30TH ANNIVERSARY OF ‘BENNY BLANCO’
As the year draws to a close, we traditionally return to our series of articles on The Prodigy’s live jams, and this year we will be discussing various jam tracks from 1995. It makes sense to start this series of ’95 tracks with one of the most legendary and mysterious live fillers — Benny Blanco, which is now exactly 30 years old!
At first glance, it sounds absurd, but it seems that Benny Blanco‘s debut did not take place on a British stage or even at some high-profile festival, but in Moscow on 14 December 1995, at a strange, half-forgotten concert attended by barely a hundred people. The empty hall, modest sound and complete absence of The Prodigy’s usual madness all seemed to push Liam Howlett to try out an experiment on a small audience. When the crowd isn’t pushing and expecting the usual hits, you can afford to test a new live track, and do so at “full volume” and with a big sound.
In terms of its sound, the track perfectly fit into the transitional period that The Prodigy was going through. It stood somewhere between the dark post-rave era of ‘Jilted Generation’ and the hip-hop-influenced big beat that would later become the foundation for half of ‘The Fat Of The Land’ and all the B-sides of that period.
It wasn’t just another simple jam-track, but a full-fledged new track that the band apparently had plans for. During their December tour of Britain, they even sold branded merchandise with direct references to the track — a rare occurrence for a composition that never existed in a finished studio form.
Incidentally, the legendary phrase “Hey, remember me? Benny Blanco from the Bronx” appeared because the track was based on a fragment from the cult film Carlito’s Way (1993) starring Al Pacino, or more precisely, the scene at the end of the film in which the main antagonist shoots the main character.
It is difficult to say what happened to the track in early 1996: perhaps it was still played live for some time, but no recordings from that period have yet appeared in the public domain. Nevertheless, ‘Benny Blanco’ periodically surfaced in conversations and rumours until the release of ‘The Fat Of The Land’. Old fan communities often mentioned that Liam had even worked on two studio versions of the track, and for a while it seemed that the track was being seriously considered as a future B-side. But the studio version was never released. The only thing that ultimately made it onto “Fat” was a short fragment used as an intro at concerts in late 1997. After that, ‘Benny Blanco’ was forgotten for almost five years.
Our team recreated the 1995 version a couple of years ago, and just recently we re-mixed and remastered it to make the track sound even more studio-like!
Five years of silence, and then suddenly, on 1 February 2002, ‘Benny Blanco’ was heard again from the stage: The Prodigy dug it out of the depths of their archive for a performance at the ‘Big Day Out’ festival in Adelaide.
Why they dig out this track in particular is a mystery, but by and large it was obvious: by 2001–2002, there were almost no big jam tracks left in the live setlist, with the exception of the short ‘Goblin,’ and the return of at least one powerful jam for the show was obvious solution.
The returning ‘Benny Blanco’ was, of course, not left in its original form — it was slightly updated for the tour, adapting the track to the overall sound of that period. The 2002 version sounded a little different from the one that rocked in 1995, which makes sense, as the old fast version simply wouldn’t fit into the new programme. The updated version, in turn, became noticeably heavier and slower, which made it fit organically with most of the concert tracks of 2002, such as ‘Baby’s Got A Temper’, ‘Trigger’, ‘Goblin’, ‘Poison’, and others.
We also recreated this version a couple of years ago!
However, this version did not last long: it was played only a couple of times, at the ‘Big Day Out’ festival in Adelaide and at the gig in Tokyo on 6 February. And already during a ‘USA’ mini-tour, Liam returned to the authentic 1995 version, only slowing down the tempo to match the new compositions.
A couple of months later, The Prodigy played a set at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan — and that was where ‘Benny Blanco’ was played for the last time before disappearing for many years. The track was played in yet another new version and only once, after which it disappeared for thirteen long years, becoming another fan favourite “ghost”.
Responding to questions from fans in the autumn of that year, Liam confirmed that he still planned to release the track as a B-side:
Jam: “any chances that those ‘live’ tracks (benny blanco, the newer ones & etc) become b-sides?”
The Prodigy: “Jam, ‘Benny Blanco’ should be a B-side, we´re all bringing them out after the Prodigy album!”
But at the end of 2002, Liam Howlett radically reworked The Prodigy’s sound: the first version of ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ was scrapped, the old material was thrown in the bin, and the band effectively started all over again. In this new reality, the old hip-hop/big beat jam from the mid-nineties simply no longer fit into the new aesthetic. As expected, after the release of the new album in 2004, there was no longer any talk of releasing ‘Benny Blanco’ as a B-side on any of the new singles.
A year after the release of the new album, it became clear that it had failed to live up to expectations, both commercially and in terms of public response. A quick response was needed, and the most obvious solution was to release a greatest hits compilation of proven material from previous years. Next, the concert programme had to be revised. On the tour in support of the compilation, the set list changed significantly: time-tested hits that had long been absent from live performances returned to the stage. It was in this context that The Prodigy unexpectedly remembered ‘Benny Blanco’. Maxim was the first to mention it:
Neko: “Which other old tracks would you like to bring back currently?”
Maxim: “Umm well we cant bring back too many old tunes because theyre too fast! (laughs) Were not going to be able to keep up with them! (laughs) But theres quite a few fillers you know like Benny Blanco, maybe things like that. Were going to bring that back for the singles tour.”
Neko: “Thats cool!”
A bit later, Liam himself confirmed the plans to bring Benny back to the setlist:
Liam Howlett in his blog (19/11/2005): “we are gonna try and do someting different every nite in the set if we can. benny blanco is coming bak- who wants it!”
However, the long-awaited return did not happen at that time.
It seemed that the track’s story had come to an end, but 10 years later, Liam suddenly remembered it again. In the autumn of 2015, during the European tour for ‘The Day Is My Enemy’, ‘Benny Blanco’ suddenly returned to the set list for no apparent reason. Perhaps Liam was inspired by the anniversary — exactly twenty years since the track was written. Or maybe he just listened to the old material again and found that it still sounded fresh.
Be that as it may, the track was played three times, and in a completely new form.
This new ‘Benny Blanco’ no longer resembled a spontaneous live jam — it was more like a full-fledged track, almost ready for release as a B-side. It contained references to early electro-funk versions, as well as an unexpected punk note — a guitar sample from the Dead Kennedys’ song ‘California Über Alles’, which still leaves us wondering: whether we are listening to a completely new reworking or the very same refined “studio version” from the ‘Always Outnumbered’ era that was once planned for release.
Faust sketched out this version more than five years ago, and we are making the new remastered version available to the public on our Bandcamp page!
Be that as it may, this version is also celebrating its anniversary this year, and we hope that its live-release in 2015 was not the end of the story. Benny Blanco from the Bronx has already returned from oblivion twice — and, judging by all appearances, he is quite capable of doing so again.
The lack of an official release of ‘Benny Blanco’ turned it into a cult rarity for fans — a track that existed only in moments but left a noticeable mark on the band’s history, despite the fact that no one ever heard it in its finished form.
Headmasters: SIXSHOT,
Additional thanks to: Split, Faust, Canyon Hill
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