Morten in Radio Norge’s studio, February 13th

Morten was interviewed on the radio show Michael Direkte on P4 in Norway yesterday. Once again he talked about how rewarding the Brother album process has been:

“I have never before experienced an album coming together this easily, with such momentum all the way through. It’s been quite unique. I don’t think Peter Kvint has been part of something like this before either. So we’ve had to pinch ourselves several times along the way, as every writing session we’ve done has led to material that’s been used. It’s very special.”

He also mentioned the great response he’s been getting to the “Brother” single:

“The feedback has been really good, also from people that you don’t usually hear much from. So that’s been fun.”

The conversation also touched on the topic of drugs in the music business. Morten explained that Terry Slater made sure a-ha never encountered any drugs:

“Our first manager Terry Slater – we found this out years later – had approached people and almost threatened to kill them if we were offered anything. He had seen how destructive drugs could be, throughout his years in the business. So he was on a real crusade, against people in the record company, in the media and others around us. I can’t remember ever being offered drugs of any kind. I actually found it strange that I never encountered any of that, but it turned out to have a natural explanation.”

At the end, host Michael Andreassen talked about his own experience of interviewing the a-ha members individually and together. In his opinion all three of them come across as such fun guys when interviewed alone, but can almost behave like jerks when they’re doing promotion together:

“I can understand you saying that, because that’s also our own experience. We gradually started to split up and do individual interviews, partly because there was such a huge amount of promotion that needed to be done. But also because we came across better that way. But you have a point. (Pause) I can’t say exactly why that is, but we have spent so much time together, done so many things together and faced a lot of intense situations. And it’s a challenge to sit there and be interviewed about something that triggered you [in the studio] six months ago, back at the moment of creation, when you were riding that wave. So you’re interviewed about one thing, while your mind is in a different place completely. And the process of repeating yourself in interviews, plugging something; a-ha was never any good at that. Explaining who we are, what we are and what we stand for; selling that to the media was never one of our talents”, Morten said.

Morten also did an interview with Radio Norge yesterday, which was broadcast today. A small video clip from that interview has been posted on Instagram.