Living a boy’s adventure tale

When I was just a little boy, I didn’t ask my mother what I would be. I already knew that I wanted to play guitar. I was in an imaginary band with Baz, Cyrus and Zubin, called “The Brillo Pads”. We used to stand in the hallway, playing imaginary instruments to some of our favourite bands of the time, such as Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and A-ha. As I grew up, and I learned to play instruments, and my appreciation of music grew, I kind of grew out of Def Leppard and Bon Jovi, but I wished I had seen A-ha play live.

Then, about three years ago, A-ha reformed. I recently bought a live DVD, and it was quite disappointing, to be honest. They played the songs quite proficiently, but it wasn’t exactly a great show. But by then, I had already bought my tickets to go and see them at the NEC Arena. The gig was last Saturday, and this time I was not disappointed!

Firstly, I did feel a little sorry for the support, a Norwegian lady with an acoustic guitar - would have been great in a café, but unfortunately did not work so well in an arena. She was obviously very good at guitar, and had quite a good voice, but the songs sounded quite samey after the second or third effort.

Then, the main event, from left to right: Magne Furuholmen (guitar, keyboards, vocals); Morten Harket (lead vocals); Pal Waaktaar (guitar, vocals). The three were ably supported by a bass player, an excellent drummer and an equally excellent keyboard player. They played most of the big hits, but thankfully omitted the awful “Cry Wolf” and the iffy “Touchy”. They also included a couple of surprises from the first couple of albums, in “Living a boy’s adventure tale” and “The weight of the wind”. Interspersed with two or three new songs from their forthcoming album, it was a crowd-pleasing setlist.

Song highlights included “Manhattan skyline”, “I’ve been losing you”, “Crying in the rain”, and the incomparable “The sun always shines on TV”. However, the most pleasing aspect was that they mixed it up a bit, changing the arrangements on many songs, with Mags playing a lot more guitar. “Stay on these roads”, “The living daylights” and the aforementioned “Manhattan skyline” were particular beneficiaries of this approach.

The new songs were, well, OK. The pick of the bunch was probably the title track from the forthcoming album, “Analogue”. This was the first song of the encore, and if a new young band were to release it, I think it would get played to death on Radio 1 and probably go high into the charts. But as they are old, it may only get played on Radio 2 and get ignored by much of the public, despite the fact that it is an excellent pop song.

I have to say that this was a major improvement on the performance showcased in the “Live at Vallhall” DVD. The use of extra guitar instead of keyboards added a new dimension to several of the songs, and the band dynamic seemed a lot tighter. Interestingly, both on the night and in the DVD, it is quite apparent that although Morten is an excellent singer, he is not really a frontman. It was left to Mags to provide most of the introductions and between-song banter. Pal remained very quiet except when introducing one of the new songs, preferring to let his guitar do the talking - incidentally, he is an excellent guitarist, with a dynamic that would seem out of place on the records, but he manages to incorporate into the live show; it is almost a jazz-blues style of playing, which wouldn’t necessarily sit so well with the synth-pop on so many of the records.

So, a great live show, and a good time had by all. Unlike Faithless last week, the evening was not ruined by a drunken idiot behind me. However, it was a shame that two people in front chose to stand up all the way through, with little consideration for those of us whose view was obscured. Poor old Nicola was not having a great day, and was too tired to stand up, and she wasn’t really able to see much of the show at all. I think it is fair to say that everyone left satisfied, and I am certainly happy that I have finally seen one of my favourite bands from my childhood. Unfortunately, going to see them made me feel really old - the average age of the crowd must have been well into the 30s, if not older! Still, I suppose to look at it another way, Nicola and I must have been amongst the youngest in the crowd (apart from the handful of children dragged along by their parents)! So thanks to A-ha, keep it going and I may even be tempted to buy the new album!