30 minutes with … Howlin' Pelle Almqvist

The Hives are known for their onstage showmanship. Have you worked out a move that could top The Freeze (1)?

Yes. But I will keep it a secret. It's not perfected yet.

You sound like the Australian cricketer Shane Warne …

I sound like a cricketer? Is that an insult or a compliment?

It's a compliment. He was the greatest ever spin bowler and before every series he would promise to unveil a new delivery that would astound all observers, but he would keep it secret …

Ah! OK! That's good. I like that.

Can you give us any clues?

We have one that we excavated from the vaults as well. I guess somebody probably did it in the 60s, but for us it comes from a Finnish band called the Flaming Sideburns. Other people have done it as well (2), but they have ripped it off from us. It's where we get the entire audience to sit down. It's a good move as well.

You have already made the best rock'n'roll album ever (3) several times. Doesn't that make it hard to do it again?

It does, yeah. That's why it takes us so long. We get a lot of questions: "It's been four and a half years since your last album. Why did it take so long?" Well, why do you think? Have you heard the album?

You were introduced to UK audiences as Your New Favourite Band (4), but that was quite a long time ago – are you now our Old Favourite Band?

Old sounds like we've stopped being your favourite band, and I don't like the sound of that so I'll just say no. We are still your favourite band. Your perpetual favourite band.

Are there ever nights when you're not the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world?

Yeah. It happens. It's terrible. It's an awful feeling. After a show where you don't feel you've done your best there is a feeling of nausea and vertigo. And that's why we constantly have to try to be as good as we possibly can. Because no one wants that feeling of nausea and vertigo. It will follow you until you can redeem yourself by doing a good show.

Can the audience tell when you haven't been the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world?

Maybe if you've seen us a lot you could tell the difference. There is less ecstasy going on: you feel less greatness.

Moving on to the individual members of the Hives. What does Dr Matt Destruction hold his doctorate in? Destruction?

Bass guitar. He claims. I am not absolutely certain where you would get such a degree, but he claims to have one.

It would be very hard to get that postgraduate course funded these days …

Very hard. He could probably teach a course in it, though.

And exactly how dangerous is your drummer, Chris Dangerous?

He can be very dangerous. Apart from the fact that he is an extremely fast and safe driver. So the only time he would not be dangerous is behind the wheel of a car.

Isn't he getting a little less dangerous now, after nearly 20 years with the Hives?

It's sort of this thing where you have to project the fact that you can, at any moment, become dangerous. And you get better at it as you get older. If you are rumoured to be dangerous, you don't have to be dangerous that often. You can just establish: "Hello there, I'm dangerous. Don't try anything." And you can just perpetuate the image of being dangerous. He's practised so much that he can just cruise at altitude.

Vigilantism is widely frowned on. Does your guitarist Vigilante Carlstroem not fear the authorities might clamp down on his activities?

He doesn't talk a lot, so I don't know what he's thinking (5). But one would fear there's not a big fear of authority there.

I recently had to explain the concept of arson to my children, after telling them about Nicholaus Arson (6) while playing Lex Hives at home (7). Will you indemnify me in case they start burning things down?

Not really. That's down to your insurance company.

And down to you – in rock's league of howlers, who is the greater – you or Howlin' Wolf.

I think Howlin' Wolf is better than me. But that's just genetics. I've worked harder at it, but he was born with something extra.

Is the great Randy Fitzsimmons (8) still your writer and manager?

Yeah, he's still involved, but slightly less so. I feel like he trusts us more with every move we make in his spirit, so he doesn't have to steer us as much as he used to.

And how does he communicate his spirit to you?

Well, it's a little but like Chris and his dangerousness. We've been brought up in his school, so to speak, so we have developed similar aesthetic tastes, so we usually do the right thing. Otherwise he will smack us around a little bit, steer us back to the straight and narrow.

I would hate to imagine him having to email you, or tweet you …

Nah. He's not a very modern guy.

Has he never got fed up with being behind the scenes?

No. That's the funny thing – it makes people so nervous, this sort of Big Brother edge, because he doesn't want to be seen. I think that's where all the questioning about his existence comes from. People have been religious for millennia, and that takes a leap of faith, but that's the point. If you don't believe, you don't believe.

It's a very unusual name for a Swede, isn't it?

Oh, he's not Swedish. I think I've already said too much.

Have the Hives never felt the need to exercise their own creative muscles?

We've had our run-ins. There have been ideas about maybe doing something else, but it feels pretty perfect.

Would the Hives – being the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world – be capable of being the greatest at any kind of music they turned their hand to?

We would be capable of playing it. I just don't know how good it would be. For what we do, it doesn't really matter that much, but the band consists of some pretty accomplished musicians and we could fiddle with jazz and fiddle with reggae, and a lot of bands seem to do that. But being more stylistically diverse is watering down what's at the core of what you do, I feel. Even in art, there's basically just Picasso who could have 50 different phases that were all genius. For most people, it feels more powerful if an artist has something you can immediately recognise, and what you want as a band is to have people saying: "Oh, that band is like the Hives," not, "Oh, the Hives, they're like that band …" And in order to get to that point you have to have an identity. And to have an identity you have to be consistent.

Have the Hives ever felt they have had anything in common with the raggare (9)?

At first there was a big rivalry between punks and raggare. We liked a bit of both – but we were more punks, so I don't think the raggare took any notice of us. But there was a foot in each camp. It's like in the UK, if you are a rod or a mocker, you can be a little bit mod and a little bit rocker.

You share that love of American cultural heritage …

Absolutely. Most of our influences come from America, and there is something to be said for how much awesomeness has come out of American culture, as young as it is.

