Rage Against The Machine's Tim Commerford Reveals Secret Cancer Battle

This year was supposed to be an exciting one for Rage Against The Machine. They finally embarked on their long-awaited reunion tour over the summer; however, singer Zack De La Rocha suffered a severe leg injury during the second show, which forced the band to not only cancel its 2022 European leg, but also its whole 2023 tour. But that's not when the tough times began for Tim Commerford. During a recent interview with SPIN, the bassist revealed that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer before tour even began.

“Right before I was about to go on tour with Rage, I had my prostate removed, and I have prostate cancer," he said.

Although no one in the audience at RATM shows would have suspected anything was wrong, Commerford has had a hard time both physically and psychologically. "The suffering part of it, the physical suffering after the surgery, I’ve never felt pain quite like that," he confessed. "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."

"Two months before the tour, I had surgery and my doctors said I wasn’t going to be ready. That was brutal. I would be on stage looking at my amp in tears," Commerford continued. "Then you just kind of turn around and suck it up. [Before] Zack’s injury, we had planned these little video interstitials that came in between blocks of songs. We were meant to go on stage, play some songs, go off stage, and on to the interstitials for a few minutes. It was seamless. Then he got hurt and we couldn’t leave the stage. So during the interstitials, we’re just sitting there. That was surreal. I would sometimes sit down and try to not think about certain things. It was weird. I kept it to myself throughout the touring we did and it was brutal."

Despite it all, Commerford is trying to have a positive outlook and focus on writing new music (just last month, he unveiled a new project called 7D7D). "The glass is half-full. That’s the beauty of songwriting and bass playing. When my mom was sick, that’s when I learned how to play bass," he said after speaking about his mother dying of cancer in her 40s. "When I was on stage with Rage, there were times that I wasn’t thinking about cancer for moments. When I play in 7D7D with Mathias in the studio, I don’t care what we’re doing. I go into a trance, and I just completely forget about it. And it’s so beautiful. When I wake up in the morning, it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s a new day. Dope!’ Then it’s like, ‘Oh f**k, I have cancer’ and you can’t stop it. It puts a dark cloud on the day. When I go jam with Mathias, I just tune out and it feels so good. Music has always been there in the toughest of times."