CraveOnline had a chance to speak with Chris Dangerous of the Hives about their new "Black and White Album", touring with Maroon 5, disco rock and The Hives' recording process...
CraveOnline: Who exactly is Randy Fitzsimmons, and what role does he play in the band?
Chris Dangerous: Well the thing is, that he sort of started the band… We’ve answered this question about 8 billion times I think, but he’s sort of the brains behind the band so to speak. He’s very involved in the songwriting and stuff, he just doesn’t want to go on tour and be in the pictures and all that. But he’s sort of the sixth member.
CraveOnline: Is it true that you had recorded 20-30 songs for “The Black and White Album”?
Chris Dangerous: Yeah we had a lot of songs this time. We never had this many before. But I mean, we could have recorded and released the album a year ago, but since we didn’t want to do it the same way, like the other 3 albums, we decided to work with a producer… and we couldn’t really agree on just one. So we traveled the world and found some great people to work with. Some were in projects at the time so we had to wait for like 5 months for some of them, and while waiting we couldn’t just sit around doing nothing, so we just wrote songs, pretty much, and recorded in a lot of different places.
CraveOnline: See, now I heard that you recorded most of the album in Mississippi…
Chris Dangerous: Oh yeah, mostly, like 50% of the album was recorded in oxford Mississippi by Dennis Harry.
CraveOnline: What made you choose that particular place?
Chris Dangerous: Mainly actually because there is this Buddy Guy record called “Sweet Tea”, that we just thought sounded fucking amazing. And Dennis Harry recorded it in Oxford Mississippi so….you know, that’s how it went.
CraveOnline: Where did you (or Randy Fitzsimmons) find the inspiration to do so many songs in so many different styles? The new album sounds like a decade’s worth of material for most bands…
Chris Dangerous: Yeah, well that was sort of the plan, to make sort of a greatest hits record of a band that didn’t really exist... I mean we’ve always done some weird stuff but this time we figured, we’re not gonna release anything we’ve already recorded and done. I mean we’ve even got one or two great songs that aren’t on the record. As I said, we made the songs over like a year, so a lot can happen in that time.
CraveOnline: What are you going to do with the rest of them?
Chris Dangerous: We don’t know really. I mean we could release like EP sort of singles here and there… But I don’t know really, this record isn’t even released in America yet so you gotta take one thing at a time. But yeah I mean there’s a lot of stuff that’s good that eventually will go on another record.
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