The Prodigy - Omen (World on Fire)

The Prodigy - Omen (World on Fire)

20 June, 2011 | 12.54PM

• Written by: Sean Lewis
• Filed under: Videos: dvd, movie, movie trailer, the prodigy

Few groups in electronic music history have had as much impact as The Prodigy. Last month they debuted a new film documenting their sold-out performance in front of 65,000 raging fans at Milton Keynes Bowl on 70 theater screens across the UK and Europe. A DVD of the performance is currently available as a 2-disc set. Read on as the mighty Liam Howlett himself shares his memories of the concert.

Liam Howlett on The Prodigy’s Milton Keynes Bowl concert:

To be honest, I was uncomfortable about doing the gig in the first place, you know. We never wanted to be like the type of band playing stadiums or whatever. We still love to play Brixton, that’s what we’re about. But people just kept saying we should do it, and I was like, “We will only do it as our own festival, not a Prodigy gig with a support act.” So we put together a good lineup of bands and DJs, a cool small second stage, we even had a tattoo tent doing ant logos. It was a celebration of 20 years. We wanted to put on a proper day and night for the people, like Knebworth Oasis.

In a way, it was a bit of an accident, really. There was never a masterplan to it. We wanted to do something special to round off the whole Invaders time. You know, that album was a great thing for us. It brought out all of the old-school fans again and took us to a brand new generation of fans. So we wanted to do something pretty special to leave our mark. We chose Milton Keynes Bowl in the end ‘cos it reminded us of goin’ to an old rave, a big green field, it had that energy to it.

I’ll never forget the feeling going on stage, it was like… “F**king hell.” I don’t get nervous at all, I mean we’ve played to bigger audiences and played bigger festivals but it was like, “Hang on a minute, these people are here for us…” We were a few songs in before I started to enjoy it. There were lots of emotions involved—there was a 20-year build up to that gig. It was almost too much.

We put a lot into choosing the songs. We wanted to keep the energy going but still wanted to play stuff from every period of The Prodigy.  People would expect stuff like “Firestarter” and what have you, but we wanted a few surprises in there too. We did “Weather Experience” and had those lasers in the show as a respect back to the early rave era.

That day was very special and we’re proud of it.

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