“We are the rock Muhammad Ali”: how impactful Swedes The Hives delivered a knockout with your new favorite band
When Hives visited London in the winter of 2002, in support of the unfairly titled Your new favorite band, the beautiful people came out to play. As the band from Fagersta rattled through a headline set at the Astoria, a 2,000-capacity audience included notables such as Oasis‘Noel Gallagher, Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, and My Bloody Valentine manager Kevin Shields. Not that the Swedes cared about hobnobbing. In between watching the night’s support band from the wings of the stage, ‘Howlin’ singer Pelle Almqvist seemed more concerned about the cost of entry to see his suddenly glowing band.
“£12.50 to see us?” he told music writer Ben Myers. “It’s far too much to pay. Even for genius.”
That patrons were able to witness a concert by an international group for little more than ten in a venue that no longer exists is a gentle reminder that this happened quite some time ago. Sure, the media storm that descended on The Hives upon the release of Your new favorite band – which celebrates its 21st birthday on October 22 – today reads like ancient history. With column inches measured in yards, from broadsheets to rock weeklies, all talked about them. Like Caroline Sullivan from The Guardian noted when he reviewed the group’s debut arc at Astoria in December 2001‘With rock’s current flavor being the three-chord thrashing of the Strokes and White Stripes, Hives couldn’t have chosen a better moment to offer their Swedish-accented version’.
Your new favorite band was in fact a compilation. Consists of a dozen or so tracks taken from the quintet’s back catalog – specifically the albums Barely legal (1997) and Veni Vedi Vicious (2000), as well as AKA IDIOT The EP – its stated aim to raise the group’s profile in the UK (and beyond) was realized with a top 10 spot in the UK charts following the decision by then-Creation Records supremo Alan McGee to license the release to his Poptones imprint. (Worldwide, the LP would be released on no fewer than five different labels.) Principal offender, a Top 30 hit, provided the soundtrack for a high-profile Agent Provocateur commercial starring Kylie Minogue. Lead-off single I hate to say, what did I say also charted, peaking at number 23.
If one needs reminding that the industry in which The Hives operate is as much about marketing as music, it’s worth noting here that both singles were reissued: when they were released in 2000/2001 to promote Veni Vedi Vicious – when The Hive’s London engagement found them opening for the now long-forgotten Group Dogdrill and The Yo-Yo’s at the 600-capacity garage in Highbury – neither song bothered the Official Chart Company compilers at all.
It is a fickle business.
Despite the hype, The Hives were less the best Scandinavian rock band at the time – that title goes to the grossly underrated Randy – and more the most famous. As with Meg and Jack White’s oft-repeated lie that the White Stripes were brother and sister, the Swedes led the press on their own merry dance with the claim that their material had been written by a reclusive Svengali named Randy Fitzsimmons. As if to prove that journalists hunt in packs, everyone wanted to know if this was really true or not – which it really wasn’t. Pressed on the matter in Independence on Sunday, Almqvist claimed he “wasn’t allowed to say” what Fitzsimmons even looked like. By the distance of galaxies, this tiresome ruse was the least interesting aspect of the entire act.
But elsewhere they talked a good game. Speaking to the now defunct F magazine, Almqvist was far from shy when it came to comparing The Hives to the best of the very best. The band was “like Muhammad Ali,” he said. “He was a pompous man and a very funny man, but he was still the best fighter in the world. And we are the rock Muhammad Ali.”
They can be fun too. In response to Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher’s claim that their carefully chosen image – at the time: shirts, shoes and sharp suits – put him in mind of The Monkees, the singer responded with the words: “Liam Gallagher looks more like a monkey than someone of us.”
Looking back, one might be tempted to wonder what all the fuss was about. But the suggestion that The Hives were hyped and carried beyond their station – which they most certainly were – risks overlooking admirable qualities that were, and remain, on full display.
Twenty years after the publication of Your new favorite bandperformed the group on stage at London’s Wembley Arena in the midst of a three-act bill headlined by The offspring. As the music makers crashed into the set opener Principal offender, the song’s evergreen liveliness filled the room with something near timeless lightness. The Hives may have finally found their footing, but you can’t keep a good band down.
Because, really, as I learned firsthand, it was never about being hip or happening. Just as The Hives were being hyped by the kind of newspapers and magazines that would drop them in an instant, on a cold day in the first week of April 2002, I traveled to Fagersta to talk to the band.
Instead of meeting musicians who had developed a sense of entitlement that can often be the result of an avalanche of instant attention, I was instead greeted by a likable bunch of small-town Swedes who had no relation to the misjudged fantasies projected upon them by the Fourth Estate.
Indeed, after being picked up from the city’s only hotel by a van piloted by Pelle Almqvist and guitarist Nicholaus Arson (aka Niklas Almqvist, the singer’s older brother by two years), the very notion of arch-credibility was dispelled before the vehicle had been pushed out of the first the switch. A voice from the front seat called out to me in the back. It told me to look in the carrier bag on the seat to my right.
“We bought you some chocolate,” heard a Swedish accent. “Try some. It’s really very good.”
As sharp as possible Your new favorite bandso was The Hives.
“We kind of knew we could make hits in the UK in a way by calling the album Your new favorite band, Pelle Almqvist told the music writer Luke Morton 15 years later. “It seemed like such a perfectly British thing to do – and it worked! It was a clever piece of writing and great rock ‘n’ roll, which made us popular.”
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