The day black metal legend Cronos from Venom met Kate Bush

Kate Bush, Cronos from Venom — (Image credit: David Redfern/Redferns/Getty Images | Fin Costello/Redferns)

On September 10, 1980, Kate Bush visited the Virgin Records shop in Newcastle's Eldon Square to promote and sign copies of her third album, Never for Ever, which had been released two days earlier. Hundreds of fans showed up to meet the star, among them 17-year-old Conrad Lant, a young man who would also go on to become a pioneering, globally-recognised musician, better known as Venom frontman. and bassist Cronos.

The teenage Cronos was a huge Kate Bush fan.

"She just flattened me when she first came out with The Kick Inside," the London-born, Newcastle-raised musician told Classic Rock in 2021. "The first thing of hers I heard was the Wuthering Heights single on the TV, and I couldn’t believe it - it didn’t sound like anything else. On the day The Kick Inside came out, I bought it. I wore the thing out – absolutely amazing album. There was nothing I could compare it to... It was completely unique."

"What's not to love about Kate Bush?” the godfather of black metal asks writer Dave Everley in the new issue of Classic Rock magazine, on sale now. "She’s got an incredible way of writing. I even dyed me hair red with henna because of her."

Venom's frontman still has vivid memories of the day that he met Bush at the Virgin Records signing session.

"I raced in and pushed me way to the front of the queue, got as near as I could," he recalls. "She had these posters she was signing. I said: ‘Can you write 'To Cronos…'? Then I said: Can I have a kiss?'

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"She leaned over and kissed me on me lips," he remembers. "My knees went. As I was walking away in a daze, the guy behind us says: 'Can I have a kiss?' And I heard this voice: 'No more kisses.' I was the last one.

"I’ve still got the poster," he says. "'To Cronos, lots of love, Kate Bush'."

You can read the full interview with Cronos in the new issue of Classic Rock.

The cover of Classic Rock 355, featuring Deep Purple — (Image credit: Future)

In addition to the career-spanning interview with Cronos, the new issue of Classic Rock magazine features Deep Purple, Peter Gabriel, Van Morrison, Ashley McBride, Fairport Convention, Skid Row and more. Full details here.

Artists

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.