Tim Commerford is the "strongest" he's ever been amid his battle with prostate cancer.
The 56-year-old Rage Against The Machine rocker revealed two years ago that he had been diagnosed with the disease and had undergone surgery to remove his prostate, two months after his band was forced to cancel their North American tour due to lead singer Zack de la Rocha, 54, tearing his Achilles tendon.
And Tim says that despite dealing with cancer, he’s never been fitter physically.
In an interview with TotalRock, Tim declared: “I’m the strongest I’ve ever been in my life."
He continued: “I’m 56 years old. And I’m artistic, and I’m focused on that, and I’m proud of it. 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.”
Both of Tim’s parents died of cancer and he struggled to talk about it for many years, and it was a huge shock when he learned he had it by chance when he underwent tests for health insurance.
He said: “It took me a couple of years before I could even discuss cancer without just getting emotional, crying about it."
The bassist explained that focusing on his physical strength made him cope better, adding: “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 per cent as strong on the left as it is on the right’. And I’m, like, well, then if I get 200 per cent stronger than I would have gotten, then I’ll be 125 per cent stronger.”
The musician – who launched the new group 7D7D in 2022 – went on to encourage men to seek the advice of a prostate cancer expert immediately if they are ever told their PSA (Prostate-specific antigen) levels are higher than normal, because discovering the cancer earlier would have left him “better off”.
He added: “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. 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.
“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."
