RATM’s Tim Commerford talks about his cancer battle

The Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave bassist Tim Commerford is currently promoting his new band 7D7D and in an interview with TotalRock (Transcribed by Blabbermouth), he talked about his three-year cancer battle. The 56 year-old musician was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few three years ago.

Tim Commerford said about his cancer battle

“I’m the strongest I’ve ever been in my life, I’m 56 years old. I’m artistic, and I’m focused on that, and I’m proud of it. And I’ve always been very proud of being fit as an older person, because most people that are my age are not; that’s the truth of it. And I feel really good about that.”

“I was broken when I found out I had cancer. It took me a couple of years before I could even discuss cancer without just getting emotional, crying about it. But what brought me over the edge with that and made me not have to cry all the time was the physicality of, like, ‘Yo, yeah, I’m sick.'”

“Like, I have a cadaver hamstring tendon that’s in my shoulder that the doctor’s, like, ‘Well, your shoulder is only gonna be 75 percent as strong on the left as it is on the right.’ And I’m, like, well, then if I get 200 percent stronger than I would have gotten, then I’ll be 125 percent stronger.”

“I tell people, like, look, if your number, your PSA number, which is what it’s called, if that number is going up, if your doctor says your PSA is rising a little, get an expert, go to an expert. At that point in time, find someone that knows everything about it that’s an expert in prostate cancer that does it. That’s what I didn’t do.”

He continued:

“And mine I found out about through health insurance. I had to do a health insurance test, and they found it early. And I went to a doctor, and she watched it rise, and then finally went, ‘Oh, now it’s up to this point. You need to have surgery. You have cancer.’ ‘What?’ ‘Oh yeah. We have to remove your prostate.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Oh yeah. And your cancer got out of your prostate a little tiny bit. So that means it escaped into my body.’ When they normally capture it, it’s in the capsule. They take the prostate, it takes the cancer.”

“It’s very important that, like, if your doctor sticks his fucking finger in your ass and goes, like my doctor said, I’ll never forget, ‘Well, your prostate is kind of generous.’ That was his words. ‘Generous.’ And I remember going, like, ‘That’s a little weird,’ but not worrying about it, because he said, ‘Well, there’s a lot of men that have that. You ride your bike a lot.'”

Commerford continued:

“And it didn’t send a red alert that it should have and that any person, especially a man, any man, if you get any of that, like you have a generous prostate or your PSA numbers a little elevated, go to an expert right then. And there’s things I could have done. Had I been at an expert earlier on, they would have done an MRI and they would have then seen the location of the cancer and then I would have been able to take it out in the capsule, and I’d be better off,” Tim Commerford said.

Tim Commerford was born in Irvine, California in 1968 and started his musical career in 1988. He is known for being the bass player of Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave and Prophets of Rage. He also recorded with groups like Future User, Wakrat and now is promoting his new band 7D7D;