IT'S that kind of interview," jokes the record company representative as she mentions which members of Prodigy will be available for interview. "At first they said Liam and Maxim but now it looks like it could be Keith and Leeroy. You can't really be sure who will walk through that door because they are that kind of band. They sure are. Indeed, Keith may even choose to float into the room in a huge, transparent balloon, which is how he made his clearly off-the-wall entrance onto stage during a legendary gig in 1995."
Either way, to even get near a balloon containing any of the guys from Prodigy is a bit of a coup these days. When their new album, The Fat Of The Land, was previewed in Dublin's Red Box last month, Dennis Woods, MD of Warner Brothers, Ireland, summed things up when he said, "the anticipation in relation to this album is such that Prodigy don't really need to do publicity".
Anyway, Keith, minus balloon but with Leeroy, turns up to talk.
Songwriter Liam Howlett promised their fans that Prodigy intended to "melt some brains" with this album which would be more "out there" than Music For A Jilted Generation. Is it?
"This album is a total reflection of the live show at the moment, bang-on in terms of what Prodigy is about right now," says Leeroy. "There's no track that's just techno, it's a collection of real hard stuff so maybe it is further `out there' in that way.
Keith agrees. "Something like Fuel My Fire has got to be the furthest we've ever pushed the punk side of things and I know the press will get on our case about that. But I've no worries about the crowd because when we do it on stage, they love it. And that's the real testing ground, for us, the response of the fans."
"That's what's great about the fans," says Leeroy. "Look at something new like Firestarter and look at one of our earliest things, Charly. Anyone who's followed us down that line knows what the band's about. And they probably are open-minded and look forward to where we'll go next. As for those who say we're moving away from our dance base, listen to our first EP, Android, or some of the tracks Liam wrote before we got together, and you'll see that a lot of the elements of the music are the same as what we do now. Liam was writing rock stuff, seven, eight years ago. Whereas the last album, with tracks like Start The Dance, had come more out of the dance scene. That's why the new album, with stuff like Mindfields, Climbatize and Serial Thrilla really is the sum of everything we've become."
There is, says Keith, a "really heavy punk vibe" on the new album. "If Liam and Maxim were here they might say that this album is a return to their dance roots - but not me," he says. "I was there, had me lino, broke me neck a couple of times trying to spin on it, enjoyed the beats, the scratching, the vibe, but I wasn't, personally, into the hip-hop scene. I was into anything that had drive.
"A lot of my friends went in a different direction, ended up involved in violence, prison, street - but not my thing, waste of life. I went for hangin' out, smoking draw, ridin' me motorbike. It wasn't until someone explained the dance scene to me, with a passion, that I realised `eh, I can come here, be me, hang out, express myself as I want'. That's where all this started for me. Whereas dance culture still has its rigid regimes that I'm not into, like, `your jeans are too baggy' - whatever."
Keith neatly sums up the basic appeal of Prodigy to many fans. They do represent a vibe that has far more to do with self-expression than purely music. Particularly Keith, whose permanently "crazed" lead-singer persona has already been parodied in the current TV ad for Lucozade.
HE responds: "As much as that may be me, you can't go living that 24 hours a day. It's more, as Leeroy says, that you go on the stage and it rocks and that's your buzz, that's when you let go. And if people take the piss out of how I dress - look, that's just because they haven't got the balls to express themselves this way.
Prodigy always claim they are driven by a core craving for "the buzz" which they say only hits its peak when they are performing. Does this buzz supersede the rush that can come from drink, drugs, fast vehicles, sex?
"Any one of them things you list, if you're into them and don't have them you'll miss them because they fuel your adrenaline," Keith responds. "But there is nothing I pine for more than being on stage. That release of energy, the connection with the audience is what it's all about, better than anything else in this world."
How do the guys deal with the come-down afterwards, say, when they're not touring?
"Any more than two weeks and you are down, like hell," says Leeroy, before Keith cuts across. "True, but, lucky enough I have me motorbike.
Speaking of buzzes....I'd say to our fans that they definitely don't need to be doin' drugs to enjoy our music," says Keith. And it's more of a challenge for us to have someone there, standing straight, at the start of a show, then see them drippin' with sweat trying to get on the stage. Because, let's face it, anyone can get off their head, listen to a few beats and they're gone. I'm not getting into a preachin' situation of `yeah' or `nay' in relation to drugs because that wouldn't be true to my thing of `do what you want' but I would say, keep your head on your shoulders, access things. And it'd he great if we could turn an audience inside out, straight, with just the music."
WE'RE freedom-givers," Keith says. "I'm up there, not thinking. So I'm just saying to the audience, `clear your head of anything that might suppress you, politics, whatever.' Give in to the energy, like we do. Give in to the buzz. We want a Prodigy gig to be like you've been sitting on the edge of your seat for the full 15 rounds!"
Speaking of freedom, is it true the American eight-figure deal record label has made them censor the titles of at least two tracks on the album, including, perhaps understandably, Smack My Bitch Up?
"When we say Smack My Bitch Up `bitch' is the tune. It's not `I'm going to slap my woman'," says Leeroy, not entirely convincingly. Cue Keith for the final word.
"What this shows, to me, is that girls who come to our shows are hard-core, they're not all caught up in political-correctness, saying `oh God, he called me a bitch'. Let's chill on it, we respect our fellow man and woman and that's it. But, yeah, America has gone mad on that, asked us to change the lyric, and we said the only compromise we'll come to is, on the sleeve, put Slap My B***h Up and in one other track, put, Funky S**t. " That's as much of a compromise as we're going to make. So, no, fans needn't worry about us selling out. We'd break up before we'd do that."