The year is 1996, and The Prodigy’s “Firestarter” is making its debut on Top of the Pops. Families sit around the TV in their living rooms, and watch as vocalist Keith Flint – with devil-horn hair and thick black eyeliner – screams and writhes around in a Tube tunnel near the abandoned Aldwych station. Soon, complaints will flood in, claiming that the video promotes arson and traumatises innocent children, ultimately leading to a ban by the BBC. 

“I got a note sent from the Top of the Pops producers saying, ‘You got me in a lot of trouble,’” says the director Walter Stern, looking back on the video 30 years on. The thing is, he hadn’t even technically broken any rules, being well-acquainted with the guidelines on what was deemed too transgressive for daytime TV. The Prodigy, seen through his lens, were simply so scary by the standards of polite society that they were deemed unbroadcastable. In the end, Stern adds: “The BBC are very silly. Every time they ban something, they just make it bigger.”

BBC censorship definitely backfired in the case of “Firestarter”. The lead single from The Fat of the Land became the group’s first number one on the UK Singles Chart (where it stayed for three weeks) and went on to be their most iconic track with fans around the world, re-entering the charts after Flint’s death in 2019.

When it first aired in the mid-90s, “Firestarter” also marked a shift in direction for the group itself. Keith was still building his “manic” persona as he made the transition from dancer to vocalist, alongside Maxim, while Liam Howlett’s production was becoming less rave-centric and leaning harder into punk. By 1996, Stern had already filmed a few music videos with the Prodigy – including “Voodoo People” and “Poison” – and didn’t shy away from any of the internal chaos of the group as it evolved. “The idea with all the videos was to focus on them as individual characters, not as some coherent band that were all mates, and on the same side,” he says. “It was more like a band kind of pulling itself apart.” 

That said, Stern’s video for “Firestarter” came about by accident. As the story goes, the Prodigy had commissioned a very expensive video by another filmmaker, but binned the final product because they didn’t like it. With just a tiny budget left (only enough to shoot in black and white), Howlett reached out to Stern and asked him to step in. Luckily, the filmmaker already had a location in mind, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Stern tells us more about the “Firestarter” video and its legacy below, and you can find some rarely-seen images from the shoot in the gallery above.

After the Prodigy reached out to you to film ‘Firestarter’, how quickly did things come together?

Walter Stern: It was a very last-minute thing. There wasn’t really time to discuss any ideas [because] they were behind schedule. The track was going to be released, and they didn’t have a video. But I’d been talking about doing a video with Leftfield, and they wanted to shoot on a Tube train. When we were reccing the station, we wandered down some tunnels and started looking around, and thought, ‘Actually, this is a lot more interesting’. 

So when the Prodigy came to me, I had this location in mind. I took them to the location, showed them around, and there was pretty much no discussion of ideas. Keith already had his idea for his character; he was starting to get a bit more manic, and it was more or less his show. We probably only had a week and a half from that conversation to actually shooting the video.

“I’m not even sure we should have been allowed down there... There was a lot of asbestos sparkling in the Tube tunnels, and the usual rats” – Walter Stern

Maybe you don’t want to admit this, although it has been 30 years now: were you actually allowed to shoot in the Tube tunnel? Was it legal?

Walter Stern: Scouting it the first time probably wasn’t... We were only supposed to be on the platform, to have a look, but then we went off on our own, down the tunnels. There, we found the big air shaft where Keith does some of the vocals, and other bits and pieces that we liked. They let us get away with a lot, let’s put it that way. I mean, you can see [members of the Prodigy] attacking the tracks with an angle grinder.

I’m not even sure we should have been allowed down there, because it was pretty unpleasant in terms of toxic chemicals. There was a lot of asbestos sparkling in the Tube tunnels, and the usual rats and the rest of it.

But all the videos were... I wouldn’t say particularly illegal, but lacking in permissions. XL Recordings [the record label behind The Fat of the Land] was really good like that. Usually, you have a lot of people throwing in their opinion, saying, ‘It must be this, or it mustn’t be that.’ They didn’t have a preconceived idea of what a video should be like.

What was the experience of shooting the video like?

Walter Stern: It was quite aggressive, in lots of ways. The Prodigy didn’t like hanging around much to do their performance, so there was a bit of tension. I think Leeroy [Thornhill] got drunk, and there was a bit of banter between him and Keith upstairs. Then, a drunken student [unconnected with the shoot] jumped up onto the main cable, supplying all the electricity deep down in the station, and was swinging from it. He could potentially have fried himself, and a woman from the London Underground told him to stop, and he jumped down and hit her, which then prompted a fight with a gaffer.

The shoot itself was kind of fast and furious. Basically, we were shooting with a dolly that was travelling probably from one end of the tunnel to the other. The dolly was moving very fast, so if anyone was in the way they’d be knocked over. And there was the added tension of the trains, because one of the tunnels was still used, for army exercises or other government training. The fear was that, if someone pressed a switch, a train could come down that tunnel, and there was nowhere to hide. We heard trains passing by the whole time, and there was always a sense of, ‘I hope someone hasn’t flicked that switch’. So the making of it was pretty similar to what the actual video looks like: fast, quite angry, and chaotic. But maybe that just helped with the atmosphere.

“Keith Flint was a force of nature, a one-off” – Walter Stern

Keith’s performance is particularly intense. What was it like working with him?

Walter Stern: By the end of the video, Keith was also feeling really sick. He was being suspended upside down, and he thought he was going to throw up on the crew below. I think he had a headache for about three days after the video was shot. 

But on set he was lovely, very polite, very enthusiastic, and a dream to work with. You’d start with an idea of what the performance was about, and then just push it. It was all about creating some kind of energy and momentum, and he just ran with it. When we were hanging him upside down, probably about 30 feet up, that wasn’t something he’d prepared for, but he would make it his own. He was a force of nature, a one-off.

Were you surprised by the BBC ban?

Walter Stern: I said to Liam, ‘Look, obviously this is going to provoke a lot of people.’ And Liam said, ‘Yeah, that’s Keith, isn’t it? What are you going to do? Ban him as a human being?’ We knew we were pushing the limits, but we didn’t actually break any rules. It feels violent, but it doesn’t actually have any physical violence. 

I remember a father talking about his daughter watching it and being shocked, appalled and traumatised by the video. A few younger people I’ve worked with have said, ‘You scared me when I was a kid.’ But I don’t think now you would look at it as scary, so much as just a style of performance. It’s basically psychological. It’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s just people acting in a way that’s maybe too strange for [the] tastes of middle-class, heritage Britain. I think what really wound them up was just this uncontrolled, mad behaviour. Keith is glorifying himself in a very trashy way. But it’s also quite a funny video.

Do you have any advice for younger filmmakers who want to make similar boundary-pushing work?

Walter Stern: I think there’s a lot of intelligence and humour out there, but you can always push it more. Don’t be frightened of offending people. Don’t be polite, because you’re self-censoring and not making what you truly want to make. Also, don’t feel like you have to fit into any style of filmmaking. Just do something that interests you. Scare yourself.