With worldwide record sales approaching 20 million, British band The Prodigy is one of the most successful and memorable groups to emerge from the '90s rave scene. After a five-year absence from the recorded world (apart from the release of Their Law: The Singles 1990-2005), the band's fifth album Invaders Must Die was released in early 2009 and signals a return to form as this unforgettable act continues to bridge the worlds of dance and rock. In a telephone interview from London, Prodigy founder and brainchild Liam Howlett tells SG that it all might just be better the second time around for this band, and that they're still making music expressly for the jilted generation.
Tamara Palmer: Before Invaders Must Die, it had been four or five years since you released an album, and now you're on your own record label. Can you tell me what happened in that time?
Liam Howlett: Basically, what happened is that we had come to the end of our contract with XL Recordings. We knew we had the hits album looming and none of us wanted to do it. The usual thing is that a band reaches the end of their career and does a hits album so we were kind of skeptical about it. But once we started doing it, we were really proud of it. We did that after Always Outnumbered, which was probably the low point in the band's career, relationships were a bit strained. We kind of worked through that and then we repaired our relationships and worked on the [hits album]. We put the packaging together ourselves and spent a lot of time looking at pictures and kind of reminiscing about what we'd done. Looking back, we got excited about the possibility of us writing on a new record. The contract comes to an end, which we think was a good thing, and we toured that record, which was quite successful in England. It went double platinum. And so we just went back into the studio right after that tour, it was a big arena tour, and we worked off the energy of that.
TP: This is probably an oversimplification, but it sounds like the music was the thing that healed your relationships with the other band members?
LH: Yeah. I mean, there was unfinished business with us. With this new record, we started recording without a deal and that's kind of what I wanted to do. I didn't want to be pressurized by a record label. At that stage, after we'd recorded a few tracks we started looking for deals. I think we spent about a good year looking at all the labels, every option that was out there. At one stage, XL actually wanted us back, which was a bit strange, but we didn't end up there. I had the idea of starting my own label but we needed the backing of someone else, and we found that with Cooking Vinyl, who are pretty much unknown. But they're our backer and they've done an amazing job, better than the previous record label. We really believe that the majors are not the ones holding the cards now. Now you can do things quicker and more creatively without them.
TP: You've also now got tools like YouTube bringing you so much closer to your fans in a more immediate way than ever before. You do a show and later that night, people have uploaded clips of it already.
LH: Totally, and an example of that is we had just finished two small club shows with about 1200 people last year in England and played a new track. A clip from one of those shows got a million hits by a couple of months later. That kind of shows you the power of that. That track kind of spread through the Prodigy fan base across the world pretty much via YouTube. So that's kind of cool.
TP: And also the days of making all the very expensive videos and crossing your fingers that they might land on MTV are over, especially here in America.
LH: No, and we've got no interest in that. My friend's a filmmaker so what we did is we started to get him to come away with us and film the band and we just put them on our website. It makes a real connection and we quite enjoy that, so there's quite a few little films up there.
TP: Is it fair to say that this is the Prodigy's second wind? You sound very energetic on this album.
LH: Yeah man, totally. Yeah, we are. It sounds crazy, but we really, totally are re-fired up. We love it. The band's in good shape, really tight. This band is made up of a lot of characters so it's kind of hard sometimes, it's kind of work. But yeah, we're loving it.
TP: Do you credit any of the newfound energy to working with Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s James Rushent? It's crazy but his band is part of a new generation that grew up on the Prodigy's music. That must be pretty special,?
LH: Yeah, James is a friend of mine. I met him at one of the festivals a few years ago and we were laughing because he was saying, "Oh, I love your stuff. I've been trying to rip you off for all these years, and this is what it sounds like when I rip you off." And I said, "Well, it doesn't sound anything like my music!" And I kind of became friends with him. I had a track I was working on that ended up being "Invaders Must Die," the title track, and I took it so far but couldn't really achieve the next step of it. So I phoned James up and he was very happy to help and I got him on board and he shed some light on how the track should be finished. That started a great relationship with the music; I could see myself working with him again.
