#AONO20: Hotride · Juliette Lewis

On 1 November 2004, The Prodigy released Hotride as the second single from Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. With vocals by the inimitable Juliette Lewis, the track blends Liam Howlett’s signature electronic punk with a generous dose of his twisted humour. Two decades later, All Souvenirs dives into the backstory of ‘Hotride’: where this unusual collaboration began, why the official music video was rejected, and who actually designed the release cover.

In the #AONO20 series, our team tells the full story behind each track on the 2004 album. We’ve already covered ‘Spitfire’, ‘Girls’, ‘Memphis Bells’ and ‘Get Up Get Off’ — and now it’s time to find out all about ‘Hotride’, the 5th track on the LP.

The story began with a phone call. One of Liam Howlett’s friends from Los Angeles called him, excitedly describing a fabulous gig at the famed The Viper Room, a club then co-owned by Johnny Depp and opened in 1993.

Which show are we talking about? That evening, Juliette Lewis and her band, Juliette and The Licks, were performing. Known best for her roles in ‘Natural Born Killers’ and ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, Lewis formed the band in 2003, and it was quickly gaining popularity across the U.S.

At that time, Lewis was already pushing into the music scene, recording her debut album, and sending out demos. One of these CD-Rs made its way to Howlett. “When I got the demo I was really excited because her voice was menacing but also melodic,” Howlett shared in an interview with Sound on Sound. The idea of collaborating with Lewis seemed bold and a bit odd — exactly what Howlett was looking for on ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’.

Liam Howlett for Ron Slomowicz: “I was half-way through the record and my friend in L.A. phoned me up after he saw her perform as Juliette Lewis and The Licks. He said she was fucking insane on stage and had a great voice. I got in touch with her management and got a CD sent across. I loved what I heard. We were up for doing something unexpected and challenging people’s preconceptions of who should be on a record or who shouldn’t be on a record.”

Initially, they exchanged files remotely: Howlett sent over a track called Good Morning for which Lewis recorded vocals, but this way of working proved difficult. “We messed around for a couple of weeks, sending each other stuff through the post,” Howlett recalled in Sound on Sound. Both quickly realized that real chemistry needed in-person collaboration. At that time, Lewis happened to be in France, making the trip to England fairly easy to arrange. In London, their ideas took shape in the studio.

Liam Howlett for Sound on Sound: “[We got her over to the UK], and that’s when I discovered just how well she fitted into The Prodigy vibe. We recorded ‘Good Morning’, which is a straight punk-rock track.”

That tune was never released, though there’s speculation that part of the ‘Good Morning’ instrumental appeared in the 2005 Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned (Demo Mix), hidden video on the ‘Their Law (The Singles 1990-2005)’ DVD.

Liam Howlett for Sound on Sound: “Then I played her the instrumental to ‘Hot Ride’ and she started telling me about this other vocal idea she had, a lyric about escaping in an air balloon.”

That’s when everything clicked. The inspiration came from The Fifth Dimension’s classic ‘Up, Up and Away’. Howlett thought it would be punk enough to simply steal the lyrics he liked, adding a bit of his twisted humour. In an interview with Jason Curtis, Howlett described himself as “deadly serious” about his music, but at the same time noted that he likes to add a certain cheeky vibe to his work. The interpolation from The Fifth Dimension is the only sample officially credited in the album/single credits notes.

Liam Howlett for Jon Wiederhorn: “I’m a beat thief. That’s the way I make music. I mean, why shouldn’t I release a complete jack of someone else’s tune if it sounds good? Some of it comes from my twisted sense of humour, I suppose. Like, I love that the lyric to ‘Hot Ride’ goes ‘Up, up and away in my beautiful balloon’ and then we add, ‘Now get out, I’ll push you out’. I think that’s really funny.”

Howlett decided to go all the way with his theft of beats and pieces: he also sampled the intro guitar from ‘Macbeth’ by Ciccone Youth (a side project of Sonic Youth members), giving the track a bit of grit. Additionally, there’s speculation that one of the melodic lines may have been borrowed from the 1970s song ‘Lifetime’ by the London progressive rock band Flash.

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‘Hotride’ was recorded at Whitfield Street Studios, where Juliette Lewis performed her sessions in the large orchestral room, one of the booths even set up like a cozy living room with a nice rug!

