Brit Beat: The Hives’ British Manager on the Swedish Band’s Conquest of Latin America

Mark Sutherland
·9 min read

The Hives have been around for 30 years now, but they could end 2023 as Venezuela’s new favorite band.

According to their British management company, ATC Management, the Swedish group will become the first major international rock band to appear in the South American territory for a decade, when they headline Caracas’ Concha Acústica de Bello Monte venue on December 7. U.S. sanctions against the country were finally eased earlier this year.

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“Because of the sanctions, it became an unviable market [for international rock bands],” ATC’s Matthew Greer tells Variety. “We just happened to have the good timing to be the first ones in. Hopefully, The Hives can be part of the journey to re-open the country and have bigger artists go down there.

“Venezuela is such a huge country, but it’s been isolated from the benefits of the music industry boom in Latin America over the last 10 years. It’s definitely overdue for Western artists to go there.”

The visit will be filmed by a local production crew for a documentary and ATC’s Brian Message expects there to be some “spicy” moments on the visit to one of the few territories the Hives have never played before. The date is part of a larger tour of South America, where the band’s notoriously no-holds-barred shows have found a new audience since their return from an 11-year album hiatus with “The Death of Randy Fitzsimmons,” a No. 2 hit in the U.K. and a top 50 record in America.

ATC took on the band in 2022 and worked with them on what Message calls “a comeback plot designed to hit it hard in key markets”. The original plan was to quickly release a follow-up album, but that will now emerge next year after the band landed the support slot on Arctic Monkeys’ U.K. stadium tour and other dates.

“It was great for us to be able to go out with a band of that stature, who’ve got such a big youth following now because of TikTok,” Message says.

“Many of the crowd were too young to go to shows before Covid and you could tell they were blown away by the Hives’ banter, the stage presence, the high jinks, the outfits,” adds Greer. “The whole thing was this real assault on the senses, and it was super fun to see them win the crowds over.”

The band is currently on a sold-out U.S. tour, which concludes with two dates at The Belasco in Los Angeles on November 14-15, with Message saying the band has “huge momentum in America – and everybody, led by the band, wants to keep pushing that forward.” The Hives will support Foo Fighters in America next year, amongst further touring and festival dates.

The Hives were one of the most popular live rock draws of the 2000s, and the ATC executives are confident they can scale even greater heights two decades later.

“They’re a global band, they’re not just a legacy indie band,” says Greer. “There’s such great demand for brilliant live bands – they’re few and far between, so this can keep going much, much further. We have definite arena ambitions for all over the world and I don’t think there’s anything that should stop us in achieving that.”

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Meanwhile, Brighton-based band Lovejoy is blazing a trail for British indie rock, having made a significant breakthrough at U.S. alternative radio.

The band’s single, “Call Me What You Like” became the first debut top-five hit for a British band on the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart since Nothing But Thieves’ “Trip Switch” in 2016. And it’s not just a one-off: The follow-up, “Normal People Things,” is already climbing the same chart. It’s currently at No. 24.

“‘Call Me What You Like’ is a really original, punchy rock song,” says Matt Riley, managing director of AWAL U.K., which releases Lovejoy’s music. “We could go to radio with a justified fanbase of Gen Z kids that shows there’s an audience for this. And what’s helpful with Lovejoy is their fans are the biggest lobbyists for that band ever – if they do something for [a station’s] YouTube channel, it will become the most viewed thing, because all the Gen Z kids turn up – and radio stations know that.”

The band’s singer Wilbur Soot originally found fame as a Twitch streamer and YouTuber, and previously released solo material, but Riley says Soot is fully focused on the band.

“What’s great about Lovejoy is, it isn’t a side project for YouTubers, it’s actually a proper band,” Riley says. “With other YouTube people, maybe some of their audience has declined because the pandemic’s over, whereas he’s going into a whole new place with this.”

Soot’s online presence has helped the band build what Riley calls “a rampant Gen Z audience,” famous in the U.K. for queuing for hours outside venues where the band plays – and for going wild once they actually get inside. And the band has been hitting the road hard, playing over 100 shows in the past 18 months including two previous U.S. visits ahead of the tour that kicks off in Washington D.C. on December 1.

