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Keith Flint, the fiery frontman of British dance-electronic band The Prodigy, has been found dead at his home near London, the band said. He was 49.
Key points:
- Flint was one of the best-known faces of 1990s British electronic music
- He co-founded The Prodigy with Liam Howlett, who confirmed Flint’s death on social media
- The band described Flint as a “true pioneer, innovator and legend”
Flint was one of the best-known faces of British electronic music, often appearing with eccentric haircuts, sometimes styled as devil’s horns, and heavy make-up around his eyes.
The Prodigy co-founder Liam Howlett confirmed on Instagram that Flint had taken his own life, saying he was “shell-shocked … confused and heartbroken”.
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Police confirmed that the body of a 49-year-old man had been found at a home in Brook Hill, north-east of London.
They said the death was being treated as non-suspicious and a file would be sent to the coroner — standard practice in cases of violent or unexplained deaths.
Flint was the stage persona of the band, whose 1990s hits Firestarter and Breathe were an incendiary fusion of techno, breakbeat and acid house music.
He was renowned for his manic stage energy and distinctive look.
“A true pioneer, innovator and legend,” the band said in a statement confirming his death.
“He will be forever missed.”
The Prodigy sold 30 million records, helping to take rave music from an insular community of party-goers to an international audience.
They had seven number one albums in Britain, most recently with No Tourists in 2018.
Flint recently returned to the United Kingdom after touring Australia, and just days ago announced on social media they would headline the Pstereo festival in Norway in August.
Flint ‘personified 90s British rave culture’
Keith Charles Flint was born in London in 1969 and after leaving a broken home, he spent time in Israel as a market-stall trader. He did not take his main school exams.
The Prodigy was formed in the early 1990s, with Howlett as producer and Flint originally employed as a dancer before becoming singer and the onstage focal point.
The Prodigy had their first gig in Dalston, east London, and released dance track Charly in August 1991.
Will Hodgkinson, rock critic for The Times, said Flint personified the British rave culture of the early 1990s.
“After meeting Howlett at a rave in 1989, Flint helped to turn The Prodigy into a band that captured the spirit of young Britain at the time: hedonistic, semi-legal, and definitely interested in doing some freaky dancing at a rave at three in the morning, ideally on ecstasy,” Hodgkinson said.
The band’s rise coincided with soul-searching in Britain over electronic dance music and its related drug culture, and The Prodigy became known as much for its anti-establishment stance as for its songs.
The band members were vocal critics of the UK’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which banned the raves popularised in the late-1980s during the so-called Second Summer of Love.
The Prodigy’s 1994 Music for the Jilted Generation was seen as a response the corruption of rave culture and the act.
In 1995, Flint danced frantically at the Glastonbury Festival with cropped pink hair and extensive facial piercing.
The video for Firestarter, which featured Flint performing in a manic manner, attracted a record number of complaints to the BBC’s Top Of The Pops TV music show because parents said it was scaring their children.
Speaking to The Guardian in 2015, Flint said the band was “dangerous and exciting” — but now no-one wants to be dangerous.
“And that’s why people are getting force-fed commercial, generic records that are just safe, safe, safe,” he said.
British music magazine NME said the 1997 Fat Of The Land album, which included Firestarter and Breathe, had sold 10 million copies to date.
Electronic duo the Chemical Brothers tweeted that Flint “was an amazing front man, a true original and he will be missed”.
Grime musician Dizzee Rascal said he had opened for The Prodigy in 2009, “and he was one of the nicest people I’ve met and always was every time I met him, the whole band were”.
“When it comes to stage few people can carry a show like him, I’m proud to say I’ve seen it for myself.”
ABC/wires
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