VENOM's CRONOS: 'DAVE GROHL's Not A Rock-Star Dick'

VENOM frontman Conrad "Cronos" Lant recently spoke to Rock Sound magazine about his involvement with the PROBOT project, the one-off metal album put together by ex-NIRVANA drummer/current FOO FIGHTERS guitarist/vocalist Dave Grohl. "Fuck, [Dave] is a totally down-to-earth guy, not a rock-star dick or nothing!" Cronos said. "We were hanging out an and having beers and talking about music, typical of what I would think of as a musician, not someone like Elton John or bloody Phil Collins. You get these people like them who are always singing about love and this, that and the other, and to me they are nasty bastards in real life. They have too many issues. And you meet these people who sing about reasonably nasty things with their music — and when you meet them they are really good eggs!

"I turned up and he has a [VENOM] 'Welcome To Hell' T-shirt on and he is humble enough to respect what I have done without him sitting there and saying, 'You know, you're not a patch on where I have been.' It doesn't mean that at the end of the day, not to someone like him. He wouldn't look down his nose at someone despite how much fame he gets. Even the likes of METALLICA — I have heard some really horrible stories about people they have looked down their noses at — and it's like, 'Fucking hell, I remember dragging those crying little babies out on the road!' And that's the shit at the end of the day when they get a big head about it, it's like, 'Shut the fuck up and get in the back of the van!' "

In the same issue of Rock Sound, CATHEDRAL mainman (and ex-NAPALM DEATH frontman) Lee Dorrian remembered the time he let Grohl's former band SCREAM sleep in his apartment after a gig in Coventry that he had promoted.

"I was about 18-19 and I'd just got my first council flat and there was fuck-all in it — there was half a curtain or something, no furniture, no carpets. I think I even ended up staying at my girlfriend's house instead! I remember I had robbed a little table from a squad down the road and there was a really old radio with a cassette player on it and only one speaker worked. It was on the eighth floor in the roughest part of Coventry, hookers next door, drug dealers, all that kind of shit. NAPALM had just done our Peel Session and I remember playing it to them and Dave found that quite intriguing — and then I remember him talking about CELTIC FROST all night!

"Dave seemed like a nice chirpy character, he was always cracking gags and stuff, not much different to how he is now, really. It is quite amazing — the amount of personal and musical success he has had, to remain such a level-headed guy is quite remarkable. It is inspirational."