“They’re paying their dues and doing it the right way,” adds Riley. “They understand you need to do the work, play hundreds of shows, and get really great if you’re going to go all the way. If you’re a guitar band, you have to earn the right to exist within the pantheon, if that’s where you want to be.”

Despite the U.K.’s stellar reputation for guitar bands, there have been few U.S. breakthroughs in recent years. Riley signed the band with AWAL U.S. President Pete Giberga and credits AWAL/In2une Music’s Dave Lombardi with the U.S. radio campaign, outlining how AWAL’s strategy of working the band globally from the start shows a possible way forward for other British companies.

“If you only think about the U.K., and you have to do things here before you go anywhere – things go quicker than that these days,” he says. “When it’s time, it’s time.”

Despite racking up 850 million global streams, according to AWAL, and having over 30 million combined followers across group and individual solo social accounts, Lovejoy has only released EPs thus far. Riley says the band will record “something longer,” which may or may not become their debut album, once the tour is over. But, whatever comes next, he’s confident Lovejoy is headed for big things on both sides of the Atlantic.

“If Wilbur can get what’s in his head onto a record, there’s no limit to where they can go,” he says. “A lot of people still love rock bands. I don’t see why the biggest act in the world can’t be a rock band again at some point soon.”

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The U.K. music industry is still reeling from the after-effects of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport Committee’s inquiry into the economics of music streaming.

But now comes the news of a DCMS Select Committee review, hearing and report into the U.K’s grassroots live venues sector. According to the Music Venue Trust (MVT), 128 such venues have closed in the last 12 months, cutting off many communities from the chance to see live music.

MVT founder and CEO Mark Davyd welcomes the review – but hopes the industry has learned the lessons of the fractious streaming sessions.

“My colleagues in the live music industry should look at that inquiry,” he says. “Don’t turn up with your head buried in the sand. Turn up with an understanding of what’s going on, turn up with something to offer and some positive suggestions. If we aren’t prepared to take action ourselves, you can pretty much be certain the action will be taken for us.”

Davyd says he would prefer the industry to come up with its own solution to the grassroots circuit crisis, rather than have the government intervene. He points to the English soccer industry as a good potential model for what the music industry should be doing, with the Premier League supporting grassroots football initiatives.

“Football recognizes it doesn’t have any direct financial interest in there being a pitch in Nantwich – but you don’t know who might play football there,” Davyd says. “You need the facilities to be there so there can be a petri dish developing the next generation of footballers. The same applies to musicians.”

The MVT has been campaigning for arenas and stadiums to support grassroots venues by raising funds through their ticket sales, but Davyd also wants record labels and other trade bodies to come together to support the sector, warning that swift action is required to avoid further closures.

“This hearing should be the end of the Mexican standoff where everybody points at each other and says, ‘Perhaps they can do something about it’,” he says. “If we all decided to act together, it could be very easily tackled. But if there is no will to do things we really should be doing then, at some point, we should expect things will be done to us that perhaps we might not like.”

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One bit of good news for the U.K.’s live music scene comes from central London’s Outernet complex.

Outernet houses two live venues: The 2,000-capacity HERE and the 350-capacity The Lower Third, with both now granted a rare 4 a.m. late license.

Outernet operating partner Karrie Goldberg tells Variety the move will allow the venue “to provide an even broader spectrum of cultural programming, which will be sustainable through the increased revenue generated from the later hours.”

Goldberg says the complex, which opened last year, sold 87,000 tickets across 160 ticketed events between September 2022 and 2023, despite Britain’s raging cost-of-living crisis hitting gig-goers’ spending power. It will now significantly expand its number and range of events as it continues its mission to “bring live music back to central London.”

“We will create space for new promoters and for sub-cultures to flourish, so we can welcome even more touring and international artists,” she says. “It’s important to give up-and-coming artists a new place to launch their careers, as well as be a platform for global stars – and this license extension will help us continue doing what we do best.”

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