Paul Is Live!

Paul Waaktaar-Savoy performing with
A-ha in Chicago, IL. May 13, 2010.
Photo ©Jeremy Clowe. All rights reserved.

Yesterday music journalist David Weiss posted an interview with my favorite songwriter of all time, Paul Waaktaar-Savoy, on his New York-based music website sonicscoop.com. For those who don't know, Paul was the co-founder and guitarist of the band A-ha, as well as the writer behind some of the most beautiful songs ever, including Hunting High and Low, Dark Is The Night, Shadowside, and even more with his other band, Savoy. 

Since A-ha's farewell concert in December 2010, I have been dying to know what he's been up to. There has been the occasional news, such as a collaboration with singer Jimmy Gnecco for the movie soundtrack song, Weathervane, but it's mostly been quiet... this article is very welcome, as it gives us a personal tour of the songwriter's New York City studio in SoHo, and professional discussion about the gear he uses to bring his songs to life.


Some highlights from the article:


"Most of the stuff I write needs a certain atmosphere to work at all, so I’m very sensitive to achieving that for an instrument or vocal — I have to have that thing that gives me shivers. If I don’t feel it, we’ll work on something else. Obviously the performance is the most important thing, but you can help it along."

“When you grow up, all you want to do is what you love to do,” says the soft-spoken Savoy. “The first time I started a demo studio in NYC, it was all tape machines – now it’s much more doable to make a great-sounding album. The technology now gives me more time to work on the things that I find to be more important.”

I also appreciated hearing him talk about finding "breathing space" to create, as the computer allows him to become more selective about the musical tools that take up his home studio space: “It works a lot better. I like to experiment, but if you have too many things, you don’t get around to it. Synths with 15,000 presets becomes like Lord of the Rings – it’s endless.”

And... a comment about hit songs: “A song may have been catchy or on the radio, but if it doesn’t move me, it’s not something I’ll take a lot of time trying to emulate. In A-ha, we always decided that if a song gives us the vibe, then that’s what we go for – it will give everyone else the same vibe. There’s nothing more complicated than that. That’s why we thought every song we ever did would be a hit.”

Amen. 


Here's a short clip of me interviewing Paul back in 2005. Here, I am asking him about the 1986 A-ha song, I've Been Losing You. The songwriter was reading a lot of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoyevsky at the time, and it seems that some of that dark tone rubbed off... musically, the simultaneous recording of the band's more commercial-friendly hit, "Cry Wolf," influenced some of the rhythms (I had no idea):

More about the documentary soon...

Related Link:

"Paul Savoy of A-ha: Inside His SoHo Song Incubator," www.sonicscoop.com, April 1, 2012