Obituary: Keith Flint, lead singer of The Prodigy

Died: March 4, 2019

KEITH Flint, who has died aged 49, was one of the most definitive pop stars of his generation, a dancer and later singer with Essex rave group The Prodigy, whose fierce image – including colourfully dyed hair, piercings, a wildly aggressive dancing style and facial make-up which accentuated his angry, piercing eyes – made him an instantly recognisable figure. In the 1990s, at the height of the Prodigy’s notoriety, he became that rare brand of pop star whose recognition was intergenerational; who was idolised by teenagers and tutted at by grandparents alike.

While the group’s success was great, and similarly crossed the boundaries of age (they released seven albums between 1992 and last November, the last six of which went to number one in the UK), it’s fair to say that Flint’s enduring and diverse legacy with The Prodigy boils down to just one image; that of the singer, dressed in baggy Stars ‘n’ Stripes jumper, hair shaved into Wolverine spikes, flailing and hollering in murky monochrome in the video for the Prodigy’s breakthrough hit Firestarter (1996).

“I’m the fear addicted / a danger illustrated… I’m a firestarter / twisted firestarter,” bellowed Flint, at once as out-there and cartoonish as a Marvel supervillain, and as challenging and as emblematic of youthful rebellion as any British pop artist had been in the past decade and a half. In The Prodigy – Flint, producer and musical visionary Liam Howlett, MC Maxim Reality and dancer Leeroy Thornhill – the spirit of anti-authority youth rebellion had its most visceral musical avatar since the Sex Pistols, and Flint’s manner as a performer owed much to Johnny Rotten.

Firestarter was the first single from The Prodigy’s third album The Fat of the Land, and it was both the moment at which Flint graduated from being the band’s hyperactive dancer and visual focus to its main recorded voice (alongside Maxim’s tougher but somehow more reserved vocal hype work), and the point at which they truly broke through. It was their first UK number one, their only bona fide US hit single (it reached number 30) and the main reason why The Fat of the Land was their only US number one album, selling nearly three million copies in the process.

From this point on, the Prodigy remained box office gold as arena stars and festival headliners. The follow-up single Breathe (1996) was their second and final UK number one, while further hits included the controversial Smack My Bitch Up (1997), Baby’s Got a Temper (2002) and Omen (2009). After a creative hiatus of seven years and Thornhill’s departure, the band released the 2004 comeback album Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (which Flint was absent from, in favour of guest vocalists like Oasis’ Gallagher brothers and the actor Juliette Lewis), followed by Invaders Must Die (2009), The Day is My Enemy (2015) and No Tourists (2018).

The ferocity and volume of Prodigy live shows was always a thrilling experience, yet to mark them up as mere big-stage electronic punks of the kind who have become commonplace now is to play down both how culturally significant and how musically ground-breaking they were at the time of their arrival. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, the illegal rave scene had grown out of the acid house movement, and its focus on drug culture and unregulated parties in the countryside had created a genuine moral panic and police crackdown.

Flint, having returned from youthful travelling in Europe and the Middle East, was introduced to Howlett by the latter’s girlfriend, on whose floor he was sleeping; Howlett was a DJ at Essex rave the Barn, and the group’s first breakbeat and rave experiments with The Prodigy resulted in the gimmicky but well-remembered debut album Experience (1992). Yet the follow-up, Music for the Jilted Generation (1994), was a truly defining document of its time, a sonic exploration of the free party scene and its place in the countercultural British tradition.

Born in Redbridge, London, in 1969 to Clive and Yvonne, Keith Charles Flint was raised in Essex towns like Springfield, Chelmsford and Braintree, leaving home at a young age. Away from the Prodigy he briefly experimented with a solo group called Flint, was a keen motorcyclist with his own racing team named Team Traction Control, and owned a pub named the Leather Bottle in Pleshey, Essex. Contrary to his wild Firestarter persona, he was reportedly a keen gardener and animal lover, and accounts of his offstage temperament say he was a kind and thoughtful person.

DAVID POLLOCK