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Juliette’s powerful performance left a strong impression on Howlett, who stood transfixed, struck by the strength of her voice. “It was shocking. I was standing at the desk, nodding at her through the glass, going, ‘Fuck, where did that voice come from?’” Howlett recalled to NME.

It can also be mentioned that in addition to Juliette Lewis herself, Hannah Robinson — a British music producer who has written dozens of hits for the likes of Lana Del Rey, Kylie Minogue and others — was a session vocalist on the track. On ‘Hotride’ she recorded the words ‘You hear me’ in the intro before the verse and the ‘Gimme gimme’ part in the bridge before the chorus.

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After ‘Hotride’ appeared on the album on 23 August 2004, Howlett considered releasing it as a single but ultimately chose a limited-edition EP release. Tired of relentless promo campaigns, Howlett told Neko he “doesn’t give a shit” about hitting the singles charts. The EP was released on 1 November 2004.

Interestingly, the version titled Album Version on the single plays a third of a semitone higher than the album version, which also affects the track length—the single’s ‘Album version’ is five seconds shorter than the original. This pitched mix later also appeared on ‘Their Law (The Singles 1990-2005)’.

The EP also included three alternate mixes titled El Batori, produced by Liam Howlett, Neil McLellan, and Dave Pemberton, who was also mixing ‘Get Up Get Off’. The title ‘El Batori’ is likely a reference to Elizabeth Báthory, the infamous 16th-century Hungarian noblewoman thought to be a serial killer.

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A full vocal track by Keith Flint was recorded specifically for the third ‘El Batori Mix’, also known as The Passenger Mix. This was the only track with Flint’s voice during the album sessions.

For a while, the band performed this version with Keef live on the ‘Always Outnumbered’ tour. However, the track didn’t fit well in the Prodigy’s set and sounded somewhat awkward.

Eventually, it was reworked toward a more Howlett-style electronic punk sound, culminating in a performance at the Lowlands Festival in 2005. The All Souvenirs team recently remastered this recording!

The final version was recorded live for BBC Radio 1 on Maida Vale, broadcast on 14 September 2005. ‘Voodoo People’, ‘Firestarter’, ‘Spitfire’, and ‘Poison’ were also performed, though for some reason, ‘Hotride’ didn’t make the final cut. Rumour has it that Liam didn’t have time to mix the track properly; later, he promised in his blog that it would be released after the ‘Their Law (The Singles 1990-2005)’ compilation, but since then—silence!

Liam in his blog: “The point of the Radio 1 session is that we record 5 tracks live and mix them all in 12 hours. We also did ‘Hotride’, which they’ll air later, when the album is released.”

Different editions of the single also included a B-side and a remix from another artist. The B-side Who U Foolin was written by Howlett in Reason back in 2003 in the then-popular broken beat style. Elements from this track were later used in both versions of ‘Get Up Get Off’ and ‘More Girls’. Notably, this was the only full B-side release in 13 years, since ‘The Trick’ on the 1996 ‘Breathe’ single—the next one appeared only in 2009 on the ‘Invaders EP’ with the well-known ‘Mescaline’.

Instead of a guest remix of ‘Hotride’, the single included a remix of ‘Girls’ by British electro-house producer Rex The Dog (Jake Williams), the only official guest remix for ‘Always Outnumbered’. Apparently, this remix was intended for the ‘Girls’ single but was left off, so it was decided to add Rex The Dog’s work to the ‘Hotride’ single due to the absence of a guest remix for ‘Hotride’.

Liam in his blog (4 September 2004): “‘Hotride’ is the next single, and there is gonna be an alternative mix and remix of ‘Girls’ by Rex The Dog. It’s fat 80’s electronic bad ass. We are mastering it today. C ya”

Official guest remixes of ‘Hotride’ do exist as well, though they didn’t make it onto the single. The first official remix request went to Environmental Science, old friends of Liam who had worked on a ‘Poison’ remix back in 1995. However, their remix of ‘Hotride’ didn’t satisfy Howlett, so it was shelved. Years later, one of Environmental Science’s founders, Ian Allen (RIP), posted it on Soundcloud.

Ian Allen on Facebook: “I’m posting it here to let you all here what I did with it”

The second remix, which was also later posted on Soundcloud, was produced by Joe Morena (aka Giuseppe Morena) of Jagged Slap. Joe created it on his own initiative, using a sample pack from Dave Pemberton, and later sent the track to the label. In our opinion, it’s probably the best guest remix from the ‘Always Outnumbered’ era – true grim dub shit, though XL Recordings refused to release it anywhere.

