Music
Remembering Fat Of The Land, The Prodigy's greatest, wildest statement
It put a "mentally unstable" Keith Flint on Top Of The Pops, brought the punks and the ravers together, and topped the charts internationally. Here's the story of 1997's maddest dance LP.
Come 1996, The Prodigy were already well-known in the UK – singles like Charly and Everybody In The Place (Fairground Edit) had scored rave-era hits on the UK single chart, while their Music For The Jilted Generation LP had topped the UK album chart on its release in July 1994. But few could have suspected the bold direction that the Braintree dance group would take next.
STARTING FIRES
Even before the album arrived the band inadvertently found themselves caught up in controversy. When Firestarter – the breakthrough single fronted by a devil-haired Keith Flint which catapulted The Prodigy into the mainstream – aired on BBC TV’s Top Of The Pops, it amassed the highest number of complaints the network had ever received, with angry parents complaining that a “demented” Flint was scaring their children and was clearly “mentally unstable.”
THE VICTORY WANK
After two hit singles in Firestarter and Breathe and month after month of blown deadlines (much to the chagrin of their label, XL Recordings), The Fat Of The Land finally dropped 30 June 1997, shooting to the top of the charts in 12 countries and becoming the Guinness World Records’ fastest-selling UK album of all time.
As any band will attest, where the #1 spot really matters is in America, but the album conquered the Yanks too, which was surprising for a country at the time obsessed with rock (and a good 15 years prior to the EDM explosion). The band’s producer Liam Howlett admitted to celebrating the album going to No.1 in the USA by “having a wank.”
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CELEBRITY SKIN
Off the back of the album’s huge success, the band’s already infamous reputation for a high-octane, unhinged live show continued to gain traction, in the process piquing interest from celebrities. At an after-party for one of The Prodigy's NYC shows, Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Bono and Courtney Love were all spotted getting in on the action. Following a gig in Los Angeles, Pamela Anderson dropped by backstage to confess her love for the album.
Even Dave Grohl confessed to being a major fan, with the Foo Fighters front man later contributing live drums to the track Run With The Wolves from the band’s 2009 album Invaders Must Die.
TURNING DOWN MADONNA
Capturing the musical zeitgeist of the late ‘90s, The Fat Of The Land also caught the attention of some major musical icons. David Bowie asked Howlett to produce music for him, but Howlett surprisingly turned down the opportunity. Speaking to Mojo, he explained: “If it was Chuck D asking I would have done it, but they didn’t mean anything to me. I remember Bowie coming into the dressing room when we did gigs together in Germany, we had some great chats about drugs and stuff. He was someone I gained a lot of respect for very quickly.”
Howlett also revealed that he turned down a production request from Madonna, despite signing to her Maverick label in the US. “One thing I will say about Madonna is, she took the initiative herself to come and find us,” he explained. “I thought that was respect, so we signed to her label in America.” You can watch Madonna introducing the band at the 1997 MTV Awards below.
CHARMING THE MEDIA
The album amassed a stack of awards, including a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album. None were more infamous, however, than when the band won Best Live Act at the Q Magazine Awards, where Liam politely told radio presenter Chris Evans to “fuck off” for not playing their music on his show.
COURTING CONTROVERSY
The last single to be released from the album was club favourite, Smack My Bitch Up. The track’s refrain, which consists only of the line "Change my pitch up/Smack my bitch up" was sampled from the song Give The Drummer Some by Ultramagnetic MCs. The BBC banned the song and only a lyric-free version was played on Radio 1. It also drew fierce criticism for misogyny, particularly from feminist groups such as the US National Organization for Women, accusing it of encouraging violence against women.
Howlett denied the lyric was to be taken literally, explaining that "that song is probably the most pointless song I've ever written" and adding that "if people think that song is about smacking girlfriends up, then they're pretty brainless."
THE BEASTIE BOYS DISS
While the Beastie Boys dug The Prodigy enough to let them sample their "Oh my God that's some funky shit!" line on the album’s track Funky Shit, the controversy behind Smack My Bitch Up finally reached its tipping point at the 1998 Reading Festival.
The night before both groups were to perform at the festival, Beastie’s MCA and Mike D contacted Liam Howlett at his home in Essex to ask that the band cut the track from their set. The Prodigy was scheduled to perform prior to The Beasties, and they didn't want to go on after a song they deemed to be offensive played. Prodigy member Maxim Reality wasn't having that, and the following audio recording made that clear.
RUSSIAN MAYHEM
The Fat Of The Land made The Prodigy superstars in Russia. So much so, in fact, that in 1997 the band played a free live show in Moscow’s Red Square to a staggering 200,000 crazy Ruskies. As Keith Flint recalls: “There we were performing Their Law while these kids are getting violently pushed around by heavy handed Russian army dudes who were doing crowd control. It was very surreal.”
THE LEGACY
When EDM finally exploded into mainstream US culture in the early 2010s, many of the genre’s biggest names used The Prodigy’s live show as an example of how electronic music could be performed in a live context. Tracks from The Fat Of The Land have featured in a number of Hollywood films. In 2004, KISS co-founder Gene Simmons covered Firestarter on his second solo album, Asshole. But if you need just one reference as to how much the album has left a mark on popular culture, the below video is surely it.
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