The story of The Prodigy

Braintree beginnings

The story starts in Braintree, Essex, with a quiet kid called Liam Howlett, born there on the twenty first of August 1971. He had classical piano lessons as a child, but hip hop grabbed him as a teenager. He said the record that made him believe he could make music himself was Grandmaster Flash cutting up Blondie and Queen on Adventures on the Wheels of Steel. He learned his DJ craft in a local hip hop crew called Cut 2 Kill. Then he saw a Roland W30 keyboard with a sampler and sequencer built in. It cost about a thousand pounds, at a time when he earned around eight thousand a year, so he saved for ages, then locked himself away for months to learn it.[1] [2] [3]

In 1989 Liam quit Cut 2 Kill and came home to Braintree, where the rave scene was exploding. He started DJing at a club called the Barn and making his own tracks at home. Two regulars kept pestering him to play the best records. One was Keith Flint, born in east London on the seventeenth of September 1969, a dyslexic, restless kid who had been thrown out of school at fifteen and worked as a roofer. He had spent time travelling around Europe and the Middle East with long hippy hair. The other was his friend Leeroy Thornhill, a gentle giant from nearby Rayne, well over six feet tall, a James Brown fan with qualifications as an electrician and a fast shuffling dance style of his own.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Keith asked Liam for a mixtape. Liam handed him a cassette with a mix on one side and, on the other, tracks he had made himself. He had scratched one word on it, Prodigy, after the Moog Prodigy synthesizer he used. Keith turned the tape over and was stunned that Liam was not playing his own music out. He took it to Leeroy, and the two of them went back to Liam with a plan. They would dance on stage while he played his tunes, like a live show for the rave crowd. Liam was shy, but he agreed. A dancer and singer called Sharky, real name Sheila Burke, a friend of Keith's, made them a four. The band officially formed on the fifth of October 1990.[1] [2] [3] [4]

They needed one more piece. Keith knew a man called Keith Palmer, born in Peterborough in 1967 to Jamaican parents, who had been an MC on the reggae sound system scene since he was fourteen. He went by Maxim Reality, a name picked because he liked lyrics about real issues. Keith thought his contacts might even make him a good manager. Maxim missed their first meeting, at a record shop, and then simply turned up an hour before their first gig and said he was ready to go. He had no plan beyond freestyling the way he would at a reggae dance. He grabbed the microphone, and the Prodigy had found its MC.[1] [2] [3]

That first gig was at the Four Aces club on Dalston Lane in east London, a famous reggae venue that was then running rave nights under the name Labrynth. Liam called it the roughest venue in London. The band arrived at midday and were not on until two in the morning. According to Keith, the owner warned them the one band he had booked before was dragged off stage and beaten up. Instead, the Prodigy were asked back the very next night, and within a week they had two months of bookings. Liam made a ten track demo on his Roland, and after one label turned him down, the young rave label XL Recordings signed the group.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Charly and the rave years

XL put out the What Evil Lurks EP in February 1991, four tracks from Liam's demo. Soon after, Sharky left, unable to commit, and the Prodigy settled into the four men who would define them: Liam making the music, Keith and Leeroy dancing, Maxim on the microphone. In August 1991 came their first single, Charly. It sampled a nineteen seventies government safety cartoon called Charley Says, in which a little boy explains the lessons meowed by his cat, voiced by the comedian Kenny Everett. On the record, the cat's meow and the boy's warning about telling your mum before going out became a rave hook. Charly went to number three in the UK and the Prodigy were suddenly on television screens and in the charts.[1] [2] [3]