Leeroy Thornhill also mentioned that he worked on his own remix of ‘Hotride’, unrelated to Joe Morena’s remix, even though they collaborated on the Jagged Slap project for some time. According to Leeroy, his version was never released, so it’s unlikely anyone has ever heard it.

The ‘Hotride’ EP, like the previous single ‘Girls’, didn’t include an official single edit, as is usually the case with singles. Some promos included only a shortened radio edit version, Hotride (Radio Edit).

As with ‘Girls’, a special edit was also made for the ‘Hotride’ music video. However, unlike ‘Girls’, the ‘Hotride’ video edit wasn’t released even on promos and can only be heard in the video itself.

For the video shoot, the team turned to South African-born director Daniel Levi. As the process began, The Prodigy’s frontman was less than thrilled. He was straightforward with Neko about it: “I hate doing videos, you know, because you’re basically laying all your trust in a fucking video director. I fucking hate it; we’ve been let down so many times.”

From the start, the ‘Hotride’ music video courted controversy. Levi’s vision, clearly influenced by Kubrick’s ‘A Clockwork Orange’, depicted a gang of ten-year-olds on a violent rampage: smashing cars, assaulting adults, taking drugs, and trashing office spaces.

After watching the final cut, Liam Howlett rejected it, feeling it didn’t capture the essence of the track. Yet some fans who saw the video online liked it. Later, Howlett wrote in his blog that the video was “shocking for the sake of it” and felt the song “deserved a more intelligent video.”

Liam Howlett in his blog: “Nothin’ wrong with violence, as long as there is a point. Actually, it didn’t do anything for the song, so I would rather not have a video at all.”

Originally, Howlett had been inspired by another video by the same director: in 2003, Daniel directed a video for ‘Freak’ by the British electronic group LFO. The music video has a similar plot, is shot in the same colors, and even uses some of the same actors. It’s possible the director made a work too similar to the LFO video for The Prodigy, and Howlett simply didn’t see the point in the resemblance.

Ironically, what Howlett deemed “shocking” for the band in 2004 now easily passes his standards. In 2018, the video for ‘Timebomb Zone’ from ‘No Tourists’ focused entirely on a brutal boxing ring fight. While Howlett described Paco Raterta, the video’s director, as his only choice for the project, many fans expressed bewilderment, criticizing the band for unnecessary violence. So what’s the difference?..

Incidentally, an official ‘Hotride’ video teaser was available on the band’s website at that time. It was created by Eugene Reicansky and his team at Rockstar, who handled The Prodigy’s web design.

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The origin of the single cover was also unclear at first. Unlike the design for ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ or the promo campaign for ‘Girls’, the covers for ‘Hotride’ and ‘Spitfire’ are absent from Intro’s portfolio (the company that designed the album), and in the liner notes of ‘Hotride’ and ‘Spitfire’, designers are not credited at all. In fact, after the release of the album and the first single, Intro stopped working with The Prodigy. In 2024, All Souvenirs spoke with Anna Bergfors from Intro, and she clarified the details: “They certainly were not ours. After two versions of the ‘Girls’ video I think the record company did them in-house. Something like that, it was indeed a while ago.” All in all, the ‘Hotride’ one was designed by Alison Fielding, the Beggars Group’s Global Head of Creative — back in the 90s she also art directed the shoot for the ‘Voodoo People’ single artwork and some others that we will mention in our future articles.

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The different releases were packaged with different title stickers on the covers, but it can also be remembered that there were two versions of the cover artwork — they differed in colour scheme. The second version had the green and purple colours swapped, and it only appeared online.
 

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‘Hotride’ is a bold example of Howlett’s fearlessness in choosing artists he wants to work with. This was also noted by Juliette Lewis herself at the time: “I think what [Liam] is doing is really amazing, because he’s not trying to repeat past successes with The Prodigy. He’s actually taking it up a notch,” she recalled in an interview with NME.

Stay tuned for our upcoming posts celebrating the 20th anniversary of one of the most underrated albums by British electronic punks, ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’. Our next stop—the story behind ‘Wake Up’ featuring Kool Keith of Ultramagnetic MCs!

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Headmasters: SIXSHOT, SPLIT

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