect of it hits you for brief moments.”
If that is the case, why end the band now for good?
“For me, when I first started thinking about stopping at this point, I felt right about it,” says Morten.
“I felt it was a bold move, because we are in top shape really. We are in most ways a better group than we have ever been.
“We’ve just done an album that has done really well and we feel strong with that.
“It was our first truly cohesive album in a long time as we are three strictly strong personalities. We don’t mate easily.
“We’re not together because we want to be a band. We are together, all three, because we respond to that potential, that possibility that the three of us represent when we come together.
“A-ha is not Pal, it’s not me, it’s not Magne, it’s what happens when the three of us hit those moments.
“We feel at this point that the cup is full. We are privileged to walk somewhere else, to go away and leave something behind and still be in good shape to pick up other things.
“That album came from being fed-up with not doing that – by resigning into the strong characters of the three of us as opposed to responding to the potential of the three of us.
“One very important decision was to look back for the first time and try and figure out what it was about the very first period that had a particular touch to it in some ways.
“One thing that does stand out comparing it to later years is that we were forced to and had no other option but to deliver out music with whatever electronic devices were available in the studios that we could afford to rent.
“There was a strict limitation to our possibilities. That was partly what honed us into defining the A-ha sound. “It happened between the three of us. Later on we would get other people in, a bass player, a drummer, who would play a part in the developing of the songs.
“This time around we developed it between just the three of us again. Then when that was done we would maybe use another musician to play a part – but the part had already been created by us.”
To coincide with the farewell tour A-ha have also release a ‘very best of’ album, featuring all the hits, including Take On Me, The Living Daylights, Hunting High And Low and the latest single Butterfly, Butterfly.
Morten tells me he cannot single out any particular album or song as his favourite over the years. “All the albums fully met the time we were in in different ways. 2011 is a completely open book for me, a clean calendar.”