This can be described for sure as the ‘Gig of the Year’ in Israel. The Prodigy strike back in Tel Aviv after 17 years and their last visit there during their Fat Of The Land word tour. This time will be different and BIG of course once again, with new stuff and hopefully new sounds for Israel prodigy fans.
Some days ago Israel people had the chance to read a very interesting interview from Liam Howlett, which appeared in 7 Nights, as part of the weekend edition of Yedioth Ahronot (May 16 2014).. You can read all of this somehow ‘unusual’ kind of interview as translated to English.
Liam Howlett chuckles as I bring him back to Smack My Bitch Up. That track with the huge sound, slang that brought up protest and rage from every other organization, and of course the mythological video clip, which got censored through and through – the one that MTV declared as the most outrageous of all times. The moment that made The Prodigy the hottest thing in the world. “We looked at all this from the sidelines, and just laughed”, he says. “For us it was nothing. Just a joke. Smack My Bitch is a kind of an expression and a kind of a night out, and we felt like making that video, and we didn’t care that we got so misunderstood. After all we always liked getting in trouble with people and never apologized for that. And it’s funny, because if that’s a ‘scandal’, how do you call things like Miley Cyrus, ‘the provocative’, who walks around and sways and wipes her ass on anything that moves? I think she’s polluting again everything we disinfected. Because we made people open their ears and their eyes. And nothing that we did was planned, but just the natural thing that happened at that moment. That’s why we never wanted to ‘recreate the scandal’ – it wasn’t cool even back then. I guess at the time they really liked being scared of us. It started with Firestarter.
But as you know, life follows its own course, and the devilish Firestarter eventually found itself on the olympic track at the opening of the London games in 2012. An event that puzzled Howlett. “Yeah, fuck. That was weird”, he admits, “but Danny Boyle (the ceremony’s director) is a big fan of ours, and he described to me first what it’s going to look like. And when he said that the intention was to display the best of British music throughout the generations, among names like The Stones, Blur and The Sex Pistols, then yeah, we consented and were very proud.“
The Prodigy started their way in 1990 in the town Braintree in Essex, England, as a one man project, Liam Howlett. A 19 year old kid who was a classic pianist, got caught by the Hip-Hop and Breakdance culture, the love-potion wrapped rave scene, and the magic machines of the new world – and he really had no reason to look back. He gathered around him two dancers, Keith Flint and Leeroy Thornhill, and started launching tracks which got accepted with hysteria and came out in the first and founding album Experience – Charly, Jericho or Everybody In The Place. Craziness of Techno, Rock and Roll riffs, monstrous beats and one sample of the Jamaican Raggae singer Max Romeo: “I’m gonna send him to outa space, to find another race.
Jilted Generation and the memorable cover followed up with Voodoo People, Poison, No Good and Their Law. Meanwhile Maxim Reality joined the band, Flint started to sing, or mainly go out of his mind. In the third album, Fat Of The Land, with Smack My Bitch, Firestarter and Breathe, the band set roots in the US, became extremely rich and became, without question, the greatest electronic band of its time – maybe even until today. First and foremost to the golden age of British electronica: Chemical Brothers, Underworld, The Orb, Orbital, Leftfield, Aphex Twin, Future Sound Of London, Basement Jaxx and KLF – a team never seen and to never be seen again. And the drugs were also better.
And just as importantly, The Prodigy were of the few bands that visited Israel at the prime of their success, three shows between 1995 and 1997, in Tel-Aviv which Howlett remembers fondly. “We tried to get everywhere, Like Beirut for instance, places back then in the nineties it wasn’t common to appear in. And we realized that many Israelis are coming to see us in London, so we decided to visit you as well”. Personal account: the shows in the Cinerama and in Hangar 11 were two of the most rousing seen here. And also the most dangerous.
– In reality, The Prodigy is a punk-rock band. And that feeling of danger, which sort of faded over the last two decades, is all you wanted to pass along?
”Right. The combination of myself, Keith and Maxim, is the sum of all sort of influences we’ve had – and for all I care we never belonged to ‘British Techno’, but always were a punk band. Like The Pistols, or Nirvana, or Public Enemy, which hit me in the face, attacked me as a listener and as a crowd. That’s the music I love: a wave of energy that will excite me, wake me up, stun. That’s why I make music. Calming things like Pink Floyd, it’s beautiful, and there are some that I really like, like Massive Attack – but it’s not my spirit. And everything we did together was immediate, to survive. Like what we found in Punk and in Hip-Hop: ‘keep it raw’, ‘do it yourself’, ‘never sell out’. Never try to suck up to some taste for the wrong reasons. And if we had lost that, we would have ceased to exist a long time ago”.
