It's been two years since Tim Commerford revealed his battle with prostate cancer. The bassist got his prostate removed before heading out on tour with Rage Against The Machine. At the time, he recalled the post-surgery pain as insufferable.

"The suffering part of it, the physical suffering after the surgery, I’ve never felt pain quite like that," he confessed during an interview in 2022. "I have metal plates in my head and cadaver parts in my body. I’ve done a lot of damage through sports and mountain biking and this sort of thing and I’ve always felt like I had a really high tolerance for pain, and that s**t brought me to my knees. After the pain went away, I still haven’t really been able to get up, even though I’m working out and doing s**t, but psychologically, the damage is severe. It’s very hard for me to not break down and get emotional."

Now, two years later, Commerford says he's "the strongest I've ever been in my life." And that's saying a lot.

“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," he told TotalRock (transcribed by Blabbermouth).

Although Commerford seems to be in a good space now, it took a long time for him to get there. “It took me a couple of years before I could even discuss cancer without just getting emotional, crying about it,” he admitted. “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.”

He also urged people to take action if they feel like something's not right. “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," Commerford explained. “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,’" he added. "When they normally capture it, it’s in the capsule. They take the prostate, it takes the cancer.”

Watch the full interview below.

Lake Street Dive

with Colorado Symphony