THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Hives on hiatus? Surely not? Believe it or not, it’s true. But even though it has been over 10 years since the Swedish band’s last album — 2012’s Lex Hives — anyone fearing they have fallen into the aging rock cliche of an act touring on past glories can rest easy.
Yes, The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons is The Hives’ first full album in over a decade, but as its macabre title hints, the reason for the band’s absence from the studio has been uniquely and suitably Hives. Of course, the group did not disappeared completely following their last long player. Along with several singles — including 2019’s double A-side I’m Alive / Good Samaritan — a live album and a series of global tours, to the outside world The Hives were still setting the pace. Yet inside the band, the lack of a new record was concerning… as was the increasingly long absence of The Hives’ founder, mentor and songwriter, the limelight-shunning Randy Fitzsimmons. As the title of the new record tells you, there was a problem… though possibly not the one you think.
“Randy is really important to us, he was responsible for forming the band and the treasure trove of Hives songs are pretty much all his,” explains frontman Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist of Fitzsimmons’ pivotal behind-the-scenes role. “Randy never really went on tour, he didn’t want to be in the public eye, so we respected his wishes and didn’t reveal his identity, which I think pissed people off. Journalists wanted to uncover the secret, so increasingly we stopped talking about Randy out of respect for him but he was always key to The Hives.”
Fitzsimmons’ need to exist in a secluded bubble was essential for The Hives. Disappearing from the band’s view after an album was wrapped ever since The Hives made their debut with Barely Legal in 1997, he would go off and do whatever he needed to do to connect with his muse, before returning with no warning with songs that would become the band’s next record. A unique way of working perhaps, but when you consider the uniqueness of The Hives, one well worth it. However, it was also a way of working that meant Fitzsimmons was not always missed. Indeed, as the band now admit, The Hives have not seen or spoken to their mentor since finishing Lex Hives — so this has been no hiatus but a horror story.
“He would be out doing his own thing while we toured; it was never really something we talked about, but he would just kind of disappear and then eventually come back all excited about a new idea,” recalls Howlin’ Pelle. “This was the first time that never happened. I think we hoped for longer than we should have that he was coming back. We stuck our heads in the sand and toured. Then we recorded the scraps of his material we had left over, Good Samaritan and I’m Alive, which feels ironic now, as one is a song about not helping people and the other about being alive. In retrospect, it feels almost intentional that Randy would leave us those songs. So we put them out to see if it would make him rear his ugly head.”
Fitzsimmons’ head — or any other part of him — was not to be seen, so in the interim The Hives tried writing their own songs, as they had no interest in becoming the ultimate tribute act to themselves by only touring old material. “We wrote some stuff in the style of The Hives, which was pretty good,” reveals Howlin’ Pelle. “But we don’t do ‘pretty good’. The world has enough OK rock music. We’re only here to make fantastic rock music. Being a band this good and this tight but not having great songs would be like owning a Ferrari with shitty tires.” As a band who had previously sworn never to “make a big hoopla about quitting” — expecting to announce their demise long after the event similarly to how Daft Punk did it — amongst its membership an unspoken feeling that The Hives might already be finished began to circulate until the most unlikely source gave them hope for the future: The death of Randy Fitzsimmons.
Buried in the Fagersta-Posten, a local paper for Northern Vastmanland where Hives guitarist Nicholaus Arson lives, a small obituary accompanied by a poem announced Fitzsimmons’ passing. For anyone else, this would be a sad end, but for Randy Fitzsimmons this might be an opening gambit. “It just didn’t seem real. It was sad, but the fact we read he was dead actually made us all feel that maybe he was alive,” explains Howlin’ Pelle. “It felt fishy, so we had to figure out what was going on. If he was properly dead that would be it, we couldn’t do the band without him, but the chance he was alive gave us hope we might be able to make something new again.”
Curiously, the poem accompanying Fitzsimmons’ death notice seemed to the band to allude to a geographic place, so the group travelled to where they figured it might be. After some searching they came across a tombstone for Fitzsimmons though, yet again, this too seemed off. “It felt like a hoax,” recalls Howlin’ Pelle. “It wasn’t in a cemetery, which in Sweden is very illegal. You can’t just fucking bury somebody anywhere. So the grave itself made us think Randy wasn’t there.” Having come this far, and with the future of The Hives on the line, the group started uncovering the freshly interred ground. “It was fucking bizarre when we started digging and we were pretty happy when we discovered there wasn’t a body. A corpse would have been fucking terrifying,” admits The Hives’ frontman. Instead, the band found several tapes, suits and a piece of paper bearing the words The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons typed up as if a title. “It felt like an instruction,” concludes the singer. “An instruction to make more music without him, but it’s also a dick move. It’s kind of an asshole thing to do, to keep us in the dark if he’s actually alive. Either that or he is dead and I don’t know who did this.”