Success brought a backlash. Charly inspired a wave of copycat rave records that sampled children's television, like Sesame's Treet and A Trip to Trumpton, and critics sneered at kiddie rave and toytown techno. In 1992 the club magazine Mixmag put Liam on its cover and asked whether Charly had killed rave. He was furious. Years later he said he stood by the record and blamed the imitators. Liam knew another cartoon single would finish them, so he spent his Charly money on new gear, including a Roland drum machine. The next single, Everybody in the Place, reached number two just after Christmas 1991. The only record above it was Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, re released after the death of Freddie Mercury.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Liam recorded the debut album, Experience, at his home setup, and it came out on the twenty eighth of September 1992. He wrote every track himself. Of the others, only Maxim was heard, on a live recording that closed the album. It reached number twelve and went platinum in Britain. The American musician Moby later said Experience changed his mind about dance albums, because it worked as a whole record rather than a pile of singles. The singles kept coming too. Fire, sampling Arthur Brown, was deleted after two weeks and stalled just outside the top ten. Out of Space, built on Max Romeo's reggae classic Chase the Devil and a line from the rapper Kool Keith, reached number five.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The Prodigy were a live band first. They played raves run, as Liam put it, by gangsters, never sure they would get paid. Leeroy remembers a ticketless fan in Folkestone jumping headfirst through a window, not realising the floor was three storeys below, and landing on their equipment. By early 1993 they had done their first national tour and were playing overseas, in Germany, the US and Japan. Then Liam tried an experiment. He released two tracks anonymously on plain white label vinyl, marked only Earthbound. Underground DJs loved them, not knowing who had made them. They came out officially in 1993 as One Love, which reached number eight. It proved the Prodigy could win over the purists.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Music for the Jilted Generation

By 1994 the British government was bringing in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act, which gave police new powers against outdoor raves. Liam wrote much of the band's second album in response. The track Their Law, made with the Midlands band Pop Will Eat Itself, became a rallying cry against the law. The album opened with a spoken statement about taking the music back underground, and its inner sleeve showed a raver facing riot police. Music for the Jilted Generation came out on the fourth of July 1994 and went straight to number one. It was nominated for the Mercury Prize. Years later Liam called the title stupid and insisted the album was never meant to be political.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The music had grown darker and heavier. No Good, Start the Dance reached number four and topped charts in Finland and Greece. Voodoo People mixed breakbeats, flute and a guitar riff based on a Nirvana song, played by the session guitarist Lance Riddler. Poison, sung by Maxim, dropped the tempo right down to hip hop speed, and both Liam and Keith later named it the single they were proudest of. The band made a point of refusing Top of the Pops and other British TV shows. A single performance of Everybody in the Place on BBC Two's Dance Energy in 1991 remained their only one on British television, so music videos on MTV Europe carried them across the continent.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

Critics who had written them off as a novelty now called the album a landmark. The Guardian later said it pushed dance music into stadiums with rock and roll swagger, and David Bowie named it among his favourite records of the nineties. The Prodigy were turning into a rock band without guitars, so they added one. Jim Davies started playing live with them in late 1994, including at Glastonbury in 1995, a set that helped them cross over to rock crowds. When Davies left to join Pitchshifter, the punk guitarist Gizz Butt of Janus Stark took over the live role for three years, recommended by a Kerrang writer and on stage at T in the Park within two weeks.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

On the eighth of December 1995 the Prodigy played the Pionir Hall in Belgrade. They were the first major international act to play the city since the break up of Yugoslavia, arriving soon after UN sanctions were partly lifted. That night they played a new song nobody had heard, called Breathe, eleven months before its release. It became a treasured song for young people in Serbia. Meanwhile the band's roles were quietly shifting. Keith, still officially a dancer, was growing restless. He told NME he was proud to be compared with the Happy Mondays' dancer Bez, but he wanted more. Back in Essex, Liam was working on an instrumental that would give him his chance.[1] [2] [3]

Firestarter and the Fat of the Land

Liam had written a track with a squealing guitar sample taken from the Breeders and a vocal snatch from the Art of Noise. He was thinking of adding a sampled voice. Keith heard it and asked to write his own lyric. Liam was surprised, since the only singing he had heard from Keith and Leeroy was U2 songs on the drive home, but he let him try. Keith said English was not his strong point, so he sang in a strange exaggerated accent, and it came out menacing. He explained the lyric was not about starting fires. It was about stirring up thousands of people at a gig until it felt like a riot. Liam later said they played it over and over driving home and knew it would change things.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Firestarter came out on the eighteenth of March 1996. Its first video had cost around one hundred thousand pounds and was scrapped. The replacement was shot cheaply in black and white in a disused London Underground tunnel at Aldwych. It showed Keith with his head shaved down the middle and two spikes of hair like horns, eyes ringed in black, sticking out a pierced tongue at the camera. When Top of the Pops showed it on the twenty eighth of March, viewers complained in record numbers that it had frightened their children, and the BBC stopped showing it. A tabloid demanded the record be banned. None of it mattered. Firestarter knocked Take That off the top and stayed at number one for three weeks.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Firestarter was a hit around the world and their breakthrough in America, where it reached number thirty. In Britain it sold more than six hundred thousand copies. Keith had gone from dancer to the face of the band almost overnight, and he found he could not walk into a pub without someone shouting that it was the Firestarter. That summer the Prodigy played Oasis's giant shows at Knebworth. In November 1996 they released Breathe, with Keith and Maxim trading vocals over a drum break borrowed from Thin Lizzy. It went to number one in Britain and in seven other European countries, and its video, set in a decaying flat full of creeping creatures, was the last to feature Leeroy.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

