Everyone in Australia knows and loves The Hives and for a while it looked like we wouldn’t see the guys back Down-Under in 2014, but strange things happen all the time, one band drops out of this year’s BIG DAY OUT and The Hives hop in! We check in with Chris Dangerous to share the love!
Mark: Hi, Chris, how are you?
Chris: I have a little bit of a cold, but other than that, I’m good.
Mark: The last time we saw you over here was at The Bright Side Festival, here in Perth.
Chris: Yeah, since then we’ve done lots of shows and had a good following, we’ve been in America and South America. We got home just before Christmas.
Mark: That’s great. It was one of the best announcements of the summer, the fact that you are coming over to play The Big Day Out, we thought there were no more surprises left, but thankfully, Blur pulled out!! It’s great news for everyone!
Chris: Yeah, it’s incredible for us too.
Mark: Everyone in Australia knows and loves The Hives, but is there anything you can tell us, that we wouldn’t know about you?!!
Chris: Oh, that’s a difficult question! I don’t know!! What you don’t know about us is, probably, that we have five hundred recorded ideas for songs ready to go!
Mark: That’s great news, because we waited so long for the album, “Lex Hives” to come out, are you guys slowing down, the older you get?!! Or, is Randy (the mysterious writer credited on all Hives songs), just slowing down!!
Chris: We’re not slowing down no! It’s just we did thinks a little differently this time!
Mark: It’s normally about 3 years isn’t it?
Chris: Yeah two or three years, but we can never really release anything, that we are not a hundred percent happy with at the time. At the end of the day I think people want quality over quantity.
Mark: I think you’re right, you’ve hit the nail on the head there, it is the quality that people expect from you, and we’ve never been disappointed so far.
Chris: Thank you, thank you so much.
Mark: You are well known for the costumes that you come out in on stage. The last time we saw you, you had the whole top hat and tails going on! I’ve seen you’ve been out in the matching mariachi outfits, what will you be wearing this time round??
Chris: Yeah, the Mariachi outfits haven’t been to Australia, so I think we will have to bring those!! Seriously, they are the finest pieces of clothing I own, I put it on at home!!
Mark: I can imagine that! I think I’d be tempted to as well! You have been regular visitors to Australia, what do you enjoy most about coming here?
Chris: I enjoy everything! Living in Sweden and being able to come and play a festival in Australia, is great, you know. We love the crowds, and we come to a country that is very different from Sweden, and that is stunningly beautiful. We discover more and more of the country every time, and we enjoy it a lot.
Mark: One thing I’ve always wanted to ask you, Chris, is about your drum kit, will it get any bigger over the years??
Chris: No, I don’t know!! For the videos I add more stuff to it, but that’s the way I sound I guess, that’s the way I’m supposed to drum, if I added more stuff it would sound different.
Mark: You are a wonderful drummer and we actually got lots of questions sent in by drummers over the last few days when we told people we were going to be speaking to you. One of them told us about a dream he had where The Hives came to Australia and played The Big Day Out, and you had the largest drum kit in the world, it was like a Neil Peart thing, with double gongs and everything like that, so, there’s no danger of that happening then??!!
Chris: In my dreams that might be fun! But no, it’s not going to happen! I wouldn’t know what to do with it! (Laughs) And I’d feel sorry for the bits of the kit that didn’t get used! (Laughs)
Mark: I don’t think half the guys who have it, don’t know either!
Chris: I think I feel I have a relationship with every part of my kit, if I had more stuff I wouldn’t feel comfortable!
Mark: The last album “Lex Hives” was fantastic and there were some great songs on there, like “Wait a Minute” and the other single “Go Right Ahead” which samples E.L.O.’s “Don’t Bring Me Down”. Were you big fans of theirs back in the day?
Chris: No when we wrote that song it wasn’t a sample and at the time we didn’t even think about it, but when we played it someone said “Hey that sounds just like that E.L.O. song” so it wasn’t intentional at all. We were asked what we wanted to do about it and as we liked the song we decided to contact the guys and they suggested we make them co-writer and we thought that was fair enough.
Mark: What can you tell us about the track that you produced on ‘Lex Hives’, “High School Shuffle”?
Chris: It’s just a great song by a friend of mine and I thought more people should hear it.
Mark: I think we’re running out of time now Chris, so just a couple of quick questions. If you could have been a fly on the wall for the recording of any album at any point in time, what would it have been for you?
Chris: I can think of three, The Jimi Hendrix Experience,” Dark Side of The Moon” and “Born to Run”.
Mark: Good picks! Finally, what is the meaning of life?
Chris: I think the meaning of life is (to) be more positive. I think there should be no fighting, no wars, everyone should be treated equally. I think we’re on our way but there’s still some way to go.
Mark: I have time for one more question. I guess the official 20th anniversary, came around last year, with nothing big, did you plan on putting anything together, or maybe releasing some of those 500 songs you said you had earlier, or doing something special for your 20th anniversary?
Chris: We didn’t, we were going to have a tenth anniversary tour years ago but we missed that, so this time every show we played in 2013 was like an Anniversary show – we figured that they would all be special, well that’s what it felt like to us anyway! (laughs)
Mark: So, we get the first of your 21st anniversary shows, here in Australia? It’s been an absolute pleasure talking to you, thank you for taking the time to speak to The Rockpit, and we’ll catch you in a few weeks.
Chris: Thank you so much, we are looking forward to it.
