A biography for Morten Harkethasn’t been written yet.
“I had always wanted to make music on a big scale but never knew how it was going happen - until I saw a band in Oslo called Bridges. I was stunned. They had everything. The only thing they didn't have was me. I knew I needed to join, not for my own sake but for the band's. I knew I was a necessary ingredient.”
“We ceased to be a band the moment we made it. It left us with nothing. We felt like a failure although we had commercial success.”
“I never liked the term 'fans.'”
“I'm attracted to people who are older rather than younger, and all ages have their potential and limitations.”
“The record company didn't know what we looked like at first. They were all excited about our tapes.”
“We sent a guy called Terry Slater a couple of demos, using the last of our money. And then things turned. He landed us a deal with Warners and said just keep coming up with songs, because when success hits you, you won't even know your name.”
“We were totally confident that we would make it internationally. We had no money or instruments. We used cake tins or bottles with water in them - anything to make sounds.”
“We knew we would make it and become very big.”
“One of the good things about being away is to digest things and maybe learn from things and see if there are better ways to get to where you want to be.”
“When we were kids, Stoke was massive in Norway.”
“We've never been very good at servicing fans. I'm here to concentrate on music, not to be a pen pal to people who write to me.”
“For a lot of fans from the early days, they probably had issues they were A-ha fans, because it probably wasn't 'cool.'”
“The pin-up thing took us completely by surprise. I found it hard because I got singled out, and I didn't like it. There was a lot of disillusionment.”
“Since I travel so much, my perfect Sunday would start by waking up at home with my partner Inez. We'd have breakfast with our little girl Karmen, maybe in our garden.”
“We got sick of interviews and performances - for a long time, it came back to doing 'Take on Me.' It became a circus number instead of music.”
“If I didn't travel so much, maybe my perfect Sunday would be skin diving on a coral reef - not scuba diving, as skin diving is more physical, and I prefer the lightness of it. Skin diving means wearing just goggles. Oh, I could wear some trunks, maybe.”
“We make music that we believe in. That's all it is.”
“You have to remember, videos were on the rise back when we did 'Take On Me.'”
“We became such darlings of a certain type of media. We became a package; we became easy to sell: these three golden nuggets that could pour out all the goods. It was all exposure in an almost violent way.”
“If looks help, that's great, but we don't want it to be the featured thing. It's totally superficial.”