The New Cue #308 August 7: Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist
"Benny Andersson has been in The Hives, how’s that for a headline?"
Good morning!
Need some help waking up? The Hives will do it, a band so positively up’n’at’em that Monday morning thinks about The Hives the way that you think about Monday morning. A listen to their latest blast of frenetic garage-rock whilst you read our interview with frontman Pelle will blow away the cobwebs:
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Enjoy the edition,
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist
This Friday, The Hives release their first record in a decade. It caps off a summer of sizzling live shows where the Swedish quintet have re-acquainted fans with their charismatic, chaotic garage-punk. It’s been their stock-in-trade since breaking through with their second record Veni Vidi Vicious in the early ‘00s, a sound that they’ve kept well-oiled and in good condition ever since. There have, and there probably never will be, any Hives ballads. New album The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons is another full-throttle collection of lean, keen rock’n’roll bangers. Part of their charm has that they always seem like they’re having the time of their lives – who wouldn’t want to be in that gang? They are still admirably sticking to the myth that all their songs are written by an elusive figure called Randy Fitzsimmons, whose disappearance and death is the stated reason why they haven’t been able to release a new album for ten years, but frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist says below that it won’t be another ten-year wait for the next record – if it is, he’s quitting (although, as one of rock music’s most entertaining frontman, it’s hard to see him handing in his P45). Two weeks ago, Niall spoke to Pelle about being out of action, the rules of fashion, the time Benny Andersson joined The Hives and more…
Hey Pelle, how’s it going?
Pretty good, how are you?
I’m good, cheers. Where are you at the moment?
Athens, Greece and the heatwave Cerberus is upon us. It’s 40 degrees in the shade.
Whoa, I was just reading about that. How is it?
It’s pretty toasty, I’m trying to stay indoors and conserve energy for the show. I went to the pool and burned my feet walking away from the pool. It’s pretty nuts.
Stage-wear wise, are you still going to go full suits or are you going to make amendments?
We would never. It’s full suits or no show.
What about those suits with shorts?
We don’t have suits where we wear shorts, you’re thinking about AC/DC!
But would you ever consider it in extreme heat?
I think the first rule of looking cool is making no concessions to weather, like if you’re in shorts on the North Pole, or you’re in a full suit in the Sahara Desert, you’re going to look cool. That’s number one - you dress for a look, not for comfort. First rule of fashion is that you’ve got to be at least a little bit uncomfortable, so this will be a lot uncomfortable but I also think people see it as impressive, wearing a full suit in 50 degree heat. It’s like when I cut my head open at a show recently and kept going. People love that shit. People love when a band looks unstoppable and so do I, so we’re gonna have to just be unstoppable.
I was reading about that show [Pelle performed a swing of his microphone and it went wrong and he hit himself in the head]. How did you feel after?
I felt great! The only problem is my neck went out a little bit, but the forehead and the bleeding, that was all fine. But my neck is still a little weird from that, so less head banging for a bit.
What’s the worst war wound you’ve got on stage?
I fell off stage in Switzerland, landed on my head, got a concussion and passed out at the third song and I finished one more hour of rock’n’roll because I woke up from having passed out, or I was woken by Vigilante [Carlstroem, guitarist], who shook me, which you’re probably not supposed to do if somebody falls on the concrete from a three-metre high stage. I finished the show and then after the show, they said ‘the security guard say you passed out’. I didn’t remember passing out, but he said that if you pass out, that’s a concussion and if you get a concussion, you got to stay away from loud noises and bright lights, and obviously I did the opposite of that. So they strapped me into on a stretcher and drove me to a hospital where a nurse named Troll would wake me once every hour and shine a flashlight into my eyes to see if my pupils dilated or not. I think that’s the worst war wound.
You came out of it with a good story, though.
Pretty close to dying I think actually! But I didn’t, so we’ll be happy about that.
It feels like a triumphant return of The Hives this summer. How is it for the band?
