Day 63. The trouble starter, punkin' instigator. (4/3/19)

I can't pretend I was a devoted Prodigy fan. Too many people know my attitude to their first two albums to allow that kind of claim.

But on their third? On Fat of The Land? God, they made great pop music. They took dance and rock and slammed them together to create something revolutionary and rebellious. They accompanied the sound with provocative videos designed to shock.

And they had somebody who, for a while, was one of THE great frontmen.

So, when the news about the death of Keith Flint broke this morning, I was genuinely shocked, stunned and saddened.

He became a folk devil. Which is always a fine thing to be. His band sat in a fine line of groups who shocked exactly the kind of people we want to be shocked: the Daily Mail, the Express, the Telegraph, the right wing, the establishment, the dull. And, with his twin mohawks striping the side of his head, his array of piercings, his tattoos, the video to Firestarter wherein he is assaulting himself in some nightmare tunnel clad in a corruption of the American flag and assaulting you with the piercing stare of his heavily lined eyes, the video for Breathe where he flickers in and out in colour, haunting the room he occupies, he became as perfect a pop star as we've ever had. He was a John Lydon for the rave generation. Which is obviously a dangerous thing to be.

For a couple of years there The Prodigy were as great, as important, as revolutionary and threatening a truly brilliant pop band as prime Frankie Goes To Hollywood. I don't make that comparison lightly.

Everything points to the idea that this figure was an invention. All reports from those who knew him, those who had worked with him or even simply met him briefly, speak of a quiet, thoughtful man with a complete professional dedication to his work, his art.

That he was lost at 49 seemed appalling and senseless. Speaking as a 55 year old man, 49 is still young. There is so much more left.

And it seemed bad enough that we'd lost another wonderful musical presence in a year that was described on Twitter earlier as 'turning into another 2016'.

That the band's Liam Howlett confirmed later that Keith had taken his own life added new levels of sadness to the loss.

We can't know what pushes a person to this. We can never know what's inside somebody's head that means that they can only see one solution. And we know that suicide is the largest killer of young men.

Keith Flint was no longer a young man. Not young as such, but young enough that there could have been more.

We know nothing (or, to be more precise, I certainly know nothing) of the circumstances surrounding his decision. And it's not for us to pry.

The one thing we can say is, talk. Whatever it is that you're going through, whatever you think you can't talk about, you can. There will always be those who will listen, those who can take on board your fears and your thoughts.

It might be trite to say that there will always be a tomorrow that makes yesterday look like it wasn't really as bad as you thought it was at the time but if you're stuck in that yesterday, try and hold on to the thought that the next great thing is just around the corner.

There's so many of us who have suffered from some sort of darkness, some sort of depression, some slight, some terrible, and who is ever to say which is which? Suffering is subjective. That which one person can cope with can cripple another.

There can never be judgement of the mental health concerns of others, only compassion and concern. As a society we are getting so much better at this, but we're still losing too many.

And today we lost somebody who seems to have been a good man. Somebody who had more art ahead of him, more work, somebody we would assume to have a good life. But we never know the inside of that life.

I have only one personal connection to The Prodigy. July 97. Fat Of The Land is released. It's a phenomenon. And we played it in the car all the time. Our Tom was 14 months old. Diesel Power would come on, the drums would kick in and he would sit in his car seat in the back seat and throw his head back and forth in time with the beat. It was his song for a while. And that's there for life.

And Keith isn't on that. But without him, without that visual impact that he made in the Firestarter video where he gave dance music an identity that it didn't normally have, the album wouldn't have been as anticipated, wouldn't have been as big as it was, would never have ended up in our CD collection.

He was a real pop star.

RIP