American labels now fought over the band. Richard Russell of XL met executives from many of them, and he remembered Guy Oseary of Maverick Records, the label owned by Madonna, as the most determined. Madonna herself turned up to several meetings. The deal, reported at around five million dollars, was announced in February 1997, a huge sum for a rave act. Liam was not dazzled. He later said Madonna once phoned him at two in the morning to ask him to DJ at her London concert, and when he asked how she got his number, she told him she was Madonna. He did it for twenty thousand pounds and enjoyed playing the Sex Pistols to her fans.[1] [2] [3]

The Fat of the Land came out on the thirtieth of June 1997. It went straight to number one in Britain and America, and the Guinness book listed it as the fastest selling dance album in UK history, with about three hundred and seventeen thousand copies in its first week. That week it outsold Radiohead's OK Computer by eight to one. The cover showed a moon crab photographed on a beach in Costa Rica, along with a new ant logo. The Prodigy headlined the opening night of Glastonbury that June, the first dance act to top the bill, then headlined the American touring festival Lollapalooza. The album went on to sell an estimated ten million copies worldwide.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Controversy and burnout

The third single from the album was Smack My Bitch Up, released in November 1997. Its repeated vocal hook was sampled from the rapper Kool Keith on an Ultramagnetic MCs record, and the Indian classical vocal was sung by Shahin Badar. The US National Organization for Women said the title advocated violence against women and even hinted at injecting heroin. Liam said it simply meant doing anything with manic intensity, like being on stage. The BBC played only an instrumental version, and the American chains Wal Mart and Kmart pulled The Fat of the Land from their shelves over the marketing. Liam later said that no major label would have had the nerve to release it, but XL did.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The video made things louder. The Swedish director Jonas Akerlund shot it in one day in London, with a heavy thirty five millimetre film camera strapped to his cinematographer's head. It follows a night of drinking, drugs, fights and sexual assault through the eyes of someone we never see, until a mirror reveals the partygoer is a young woman. Akerlund said the band and label hated his first rough edit and fired him, so he finished it his own way and sent it to Keith, who loved it. MTV aired it only after midnight, then pulled it on the twenty second of December 1997. The following year it still won two MTV Video Music Awards.[1] [2]

The song caused a public fight with the Beastie Boys. Both bands played the Reading Festival on the same Saturday in August 1998. The Beastie Boys asked the Prodigy to drop Smack My Bitch Up from their set, saying it could hurt people who had suffered domestic abuse. The Prodigy refused. Maxim introduced the song by telling the crowd that someone had not wanted them to play it, and that he would do whatever he wanted. There were also public slanging matches with Moby over the title. Years later the song kept stirring trouble. In 2016 the Chicago Cubs fired a stadium DJ who played it for a pitcher who had been suspended under baseball's domestic violence policy.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The band stayed on the road for years. They played Moscow's Red Square in 1997 and, invited by the African National Congress, toured post apartheid South Africa. In 1999 Liam released The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One, a mix album based on a guest set for Mary Anne Hobbs's BBC Radio 1 show. He also scored music for The Uranus Experiment, an adult film sold on the gimmick of a sex scene shot in zero gravity, working with Massive Attack's 3D. The world tour finally ended in August 1999, and the Prodigy parted ways with Gizz Butt. Leeroy had been worn down by years of dancing and waiting for work, and he felt the band no longer needed a dancer.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

In April 2000 the band announced that Leeroy had left. He said he had been a full member for nine brilliant years and wanted to concentrate on his own music as Flightcrank. Liam said it obviously would not affect the music, a remark that stung, though Leeroy later said the split was friendlier than it sounded and that they were still like brothers. Around the same time Leeroy split from his fiancee, the Radio 1 DJ Sara Cox. The Prodigy's website went black, showing only the band's logo and the words we will be back. It stayed that way for about two years, and many fans assumed the group was finished.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The wilderness years