Feels good, man, it seems like everyone’s been waiting. We’ve picked up a lot of new fans, which is always good for regrowth. It’s looking good out there for The Hives at the moment, way better than the past 10 years, which looked fucking shit since we didn’t put any music out. Still popular though, people still love us but it’s not fun not being active in a recording sense, it was not fun.
You’ve done bits and pieces and played live but this is the first new album in ten years. What was behind that?
We didn’t have the songs. We didn’t have any contact with Randy Fitzsimmons, who’s the guy who writes the songs. He disappeared, he’s now presumed dead. So that’s why we didn’t have any songs, that’s why we couldn’t make a record and that created a lot of tension in the band, like how do you finish a record without songs? You can’t basically but then songs surfaced and after that, we moved pretty swiftly and made an album.
What are you like when you’re not on Hives duty, doing real life stuff?
Tons of stuff, just different life stuff. I don’t know how interesting it is. For me, it feels like real life is on stage with The Hives. The rest of it is transport to the show. But yeah, I’m having a pretty good time. You know, got some hobbies, got some people I like to hang out with. I don’t know, I’m being pretty vague, I just don’t think it’s that relevant.
I just want to know…
I’m sure you do want to know!
Haha… I just want to know what hobbies Pelle from The Hives has.
Hobbies man, hobbies are corny. It’s a jobbie, my favourite pastime was anything to do with music or rock’n’roll. I like playing rock’n’roll. I like listening to it. I like thinking about it and then I turned it into a job and then you’re out of hobbies. But if you’re going to be in The Hives then unfortunately you’re going to have to have hobbies that make you physically tired so you can keep up onstage. You’ve got to be in pretty decent shape to do what we do.
I bet. Congratulations on the record, it’s excellent. Do you talk much about what you’re going to do before you do it, or just do it?
Yeah, there’s mountains of philosophy and theses and ideas and what comes out is normal rock’n’roll. But there’s a lot of fucking intellectualising, unfortunately, which is the way we’ve always done it. We spend a lot of time talking about how we’re going to play and then we just kind of play it. People ask for advice, like, ‘You got any tips for young bands?’, and our way of doing it is that we want everything to sound like a debut album. There’s a feeling to debut albums and I think we cracked the code, which is that we rehearse a shitload and we play the songs a lot, like a band that just started out and don’t record, so we rehearse a lot and then record really quickly, like we couldn’t afford studio time, we had to fake that thing. How does it start? There’s bits and pieces of songs, and we got to put them together in a way that makes sense. It’s a lot of fucking lego’ing and piecing this part with that part. A lot of times, we’ll have a verse for 10 years, and we never come up with a second part that’s as good as that first part so we can finish it. Bogus Operandi, the idea for that is pretty old.
I guess the trick is that it doesn’t sound it’s been sitting around, it just comes roaring out the cage.
Yeah, it’s a lot of work making it sound as easy and that’s what we want, that’s the finest compliment we can get if it sounds like we just made it up and played it and ran out, like all natural. But there’s a lot of work and put into making it feel natural.
I heard that you recorded some of the album in Benny Andersson’s studio.
Yeah, it’s true. The two best studios in Stockholm now are owned by Benny Andersson, and one of the heirs to the IKEA empire owns the other one. Those are our favourite studios to record in because they’re the best ones. It’s hard to run a commercial recording studio, you have to have a lot of money behind it and interest because having a big professional recording studio in Stockholm on its own to just rent out, you wouldn’t make money doing that, so we’re glad these rich people can afford to keep their studios we can go record in them.
Did Benny come to the studio?
Last time we recorded there he did. He came in and said, ‘Are there any hits?’.
Haha, what did you say?
We’re not interested in hits, it’s rock and roll dammit! A rock’n’roll career is different from a pop career. It’s great if there is a hit or something, but it’s more of a long game. I mean, I’m not saying ABBA are not good at playing the long game, but they’re different schools of thought, rock’n’roll and pop. But he’s a great guy. He played organ with us on a Swedish TV show. We did a song for a horror movie called Blood Red Moon, it was a while ago, and we played it on a Swedish talk show, a Letterman-ish thing, and Benny played organ. I think it’s the first time he’s played organ since the 60s - he was in the 60s garage band called the Hep Stars - and I think that was the first time he's played organ since then. That was kind of cool. Benny Andersson has kind of been in The Hives, how’s that for a headline?