TP: This is a great time for the return of the Prodigy particularly as far as live shows are concerned. Your shows are always so high energy and escapist and such a release. I think people want that sort of escapism now more than ever when they go to a concert. They want to leave their day-to-day troubles behind.
LH: I think you've hit the nail on the head with the Prodigy right there. Basically, people always ask me about what the message is. The message is within the band itself, there's no individual message within each song. We've always been writing to the hedonistic side. Bands who write big messages in the music, we always feel that this kind of weighs down the effect [of the sound]. What I've always loved about dance music is, I was [previously] into Public Enemy, which obviously carries a lot of political weight, and I was so happy to get into dance music and free myself from the shit and the kind of downness of hip-hop, the political weight of all that shit. I wanted to escape from that. And I've always remembered that feeling and just tried to capture that in our music and kind of remind people like that.
TP: It's interesting that you bring up Public Enemy because the production of The Bomb Squad was very arresting and bombastic, but it was hard to focus on when Chuck D was blowing your mind with some heavy subjects. It could be overwhelming. And I feel like your beats go after that same sort of energy and bombast, but without the social content.
LH: Yeah, definitely. When I was just a 15-year-old kid listening to Public Enemy for the first time, I had never heard anything like it. It came along and blew my mind. But I listened to it purely for the beats and the effect of the music. I wasn't tuned into the sort of black power aspect of it, I couldn't relate to that as a white kid living in the country. But the Bomb Squad were definitely the people I was looking at when I was starting.
TP: It was surprising to see Dave Grohl on the album as a guest star on "Run with the Wolves." How did that come about?
LH: Very naturally, actually. I've known Dave for quite a while. Dave was into the band when the Foo Fighters first started and we'd kept in touch. Dave's a nice guy, do you know what I mean? The last time I saw him was probably two or three years ago at the V Festival. We were chatting there and he was asking me what I was up to; we were doing our hits album tour at that time. Later, I had written one of the last tracks on the album and I got an email from him. He'd finished touring for the time being and was at home. His wife was pregnant and he was staying home to just be at home, but he wanted to get back into drumming and wondered if I would get inspired if he sent me loads of drums. And I was like, "Of course, I'm not going to turn that down!"
A week later, a hard drive arrived with four hours of drumming on it. I started listening to it and within the first five minutes there was already like two ideas I had. It's quite rare that I get inspired by just a rhythm track; maybe I used to be more like that, but these days I'm looking for a bit more. But the stuff Dave sent me, there was just so much energy coming from the drums that I just sampled a few things off of it and started working on a track. And the track came about very quickly and the whole collaboration just felt really natural. We weren't really interested in collaborating with anyone on this record, especially no vocals. We wanted it to be a band album and about the three of us. When Dave came along and we finished the track, we decided we didn't want to call extra attention to it and just let people discover it for themselves. I think this album is more about us as a band than any album we've ever made, and we're all really proud of it. We accomplished what we wanted to set out to do.
TP: Hopefully that means you have more of that good energy for the future as well?
LH: Yeah. We don't care about that, we've kind of fixed our relationships and we will obviously do more stuff, but we don't really look ahead. All we think about is what's coming up next, doing these gigs with as much conviction as we can and playing the songs and concentrating on that. Before, we were so swept up that we didn't have time to enjoy it. It was total chaos, a lot of turbulent shit going on, and it was just crazy. This time around, we're just enjoying it more.
The Prodigy are currently on the final leg of their US Invaders Must Die tour, which stops in Chicago (5/23), Anaheim (5/26), Los Angeles (5/27), San Francisco (5/28) and Seattle (5/30). Go to TheProdigy.com for more info.
Tamara Palmer: Before Invaders Must Die, it had been four or five years since you released an album, and now you're on your own record label. Can you tell me what happened in that time?
