RIP Keith Flint, The Original Firestarter
11 March 2019
Was shocked and saddened to read the news about Keith Flint last week. He died far too young – quite a talent and, by all accounts, an extraordinarily big-hearted and humble person, too, considering how famous and successful he was. Apparently none of this was enough to keep the black dog from his door, tragically.
The Prodigy’s Charly EP made an indelible mark on me (among doubtless hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of others) when it emerged like a rave silo in the summer of 1991. With its “You’re crazy” vocal refrain lifted from MC Shan’s 1988 hip hop belter Juice Crew Law and hoover bassline nicked more or less wholesale from Joey Beltram’s July ’91 rave anthem, Mentasm, Charly blew the bloody doors off the charts, climbing to Number 3 and inspiring a raft of copycat records via the short-lived ‘kiddie rave’ pop ‘nightmare’ / national club furore (depending on your POV, choice of narcotic ‘accessory’, sense of humour etc etc).
The 12″ i picked up featured further hardcore/breakbeat killers Pandemonium and Your Love. I just about wore out my copy. And, alongside the MC Duke & Merlin sampling Everyobdy In The Place (UK Number 2 in December ’91), and the equally immense Kool Keith/Ultramagnetic MCs (Critical Beatdown) & Max Romeo (Chase The Devil) sampling hit Out Of Space (UK Number 5, Nov, ’92), these tunes were among a handful of records that sparked a passion for electronic and dance music that set me on the path I’ve followed ever since.
Out Of Space was actually originally released on their, arguably even more influential, February ’91 debut EP, What Evil Lurks, but made a much wider impression on re-release, once Prodigy mania had taken hold nationwide, with Flint looning around in a boiler suit, throwing some serious rave shapes, in the video.
It’s hard to overstate how exciting this music sounded to my teenage ears. It fizzed with a visceral energy like nothing I’d witnessed before. Though i didn’t know it at the time, these were the beginnings of the ‘jungle techno’ sound or ‘jungle tekno’ (later just jungle and consequently drum ‘n’ bass) that was transforming British dance music at the time. I wouldn’t personally experience it on a club dancefloor until i made it along to Fabio & Grooverider’s legendary Rage night at Heaven in central London’s Charing Cross district for the first time in June or July ’92. But this just made it all even more tantalising.
However, if these records and the rest of 1992 debut album The Prodigy Experience (not least fellow bangers Fire and Wind It Up) were ‘entry level’ rave tunes for millions of British teenagers like me, the tracks Liam Howlett produced for Mercury Music Prize-nominated second album Music For The Jillted Generation, in 1994, and even bigger third album The Fat Of The Land, in 1997, ignited the touch paper for a different sound and even bigger, more commercial success.
Embracing a more industrial/electro/rock feel and slowing the tempo on some of the tracks (check out Poison on ‘Jilted…’ for one), these records assisted at the birth of what came to be known as ‘Big Beat’ (alongside fellow UK pop innovators The Chemical Bros and Fatboy Slim), and, with Flint assuming an increasingly pivotal, centre-stage role alongside MC Maxim, took the band to the next level.
However, it was The Fat Of The Land, particularly its three singles, Firestarter (their first UK Number 1), Breathe (UK Number 1, March ’97) and Smack My Bitch Up (UK Number 8, November ’97) that really opened the floodgates. And Firestarter kicked this off in March ’96.
Few British acts have made pop music as kinetic, exciting, fresh and downright dangerous, revolutionary even, since the Prodigy at that time, and Keith Flint’s metamorphosis on Firestarter, from dancer/hype-merchant to 90s rave’s Johnny Rotten (Sex Pistols), was one of the main drivers for it and the subsequent transformation of the band’s fortunes, internationally.
The Prodigy – Smack My Bitch Up – DVD edit from The Prodigy on Vimeo.
Courting controversy and terrifying everyone’s granny, Firestarter, Breathe and Smack My Bitch Up cemented Flint’s own status in the global pop-cultural consciousness and the level of international success the band achieved with them seemed to take everyone by surprise (not least the Prodigy themselves). Thanks in no small part to extensive airplay from MTV (bar Smack My Bitch Up, which was banned), The Fat Of the Land was a Number 1 hit in the UK, the US, Australia and just about country in Europe…. Ooft.
I stumbled across some old videos of the band in their early days, including a great TV feature on the Essex scene from that era:
…plus these clips of them all being interviewed by MTV around the time of The Fat Of The Land:
It’s impossible not to be touched by their attitude: just a bunch of mates doing something they loved for all the right reasons, with the utmost respect for their fans, and having the best laugh in the process.
As Flint explains in one clip (I’ve paraphrased), ‘if you just follow your heart and persevere with something you actually believe in, ignoring everything and everyone else in the process, eventually it pays off’. Flicking two fingers to both the critics and the mainstream (they consistently refused to compromise and never appeared on TOTP), while shifting its goalposts, they re-defined what was possible from a ‘dance act’ and a lot of this was clearly down to Keith Flint.
RIP, the original Firestarter, a true gentleman and a proper legend.
Thanks to Will Lynch’s great tribute on Resident Advisor.
