IN the Nineties, four mates from the east of England became the biggest dance music act in the country – with The Prodigy landing two No1s in a row.
The band, best known for belting hits Firestarter and Breathe, were the surprise special guests for Oasis’s legendary Knebworth gig, while David Bowie said he’d rather be their support act than come on after them on stage.
That’s because their unpredictable shows were full of raw punk/rave energy that few could match. The Prodigy launched when dancer Leeroy Thornhill and his pal Keith Flint convinced songwriter Liam Howlett to let them front his explosive music.
Joining the three Essex lads was Maxim, an MC from Peterborough.
Leeroy, 55, who quit the group in 2000, has now written a book, titled Wildfire, about his decade of excess with the free-spirited quartet, flying planes while high and ending up drunk and naked in hotel stairwells.
The dad-of-two, who continues to DJ and write music, also speaks movingly about his friend Keith, who was found dead at his home five years ago aged 49 after a suspected suicide.
Here. Leeroy recounts some of The Prodigy’s extreme exploits.
We take controls of our private jet… stoned on weed
BACK in 1998, The Prodigy had to hire a private plane so they could get to a festival in France from London Stansted.
When the pilot told them: “Feel free to smoke,” one of the band’s crew started rolling a joint.
Leeroy says: “Getting stoned on a plane. Oh man, that was a crazy one.”
It got crazier because the pilot then asked: “Who wants to try flying the plane?” Leeroy recalls: “We are all buzzing at the idea of having a go at flying, heading into the cockpit one at a time to take the controls.
“When I took over, the sky was clear. It was such a strange feeling. The steering was really sensitive, so if you were heavy-handed, you ended up in a nosedive.
“When it was Keith’s turn to take over, he sent the plane upwards so steeply that we were all freaking out and shouting, ‘Get him back here!’.”
Fan dives through window to get into a gig
DURING one of their early gigs, a fan was so distraught about not having a ticket that he dived through a window to get in.
What the over-enthusiastic raver did not realise was the venue, in Folkestone, Kent, was in a cellar three storeys down.
He landed on the group’s mixing desk and had to go to hospital. Leeroy says: “God knows what he was on or what he was thinking of to even dive through a pane of glass. He was shaking.
It was horrendous.” The band were used to stage-divers invading their space and would sometimes help them on their way.
But Leeroy says: “I wouldn’t go down to the front of the crowd if you paid me. People used to get crushed or they’d get dragged out, passing out.”
I wake up naked in a hotel emergency exit
LEEROY and the others realised early on that taking unpredictable drugs such as ecstasy would ruin their stage performance.
Dancing in front of thousands of fans at festivals and sweaty venues across the globe was “the best high” in itself.
But they did like to wind down in hotels later by smoking marijuana and drinking.
There was a time when the band were in Australia that, if anyone wanted to find Leeroy, “they just rang the bar because that’s where they’d find me”.
Leeroy continues: “This guy there was the best cocktail mixer, so I’d be in all the time.
“I remember Keith had an absinthe phase. I also had a few vodka Red Bull moments and I’d wake up naked down the emergency exit in the hotel.
“It was a little vodka blackout or something.”
Bowie: Can I be your support act?
THE PRODIGY got to know Bowie while performing at festivals around the world.
The musical chameleon, who went from glam rock to pop to dance, died in 2016.
Bowie admitted to taking all kinds of drugs to excess during his early years, so the advice he offered Leeroy came as a bit of a surprise. The dancer, who was just thrilled to meet “one of my heroes”, let alone work with him, recalls: “He said, ‘Don’t do too many drugs’.”
One time, Bowie told The Prodigy he’d be happier if they went on stage after him. Leeroy says: “When we got there, we were supporting him.
“He said, ‘I should go on first’, because he understood how hard it was to follow The Prodigy.”
We don’t smash up hotel room TVs… we pinch them instead
THERE were moments when the quartet’s frustration boiled over, with Keith smashing lights on stage as well as the phone in his hotel.
But Leeroy reckons that rather than doing the rock ’n’ roll thing of “throwing things out of hotels”, they preferred trying to nick mementos.
He recalls: “I’d have Keith trying to come out the window, saying, ‘Bring the van round the back’. We’d go round the back and he’s trying to climb out the window with the TV. They weren’t flatscreen. They had a big old back on.”
Leeroy told him: “You do know we’re gonna have to pay for it?” They even had a competition with another band to see who could steal the oddest items from rooms, such as pedal bins.
A scary spliff in airport customs
THE stars found themselves in some tight spots – such as when a tour promoter in Eastern Europe smoked a spliff at an airport customs office.
Leeroy recalls: “We’d do these photos for the customs officers, give them our passports, go in this little room and the promoter’s pulled out his two joints.
“He fires up this joint. No one wanted to get caught with it.” Even when customs officials smelt the cannabis, nothing was said.
In the US, they were asked to meet the son of ex-president George W Bush in their room. Leeroy says: “We had some strong weed that was stinking.” They met outside instead.
We’ve lived 10 lifetimes, Keith more
WHEN Leeroy last met Keith in Berlin a couple of months before his death, there was “no sign” anything was wrong with his long-time pal.
And the day before The Prodigy frontman was found hanged in his home in North End, Essex, in March 2019, he was “running, doing his usual stuff.”
Leeroy believes that “if anyone had known” anything was wrong with Keith, “it wouldn’t have happened” because they would have had a chat with him.
The coroner recorded an open verdict on Keith’s death, noting that the presence of alcohol and drugs in his bloodstream meant no one could be sure if the singer had intended to take his own life.
Leeroy prefers to look back on the man who sang on Firestarter and Breathe as someone who lived life to the fullest.
He says: “As long as this planet is spinning, he’s here. Someone’s going to be listening to his music, watching his videos.
“We’ve lived ten lifetimes – him more. We’ve done everything we could possibly want to do.”
Supporting Oasis at Knebworth… we hide!
THE biggest gig of the Britpop era was Oasis’s two-day concert in the grounds of Knebworth House in Herts in 1996.
No one knew who the “special guest” act was going to be on the Saturday night.
Leeroy says: “It was once in a lifetime. I thought it was awesome because no one knew we were there. We had to hide. We had to keep out of sight.”
There were around 125,000 people waiting to see who would appear on stage before Noel and Liam Gallagher.
He recalls: “You can actually hear a gasp of air when we come out. It was kind of mad.”
Leeroy is a huge Oasis fan and says he would like to perform with them again on their comeback tour. He adds: “They’re amazing songwriters. “They should not have split up in the first place.”
