A-ha (often stylised as a-ha) were formed in Oslo in 1982, and consisted of lead vocalist Morten Harket, guitarist Paul Waaktaar (then known as Pål Waaktaar), and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen. Shortly after getting together, they left Norway for London in order to make a career in music, and they named themselves A-ha after Harket spotted a song called 'A-ha' in Waaktaar's songbook, and although he thought it was a terrible song, it was a great name. In April 1983, with funds running low, they booked themselves into a small Sydenham studio, Rendezvous, run by a man called John Ratcliff. The band ended up at Rendezvous almost by accident, allegedly booking it because it had a Space Invaders machine, but Ratcliff proved a generous patron when the band were at a low ebb, paying for them to make additional demos of the songs he thought were strongest, and renting them a flat at 221 Dartmouth Road, about 200 metres from the studio. Ratcliff introduced them to his manager, Terry Slater, and A-ha enlisted Ratcliff as a manager as well, with Slater and Ratcliff forming TJ Management, in which Ratcliff dealt with technical and musical aspects and Slater acted as the group's international business manager. One of the demo tracks recorded at Rendezvouz was called 'Lesson One', but before long it had been reworked into their breakthrough hit 'Take On Me', and with Ratcliffe's help in getting them a record deal with Warner Bros Records, it became their first single in 1984.
After it failed to chart, the song was re-recorded again with production by Alan Tarney, and when this also failed to chart it was finally re-released in 1985 with a new, ground-breaking video, and this time the song peaked at number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 and at number two on the UK Singles Chart. The video used a pencil-sketch animation/live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which individual frames of film are drawn over or coloured, and it became one of the most instantly recognizable and most enduringly popular music videos in the US. It was nominated for eight awards at the third annual MTV Video Awards in 1986, winning six, including Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Best Direction, Best Special Effects, Viewer's Choice and Best Video of the Year. A couple of other tracks demoed at Rendezvous were later re-worked for the band's debut album, 'Hunting High And Low', but many of the songs remained unheard until they were included on a free CD with the audiobook edition of the band's book 'The Swing Of Things' in 2004. Even then, not all of the Rendezvous demos were included, and so I've tracked down the missing songs, and we now have all of the tracks that the band recorded at the studio in 1983 and 1984. 'Days On End' features guitarist Waaktaar on piano and Harket on trombone, with the original title being 'If You Do', while 'Presenting Lily Mars' was inspired by the 1943 film of the same name, and was intended as a possible b-side or album track, and a couple of lines from these demos were later used in the songs 'And You Tell Me' and 'Dream Myself Alive'. So here are all these rarities now collected together on one album, titled after the studio where they were recorded.
Track listing
01 Take On Me
02 Days On End
03 Never Never
04 Monday Mourning
05 The Love Goodbye
06 Go To Sleep
07 Umbrella
08 Hunting High And Low
09 And You Tell Me
10 I've Been Losing You
11 Love Is Reason
12 The Swing Of Things
