I've purchased one of the 'Rebel with the Paws' sculptures. It arrived today. Thought I'd share here for those that are interested.

20 Questions With Maxim

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-n ... 1235116710



https://medium.com/cryptocomnft/maxim-o ... b87fe75495

1. Where are you at the moment?

In a hotel room in Manchester. I’m on tour with The Prodigy in the U.K. It’s weird being back on tour. It’s been in limbo for quite a while and it needed to happen. For months I’ve been anticipating what it was going to be like. This is the first time without Keith. It’s me and Liam, and we’ve got our drummer and guitarist, but it’s just me at the front.

For the last three years, after Keith’s death, I’ve had a reoccurring dream that we were going to do a show, I was going on stage, and I see a car pull up and it’s Keith. He says, “I’m back! I’ve come back!” And I say, “Man, you came back! You’ve come back for us!” I suppose there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to let go.

2. You are okay, though?

Yeah, I’m good. As soon as I got on stage, it clicked in. There are 10 shows in total. Tonight is going to be the seventh. Then we do three Brixton shows in a row. Brixton is quite an emotional venue for us because we’re the band who have done the most shows there, seven nights in a row. There’s a plaque there of Keith in the dressing rooms as well.

The fans are getting us through this. They want it so much. It ended abruptly for a lot of people. A lot of people want to celebrate Keith’s life. The build up to the first show for the last few months was the hardest thinking, what’s it going to be like. But soon as we got on stage, everything came back and the fans are just amazing. It’s been fun ever since. I can’t wait for tonight.

How does it feel to be back on the road after all this time?

It’s great being back on the road. This is a great opportunity to celebrate Keith’s life. It’s been three and a half years since we did a live show, so it’s a challenge going back on the road. We know that the fans are really eager for some more Prodigy music so, in that respect, it’s almost something that was needed to be done for the fans — and also to celebrate Keith’s life.

I am half expecting him to pop up on my screen bare-chested, with his signature white face paint smeared across his eyes, growling a hello. But it is a serene figure who appears as the Zoom call grinds into gear.

A make-up-free Maxim is slouched on a sofa at home, the only paint visible being that which is splattered on his black hoodie. The Prodigy MC has spent the afternoon putting the finishing touches to the pieces he is about to exhibit in his solo art show, which opens this week, on the eve of the band’s European tour. Futuristic visions of figures in riot suits handing out flowers, a heart enclosed inside a grenade, a literal love bomb, a supercharged butterfly — in his art, as in life, Maxim, 56, enjoys playing with people’s expectations.

When the Prodigy emerged in the Nineties they acted like a defibrillator to the UK music scene. Their live shows filled with punk theatrics became the stuff of legend. Perhaps inevitably their antics triggered several good old-fashioned moral panics too. In 1996 the music video for their single Firestarter was banned by the BBC after parents complained that Keith Flint, the band’s frontman, had frightened their children.

But if Flint, famed for his devil-horns haircut and snarling vocal delivery, was the better-known singer in the group, Maxim, with his rattlesnake contact lenses and metallic teeth, always seemed the more genuinely unsettling presence. In private, however, he is retiring, almost shy, becoming most animated when speaking on the topic of green tea. “People don’t understand,” he says. “I go on stage and this persona comes out. When I come off stage, that persona goes back in the box. I don’t question it, it just happens.”

Maxim’s central philosophy appears to be not to overanalyse anything. The Prodigy, formed in Braintree, Essex, in 1990, never rehearse before a show, preferring to let it all hang loose. With his art Maxim is the same, painting whatever comes to mind whenever he gets the fancy.

He only started about 15 years ago because he wanted something with which to decorate his walls. “I went to the Affordable Art Fair and I looked around and I thought, ‘I could do that. I’m not paying ten grand for that,’” he says. “So I went home, bought some canvases, bought some paints and literally just started like that.”

He has experimented with sculpture, collage and painting and if he doesn’t like the result he simply burns it, with a Marie Kondo-like decisiveness. “It’s a cleansing,” he says. “Why have things lying around that don’t have any purpose?”

Some of his artworks come in the form of digital non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which Maxim believes could soon change how we collect music too. Does he ever worry that people in the art world look down on him as a bit of an upstart? “We all know [the art world] is kind of conservative in some ways. I have no weight in that. I just do what I do and if people like my art, they like my art,” he says.

