The Hives' Sessions Video and Q&A: Six Songs, 100 Beers and a Sex Toy

On a sweltering New York City afternoon, the Hives came up to Harlem for a special AOL Sessions taping. In front of an audience of 40 -- including one super fan who flew out from Denver after winning a ticket to the show -- the Swedish rockers tore through a six-song set that included tracks off their new album, Lex Hives, as well two of their classic bangers.

If you need any proof that they're the best live band going -- or, in their opinion, of all time -- check out video of the Hives' Sessions performance, and stick around to read their hilarious Q&A about dangerous stages, their brilliant idea for a 20th-anniversary celebration and how they'll put on the same show for 40 or 40,000 people.


Watch the Hives' Full Sessions Performance
In the "Go Right Ahead" music video, you guys play onstage suspended by a zeppelin. In real life, what is the most dangerous stage you've played on?

Almqvist: We've played a few difficult stages, a lot of them that have been about to collapse. We once played in a French battleship in the front like where we had to climb down through the gun tower. There are about 50 people and that was full. In the event of fire, that would have been bad. But we also played on a raft in a lake with the cables, electrical cables going up through the lake onto the raft. I'm not sure how safe that was from the electrician's perspective, but it was a lot of fun. It was a good show and also jumping into the water holding the microphone, [laughter] I don't know how good that is either.

Dangerous: I don't know if it was the stage or you but the last show with did on the Black and White tour, Pelle fell off the lighting ring. That's a weird stage fall. Not supposed to happen.

Almqvist: Yeah, we toured that [album] out over such a long time, that falling off the stage and it's like, "OK, maybe were done."

Dangerous: Vigilante [Carlstroem, guitarist] fell down like three-meter deep hole once. That was in a stage. It's a stupid thing to have in a stage.

Almqvist: We've been a touring band for like 12 years. That's very little falling, especially [because] we do all our own stunts.

The first song you're performing today is "Come On." How long did that take to write and is there a lyric sheet?

Almqvist: There is a lyric sheet. It says "come on" on it and that's pretty much all it says. How long did it take to write? I don't know. It took a lot of arranging, like it used to start off really slow and build, that didn't feel right. So yeah, it took so much longer than you would want it to take. [Laughter]

Dangerous: Yeah. It's not even funny.

Almqvist: We spend way too much time on making things sound simple, a lot of the time.

Photos From the Hives' Sessions Performance
You guys are coming up on 20 years as a band. Do you have any celebration planned?

Dangerous: The thing is that we forgot to celebrate our 10th anniversary, so we were going to do the 11th one. That's like one of the only few shows that we had to cancel.

Almqvist: It's funny that you should mention if there's anything we were going to do together. We're actually going to drink 100 beers to celebrate being in the band for 20 years.

Dangerous: We're thinking about whether to do it on show a day or not.

Almqvist: I'm thinking not.

Dangerous: We've got to have a week off for that one, I think. [Laughs] We're going to get messy.

You're touring with FIDLAR and Flesh Lights. On Twitter, one of you wrote something about Flesh Lights, but tagged the sex toy, not the band. What happened there?

Almqvist: Well, I'm new to this Twitter thing. I'm the last adopter of Twitter, I think. So I sent out this tweet to the kids, to the children, but apparently I tagged the wrong Flesh Lights and it's a company that makes ... basically it is a flashlight. But you open the front of it and inside there is a pretend female genital. I don't know who you're going to hide it from, like "Here's my flashlight that doesn't work." But yeah, both FIDLAR and Flesh Lights have been amazing to play with. [Realizes what he said, laughs] Sorry about that.

But yeah, it means a lot to us to have good support bands and, both FIDLAR and Flesh Lights have been really exciting and it makes us better too. It means we've got to stay on our toes if we play with them and feel like that was really great. Now, we've got to top that. Otherwise, there is no reason we're at the end of the bill.

With a small studio taping like this, how do you guys approach the performance? How do you keep up that energy?

Nicholaus Arson (Guitarist): Whether there'll be five people or 50 people or 50,000 people, I think we pretty much always did it the same way. The smaller show is faster though, like there's a faster communication. Now, if there is only 40 people or something, there can be a faster communication, like maybe Pelle might even have time to talk and shake hands with all of them. [Laughs]

Dangerous: There's a show that we all remember really well that we did, I don't know, 10 years ago that had nine people paying at the door. And we played all the songs we knew at that time. It's one of those amazing shows that you're-- that you're never going to forget.

Almqvist: That's from being fans too, like we saw some bands that did amazing shows in front of 20 people. Even if there's just 20 people there, if your show is going to suck due to the amount of lack of interest, like your band sucks, basically. And we don't want to do that.

Dangerous: Tonight's a sold-out house, we know that.

Almqvist: Yeah 40, that's full. 40 is an amazing 1998 Hives audience count. We would have been ecstatic, like "shit!"

Dangerous: And if we had 40, two of them would like the band. [Laughter] So, now we got 40 fans. Imagine what's gonna happen.

Arson: There's cameras here too. There might be people watching.

Almqvist: It might be billions of fans. How many people have an internet connection?

Dangerous: 28,000, last count.

Arson: That's only in New York. [Laughter]