I had to dive in while it burned to retrieve my car keys and sleeping bag.
At a festival in 2006, I watched him whip the crowd into such a frenzy for "Firestarter" that afterwards, a group roamed the campsite singing the words and lighting random tents on fire-including my own. Keith darted across the stage, thrashing and snarling and chomping at the mic. Seeing The Prodigy live was like watching a great white shark grow legs and start moshing. In 1996 The Face opted to put Keith, rather than the band on the cover. It was his vocals on "Firestarter" and "Breathe" that landed them their only number 1 singles and allowed their big beat records to break America. He encouraged Liam to create the original Prodigy mixtape when they first met at The Barn, in Braintree. The BBC had banned the video after viewers said its Top of the Pops broadcast frightened children and showcased an “arson fixation.”Īlthough he didn't write the songs, to those of us on the outside Keith was The Prodigy.
This being the pre-Internet years it would be a long time before I'd get my next fix. There he was, this strange, terrifying specter-part clown, part boogieman-prancing around merrily in his grainy underworld. I remember little of the New Labour landslide, or Diana's funeral, or Dolly the sheep, but those 3 minutes and 46 seconds, stumbled across while channel-hopping one quiet Saturday afternoon seared themselves into my brain for good.
I was eight in 1997 when The Prodigy unleashed that video. Like a great many people, Keith Flint, exploded into my life, spiky-haired and snarling down a tunnel from the "Firestarter" video's black and white hellscape. And that friend was speaking so passionately, he said, that Keith thought, “‘I’ve got to be a part of this.’ Next Friday, I went down to the Barn took some acid, took some ecstasy and… never looked back.” And one of her mates came round and was just telling me about rave parties and the Barn, which was a local club we used to go to.” Keith and Liam had met at the Essex rave mainstay, in 1989. “I didn’t really have a house to go to, so I was sleeping on Liam’s then-girlfriend’s sofa at the time. “My entry into rave culture was that I’d come back from traveling, and was a bit lost,” he also told Richard. In a way, Keith ended up at the apex of a corner of UK dance music by chance. After their debut album, Experience, every one of their next six studio albums-including a 2005 singles collection-would top the UK album chart. They had strange clothes, stranger hair and an attitude not seen since the Sex Pistols. The kids ran it.” The UK's dance music scene could've easily faltered as the law closed in, but then came four boys and a girl from Essex.
The police didn’t know how to control it.
As Keith described the free parties, in conversation with XL Recordings’ Richard Russell in 2014: “The government didn’t know what it was. The second summer of love was meant to set us free, but like its predecessor, it had fallen short Britain’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act had just about killed off the free party scene and the whole country was suffering from history's biggest comedown. Originally teetering on the brink of being a novelty act, they would go on to embody the anger, abandon, and energy of a generation. It really upset Keith and I know the band and the management were a bit worried for him.It's hard to overstate the importance of The Prodigy. “A couple of times, anti-hunt protesters turned up and made a fuss.
“Keith’s pub, The Leather Bottle, became a meeting place for the local hunt, and this information got out online,” a source told The Sun. He was trailed 24/7 by a local minder and said he’d been put on “health watch” by bandmates after anti-hunt protesters stormed his English pub. PRODIGY WORRIED ABOUT FRONTMAN’S SECURITYįlint was assigned a full-time security guard because his bandmates were worried about his safety. He also chatted with another female regular there who was dining with her daughter.” “He was dressed casually, with flashes of dyed blonde hair escaping out the back of a tweed flat cap, wearing a green combat jacket and trousers over an orange T-shirt and trainers, and he was buying lunch for his personal trainer. So I was surprised and gutted as a fan of his work when I heard that he’d taken his own life so soon afterwards,” the diner said. “There was no one else in the pub for him to be putting on an act for. The diner added Flint seemed positive, and was particular proud about how healthy he felt. “He seemed really happy, talking to his trainer about how he’d achieved a personal best running and how it made him feel much better, opening his lungs up.”