How do you feel about the state of American rock'n'roll at the moment?

Pretty shit. But I feel like for a very, very long time it has been pretty shit. There's always good stuff if you scratch the surface. But if you look at the nominees for best rock Grammy (10), there hasn't been a rock band there for 10 years. It's all pop bands with distorted guitars. Nothing blues-based, whatsoever. Well, a few things.

I take it you don't have a lot of time for emo, then?

Not really. We used to like it in the 90s – there were a few emo things we thought were good and we liked. I liked Jimmy Eat World and Fugazi. Then I hear people say the second Weezer album was an emo album, which I don't agree with at all. But for what it is now? No. It's pretty shit. It claims to be rock'n'roll but it's people constantly whining. Rock'n'roll is 50 drunk people in a room who want to have fun, but there's something extremely unsexy about it being perverted into middle-class guilt and whining. We like our rock'n'roll sexual.

All those words have had their meaning changed. Punk means something completely different now, doesn't it?

I have a friend who is writing a big bible on punk aesthetics. The last picture in the book was supposed to be a picture of Demi Moore on the cover of Architectural Digest, where it says "At home with Demi and Ashton" and she's wearing a Sex Pistols T-shirt. That's basically the end for punk. And David Beckham wearing a Crass T-shirt. It's all the fault of stylists. Stylists and anyone in trend analysis. That's the age of the hipster though – you take everything and you turn it into bland.

What does punk rock mean to you, then?

Punk rock to me is an era in rock'n'roll, one of my favourite eras in rock'n'roll. It's also an attitude, and it's been called different things – that attitude has existed probably since the youth gangs of Roman times. But my version of rebellion in puberty was punk rock, so it's probably the musical genre that's closest to my heart.

Over the past couple of albums the Hives have evolved. Do the gods of rock'n'roll look kindly on evolution?

I guess it depends. But yes. We do what we need to do in order to feel excited about playing rock'n'roll, and that sometimes means we need to stretch it as far as we can. I think The Black and White Album (11) was our way of going into space. But once we got there it was a little cold and lonely. So therefore now we have travelled to the Earth's core. I think Lex Hives is probably our most classic rock'n'roll album. So I think the gods of rock'n'roll are smiling on us at the moment.

You have become adept at provoking crowds. Has it ever gone horribly wrong?

It has. It used to go horribly wrong all the time, when there were fewer people at the shows. Then it becomes more personal to the people you're baiting. The crowds we used to play to – 20 punks – would have no issue with walking up on stage trying to fight us. You get some boos. But horribly wrong? You have to look it from an Andy Kaufman (12) perspective, where going horribly wrong becomes part of the art. Any reaction is better than no reaction.

It's interesting you mention Andy Kaufman: do you feel kinship with the notion of playing absurdist pranks on your audience and daring them to get it?

We do feel like that, yes. Some of it comes from comedians, but comedians that are not necessarily funny. Andy Kaufman might be the best example – as long as he liked it, he didn't really care what was going on. He seemed a little crazy too. Lenny Bruce, too – very confrontational standup comedians we took a few things from.

Is it hard to be an exciting band when rock'n'roll becomes a career rather than just an explosion of self-expression?

Everyone has that first moment, but if you don't quit then invariably there is a career after that. And I think that career is sometimes underestimated. People always say: "Oh they were good once." Like the Rolling Stones. First people said: "Oh they were good in 66." Then people said: "Oh they were better in 71." Then: "Oh they were also pretty good in 78." If you are band for a really long time you will have peaks and valleys, and the first peak will be most noticeable because then you are coming from nothing. But I also feel what happens after the explosion can be underestimated. But the first time is always the first time: you're worse at it, but it's gonna feel pretty exciting.

Finally, how important are ninjas (13) to rock'n'roll, and should more rock'n'roll bands employ ninjas?

The skills that are required to be a ninja are also the skills that are required to be a good backline tech, so it's worked really well for us. But I fear other bands probably shouldn't, because then we'd have to beat them up.

And is a ninja more useful than, say, a samurai?

Yeah, the ninjas are just hired guns. You pay them and they do their jobs. Also, their agility and ballet techniques and rappelling are more useful to us than a samurai just waving their sword around.

Footnotes

(1) Mid-song, the Hives all, well, freeze. Then they start again. It looks great, and it costs nothing.

(2) You can see the Flaming Sideburns doing it here. The Decemberists do it, too. Come on, Howlin' Pelle, you can do better than this.

(3) For the purposes of this interview, we will be taking all the Hives' claims about themselves and their greatness absolutely literally. We leave it to you to decide whether or not to accept them.

(4) The 2002 compilation on Alan McGee's Poptones label that introduced them to Britain.

(5) He was doing a round of interviews, so presumably he does talk sometimes.

(6) He's actually Howlin' Pelle's brother.

(7) Actually, I didn't. But given that the Hives are prone to creating their own mythologies, why can't interviewers, too?

(8) The Hives have always claimed their songs are written and their activities directed by this mysterious svengali. No one believes them. One journalist, with more time than sense, gave it the Woodward and Bernstein treatment and disovered Fitzsimmons was a pseudonym registered to Nicholaus Arson. In other news, the pope is Catholic. And have you heard what bears do?

(9) The Swedish cult obsessed with 50s Americana.

(10) The actual award for best rock album appears to be given in turn to Foo Fighters and Green Day.

(11) The 2007 album that saw them working with hip-hop production team the Neptunes, and which did not make them the biggest band in the world.

(12) Have you seen the film Man on the Moon? No? Go and watch it. It'll tell you all you need to know about Andy Kaufman.

(13) The Hives' roadies are all ninjas. Or, possibly, people dressed as ninjas.