A Lamb To The Slaughter



He was the denim king when we were first introduced to him. A childishly mischievious guy with a cheeky grin, but underneath it all was so much more than an altogether fun persona. Time has pronounced Magne Furuholmen as an intellectual with a serious mind, passionate heart and a conflicted psyche. Never boring, never quite understood and extremely hard to figure out. He is the member the fan base have opposing views, seeing him in one of two ways when really he is something inbetween. In "A Forever Thing" I called him a 'Jekyll and Hyde' and I stick to that and will try in this little piece to explain why.

Magne Furuholmen has always been a very interesting character, bringing to many of us a rare insight into a powerful and most individual psyche. I kept my eye on him, tried to understand him and in the period of almost 14 years, actually came to have a great respect for him and his multiple characterisations. I guess he is the one member I have the strongest opinions, the member who was overlooked more times than acknowledged, but deserved so much more. He was always more than the band clown or brooding artist. Magne Furuholmen is to me anyway a tortured soul and a man who paid too hefty a price for fame. He is a man who needed to express and in doing so found himself in yet more chains, having a love/hate relationship with what he desired most.

I have to say it was easy in the 80's to assume that Magne was having the time of his life, after all, he was always messing around, playing practical jokes and generally making every a-ha show something so exciting and energised. But, in the midst of all this were one or two interviews, written reports that were in conflict. "Så Blåser Det På Jorden" for one has many an insight into the real state of mind Magne carried at the earliest of a-ha's days, a TV AM UK interview adding a little extra salt into already open wounds. Magne understood that fame was like a circus, that he was the clown not the ringmaster and that the price was high. He likened it to a kiss of death, realising a day would come when he would need the fans affection more than they needed him and in some ways, his lyrical "fool" who believed the stories, was a hopeful Magne wanting to believe that fame for him could be less fickle, yet it was not.

I see Magne in a more darkened light I guess and he may be offended to read that I do see him this way. I have always felt he was hiding behind a facade as self preservation - a smile, a joke and then a beard. I have discussed this with so many at this juncture, and it still makes sense. Can you believe that when Magne first hit the big time he was only 21!! - that is quite a young age to be cast to the lions as he was.

So where do I begin? Should I start by saying that he lost out at singing for Bridges because his voice was breaking and Pål thought, as he had written the lyrics, that he should be the vocalist. Should I mention the fact that Magne was pushed onto the keyboards when he wanted to be a guitar player, or should we skip musical stuff and talk about the time when he gave a tramp in London his last remaining money? I have a lot of such anecdotes that make us warm to this guy, but I want to get into why many stopped feeling that way.

The oncoming of the beard....


There was a rumour that Magne Furuholmen had suffered a nervous breakdown after the making of "Stay On These Roads", but the truth of that situation is not known. All we know is, that by the release of the next album "East Of The Sun..", Magne Furuholmen had undergone some pretty drastic changes. The beard is the first thing, and so many take it just as it is - a growth of hair - after all through the eighties numerous newspaper reports would inform the fans that Magne wanted to grow a beard and couldn't etc, etc, now, here it was and larger than anticipated too. I always thought that was a little too easy and psycholgically tried to see the bigger picture. If you think about it, the beard arrived at a time when he grow moody, aloof, no more the fun loving Mags many had come to love. He was now Magne, cold, unavailable for most of the time and the fear people had of getting on the wrong side of him was incredible.

The German fan club once ran a piece where a girl wanted to give Magne a gift, but on this particular day - he wasn't in one of his better moods and the girl so terrified asked Pål to give it to him. Pål interestingly enough also declined to approach Magne. Is this story true? I don't know, but the power of Magne's moods is undeniably strong.

I see this phase as being very similar to that which Jim Morrison undertook later in his career. Tired of being the 'Lizard King', needy of having his poetry taking seriously, he deliberately grew a beard, gained weight and took a more serious attitude. Magne in my opinion did just that - tried to be taken more seriously as an artist, song writer, moving away from the sexual image he had as a teen idol. The beard for me at least was yet another cloak for him to hide behind. Like Pål and his sun glasses, Magne was able to hide behind the facial hair, a mask so to speak and no one can deny that the day he finally shaved it, he had completely transformed, not caterpillar to butterfly as he was never to be that soft again, but from young and confused, to well - to Magne F. He was older, wiser, detaching himself from the imagary of the industry and trying to have a normal existence if such a thing is possible; Seeing through the pretense and fighting against the fickle fan attention by being distant, inaccessible. It worked too as fans reassessed their view, respecting his multi layered personality and at times even respected his need for distance. There are still the odd horror story of fans behaving badly - there always are, and this time the worst of all unfortunately was regarding the British fan contingent crowding him in a London hotel bar to such an extent that they were thrown out on Magne's request.

