The Swede Smell Of Success

07/25/2002 11:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Lyndsey Parker

It's a lovely, sunny afternoon at Warner Bros. Records' L.A. headquarters, where the lobby displays an impossible-to-miss, life-sized cardboard cutout of the major label's unlikely new great white hope: Swedish garage-punks the Hives, in all their sharp-suited, wraparound-shaded glory. Warner has recently reissued the Hives' Veni Vidi Vicious, and guitarists Nicholaus Arson and Vigilante Carlstroem (probably not their given names) are promoting the album with a round of press interviews in the WB courtyard, preferring the woodsy outdoor setting to the stuffy confines of the label's fluorescent-lit offices. Reclining in the California sunshine, both black-haired, blue-eyed Swedes seem unexpectedly relaxed, utterly unfazed by their sudden success.

"We really think it makes sense for us to be popular, because we think that we're a really, really, really good band," Arson asserts with casual confidence, as he leans back on a boulder and engages in a bit of absentminded air-drumming. "But we never thought that we'd be popular during our lifetime. We thought that we would make three records, break up, and then 15 years later, people would catch on and realize they were good records."

Luckily, it hasn't taken 15 years for the public to take notice of this mighty mod squad's Cavern-Club caveman rock: Veni Vidi Vicious's sublimely scuzzy single, "Hate To Say I Told You So," is a surprise hit, with its freewheeling, freakbeat grooviness (think early Kinks, Pretty Things, Troggs, speedfreak-era Beatles) sounding amazingly fresh sandwiched between slabs of stale nu-metal on modern rock radio. It's defiantly nihilistic yet still the feelgood hit of the summer, and there's more where that came from: Other VVV tracks, boasting such truly brilliant titles as "Main Offender," "A Get-Together To Tear It Apart," and (this writer's personal favorite) "Die, All Right!," positively ooze with just as much primitive cool.

This is the band that puts the "raw" in rawk 'n' roll. While other acts heavy-handedly ProTool their albums into overproduced, personality-free marketing products, on VVV the Hives spurt out 12 short, sharp, shocking doses of pure audio amphetamine in less than a half-hour, plain and simple. And their shows never carry on much longer than that, ensuring that fans are always left breathless and begging for more. "Music gets kind of boring when it goes on long," says Carlstroem of his group's no-frills, all-thrills approach. "Even if it's good, it gets to be too much."

But speaking of going on too long...What's all this about breaking up after only three albums? The Hives already have two releases under their dapper black belts, Veni Vidi Vicious (originally released in 2000) and 1997's Barely Legal--but now that they're finally catching on internationally, surely they won't stick to their play-fast-quit-young policy and pack it in after album number three, going out in an Arson-powered yet premature blaze of glory?

"People have a hard time believing that," says Arson. "I think nowadays everyone wants to be famous for doing nothing, so people have a hard time understanding why someone wouldn't want to be famous for doing something. But we never did this to be popular in any way. The reason why did it is for egoistic reasons: We wanted to have the records in our hands. That people like them, that's nice, and we might want to continue, but that's why most bands lose their heads--because they want to 'do well,' and they want to have people like them." However, Arson does provide some hope for those who'd like to see this particular band continue, adding with a wry grin, "Of course, remember, we did make these rules when we were 13--an age when your attention span is really short!"

Yes, Arson, Carlstroem, and their even more spectacularly monikered bandmates--Chris Dangerous (drums), Dr. Matt Destruction (bass), and Arson's pretty pinup of a brother, Howlin' Pelle Almqvist (lead vocals)--have been playing together since their preteens, when they were assembled, as the band's self-perpetuated legend goes, by a mysterious Svengali named Randy Fitzsimmons (Arson denies rumors, circulated by the British music press, that he and Fitzsimmons are one and the same). This Fitzsimmons character, who is credited with writing all of the Hives' songs, allegedly contacted the five future Hives via mail, sending each of them an anonymous invitation to a blind-date band rehearsal. His disciples dutifully showed up, and the rest is rock 'n' roll history.

"It may sound strange, but it isn't that strange, because that's what you did when you were a young punk," Arson deadpans. "Like, if you didn't have a record, you asked around the punk crowd, people who went to shows and stuff, and sometimes someone would just send you a letter: 'Meet me at the train station at 5 o'clock.' And you'd go there and you'd get the record. I don't think it was any weirder that a band was put together that way."

It actually seems weird that a punk band, or any kind of punk scene, would develop in a place like the Hives' speck-on-the-map hometown of Fagersta, Sweden (population: 12,000). But Arson is quick to point out, "Most really good music comes out of boredom. Most places that have very good rock music are pretty boring! Most of the really, really good bands we always liked were from the suburbs, which is kind of a boring place to be with a lot of time on your hands. Like, the Stooges were from Ann Arbor, and the Sonics were from Tacoma, not Seattle."

And so, these swanky Swedes spent the next 10 years kicking out the jams in obscurity, inspired by a handful of touring acts--NoFx, L7, Biohazard, Youth Of Today--brought into Fagersta by the head of the Hives' record label, Burning Heart. ("That makes a pretty big impression when you're 13," Arson marvels, recalling the shows he saw as a wide-eyed young punk.) But it wasn't until the U.K. press caught onto them last year--after former Creation Records honcho Alan McGee released the Hives' best-of compilation, Your New Favorite Band, on his fledgling new Poptones label, shifting a quarter-million units in the process--that they were suddenly catapulted to levels of next-big-thingdom not reached since the Strokes first knotted their skinny ties.

And speaking of skinny ties, the Hives are such sharp-dressed men--always hitting the stage in their snazzy two-tone uniforms, right down to their trademark white patent dance shoes--they make the Strokes look like the Grateful Dead on a bad day. (Even during downtime, the Hives have their image down pat: This afternoon, Arson and Carlstroem are rockin' their Casual Friday look, wearing matching black T-shirts emblazoned with their stage names in big block letters.)

"All bands have to have some sort of image, even if it's like AC/DC or the Ramones," Arson reasons. "Even all the grunge bands probably changed their clothes before they went onstage--if they wore a pair of torn jeans, it was their best torn jeans."

"Every band cares about how they look," agrees Carlstroem, a man of far fewer (but no less amusing) words that his garrulous fellow guitarist. "We just have better taste than most bands!"

Now fans with a taste for the Hives may already be breaking out in hives themselves over the rumored imminent breakup of this band with the glamorous look and grubby sound. But all can rest assured that at least one more Hives album--that's a whole half-hour of new music!--is forthcoming.

"The way it usually goes, the first album is supposed to be the classic debut, the second one is supposed to be a bit worse, and then the third one is supposed to be really, really good," Arson muses, "but our second album was really, really good, so now we don't want to jinx it with a third album!" And so, the Hives' master plan is always subject to change. "I guess we could do it like they do with American elevators, where they don't have a 13th floor--we won't have a third record, we'll just go straight to the fourth," laughs Arson. "Yeah! Who knows, we might lose our heads like all the other bands, and go on forever."