The comeback single, Baby's Got a Temper, arrived on the first of July 2002, the Prodigy's first new music in five years. Keith had written it for his side project, a punk band called Flint, and its lyrics repeatedly named Rohypnol, a sedative notorious as a date rape drug. The band insisted it was about Keith's own use of downers, not about drugging anyone. Radio 1 masked the word, and critics hated the song. The video, filmed in the Czech Republic, showed women in skimpy outfits milking cows for a crowd of addicts. It still reached the top five, but Liam soon disowned it, saying the band had started taking themselves too seriously.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Late in 2002 Liam called Keith and Maxim to a rented studio in an east London warehouse. He told them the tracks he had been working on were rubbish and that he had thrown them away. Then he played them a couple of new pieces they loved, looked each of them in the eye, and told them they would not be on the next album. He felt the Prodigy had become a band with a singer, and he had to break the mould. It was a hard blow. Keith and Maxim earned songwriting money only on tracks they sang, and with no gigs booked they had a real stake in the decision. Liam called it the band's rock bottom moment.[1] [2] [3]

Keith took it badly. He had no creative outlet, and his solo album with Flint, Device Number One, was shelved before release. He later spoke openly about depression and a dependence on prescription painkillers, describing lining up pills and taking them until he passed out. He found some release in motorcycles, riding in a Ducati backed racing team until a bad crash made him stop. Liam, meanwhile, had writer's block. He had married Natalie Appleton of All Saints in June 2002 and bought a country house with a dream studio, but nothing came. In the end he shut the studio and wrote on a laptop with cheap software, often, he said, in bed.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned came out on the twenty third of August 2004. It was the only Prodigy album where Liam was the sole member heard, with guests instead, including the actress Juliette Lewis, Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis, Kool Keith and the rapper Twista. A track called Memphis Bells was sold online in a limited run of five thousand copies, each one a mix chosen by the buyer from nearly forty thousand combinations. It sold out within about a day and a half. The album went to number one, but reviews were mixed and it sold poorly by their standards. After a singles collection, Their Law, in 2005, both XL and Maverick let the band go.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Something important happened on the road. Touring resumed in 2005, and Liam later said that was the repair time, full of four in the morning talks with Keith to fix their friendship. Keith also met the Japanese DJ Mayumi Kai. He said he decided to get clean after meeting her, giving up drugs, cigarettes and alcohol around the time they married in 2006, at Felsted in Essex. Among the invited guests were Liam Gallagher and Liam Howlett with Natalie Appleton. In 2008 the band played a Gatecrasher event celebrating twenty years of acid house, and Liam wrote a retro track to play live, called Warrior's Dance. It became the spark for their next album.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Invaders Must Die and the second life

Invaders Must Die came out on the twenty third of February 2009 on the band's own label, Take Me to the Hospital. It was the first Prodigy album where all three members took part in the writing. Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters played drums on two tracks, and James Rushent of Does It Offend You, Yeah co produced the title track and Omen. Omen reached number four, their highest single since Breathe, and won a Kerrang award. Critics were lukewarm, but fans were delighted, and the album entered the chart at number one with more than ninety seven thousand sales in its first week. Liam called it a celebration, the sound of a band buzzing to be back together.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The comeback grew into something bigger. The band launched their own event, the Warriors Dance Festival, and on the twenty fourth of July 2010 they headlined it at the Milton Keynes Bowl, a show released as the live album and film World's on Fire. Liam later called that night their version of Oasis at Knebworth, a big moment for a band that had nearly broken up. He also remembered Keith, a master on two wheels but a terrible driver on four, crashing a golf buggy into his and running him into a bush. In 2012 the Prodigy headlined the Download Festival alongside Metallica and a reunited Black Sabbath, confirming how far they had crossed into the rock and metal world.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The next album took nearly six years, several restarts and a working title, How to Steal a Jetfighter, that was dropped. The Day Is My Enemy came out on the thirtieth of March 2015 and, unlike the last two, was made as a real band record, with Keith and Maxim writing closely alongside Liam. Keith admitted it had not all been cuddles and kisses. Liam said the word that kept coming up was violent. On the track Ibiza, Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods attacked superstar DJs who press play on a USB stick and wave their arms. The album was their sixth studio record in a row to top the UK chart, and they projected its cover onto the Houses of Parliament.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Off stage, Keith had built a full life in the Essex countryside. He restored a listed Tudor manor house, kept horses and dogs, and even bought the surface of a street in Bristol to get the right cobbles for his drive. In 2014 he took over the Leather Bottle pub in Pleshey and became a popular landlord, keeping a jar where anyone who made a Firestarter joke as he lit the fire had to pay a pound for charity. He quit the pub suddenly in 2017. His motorcycle outfit, Team Traction Control, did better still. With the rider Ian Hutchinson it won two races at the Isle of Man TT in 2015 and two more in 2016.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

