'80s Rock Icon on End-of-Life Cancer Care Now Declares He's 'Asymptomatic' - Credits 'Breakthrough Drug'
Duran Duran’s original guitarist says his life has been extended by at least five years and he has no symptoms from his stage 4 cancer following his use of a new “breakthrough drug.”
Andy Taylor, 62, was with the band as it climbed the charts with hits such as “Hungry Like the Wolf,” “The Reflex” and “A View to a Kill.”
Taylor never rejoined Duran Duran after it went into hiatus in 1985, but he remained active in music while keeping his personal life private.
In 2018, he was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer, which was inoperable. He refused chemotherapy over worries it would damage the nerves in his hands and thus his guitar playing.
The diagnosis was not made public until last year, when Duran Duran and Taylor were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Taylor missed the event and finally told his bandmates — which led to lead singer Simon Le Bon telling the world about the condition.
The guitarist was too weak to stand and had to skip the show, he said.
“It is absolutely devastating news to find out that a colleague — no, not a colleague, a mate, a friend, one of our family — is not going to be around for very long,” Le Bon said in November, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.
While all hope seemed lost at that time, Taylor revealed in two recent interviews that his condition has improved in just a matter of weeks since he tried an experimental cancer treatment.
“I was classified as palliative, end-of-life care,” he told The Times of London in an interview published Friday. “And now I’m not; I’m asymptomatic.”
“It’s been a hell of a journey,” Taylor said in a BBC interview this month.
He said Welsh scientist Christopher Evans gave him a concoction of radioactive chemicals that has essentially made his cancer dormant.
Evans told the BBC that Taylor was injected with lutetium-177, which he described as a “nuclear medicine” that is “targeted so it only sees cancer cells.”
The guitarist received his first intravenous infusion of the substance in early July. As of last week, he said, he is feeling more like himself.
“It can’t see healthy cells,” Taylor told The Times. “It kills stage four cancer in your bones. And so what it’s effectively done is extend my life for five years.”
He described the emotional toll of being told he was dying.
“The lowest point is maybe six weeks after the diagnosis when it really sinks in. You’re gonna have to say goodbye to your family,” the rocker said.
“You’re not going to see your grandson’s 10th birthday,” he said. “Psychologically it’s mind-blowing — you can’t have therapy to remove the certainty of death.”
Now, after years of being told he was on the clock, Taylor is playing music again.
He credits Evans for giving him his health back.
“He’s a genius,” Taylor said. “I call him the Elon Musk of cancer.”
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