Interview: Liam Howlett of The Prodigy

If you’re interested in music then you probably already know a bit about The Prodigy. Towards the end of the last millennium, they pretty much revolutionised popular and alternative music and topped the charts across the world. With 1994’s Music for the Jilted Generation and 1997’s Fat of the Land (and to some extent 1992’s Experience) they crossed boundaries between dance, rock and rap and made friends of them all. At one point, after Firestarter came out as a single, they appeared on the covers of NME, Mixmag and Kerrang within a few months. There’s no other band quite like the strange brew of Liam Howlett, Keith Flint and Maxim. While many new acts usher in new scenes behind them, there has been no-one since that compares to The Prodigy in either style or content. So it’s a good job that they’re back on it and playing out live. We caught up with Liam to find out more…

I’ve been looking at some of your latest press photos and you seem to have had another change of image. Keith’s looking a bit like a member of The Smiths…
Keith’s got a bizarre kind of eccentric English gentleman gone wrong look at the moment… where it comes from I’ve got no idea. But it’s all him.

I take it you guys totally control your image then…
Yeah, of course. We control everything you see. It’s down to us right through from the website design, to all the artwork. We don’t think about it too hard, it’s just the way we look. Keith doesn’t sit down and work out any kind of image, he just dresses like that all the time. He didn't want to just spike his hair up again and go off to some nostalgic tip. Much as it helped the band, it felt like it’s a bit of a noose around his neck and we’re trying to move on from it.

Did you know before hand that Firestarter would break as big as it did?
I always knew we had a killer tune. I’d done the instrumental and called up Keith and Maxim. Whoever got there first would get to claim it as their song. Keith came round, and I played him the record. He was like: “If there’s ever a track I’m going to do vocals on, this is it”. I was listening to the vocal sessions the other day. There’s a lot on there that we didn’t use. We had loads of lyrics originally and stripped it down.

We used the demo I’d recorded in my bedroom as the finished version and put the vocals on top after. I remember coming back from London with Keith at 2am, playing it over and over and we knew it had to be the next single. That was a good moment between two mates. Then when it came out it exploded.

Must have been fun at the time…
When that whole hysteria was happening, we definitely rose to the occasion and took the piss. We thought ‘Okay, now we’re up here don’t think we’re going to be responsible’. Smack My Bitch Up was just us acting like angry little teenagers. Now we feel like the band is big enough for us to experiment musically and do more interesting things. Personally I’m more comfortable with the way things are now, than ever.

The dance music or rave music scene has evolved quite a lot since you started out. How do you think The Prodigy has evolved with that?
I got into the original party scene in the summer of 89, and 90. Those were my party years and that’s what shaped the early band. Then about late 92, 93 it began to get really monotonous and I began to really hate it. Before that we were writing music for DJs to play at parties, but because our records were getting in the charts, the DJs didn't want to play them. That made me turn against the dance music scene at the time and every record I wrote after then was to try and destroy it. Poison was the reverse of what was going on with drum’n’bass, Voodoo People was bringing guitars into it, all twisted opposite ends of what of what was going on. I’ve had some great nights out but with the music I was into at the beginning of the nineties, you’d hear an array of styles next to each other. There are good tunes in all genres of music, but I don’t really see the different types, I just see the sounds.

Do you think the dance scene has became too segregated then?
I’m sure kids that go out now will have the best time of their lives, but personally it just made me loose interest in it. I was blown away by Rage Against The Machine when I went to America and I came back from there thinking that The Prodigy were finished. We had to either call it a day or turn it around and that’s when I went back into the studio with a new angle. That’s when the band took a different shape and moved forward and became what we are now.

It must be amazing to look back at what you’ve achieved…
It’s good to do the singles album because it’s like a history of the band in music and pictures. We had to gather all these photos together and talk about the old times. We never had the time to do it before, but it was good to reminisce together…

What was it like working with Juliette Lewis?
I think she’s fucking great. Our original idea was to challenge people, I like a bit of confrontation. It would have been easy for me to choose an established female rock star, but when I met her and we talked about it we were really buzzing about making music together. She was into the band and it was just the right collaboration to do for me. People didn’t get it, when we came out, but I think now people can understand it as she’s a bit more established with her own band The Licks.

On the same note, neither Maxim or Keith were involved on the Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned album. Was there any friction in the band after that?
We never really fell out, but we went through very bad stages in late 2001 and 2002 and we didn’t speak for some time, we didn’t really have anything to say to each other. Music is the common link between us and we don’t really hang out with each others friends or anything. It’s basically down to me to write the music and pull the band back together to record it. But I wasn’t really interested in making Firestarter Part 2, or another Fat of the Land. I just wanted to try something different and I wasn’t really bothered if it was commercially successful.

To be honest, the album was more of a personal record to me, but I think one mistake is that we didn’t get a chance to play it live while we were making it and I think that affected it quite a bit. Playing live with new songs is really important. It helps you grade whether something needs to be shorter, longer, louder or faster. I can tell it all by the first minute of a song onstage.

I’ve seen you guys live loads of times and I think you’re awesome. One of the best bands I’ve ever seen…
Nice one man, cool. We love it and I think it shows. People make me laugh. They’re like ‘ahh, you’re 38 years old’, but there's no excuse. As long as Primal Scream are still going we will be, you know what I mean? They’re much older than us and they’ve still got it.

Are you still in touch with Leeroy Thornhill (former Prodigy member)?
Yeah man, yeah. He’s one of my best friends. He’s DJing at one of the gigs on our tour and doing his own thing. I’ve not seen him in a while, but I usually speak to him once a week. He’s basically doing lots of gigs as a DJ. He’s also joined this band with this DJ Hyper guy. I think he’s done some vocals on his album and they’ll be doing a live thing.

Are you good mates with Noel and Liam Gallagher these days?
I’m good friends with Liam. He’s a close friend of mine, with the family connections and all that. We never talk about music when we go out, because everyone always talks to us about it all the time. We talk about the weather and other shit. Liam's a funny guy. I don’t know Noel that well, but he really helped me out on the last record. He lent me his studio for weeks to record it and we jammed. He came down while we were there to hang out and got his guitar out a couple of times.

You’ve changed your image a lot over the years. Do you ever look back at the photos and think, what the hell were we wearing?
I believe I’d say that was true of the green and white costumes we wore early on. I do definitely look back at those photos now and go “what the f*ck?” I think we were all young and a bit naïve at that point… I must have been on drugs! I used to dress cooler when I was at school. I was really into The Specials and looking sharp, but when the rave thing came in it all went tits up for me.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to LeftLion readers?
Just respect to everyone that stayed with this band. We’ve got a lot of music to give and we’re still really into it. It’s fucking great to be here. That sounds a bit John Lennon for me, but respect to the people that follow us. And respect to all the young producers out there, because that’s where the real future of music is. People in their bedrooms that haven’t got any cash but have ideas. It ain’t about money, it’s about people putting back into it and being creative, so respect to all those out there doing it.

The Prodigy play at Nottingham Ice Arena on 7 December 2005 with the Audio Bullies in support. Their Law, The Prodigy greatest hits, is on general release.

The Prodigy website