This event took place the evening of the Subterrania concert and the day we all saw Magne beardless after many months, sauntering down the road with a cigarrette hanging out of his mouth. He was so cool, so empowered and like I say - inaccessible and a bit broody. That evening he was a whisky swigging Magne, a chain smoking Magne - but Magne - no longer a Mags, carrying an air of something powerful, a presence of sheer masculinity and I found his aura invigorating.



As much respect as I have for him as a musician and person, the one thing I am not completely in tune with is his artistic self. I know nothing about texture, brush strokes and the like, - I just know what I find pleasing to look at and while Magne has given me something to enjoy in his sketches, I just don't get his wood cuts as interesting as they appear, some striking in colour. But they don't speak to me. This, however, doesn't stop me from acknowledging that he is successful in that field and that to be creative in this way fulfills him in ways music couldn't. I mean, I often sit back and go Wow - is there anything this guy can't do. He paints, he plays instruments, writes music and is contemplating a novel and .... he used to read Tarot cards at one point in his life!!! This guy is amazing and yet there are never enough people ranting and raving about him - even in the a-ha circles. That astounds me.

Above anything else though, Magne Furuholmen is a Family man and he has protected his children well from his own trappings of fame. Where Morten has taken his children on tour on more than one occassion and has a child "star" in his Jakob appearing on Swedish television, Magne's two children are gratefully elusive. It is very rare we see the Furuholmen boys, in fact I have never seen Magne and Heidi's second child and I feel that is how it should be. I recall with distaste a Bergen hotel lobby where the Harket sons found themselves in the line of fan camera fire - so close the various flashes would have been blinding and disconcerting for the two innocents. Is it Morten's fault for taking them with him? Perhaps, but fans should know better then to behave like the baying for blood papparazzi.

Magne loves his Family, protects them from the hordes and above all tries his hardest to be there for them - at home. An interesting interview once declared that while on tour, working away, Magne sent his children letters and drawings via Fax to ensure they wouldn't forget him and it is no wonder that on the last tours Magne seemed more than a little dissatisfied. Unfulfilling as a-ha were to him at that point, seperated from your kids cannot be easy. I think it also a right point in the piece to say how uplifted I am by the relationship he has with Heidi. They were together so long before they married, survived the years of chaos as a-ha musically conquered the world and what is more, the marriage is still (as far as I know) going strong. Magne Furuholmen was never ashamed to declare his being in love, showed that men were capable of great feeling and has proved that some relationships can last through great upheavals. Maybe we should be giving the praise to Heidi who has possibly been the controlling influence on keeping everything down to earth and workable - never letting him forget who he is and where he came from. Either way, hats off to a relationship that works for a change. It is rare we see such continuity.

(Jesus I am getting cynical in my old age)

I am not, by the way here saying that Heidi and Magne love each other far more than Pål and Lauren and I am not saying that Morten loves his children any less, but there is something special about Mr and Mrs Furuholmen. I cannot pin point what it is exactly, maybe it is just the normality of it who knows. Yet, while Pål and Lauren have all this heavy duty intense love and longing surrounding them and Morten's relationships are, well ... (enough said), Magne and Heidi are in many ways a very normal, everday couple, give or take a few million kroner and an artist/ musicians existence.

To round this piece off is hard. Maybe after all I have said I do need to remind us all that Magne gave as much as any musician could, any idol could in this crazy business. I have concentrated on the change in him because it hit a nerve in me and I felt it needed expressed, but I don't in any way mean to take away the memory we have of him as the guy flat on his back in a hotel lobby in 1986 signing autographs without complaint. I am not trying to forget the playfulness he possessed. I personally can't forget the way he rode a Fake ostrich on Superstore and in yellow tights too!!, and more importantly you cannot listen to an a-ha album without hearing a piece of his soul in there somewhere. "The Way We Talk", one of the greatest a-ha tracks ever capturing Magne so well, blowing us away with the character in his voice, the emotion in his piano to name just one of my favourites. But I can also never forget the way people fail to notice just how badly he wanted to succeed, to simply make music and yet be denied the respect he earned.


Magne F has paid his dues. Magne F is one of the most fascinating individuals I have ever had the fortune to be aware of. Magne F can do whatever he puts his mind to and the older he gets, the more proficient he becomes so we had all better watch out, for one day Magne Furuholmen will truly arrive and finally on his terms.




Read more about Magne from Magne in Metamorphosis. The Interviews from Norwegian Press.