You’ve amassed a great collection of onstage quips over the years. Does anything ever go down like a lead balloon?
Of course, but I think there’s always something to say for the next song that could work. In order to succeed, you also have to fail. Especially if it’s that improvised. I say stupid shit all the time, I just have to make sure that I say enough good stuff to cover it up. I constantly make a fool of myself, but that’s part of the fact there’s no safety net and it’s all my own stuff, so I’m just gonna have to deal with that.
When did you first realise you were a really good frontman?
I don’t know, it’s mostly something other people say, I just do it as well as I can. We have a good close old friend of the band who said that he thought we were shit in the beginning, the band was shit, the songs were bad, but he said, ‘you were always entertaining’.I guess we’ve always had that element of it, for some reason that I don’t even know myself. We’ve been entertaining, even when we sucked. I just do what I do and hope it works out. I notice a lot of people are saying that about me and thanks. Actually... I think I’m gonna have to re-answer that question. I think I realised when I saw other frontmen.
Haha!
I don’t really think I’m that good but when I see other people, it’s like, ‘yeah, I guess I am’ or, ‘they’re bad’. I find it weird that people would be in that situation, standing on a stage with a crowd in front of you playing songs and not react to that in any way. Like, you just stand there, you play the songs, you don’t say anything between the songs. That’s so much more bizarre to me than doing what I do, basically pretending this isn’t a weird situation, which it obviously is. I’d have a hard time doing that. I have a hard time buying that, it looks fake to me, I think. But I know most people think it’s real or it’s a sensitive artist and they can’t talk but to me, it seems contrived to not react like ‘holy shit, there’s a lot of people here, that’s weird!’.
Have The Hives ever been close to splitting up?
There’s definitely been times when we’ve had a terrible time. There’s been a couple of times when we were probably close to splitting up. When our own indie label tried to sell us to a major label, we were pretty close to splitting up. That was a long time ago. Probably a couple of times during this past decade when we didn’t put out a record, are we even a band if we don’t put out music? I don’t know how close it’s been, though, because we never have broken up. But those are the two closest calls that I can remember.
What do you think it is that pulls you back and keeps you together?
The fact that we have no other marketable skills.
That’s also why I’m a music journalist.
Haha, no, I don’t really know man. I think it’s a pretty sweet deal to be in The Hives. Our quote-unquote new bass player The Johan And Only has been in the band for a decade now and it’s his advice to other people who have a tough time in life, like, ‘I think you should join The Hives, it made my life better’. I think we all know that it’s pretty amazing to have a life where you get to just do what you want 80% of the time and then once in a while, you have to go away and play to thousands of people who love you and then you get to go home back to doing exactly what you want all the time. It’s not really a bad life. And the fact that it still feels like there’s a mission left to accomplish, it’s like an ongoing piece of art in a way. We want to see what The Hives do next as much as our fans do because we don’t have full control over it. But we’re interested and intrigued to see what happens next.
So you’re determined to make sure it’s not another 10 years before the next record?
Yeah, I won’t do that again. I’d quit before I wait 10 years to make a record, I hope the other guys feel the same.
What’s the most Spinal Tap thing that’s ever happened to you?
Oh, you’re actually talking about 30 years in the rock’n’roll business. It’s all fucking Spinal Tap. OK, so we’re at Radio City Music Hall in New York. We’re doing the MTV Video Music Awards and we go downstairs to leave to go to the hotel, and we get mobbed by a group of 30-40 fans who come running after us screaming and we’re supposed to go to the cab and leave. Radio City Music Hall has many exits so we go to the exit to get to the cab and when we get there, instead of a cab, there’s a horse and a buggy that we don’t all fit into, and then the fans catch up with us.
Hahaha. Thanks for your time Pelle, I hope the show goes well.
I hope so too. No worries man, thanks Niall. It was nice talking to you.
ND