The Hives' Howlin' Pelle Almqvist on Outkast, the Beastie Boys, the Rolling Stones and becoming rock royalty
It's 9am on a Tuesday, and a corporate-looking Howlin' Pelle Almqvist is conducting interviews from an office in Stockholm.
"It's not my office," he tells Classic Rock. "Mine is better."
That's the kind of self-belief we've come to expect from the frontman of Swedish garage punkers The Hives, who on the cover of new album The Hives Forever Forever The Hives are looking royal, wearing crowns and ermine robes.
What was the creative spur for the new album?
We put out another album, The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons, fairly recently [2023], and this was a sibling of it. They were partly made at the same time. That was supposed to be our punk comeback [after 11 years away], and this was supposed to be the arena record, our Back In Black. But it was punk also.
You've gone royal! What took you so long?
We should be on a palace balcony. I've been practising my royal wave [gives a demonstration]. But having five kings in one country could be complicated. How would any decisions get made? Maybe that's why these records took eleven years.
How did Mike D from Beastie Boys contribute to the record?
We wanted to work with Beastie Boys since we were kids. They had the coolest-sounding records. Punk in the nineties sounded sanitised. [Beasties track] Sabotage was more punk than anything. It was a three-stage process. We started by sending him demos. He'd inherited the Beasties gear, which is in his garage, so he made covers of all the tunes. He flew to Sweden for some of our recording, then after a US tour I went to his house in Malibu to finish up. We loved his approach, his attention to detail.
It is. Andre [3000, frontman] was a big fan. We were going to work with him. It's an amazing song and very different from other OutKast stuff. Hey Ya is the perfect song that could have made us popular [laughs].
The Hives toured with the Stones in 2003, and Keith Richards said you were their natural inheritors. How did that feel?
That's pretty fucking cool, huh? Jesus Christ! We were really young, and they were so nice to us, watching soundchecks and hanging out. That's when we realised we could just keep going. They were having more fun than anyone we knew. The reason you have this new record is probably because of the Stones.
How will the Hives go on forever?
Maybe as holograms? No, not that - we're irreplaceable. What's helping us is the franchise that we set up last year where we support cover bands around the world. We send them things and give them cash for gas and stuff. The aim is to have Hives everywhere, all the time. It's doing quite well. There's loads of Hives in South America.