In 2015 the band said they were bored with making albums and might only release EPs, and Keith even said the Prodigy would have to end soon because of age. Instead, in September 2017 they signed a worldwide record deal with BMG. Liam wrote No Tourists at Tileyard Studios in King's Cross, giving up alcohol and, he said, even sleep, to push himself into new ways of thinking. It came out on the second of November 2018 with guests including the American duo Ho99o9. Its cover showed a London bus bound for the Four Aces, the site of their first gig. It went to number one, and the band set off on a world tour.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The death of Keith Flint

Early in 2019 the Prodigy toured Australia and New Zealand, and they were due to tour the United States in May. On Saturday the second of March, Keith ran a five kilometre Parkrun in Chelmsford and set a personal best of twenty one minutes and twenty two seconds. On the morning of Monday the fourth of March, police were called to his home in the Essex hamlet of North End, near Dunmow, over concerns for his welfare. A friend had found him hanged. He was pronounced dead at the scene, aged forty nine. Police said the death was not suspicious. That day Liam wrote on Instagram that Keith had taken his own life, and said he was shell shocked, angry, confused and heartbroken.[1] [2] [3] [4]

The band cancelled every remaining show. Tributes poured in, and many of them described a gentle man far removed from the snarling figure in the Firestarter video. Jo Whiley called him an absolute sweetheart. The Chemical Brothers remembered him being kind to them when they were starting out. James Blunt recalled an awards night when other stars refused to be photographed with him, and Keith came over, hugged him and said how thrilled he was for his success. Brian May said Keith ran across a festival stage to tell him how much Queen had inspired him. Johnny Rotten, clearly upset, said Keith had been left alone after the band's huge success.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Keith's funeral was held on the twenty ninth of March 2019 at St Mary's Church in Bocking, near Braintree. The band had asked fans to line the route and raise the roof for Keef, and thousands came, some from as far as Australia and Prague. A horse drawn carriage carried his coffin, topped with a green microphone, escorted by roaring motorbikes. Drum and bass blared from speakers outside the church. Liam, Maxim and Leeroy were cheered as they arrived. Keith's wife Mayumi Kai attended, as did his beloved German shepherd, Cyrus. The actor Paul Kaye read a eulogy, and the service included music by System of a Down, Van Morrison and Pink Floyd.[1] [2] [3]

At an inquest in Chelmsford in May 2019, the court heard that Keith had died by hanging, with cocaine, alcohol and codeine in his system. The senior coroner for Essex, Caroline Beasley Murray, did not record suicide. She said there was not enough evidence that he had formed the intention to die, nor enough to call it an accident, so she recorded an open conclusion, adding that we will never quite know what was going on in his mind. Fans started a campaign to send Firestarter back to number one and raise awareness of suicide among men. Donatella Versace dedicated a Milan fashion show to him, and Liam Gallagher sang Champagne Supernova for him at Glastonbury.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

Carrying the fire

For a while it was not clear the Prodigy would go on. A year after Keith's death, Leeroy said the three of them had met on the anniversary to celebrate his life, and that Liam wanted to finish the album he had been working on. In August 2020 Liam confirmed the band would continue. In 2021 they announced a documentary about their history, to be directed by their long time filmmaker Paul Dugdale. Liam also branched out, composing the score for the Netflix horror film Choose or Die in 2022. That September a mural of Keith by the street artist Akse was unveiled in Hackney, near the site of the Four Aces, a day before World Suicide Prevention Day.[1] [2] [3] [4]

In July 2022 the Prodigy returned to the stage with a UK tour marking twenty five years of The Fat of the Land. Maxim, long a commanding frontman in his own right, stood on the speaker stacks and drove the crowd, with Rob Holliday on guitar and Leo Crabtree on drums. During Firestarter an outline of Keith, recognisable from his horns of hair, was drawn in lasers and danced on stage. Maxim told the crowd that Keith was still there. In February 2025, after a tour of Australia, the band confirmed a new album was coming, with Liam describing the sound as evil rave. He later said Keith would always be in his mind in the studio.[1] [2] [3] [4]