One thing though is certain, having played back the tapes the band discovered they at least contained the demos for a series of Fitzsimmons-quality songs. “It seems like he wrote them,” suggests Howlin’ Pelle. ”We’ve played his songs all our lives, so it seems clear to us this could be him. Compared to the stuff we tried to write… there’s no comparison, unfortunately! And we’ve heard all his demos and these have his musical fingerprints, so we decided to record them. I mean, if someone is trolling us and they’re not Randy’s songs, someone would have to have spent 15 years becoming a great rock ’n’ roll songwriter first.”
After plans to turn the demos into an album in the U.S. were abandoned due to the pandemic, the group made use of several Swedish studios to make The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons a reality… well, only musically of course, as despite disturbing the fake grave still no word has been heard from the album’s namesake. Not that they were without direction. Having overseen the transformation of previous demos into Hives songs the band knew what they were doing, plus they had the best help. While Dr. Matt Destruction will forever be “spiritually, emotionally and friendship-wise” a member of The Hives, his departure due to health reasons has seen bassist The Johan And Only join Chris Dangerous (drums) — himself recovered after “almost dying in 2019” — Vigilante Carlstroem (rhythm guitar), Nicholaus Arson (lead guitar) and Howlin’ Pelle as a full member of The Hives.
Meanwhile, engineer Pelle Gunderfelt, who worked on the group’s first three albums, has returned, while the record’s producer, Patrik Berger, might possess pop credentials that led to his work with the likes of Robyn, Lana Del Rey and Charli XCX, but he was also previously in a punk band on the same scene The Hives emerged from. “He seemed like a good fit to understand both how we can sound like an insane punk band and also make hits. He also knew that the only thing this band can’t do is stop, we have to constantly be moving forward like sharks,” notes Howlin’ Pelle of the atmosphere of the album sessions which took place in Berger’s personal studio, plus studios with an unplanned ABBA connection — one where they did their first albums and one owned Benny Andersson, which happen to be “the best two studios in Stockholm.”
Not that these rarefied surroundings, the strained circumstances behind the songs’ discovery, or the long gap between records, has resulted in a more sophisticated or thoughtful version of The Hives. As the band proudly declare this is still rock ’n’ roll par excellence. “There’s no maturity or anything like that bullshit, because who the fuck wants mature rock ’n’ roll?” declares Howlin’ Pelle of the new album. “That’s always where people go wrong, I feel. ‘It’s like rock ’n’ roll but adult,’ nobody wants that! That’s literally taking the good shit out of it. Rock ’n’ roll can’t grow up, it is a perpetual teenager and this album feels exactly like that which it’s all down to our excitement — and you can’t fake that shit.”
Opening with Bogus Operandi, the record’s tone is set from the first note. Muscular, determined, yet fizzing with the wild energy behind the band’s greatest moments, it is an insistent, incendiary yet suave calling card. The song is also The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons’ first single and is accompanied by “probably the best video we ever did,” a partial retelling of the search for Fitzsimmons’ fake grave though “scrambled” with acclaimed director Aube Perrie’s childhood memories of horror movies. And from that start, the album continues in an equally swaggering, stylish and explosive fashion.
Songs like “all out banger” Countdown To Shutdown, the ’50s shuffle of Stick Up and the Hound Dog Taylor-inspired Memphis stomp of Crash Into The Weekend ensures the record makes the most of all the pent-up energy that gets accumulated when one of the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll bands is unable to take a step forward for 10 years. “We were fucking excited that there was more music,” says Howlin’ Pelle of the results. “Seeing as we don’t write the songs it feels fine for me to say I am a fan of this music; I was excited to hear the demos. So I figured we had to nail this to the wall completely, we really had to do our best with this stuff, especially as it could be the last stuff we do.”
Should this be Randy Fitzsimmons’ — or even The Hives’ — final act, then the band have delivered a record that is not just worthy of their legacy, but one that adds fresh lustre to The Hives. “I feel we honoured the title Randy left for us, so if this is his last will and testament and the last thing we do I’m almost happy with it,” laughs Howlin’ Pelle, a glint of The Hives’ notorious perfectionism lurking behind his smile. Yet then again, after the strange obit, the poem’s secret message and the macabre demo delivery, it does not feel like Fitzsimmons is done. After all, the five suits the band found in the grave — all featuring “cool Day-Glo shit on them” — fit snugly and will make ideal stage wear for when The Hives hit the road, implying both parties still have a lot to give. “I would just say to Randy, if you are alive, come back, man,” concludes Howlin’ Pelle. “Let’s make more shit together, it’s fun.” Whether or not he can heed the call, for The Hives The Death Of Randy Fitzsimmons is a true resurrection.”