Born Keith Andrew Palmer to Jamaican parents in Peterborough, Maxim describes a happy, almost pastoral childhood marked by “going scrumping for apples and snowball fights”. He started MCing at 14, joining his older brother and friends who had formed a reggae sound system. “Being an MC, it wasn’t taken lightly. You couldn’t go up there if you didn’t have any lyrics, you’d be shamed,” Maxim recalls. “I’ve seen people today with their mobile phones in front of the mike. You couldn’t do that then, you couldn’t turn up with an A4 piece of paper. No, you had to learn the lyrics. And if you repeated lyrics which you had two weeks ago, people would know.”

Every day after school, the teenage Maxim — whose look at the time included pink dungarees and a beret — would scribble down lines in his schoolbooks to prepare for the next time he was called up. “I loved having a microphone in my hand and being on stage, I loved that attention.”

Maxim was never much of a party animal, his introduction to music having come through reggae rather than nightclubs. But when he was asked by the Prodigy’s co-founder and songwriter Liam Howlett to join the nascent group, he jumped in.

In 2019 the band were gearing up for the second half of their world tour in support of their seventh studio album, No Tourists, when Flint, who had faced addiction and depression, was found hanged at his home. The band cancelled the rest of their dates and fans flocked to the singer’s funeral, forming a 1.5-mile-long procession to the church in Braintree. Now, after a ten-date return to UK stages in 2022 the group are embarking on a European tour, beginning this week.

The vocalist’s death had come “totally by surprise” to his bandmates, Maxim says. Nearly five years on, he still thinks about him every day. “It’s not a feeling that goes away when you lose someone that close to you. You question yourself. You think, where was I the day before? Why didn’t I go see him?” he says. “But it’s not your fault. You have to come to terms with what it is.”

While there may have been questions about whether the Prodigy could create the same manic energy without Flint, his presence looms large in their live shows. Maxim is reluctant to sing the lyrics that once belonged to the vocalist, whose outline is beamed onto the stage behind him. “He’s my brother and when I’m rocking out on stage he’s still with me by my side,” he says.

There is something destructive about making art, he muses. “Creatives have something inside them, a fire which is burning all the time.” So how has Maxim managed to keep his balance in all of it? “My advice is green tea,” he says. “I could talk about green tea all day, that’s my thing. I live for music and art and I live for green tea.”

MAXIM x CLARENDON opens on Nov 15 at Clarendon Fine Art in London, clarendonfineart.com. The Prodigy begin their tour at OVO Hydro in Glasgow on November 16, theprodigy.com

https://metro.co.uk/2023/11/15/prodigy-frontman-maxim-after-keith-flints-death-burnt-artwork-19822944

Prodigy frontman Maxim: ‘After Keith Flint’s death I burnt my artwork’
Author Emma Pryer
Wednesday 15 Nov 2023 6:00 am

With his trademark snake eyes, fierce electro-punk performances, metallic teeth, and eclectic clothes, you’d be forgiven for thinking The Prodigy’s vocalist might be a wild, brash, unpredictable character.

In actual fact, the only time he’s lost control in recent years was after his bandmate Keith Flint took his own life – when he set light to a collection of paintings he’d created of dead icons, out of respect for a man he lovingly calls ‘my brother.’

Despite being part of the biggest electronic dance band in the world, selling over 25million records, and bringing rave into the mainstream, Maxim’s more at home creating art in his Essex barn conversion these days, than all-night partying.

At 56, even his most eccentric quirks can be explained away.

‘I sleep on a bed of nails,’ he smiles with a twinkle in his eye, before adding: ‘But they’re plastic nails.

‘Our manager gave it to me a few years ago. It hits all your pressure points and releases endorphins and it’s good for your back and relaxation.

‘I sleep on a bed of nails,’ he smiles with a twinkle in his eye, before adding: ‘But they’re plastic nails.

‘Our manager gave it to me a few years ago. It hits all your pressure points and releases endorphins and it’s good for your back and relaxation.

He admits: ‘I painted a lot of art then. It’s another form of expression for me, just like the band and like designing my own clothes.

Flint’s death is still a touchy subject. He says: ‘I can’t actually remember that time. I think I blocked it out.

‘When you’re in it you can’t imagine getting through it, but here I am four-and-a-half years later.

‘Of course, the dynamic has changed.

