Former guitarist for Duran Duran, Andy Taylor, said that he is totally focused on “getting the most out of life” ever since being diagnosed with stage four metastatic prostate cancer four years ago. Back in November, Taylor went public with his diagnosis when Duran Duran was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Taylor was unable to attend the ceremony due to a setback with his treatment, so he wrote a letter that announced his condition and his former bandmates read it during their induction.
Taylor recently said that he first knew something was wrong when he “was out jogging, and I started to notice what you would think was a kind of, maybe, arthritic sort of pain.” He later noticed “what felt like tumors” on his neck. He explained, “So I went and had a biopsy done, and I came back for the results, and no one could be prepared for this day, I’m like, ‘Yeah, well, my dad had that. I understand.’ And he said, ‘But it’s stage 4, metastatic, which is a death sentence.’”
When it comes to the ceremony for the Rock Hall of Fame he said, “So because I had to miss the ceremony — quite a public event, it was on HBO — it’s just funny how these things collide, So I wrote a letter to the band just explaining the situation, and they very graciously, generously read that out before the ceremony. And that’s when it went public.”
Taylor concluded in saying, “I often say to people, every minute’s like an hour, every day’s like a week, You really want to get the most out of life, and I’ve been very fortunate. I’ve had so much in terms of living the dream. But because I do music, I think that’s probably given me, it’s really helped me to live with the pessimism of an incurable disease, [with] the optimism of creating music.”
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