As of 2026 the Prodigy are Liam and Maxim, joined live by Rob Holliday and Leo Crabtree. In spring 2026 they set out on a twelve date UK and Ireland arena tour that had sold out fast, including two nights at Wembley Arena. In April they released a remix of Sleaford Mods' track Elitest GOAT, reuniting with Jason Williamson, who said it turned the song into another tune entirely. In March 2026 a memorial bench was placed at St Mary's Church in Bocking, its backrest carved with Keith's devil horns. Some questioned the design in a churchyard, but the vicar who led the funeral said the band and family had been very respectful. Big outdoor Warrior's Dance shows were booked for that summer, including a return to Milton Keynes Bowl.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

The Prodigy's legacy is enormous. They are one of the most successful electronic acts ever, with an estimated twenty five million records sold, two Brit Awards for best British dance act and two Grammy nominations. Every album after their debut went to number one in Britain, six studio albums in a row, seven if you count the singles collection. They took rave out of fields and warehouses and into rock festivals, and acts from Pendulum and Justice to Chase and Status have named them as an influence. Liam once said the band belongs in a line that runs back to the Sex Pistols and the Clash. Whatever the label, their music still sounds like nothing else.[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

The people around The Prodigy

Liam Howlett and Keith Flint. They met on the Braintree rave scene, and Keith's excitement over Liam's homemade tape is the reason the Prodigy exists. Liam built the music and Keith became its face. Their friendship frayed in the early two thousands, when Liam left Keith off an album, but they repaired it on tour with long late night talks. After Keith's death Liam called him his brother, and said he still hears him snarling in the studio.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Liam Howlett and Natalie Appleton. Liam nearly refused to go to V Festival in 2000 because All Saints were on the bill and he had no time for pop. He went anyway and met Natalie there. They married on the seventh of June 2002 in France and had a son in 2004. Through Natalie's sister Nicole, Liam Gallagher of Oasis became family, and he later sang on the Prodigy track Shoot Down.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Keith Flint and Mayumi Kai. Keith said meeting the Japanese DJ Mayumi Kai made him decide to get clean, and he gave up drugs, cigarettes and alcohol around the time they married in 2006 in Felsted, Essex. The couple later separated, but she attended his funeral in 2019. After his death, a different Japanese DJ with the same name was flooded with messages and had to explain she was not his wife.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Keith Flint and Gail Porter. At the height of the band's fame Keith dated the television presenter Gail Porter, and the tabloids branded them beauty and the beast. They were photographed hand in hand at a film premiere in London in 1999. Reports differ on when they split, around 2000 or 2001. When Keith died, Porter posted a single word on social media, heartbroken.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Leeroy Thornhill and Keith Flint. Leeroy and Keith were best mates before the band, partying in Braintree like a little comedy duo. They danced side by side for ten years, one very tall and one short. Leeroy says Keith handled fame's pressure better than he expected, though he once saw him rip phones from hotel walls in a rage. He stayed close until the end, and says simply that he loves him and always will.[1] [2] [3]

The Prodigy and Beastie Boys. The Fat of the Land even sampled the Beastie Boys, on Funky Shit, but the two bands fell out in 1998. At the Reading Festival the Beastie Boys asked the Prodigy to drop Smack My Bitch Up from their set, out of concern for abuse survivors. The Prodigy played it anyway, with Maxim mocking the request from the stage, and the public row followed them for years.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Liam Howlett and Richard Russell. Richard Russell ran XL Recordings, the label that signed the Prodigy and grew rich on their success. He credits Liam with strengthening his belief that you can ignore the rules, and backed him in refusing TV and releasing Smack My Bitch Up. Liam says he only saw Russell angry once, around 1994, when he and Keith charged all their hotel extras, including adult films, to Russell's room as a joke.[1] [2] [3]

