Quotes from Morten Harket

I didn't feel like I fitted in. I felt like I was a hindrance to A-ha.

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 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.

I feel very strong about 'Brother.' This is me. I've been writing with a much more free sky, open and free.

My younger brother was a big Stoke fan, and I was sucked into it. I was kind of waking up every morning and looking at Gordon Banks' face! We had all these small football cards - literally hundreds of them - and swapping them was the currency back then.

Mind you, the limelight exists anywhere in the world. When you're not in the U.K., it can be as active somewhere else in the world, and for me, that's more or less been the case, so I never dropped out of the limelight in that sense.

We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money - we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.

We had a large spell in 1985-86, but we would have had to move to the States and be available all the time, so we chose to remain a European act.

I love just being in the sphere of nothingness looking inwards.

I'm not an entertainer; I'm an engager. I never sell myself, in a sense.

I've never been uncomfortable being a frontman.

Just to be spontaneous and free is life's biggest luxury and privilege when life is so busy.

I grew up in a small mountain town in Norway, and I remember miming to the Beatles on the couch when I was about six, singing into a broomstick, but this was a country that only had one radio station. There was no music around, really.

When we were kids, Stoke was massive in Norway.

I don't abuse my body - I don't drink much alcohol, don't smoke and never have - but that's the same of many people. I don't think I've ever stopped ageing myself.

People think the chorus is the hard part in 'Take on Me,' but they're wrong. The hard part was making the verses bounce.

Anything can be interesting as long as you access it from the right angle.

You have to remember, videos were on the rise back when we did 'Take On Me.'

It's great to play live. I love it and appreciate it more than I did in the early days. It's a central part of being in A-ha.

For a lot of fans from the early days, they probably had issues they were A-ha fans, because it probably wasn't 'cool.'

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.

I'm attracted to people who are older rather than younger, and all ages have their potential and limitations.