Prodigy chucked this cover on as the last track on their 1997 classic The Fat Of The Land and it still seems like an odd thing for them to have done. The original is a typically raucous, driving punk tune from L7, built around two heavy guitar riffs – which is PLENTY for any song, in my opinion – one for the verse, one for the chorus.

Straightforward as L7’s version is, the Prodigy’s is even less subtle; its main feature is a bludgeoning drum beat, with the tune loosely carried by Keith Flynt’s Lydon-esque vocals and some filthily distorted electro-punk noise. Apparently ‘Saffron’, the singer from Republica provides backing vocals, but you can hardly hear them, so that’s OK.

The thing that’s hard to understand about the cover is how they came to pick it up in the first place. L7’s Fuel My Fire appeared on their excellent 1994 album Hungry For Stink. I really loved this album because, while most bands who’d found fame during the grunge era were consciously moving away from a heavy guitar sound, L7 went heavier than ever (it’s all explained here). The album is full of rudimentary, crunching punk riffs like Fuel My Fire, but there are loads of better examples – Andres, The Bomb, Questioning My Sanity, Shirley all top it comfortably – so it’s never made sense that The Prodigy chose it as the one to cover.

Turns out Fuel My Fire isn’t even an original L7 composition. They used the tune from a song called Lost Cause by the Australian punk/yob rock band Cosmic Psychos and gave it new lyrics. Those two basic riffs went on a surprisingly long journey from the Melbourne punk scene to the UK rave scene via L7’s LA grunge. More surprising though is that Kim Deal has a writing credit on Prodigy’s monster hit, Firestarter, courtesy of a Breeders guitar part they sampled. Who knew?

 

‘The Model’ by Kraftwerk covered by Big Black – Magnificent Cover Version No.17

‘Motorhead’ by Motorhead covered by Corduroy – Magnificent Cover Version N.19