‘He’s not here. We go on. But his spirit is here.’

There was other work he’ll never show because he burnt it after Flint’s death.

Maxim says: ‘Over 10 years ago, I had this concept of doing some artwork with people who’d passed away at 27 and died from drug overdoses. The 27 Club – people like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison.

‘I always just tried to push the boundaries of art and because it was drug overdoses, I did these paintings with pills. After that, quite a few people started using pills in their art too.

‘But it got to a point where I didn’t feel it was right – and it was probably because of Keith.

‘After he died I destroyed them. I burnt them like a bonfire in the back garden.

‘I saw people creating artwork after Keith… cashing in. I didn’t want to be any part of that and I vowed not to do musicians then.’

As he shows me around, he admits most of his art is about taking something negative, and turning it into a positive.

One painting, called Hope, depicts a grenade with a heart in it – a seemingly sinister image on the surface.

It was, in part, inspired by a trip Maxim made to Auschwitz when The Prodigy were touring Germany nine years ago.

‘In the gas chambers, they had cut out metal benches, in the shape of a human body, for them to lie down on to die.

‘I couldn’t get my head around the mentality of people to create such a thing.

‘When you think of the psychology behind the grenade design, this tool to kill to kill. That’s kind of what I can’t get my head around. You throw it in the direction of something you want to kill, maim, hurt. So I wanted to flip that and here, you throw it in a direction and it spreads love.

‘Obviously, there are elements of surrealism in my art but it’s all about creating positivity for me because there is so much negativity around us.’

The inspiration behind another – a striking woman – came from a trip to Ghana and a compulsion to take the traditional, tribal pictures of black women and make them more futuristic, more modern, and more empowered.

‘I wanted to see strong, positive images of black women – not just the traditional ones of a woman carrying a pot,’ he adds. ‘I’ve grown up surrounded by strong women.”

Flipping the traditional notions of things on their head has always been something the band has done so well.

The Prodigy was formed by producer Liam Howlett, now 52, 33 years ago in Braintree, Essex.

Maxim and Flint were two of the founding members of the band, together with Leeroy Thornhill, 55, and dancer Sharkey.

Flint’s wild stage performances helped catapult The Prodigy to a position as the biggest dance act in the world.

In 1997, The Fat of the Land went on to sell 10million copies, boosted by subsequent singles Breathe and the controversy-generating, Smack My Bitch Up. The same year they went on to headline Glastonbury.

But Flint later opened up about battling depression and a worrying dependence on prescription drugs.

He said: ‘I’d line up rows of pills and just take them and take them and I’d lose track of how many until I passed out.’

He also admitted: ‘The problem is, you’ve got s***loads of cash and s***loads of time and all you’re doing is looking for a buzz. I did f**k all, really, apart from being a jerk.’

Touring America with Moby, the health-conscious American would often have to put blankets across the cracks in his door to stop weed fumes from the band billowing in.

But Maxim is clearly very health-conscious himself.

He adds ‘I smoked weed back in the day but I’m not a drug head. I never was. I got into music because I liked MC’ing and then I got into the party scene. Some people got into the party scene because it was a party scene.

‘People think that’s strange but I’ve never been a follower and felt a pressure to do what others do.’

In his early days, he was used to late nights.

‘I used to bring a hip flask onto stage with brandy in it,’ he says. ‘Now I ask someone to bring me a green tea for when I come off stage.

‘I have about 10 cups a day.’ He drives a Porsche four-by-four, but jokes that green tea is still his ‘biggest indulgence’.

He doesn’t dwell on the future and insists he is content, so long as he’s being creative.

‘I have my two families. My tour family and my home family. When I’m on tour I miss my home. When I’m home I miss my crew on tour.

‘But I’m always content. I always want to be creative. You can’t switch creativity off. It’s not Monday to Friday, 9 to 5.

‘I can’t go on holiday and sit on a lounger. I’m always thinking about the next creative idea but at the same time, I don’t worry about the future.

‘Who knows what I’ll be doing next year? I might be a plasterer!

‘When we first started in The Prodigy, we didn’t expect to do more than three gigs. And when the ending is up, we’ll just know.

‘We’ll know when we get on the stage and it doesn’t feel right, that it’s done.’

Maxim’s new solo exhibition launches on November 15 at Clarendon Fine Art in London’s Covent Garden.