Liam Howlett: Basically, what happened is that we had come to the end of our contract with XL Recordings. We knew we had the hits album looming and none of us wanted to do it. The usual thing is that a band reaches the end of their career and does a hits album so we were kind of skeptical about it. But once we started doing it, we were really proud of it. We did that after Always Outnumbered, which was probably the low point in the band's career, relationships were a bit strained. We kind of worked through that and then we repaired our relationships and worked on the [hits album]. We put the packaging together ourselves and spent a lot of time looking at pictures and kind of reminiscing about what we'd done. Looking back, we got excited about the possibility of us writing on a new record. The contract comes to an end, which we think was a good thing, and we toured that record, which was quite successful in England. It went double platinum. And so we just went back into the studio right after that tour, it was a big arena tour, and we worked off the energy of that.
TP: This is probably an oversimplification, but it sounds like the music was the thing that healed your relationships with the other band members?
LH: Yeah. I mean, there was unfinished business with us. With this new record, we started recording without a deal and that's kind of what I wanted to do. I didn't want to be pressurized by a record label. At that stage, after we'd recorded a few tracks we started looking for deals. I think we spent about a good year looking at all the labels, every option that was out there. At one stage, XL actually wanted us back, which was a bit strange, but we didn't end up there. I had the idea of starting my own label but we needed the backing of someone else, and we found that with Cooking Vinyl, who are pretty much unknown. But they're our backer and they've done an amazing job, better than the previous record label. We really believe that the majors are not the ones holding the cards now. Now you can do things quicker and more creatively without them.
TP: You've also now got tools like YouTube bringing you so much closer to your fans in a more immediate way than ever before. You do a show and later that night, people have uploaded clips of it already.
LH: Totally, and an example of that is we had just finished two small club shows with about 1200 people last year in England and played a new track. A clip from one of those shows got a million hits by a couple of months later. That kind of shows you the power of that. That track kind of spread through the Prodigy fan base across the world pretty much via YouTube. So that's kind of cool.
TP: And also the days of making all the very expensive videos and crossing your fingers that they might land on MTV are over, especially here in America.
LH: No, and we've got no interest in that. My friend's a filmmaker so what we did is we started to get him to come away with us and film the band and we just put them on our website. It makes a real connection and we quite enjoy that, so there's quite a few little films up there.
TP: Is it fair to say that this is the Prodigy's second wind? You sound very energetic on this album.
LH: Yeah man, totally. Yeah, we are. It sounds crazy, but we really, totally are re-fired up. We love it. The band's in good shape, really tight. This band is made up of a lot of characters so it's kind of hard sometimes, it's kind of work. But yeah, we're loving it.
TP: Do you credit any of the newfound energy to working with Does It Offend You, Yeah?'s James Rushent? It's crazy but his band is part of a new generation that grew up on the Prodigy's music. That must be pretty special,?
LH: Yeah, James is a friend of mine. I met him at one of the festivals a few years ago and we were laughing because he was saying, "Oh, I love your stuff. I've been trying to rip you off for all these years, and this is what it sounds like when I rip you off." And I said, "Well, it doesn't sound anything like my music!" And I kind of became friends with him. I had a track I was working on that ended up being "Invaders Must Die," the title track, and I took it so far but couldn't really achieve the next step of it. So I phoned James up and he was very happy to help and I got him on board and he shed some light on how the track should be finished. That started a great relationship with the music; I could see myself working with him again.
TP: This is a great time for the return of the Prodigy particularly as far as live shows are concerned. Your shows are always so high energy and escapist and such a release. I think people want that sort of escapism now more than ever when they go to a concert. They want to leave their day-to-day troubles behind.