The Prodigy and Madonna. Madonna's label Maverick won a bidding war for the band's American rights in 1997, with Madonna herself sitting in on meetings. Liam was unimpressed by the star. He said she once rang him at two in the morning to book him as a DJ, and he took the job for the money and played punk records to her fans. Maverick later dropped the band after the 2004 album sold poorly.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Keith Flint and Maxim. Keith brought Maxim into the band, and for more than twenty five years the two fronted the Prodigy together, trading vocals on Breathe and prowling the stage. Both were cut from the 2004 album, which Maxim later called the right decision. Since Keith's death Maxim has led the live show alone, and at the first shows back in 2022 he told the crowd that Keith was still there.[1] [2] [3] [4]

Keith Flint and Johnny Rotten. Keith was often compared to the Sex Pistols singer, and the two were friendly. But in 2009 Keith fiercely criticised John Lydon for going on the reality show I'm a Celebrity, saying he had let down the punks who believed in him. When Keith died, Lydon was visibly upset, called him a good friend, and said Keith had been left alone after his success.[1] [2]

Liam Howlett and Jason Williamson. Liam and the Sleaford Mods singer Jason Williamson first worked together on Ibiza in 2015, a furious track aimed at lazy superstar DJs, and Williamson joined the band on stage at the Isle of Wight Festival that year. In 2026 Liam remixed the Sleaford Mods song Elitest GOAT, and Williamson said he could not believe it.[1] [2] [3]

