The Hives’ Pelle Almqvist recently appeared as a guest on Lipps Service with Scott Lipps and criticized ‘weak’ rock bands for halting concerts over thrown bottles.
The interviewer initially asked the singer:
“You get noticed for having this incredible live show. It’s almost like a sport for you. You get injured sometimes. Recently, [you] got hit in the face with the mic, right?”
Almqvist replied, sharing his perspective on doing shows:
“Well, I need to feel something. I can’t do a show and not have it hurt a little bit. Like either jump into things or scream so much that it hurts my throat or whatever it is I’m doing, but it’s some kind of full release for me, like it’s the culmination of everything. I think that’s also about being a human, like endorphin levels and crawling around on teenagers, screaming into a microphone. That’s my idea of fun.”
Almqvist’s Philosophy On Performing
Lipps then stepped in and said:
“I was watching the video when you hit yourself in the face the other day, whenever it was, a couple of months ago with the mic. And you didn’t even stop, by the way.”
The frontman responded, revealing why he didn’t stop despite the mishap:
“No, why would I? I think the coolest thing you can be as a rock band is unstoppable. If you have a band, and you throw, like, somebody throws a plastic bottle on a band, and they stop playing, I think that’s the biggest sign of weakness I know. That’s not a dare, by the way, or a challenge to anyone in the crowd, but I feel like it’s important to me to believe that a band is unstoppable.”
Almqvist accidentally hit his head with his microphone at a concert with Arctic Monkeys on June 2, 2023. Despite this, he finished the show. The incident happened when his brother and bandmate, Hives guitarist Niklas, stepped on the mic cable, causing the microphone to hit Pelle’s head.
The Hives’ Return With ‘The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’
The Hives dropped their sixth album ‘The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons’ on August 11, 2023, after an 11-year break following their previous record, ‘Lex Hives’ of 2012. Speaking of why they took such a long gap between the two albums in an August interview with Music Week, Almqvist explained:
“I don’t have a good answer for that. I wish it was two years. It has not been fun, but the main problem is that Randy Fitzsimmons, our principal songwriter, has not been with us and then two years ago or so, we finally got the songs that he had left behind for us. It was also because Dr. Matt Destruction, our bass player, left and that took a lot of restructuring, like, what’s the band like without one of the five founding members? There are a lot of things that happened in 10 years. I can’t sum it up, but I am as mad about it as everyone else – probably more so.”
The album marks the first release with bassist The Johan and Only, who joined after Dr. Matt Destruction left the band in 2013.
You can listen to the full episode below.
