Author: Alex Marshall / Source: New York Times
Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
LONDON — Keith Flint, a high-octane founding member of the British dance act the Prodigy, who sang lead vocals on their hits “Firestarter” and “Breathe,” was found dead on Monday in Essex, England. He was 49.
His death was announced . In a post on Monday, Liam Howlett, the band’s main musician, said Flint had killed himself.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this but our brother Keith took his own life over the weekend,” Mr. Howlett wrote, saying he was angry, confused and heartbroken by the news.
The Prodigy was scheduled to tour the United States in May, with one show set for Terminal 5 in New York. It has not been announced whether the shows will go ahead.
The Prodigy came to prominence in 1997 with “The Fat of the Land,” the group’s third studio album, which went to No. 1 in Britain and the United States and made underground British dance music a hit across the Atlantic.
Mr. Flint, with his distinctive double mohawk and endless energy, was one of the main factors behind the band’s appeal, along with the band’s other singer, Maxim Reality (Keith Palmer).
Mr. Flint and Maxim Reality were “folk devils” and “emissaries from techno’s psychic underworld,” Ann Powers, a New York Times pop music critic, wrote in 1998 in a review of the band’s live show.
Mr. Flint explained his look and onstage antics in a 2009 interview with The Guardian. After wearing his hair in a mohawk at school, he was “chucked out and sent to a special school,” he said. “They had to hypnotize me to settle me down — I just had so much energy.”
Being onstage was a release for him, he added. “It gets my mental energy out,” he said. “That’s why I’m really honest onstage. I’m not there for the beauty of my voice or to be the best dancer. I go out to express myself and stir up the audience.”
Keith Charles Flint was born on Sept. 17, 1969, in Redbridge, in East London, and grew up in Braintree,…
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