Gizz Butt, the former guitarist for The Prodigy, has remembered his late bandmate Keith Flint in a new interview.
Flint was found dead at his Essex home on Monday (March 4). He was 49 years old.
Speaking to the Quietus, Butt recalled the frontman asking him to audition to join the band. “I remember he was so down to earth with me. On the audition day, I was saying stupid things because I was so nervous. My legs were shaking, I felt like ‘I don’t know these people, they’ve got their in-jokes’, but Keith just went along with whatever dumb things I said.
“There was no coldness in any sense from him at all, I just had this impression that he wanted it to be good, he wanted it to be right. He wanted it and I wanted it. There was a unity.”
Butt added of his three years with The Prodigy: “It was enormous, when you’re in that kind of situation you want to keep yourself as rooted as you possibly can. There was an energy that I can only describe as being like the world’s strongest magnet, and Keith had to shoulder it; a lot of [that energy] was coming from him.”
The guitarist spoke of Flint’s on-stage persona, saying he thought, “I’ve never seen anything like this before” when he was performing. “The way he’s so animated, nothing’s staying still, his mouth isn’t staying still,” he said.
“I’m not even talking about when he’s singing, it’s when he opens his mouth and he’s drawing the crowd in. He’s speaking and you don’t know what he’s saying! Is he speaking in tongues? What you do know is it’s part of the ritual and the magic, the performance.”
Butt added that his “most important memories” of Flint were of “that magic” onstage. He said he hadn’t seen the frontman for a few years before his death, but remembered him as “a great master of pulling a disguise out of the hat.”
Meanwhile, the landlord of the Essex pub once owned by Flint said fans would descend on the establishment this weekend (March 9) to pay their respects to the star.
Landlord Robert Reilly told NME The Leather Bottle had been visited by fans since Flint’s death on Monday and had promised to return at the weekend to pay special tribute to the Prodigy frontman.