Both Morten Harket and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy were diagnosed with covid-19 after the Oslo Spektrum concert on 20 May. Five arena concerts took place, but this weekend a-ha is back during the Over Oslo festival.
Less than 20 minutes ago
a-ha manager Harald Wiik confirms to VG that the corona alarm went off in the a-ha camp after the Oslo concert almost three weeks ago.
– Morten began to feel signs of irregularities in his throat on Friday 20 May during the first concert in Oslo Spektrum. This condition worsened during the night, Wiik said.
The next day, Harket was diagnosed with laryngitis and the concert later in the evening had to be canceled. The same thing happened with two concerts in Bournemouth and Liverpool.
On Monday 23 May, both Morten Harket and Paul Waaktaar-Savoy tested positive for covid-19.
A new medical examination concluded that it was likely that Morten’s laryngitis was caused by covid-19, says Harald Wiik, who thus also had to cancel two concerts in London and Birmingham.
The vocalist himself was genuinely desperate to get sick in the middle of a world tour.
– Completely incapacitating! When your body denies you access to what is otherwise a matter of course, you are completely parked. It is very frustrating to go in a circle in the waiting room and not be able to say where this is going, from day to day, to everyone else who also gets their plans put on hold, says Morten Harket, who also emphasizes that this is a reminder of how fragile it is.
– It is almost unbelievable that I have escaped with so little dropout through almost 40 years of touring. A cold can be enough to strain a bone on a large appliance. For my part, it is almost impossible to avert all close contact with volatile groups of people during tours, in lobbies, elevators, in and out of hotels or at airports.
– Despite the fact that we have lived under strict restrictions when it comes to covid, I must have been exposed to infection on several occasions without developing symptoms. I almost started to think I was naturally immune. So I was not.
– Is your voice now completely recovered, or do you notice any kind of after-effects of the disease?
– It is not completely recovered, says Harket, who admits that “the healing process has been a bit messy”.
– One day the arrow has pointed up, the next it has shown a decline. There is a difficult balance between the desire to go on again and the risk of prolonging the course of the disease, but the last few days have been stably better and given hope that I can be on stage this weekend. The first test with the band yesterday was promising. If the voice shows the same signals tonight, there will be a concert on Friday and Saturday, Morten Harket tells VG.
Naturally, this was not a good experience for Paul Waaktaar-Savoy either. “Incredibly weird,” he says.
– We have had incredibly few cancellations during 30 years of tournaments, so we are not used to this. I’ve been using N95 masks pretty much constantly from the time I walked out the door at home in Venice, California until recently where it started to get more lax in the backstage area, plus we started getting more together on stage. Big mistake!
– It seems as if everyone in Norway pretends that this is just a slightly awkward flu, no one seems very worried about the long-term effect it can have on the body.
the a-ha guitarist at least got to see some tennis after he got sick.
– I lay on the couch and watched tennis – French Open – from morning to night. After the worst headache started to subside, I lit up the studio here at home so I could watch a little carefully new songs, he says.
By this studio he means the villa in Oslo.
– I took daily, short walks in Frognerparken or by Sognsvann. Lovely to be home in Norway again, despite everything!
According to manager Harald Wiik, this is only the third time that a-ha has to cancel a concert. Previously, it only happened during the first world tour in 1986/87, which was 129 concerts, and one on the tour in 2010 which consisted of 73 concerts.
Otherwise, Wiik says that due to pandemic delays, “it feels like an eternity since the first part of the” Hunting High And Low “tour went on sale in 2018”, but that they have now passed one million tickets sold.
– When we finally got started again in Argentina, it was not completely smooth. Musical director Erik Ljunggren tested positive for covid-19 on arrival and was isolated in a hotel room in Buenos Aires for ten days, says Wiik.
Magne Furuholmen – who has had corona – confirms that there have been strict corona restrictions along the way.
– Very strict corona routines have been observed on this tour through South America, the USA and Europe. We have also implemented a separate regime with masks on the crew and zero guests backstage to try to prevent Morten and Paul – who were the only ones of us who had not had covid already – from getting it, says Magne Furuholmen.
– When we came to Scandinavia, there were of course no restrictions on others, and quite impossible to implement a waterproof scheme. It has been up to each individual to exercise caution and take precautions. I think we all realize that it is almost impossible to avoid getting corona at some point, but we had hoped to avoid cancellations.
Now Furuholmen is looking forward to ending the tour on July 31, a tour which according to his own words has been “full of enthusiastic and grateful audience members”.
– We feel that it has been a pretty unique time to play for people after two years of global pandemic. By the way, we’re really looking forward to ending this tour at the Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra at the end of July – it’s definitely a bucket-list thing!