LH: I think you've hit the nail on the head with the Prodigy right there. Basically, people always ask me about what the message is. The message is within the band itself, there's no individual message within each song. We've always been writing to the hedonistic side. Bands who write big messages in the music, we always feel that this kind of weighs down the effect [of the sound]. What I've always loved about dance music is, I was [previously] into Public Enemy, which obviously carries a lot of political weight, and I was so happy to get into dance music and free myself from the shit and the kind of downness of hip-hop, the political weight of all that shit. I wanted to escape from that. And I've always remembered that feeling and just tried to capture that in our music and kind of remind people like that.
TP: It's interesting that you bring up Public Enemy because the production of The Bomb Squad was very arresting and bombastic, but it was hard to focus on when Chuck D was blowing your mind with some heavy subjects. It could be overwhelming. And I feel like your beats go after that same sort of energy and bombast, but without the social content.
LH: Yeah, definitely. When I was just a 15-year-old kid listening to Public Enemy for the first time, I had never heard anything like it. It came along and blew my mind. But I listened to it purely for the beats and the effect of the music. I wasn't tuned into the sort of black power aspect of it, I couldn't relate to that as a white kid living in the country. But the Bomb Squad were definitely the people I was looking at when I was starting.
TP: It was surprising to see Dave Grohl on the album as a guest star on "Run with the Wolves." How did that come about?
LH: Very naturally, actually. I've known Dave for quite a while. Dave was into the band when the Foo Fighters first started and we'd kept in touch. Dave's a nice guy, do you know what I mean? The last time I saw him was probably two or three years ago at the V Festival. We were chatting there and he was asking me what I was up to; we were doing our hits album tour at that time. Later, I had written one of the last tracks on the album and I got an email from him. He'd finished touring for the time being and was at home. His wife was pregnant and he was staying home to just be at home, but he wanted to get back into drumming and wondered if I would get inspired if he sent me loads of drums. And I was like, "Of course, I'm not going to turn that down!"
A week later, a hard drive arrived with four hours of drumming on it. I started listening to it and within the first five minutes there was already like two ideas I had. It's quite rare that I get inspired by just a rhythm track; maybe I used to be more like that, but these days I'm looking for a bit more. But the stuff Dave sent me, there was just so much energy coming from the drums that I just sampled a few things off of it and started working on a track. And the track came about very quickly and the whole collaboration just felt really natural. We weren't really interested in collaborating with anyone on this record, especially no vocals. We wanted it to be a band album and about the three of us. When Dave came along and we finished the track, we decided we didn't want to call extra attention to it and just let people discover it for themselves. I think this album is more about us as a band than any album we've ever made, and we're all really proud of it. We accomplished what we wanted to set out to do.
TP: Hopefully that means you have more of that good energy for the future as well?
LH: Yeah. We don't care about that, we've kind of fixed our relationships and we will obviously do more stuff, but we don't really look ahead. All we think about is what's coming up next, doing these gigs with as much conviction as we can and playing the songs and concentrating on that. Before, we were so swept up that we didn't have time to enjoy it. It was total chaos, a lot of turbulent shit going on, and it was just crazy. This time around, we're just enjoying it more.
The Prodigy are currently on the final leg of their US Invaders Must Die tour, which stops in Chicago (5/23), Anaheim (5/26), Los Angeles (5/27), San Francisco (5/28) and Seattle (5/30). Go to TheProdigy.com for more info.
VIEW 9 of 9 COMMENTS
watchtheskies:
I first saw them at Glastonbury years ago, and thank god I did - it was the best live show I have ever experienced! If you get the chance - go see 'em.
ainur:
I remember hearing Prodigy tracks at warehouse parties (the real kind 
) Soma in SF in 1991, going to a record store to buy them and finding out I still had months to wait until Experience would be released. Absolutely LOVE that they're still around and excited to be doing what they're doing. The reason they've lasted so long is that they really aren't like anybody else. Others have tried, but they never come close.
) Soma in SF in 1991, going to a record store to buy them and finding out I still had months to wait until Experience would be released. Absolutely LOVE that they're still around and excited to be doing what they're doing. The reason they've lasted so long is that they really aren't like anybody else. Others have tried, but they never come close.