The Prodigy – ‘We have never been a push-button band’

Words: Miljan Milekić

Some bands simply need no introduction. If you have never heard of The Prodigy, you must have been living under a rock. Well, it’s time for the earthquake. One of the most innovative, controversial, and influential bands to ever come from the UK is back with a new record called ‘The Day is My Enemy.’ Exclusively for Nocturne Magazine, they talked about it and many other things. Ladies and gentlemen – Liam H himself.

This one just has to be asked. The Prodigy has a close and unique connection with Serbia and Serbian fans. Every show you ever played here was something special and filled with a ridiculous amount of energy. How would you explain that?
Liam: The Prodigy as a band has a special connection with the Serbian people. We know that because we feel it from the people when we come and play there. The history of when we played our music there and what it meant to the people is very important to us. It’s always the spirit of the people that makes a country great. Music can have the ability more than anything else to unite and incite people to escape.

Were you aware of the social and political significance of your first Serbian show back in 1995, and are you aware of it now?
Liam: Yes, we’re always aware because it is important to us. This is why we wanted to bring our Warrior’s Dance Festival there. The only other countries we did this in were England and Japan.

It’s fair to say that The Prodigy are standing in line with revolutionary, innovative, and groundbreaking artists with an attitude, such as Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Public Enemy, and Rage Against the Machine. Is there anyone in the music scene today who could carry that torch and make an impact?
Liam: I don’t know anything about these things you’re saying. We are just focused on our mission. We have never been interested, distracted, or bothered by trying to be innovative. Music is going to go through some changes, and I believe that in the next year that will be exciting. The electronic music sound has been so commercialized and rinsed that the time is right for new noise to come out. Us, as a band, we will carry on until the people don’t care about us anymore.

I would like to talk about ‘The Day is My Enemy.’ How do you manage to constantly evolve with every next release you make, and still stay true to yourselves and make every record a typical The Prodigy record? Where do you find energy for constant change?
Liam: Energy is a word that keeps poking up here. I like music that shakes my soul, noise that wakes my head up. Sound attack! That’s what I use music for. As far as our music goes, the writing of it just happens when it needs to react to something. I can’t really explain it, but we have never been a push-button band, as in the record company telling us to start writing. That is not us. This can be frustrating for fans and ourselves because it takes time, and it’s out of our control. When we push the writing, it doesn’t feel real, so that’s just the way it is. We want to always keep our sound that we have created. It is important to write good tunes, but without losing what you are about.

On the last record, there is a song called ‘Medicine.’ Some melodies in the song sound pretty much like traditional Serbian music. Am I on the right track here? Where did you get the inspiration for the track?
Liam: I have always had and always will have some kind of attraction to these types of melodies. They hold some kind of magic for me, some kind of atmosphere. It’s the musical scale. Maybe it came from when I was young, watching certain movies, I don’t know. But it’s deep in my head because it is something that happens on every album. ‘The Medicine’ riff is a recording from 1939, but it’s not Serbian.

With ‘Invaders Must Die,’ you decided to take your music into your own hands and place it on the market through your own Take Me to the Hospital Records in cooperation with Cooking Vinyl. With the new record, you did the same. How much does that kind of independence mean to you? Was it harder or easier to do everything by yourselves?
Liam: We have always been on an independent label; I would never sign to a major in the UK to release our music. They wouldn’t like me either because I couldn’t stick to their rules and schedule. The first label we were signed to was XL Recordings. They are a great label, so when we left them to go to Cooking Vinyl Records, we wanted to create the same setup we had at XL. I set up Take Me To The Hospital to release our music through CV records who are also a great independent label. The thing with being on a major label is that it would have to go up against a big boss, and the answer would be more money-led and not creative-led.

You are one of the most creative bands in the world when it comes to promotion. Recent projections are just a tip of the iceberg; you do it with Warrior’s Dance festivals, clothing brand, music videos, and many more. How important to you is to stand out from the masses and bring something new every time? How hard was it to do the “projections trick,” and who stands behind that idea?
Liam: All of what you say here is just from us, our buzz for our band. I don’t like the word “promotion” because it feels too corporate to me. We want to just get our music and images out to people in a different way, and these ideas come from us and the good people we have around us who try and make it happen. We really are just about the music and taking it to the stage to play for people. All the other stuff is less important. The projection idea was my idea, and of course it’s been done before, but we ain’t done it before, and I wanted to see the fox – the rebel of the night appear on the Parliament building at 12 midnight, which was a beautiful thing.

On the course of you career, you have had a chance to work with many amazing artists such as Dave Grohl, Juliette Lewis, Martina Topley-Bird, Kool Keith, Flux Pavilion, Tom Morello, Gallagher brothers… They all come from all over the world, and from a variety of genres, but fit with your music perfectly. What were the main criteria for choosing those people? Who was the most fun, and who was the most challenging person to work with?
Liam: First of all, any collaboration has to happen naturally, and all we have done is. It wasn’t something we wanted to do on the new album, but say, for example, working with Jason from The Sleaford Mods was great because we speak the same language, the words he writes I just get them, so I buzzed off doing our track ‘Ibiza.’ It always seems to be a very commercial and calculated move in music when you see this artist put together with this other artist. The long list of “featurings” on certain dance electronic albums. Fuck that shite. That’s all for the wrong reasons, fuckin’ Facebook numbers, but hardly ever for the music. So the people who appear always happen naturally. Dave Grohl, for example, just phoned me and said: “Not sure what you are doin’ but I’ve just been in a mad warehouse recording drums and I’m gonna send them to you.” Out of that came our tune ‘Run With The Wolves.’

At the very beginning of The Prodigy, you were classified as “controversial,” you were banned, your shows were shut down, and yet, in 2012, ‘Firestarter’ was played to the world as part of British cultural legacy at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony. Do you see it as some kind of victory? What was your reaction when you first heard the idea?
Liam: We were never that controversial by our standards, apart from the ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ video, where we went full out to insult and offend. Sometimes you just have to, and we did. Being controversial has to happen again naturally; people can see through a stupid stunt that isn’t real, and we don’t want to have any part of that. The Prodigy is here to write the rebel soundtrack ‘cause that’s just what the fuck we do. The Olympic Games opening thing, we were glad to be part of because it was about important British cultural moments, and ‘Firestarter’ was one of them. We were in good timeline and musical company with the Pistols and Stones, flowing through to the 90’s… Danny Boyle was the director of that Olympic opening event, and he is the real deal, and we were on the same page. He told us that out of all the bands he asked to be a part of it, only us and John Lydon (Sex Pistols) bothered to go down to see what he was doing, the creation of it. It’s ‘cause we care!

If you had to assign one Prodigy song to each of the band members and match their personality, what would that list look like, and why?
Liam: Good question. Keef – “Rockweiller” – ‘cause he is one (Rottweiler), he has a bite! Also, ‘Firestarter,‘ ‘cause it is a description of his personality. Liam – I would say ‘Take Me To The Hospital,’ ‘cause it is a wild combination of different styles smashed together but unhinged at the same time, and that feels like my head. Maxim – ‘Poison,’ he has the venom, his first vocal tune, but to me it suits his personality in the way it makes you think you got it, then boom! It explodes on another level.

Follow The Prodigy:
Website: theprodigy.com
Instagram: instagram.com/theprodigyofficial
Facebook: facebook.com/theprodigyofficial
Twitter: x.com/the_prodigy