Rare facts about The Prodigy

• The band's name came from a synthesizer. Liam scratched the word Prodigy onto the mixtape he gave Keith Flint, after the Moog Prodigy synth he used to make some of the tracks. The name stuck when the group formed.[1] [2]
• Before the Prodigy, Keith Flint appeared in someone else's music video as a running boy. In 1989 Keith played the boy running in the video for Just as Long as I Got You by the new beat act 101, a year before the Prodigy formed.[1]
• The club where the Prodigy played their first gig was later demolished, and its name ended up on an album cover. The Four Aces in Dalston was demolished in 2007. The cover of No Tourists in 2018 showed a London bus with the Four Aces as its destination, a nod to that first show.[1] [2]
• The cat in the Charly sample was voiced by the comedian Kenny Everett. Charly sampled a nineteen seventies safety film series called Charley Says. The cat Charley was voiced by Kenny Everett, and the little boy by the young son of a neighbour of the producer.[1] [2]
• Everybody in the Place was kept off number one by Queen. In January 1992 the only single above it was the re released Bohemian Rhapsody, which returned to the top after the death of Freddie Mercury.[1] [2]
• The Prodigy made only one appearance performing on British television in their early career. They refused Top of the Pops and similar shows. A 1991 performance of Everybody in the Place on BBC Two's Dance Energy remained their only one.[1]
• Carl Cox was the first DJ Liam ever heard play his music in a club. In late 1990 Liam heard Cox play Everybody in the Place in a London club before it was released. In 2026 Cox was booked for the band's Warrior's Dance shows.[1]
• The single Fire was deleted after just two weeks on purpose. The label pulled the twelve inch so attention would move to the debut album. It stalled at number eleven, breaking a run of top ten hits.[1] [2]
• One Love first came out anonymously on unmarked vinyl. Liam released it as white labels called Earthbound, and underground DJs loved it without knowing it was the Prodigy. Leeroy said purists sent their anonymous records to the top of the dance charts.[1] [2]
• A whole track was cut from Music for the Jilted Generation because the CD ran out of space. At the cutting room Liam found the music would not fit, so We Eat Rhythm was dropped and other tracks were shortened. It later appeared on a free cassette with Select magazine.[1]
• The guitar riff in Voodoo People is based on a Nirvana song. The riff borrows from Nirvana's Very Ape and was played by the session guitarist Lance Riddler. Pendulum's remix of Voodoo People later became famous in its own right.[1] [2] [3]
• Liam refused road protesters the use of Their Law, because motorways got him to London faster. Despite the anti establishment image, Liam turned down protesters who wanted the song for a documentary, reasoning that he liked driving on motorways.[1]
• The songwriting credits for Firestarter include Kim Deal of the Breeders and Trevor Horn. The guitar loop came from the Breeders' track SOS and a vocal snatch from the Art of Noise, so their members are credited. Liam phoned Pete Townshend to correct him after Townshend assumed Liam had worked with Horn.[1] [2] [3]
• The famous Firestarter video was a cheap second attempt. The band spent around one hundred thousand pounds on a first video they hated. The replacement was filmed in black and white in a disused Tube tunnel at Aldwych.[1] [2]
• Breathe was first played live in Belgrade, eleven months before its release. On the eighth of December 1995 the Prodigy became the first major international act to play Belgrade since Yugoslavia broke up, and debuted Breathe that night.[1]
• The drums on Breathe come from Thin Lizzy, and its sword sound from the Wu Tang Clan. The drum break is taken from Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed, and the swishing blade from Da Mystery of Chessboxin.[1]
• The Fat of the Land outsold Radiohead's OK Computer by eight to one in its first week. Its British sales that week were reportedly bigger than the rest of the top one hundred combined. OK Computer later beat it to a Grammy for best alternative album.[1] [2]
• The crab on the Fat of the Land cover was photographed on a Costa Rican beach. The moon crab was shot in Manuel Antonio National Park. The album also introduced the ant logo, and its title comes from the old phrase living off the fat of the land.[1]
• The Smack My Bitch Up video was filmed with a heavy film camera strapped to a man's head. Jonas Akerlund's cinematographer Henrik Halvarson wore a thirty five millimetre camera all day for the first person shoot. Madonna saw the video and hired Akerlund for Ray of Light.[1] [2]
• Madonna once paid Liam twenty thousand pounds to DJ at her London concert. He said she phoned him at two in the morning. He took the job for the money and played the Sex Pistols to her fans.[1]
• Liam wrote music for an adult film sold on a zero gravity sex scene. In 1999 he contributed to The Uranus Experiment with Massive Attack's 3D. His press officer said 3D started it.[1] [2] [3]
• Memphis Bells was sold in nearly forty thousand possible versions. In 2004 fans could build their own mix from thirty nine thousand six hundred combinations. Only five thousand copies were sold, and they went in about a day and a half.[1] [2]
• Invaders Must Die is the only Prodigy album with no explicit songs. After years of controversy, their 2009 comeback album carries no explicit content warning, a first for the band.[1]
• An early Australian download of Warrior's Dance was actually a Placebo song. When it went on sale on iTunes in Australia in April 2009, buyers got a track by Placebo by mistake. It was fixed soon after.[1] [2]
• The Take Me to the Hospital video was shot on VHS tape. The band filmed it on old VHS equipment to get a nineties look, in what they said was an abandoned mental hospital.[1]
• Liam's Essex house once belonged to a businessman killed in a McLaren F1 crash. Liam owned the same rare car. When news broke that an unnamed Essex man had died in one, his own father briefly feared it was him.[1]
• Keith bought the surface of a Bristol street to pave his drive. Restoring his listed Tudor manor house in Essex, he wanted the right kind of cobbles, so he bought them from a street in Bristol.[1]
• Keith's pub had a jar for Firestarter jokes. At the Leather Bottle in Pleshey, anyone who joked about the Firestarter while he lit the fire paid a pound. By early 2015 he had collected fifty seven pounds for charity.[1] [2] [3]
• Keith had a crash while trying to start a racing career at the height of Firestarter. In 1998 he trained to race and rode a Red Bull Ducati, but a big crash and the band's workload made him stop.[1]
• Keith once flew the band's private plane. Leeroy says a pilot let them take the controls, and Keith sent the plane shooting upwards while everyone screamed to get him back.[1]
• The African National Congress invited the Prodigy to play South Africa. Leeroy says the ANC felt the band's multiracial line up would set a good example after apartheid. The tour went well.[1]
• Weird Al Yankovic could only do a loose parody of Firestarter. His network CBS would not pay the Prodigy royalties, so his Weird Al Show song Lousy Haircut only loosely copied the original.[1]
• Maxim makes art from pills, blades, needles and bullets. Working as MM, or Double M, he held his first exhibition, Lepidop Terror, in London's Covent Garden in 2011.[1]
• Leeroy bought a windmill because normal houses were too low for him. Standing well over six feet, he needed high ceilings. Buying it in 1998 stretched him financially, which fed into his decision to leave.[1] [2]
• A video game side quest pays tribute to Keith Flint. In Assassin's Creed Valhalla, a bard called Keith in Essex is denounced by a bishop in a quest named The Prodigy, full of jokes on the band's song titles.[1]
• The Prodigy's first ever business card went up for auction in 2026. It was part of a rave memorabilia collection offered by Bonhams, estimated at sixty to eighty thousand pounds for the whole lot.[1]

Disputed stories

These stories are told often but the accounts don't agree. Here are the versions and who says what.