Further down the road Howlett tried to stay true to his principles, which led to somewhat of a dismantling of the band, for the next two albums, and now he’s working on a new album planned to see the light of day by the end of the year as he says. On May 29th they will arrive again to Israel, to the Trade Fairs Center, for an open air rave as part of ‘Pepsi Max Music Project’, in the beginning of a worldwide tour. And he’s not expecting to see pacifiers and light sticks in the crowd.
“Look, we all know is where we came from, from rave culture, and we all drank and ate whatever was there, and for all we care people can do whatever they like”, he says, “but at some point I got tired of the Ecstasy kids. Like, this is all that it’s about. The truth is, there’s not much left of that. And rock concerts, they’re filled with alcohol. At least in the last decade”.
– Try the US, they finally discovered ‘the high. How do you relate to this ‘new’ American term, EDM?
“Re-branding. That’s exactly the thing with America, and what’s so annoying about it. In dance music there was always enough room for many people and many genres. And once in a while someone would come and give all this a title. What’s happening now is not much different than what happened at the end of the nineties, when all around they were saying, ‘electronica’. Wow! And that must have been some bored journalist who came up with this nickname. And that’s the thing with ‘EDM’. Nothing new, except for the packaging. Because the kid who sits in his room making music, he didn’t come up with this term, ‘EDM’. It’s just, concept, meant to give people a more comfortable feeling. This is what Americans do for a living: Invent stupid words to make people feel more comfortable”.
Howlett almost shoots me, from thousands of miles away, when I ask him for an opinion about names like Avicii, Deadmau5, or Swedish House Mafia, wedding DJs that make a fortune – the total commercialization of the culture which he helped design. “I never liked faceless DJs, and that didn’t change when they became famous”, he says, “it just didn’t speak to us. There’s one photo of The Specials, walking down the street, and it’s the one that made me as a kid want to be in music. Or The Beastie Boys, we always preferred these bands over Kraftwerk, which didn’t interest us growing up. We wanted to be in a group, a band, a gang. Keith didn’t know at all what he was doing, one day he just did it, grabbed the microphone and came up from backstage. And that’s it”.
Howlett is a sharp man, fluent and somewhat impatient to casual talk. Personal matters he requested to leave out of the bounds of our short conversation, and also political matters. Not just because of the voices asking the band not to come to Israel. The Prodigy were always anti politics. “Because when you’re ‘political’, you’re actually dividing people. You’re not helping them, but split them for the benefit of others”, he says. “And our philosophy always said, you can think about us whatever you like, and find whatever you want in our music. But in reality we’re saying, come, forget about everything, and let’s run away, because we’re beyond all this shit. Not hippies, but fuck-you music – and don’t find any distinct ‘political message’ in it”.
– How come other ‘Prodigy’s haven’t been born? An electronic band with a face?
“That’s a real question, and I don’t have a good answer. Bands don’t survive if you don’t have a few good tracks, and if you don’t try to renew yourself. For us, if we didn’t have much new to go alongside the hits, people would have gotten tired of us. And maybe they don’t give these days enough chance to artists. It’s a fast world, where everything is about money and instant success, not much chance for a followup. And that’s a shame”.
– Are there any new things that caught your attention? Say, over the last decade?
“No. I have to say that there aren’t really new bands that do that to me. Haven’t noticed a band that brings out an album, does that to me, and then I’m waiting enthusiastically for the band’s next album. Not enough consistency”.
– Radiohead?
“Can’t say anything. Because I hardly know anything. I loved the first album, and that’s it. But really, no comment. (Tom York) he’s a really nice guy, we met once – but honestly, I simply don’t know anything”.
– Kanye West?
“Oh he’s such a crybaby! Complains about people that they don’t understand him, like some spoiled schoolboy. Come on! Make rock, make hip-hop, and you’re talented – but when he gets to the Grammys he’s always such a putz! And you’re bursting with laughter. And then he goes around whining in interviews, and all these leather pants and fashion and all that bullshit. What are you talking about? What’s this? Fuck off! All kinds of ridiculous statements. I don’t belong to the camp that says, ‘well, he’s very crazy and very creative’. No, he’s a rapper and a good writer, and a very good producer – but move on! Quit whining! Just an annoying creature”.
– To finish. Before the show I took a look at your recent setlists. You’re not performing Out Of Space?
“No, that didn’t happen”.
– You’re kidding me. In the event that closed the 20 year celebration of the Sonar festival in Barcelona, Laurent Garnier let people know, “these are the last ten minutes, and this will be the last bit”. He laid down Out Of Space and people flew out of space.
“Cool, nice to hear. So we’ll perform it, I promise (laughs). Truth is, in our shows you’ll see Maxim and Keith and myself talking among ourselves, ‘what will be the next track?’, we like to change, make it fresh, spontaneous. But alright man, we’ll do that bit for the Israeli crowd that we like so much”.
The Prodigy’s gig will take place at the Ganei Tarukha (Exhibition Grounds) in Tel Aviv on 29th May.