Duran Duran want their benefit concert next month in honour of guitarist Andy Taylor to help the global fight against cancer.
Proceeds from the gig, planned for 19 August at the Guild Theatre in Menlo Park, California, will go to the UK’s Cancer Awareness Trust charity, after Andy left the band in 2006 and revealed his prostate cancer diagnosis last year.
Frontman Simon Le Bon, 64, said in a statement: “We are heading to Northern California to play many of the songs that we wrote together with our dear friend, Andy Taylor, to help him and others in their fight against prostate cancer.
“It is the right thing to do.”
Drummer Roger Taylor, 74, added: “We would like to thank our fans and the organisers of this benefit who have given us the chance to help our longtime friend and colleague Andy Taylor.
“We have always described ourselves as a ‘band of brothers,’ and that has never been more true than in this very moment.”
The Cancer Awareness Trust raises money to fight cancer and helps develop treatments that allow patients like Andy to extend their lives.
Tickets for the upcoming gig are available now.
Sir Chris Evans – the founder of Cancer Awareness Trust – told Rolling Stone: “Andy will receive the latest precision medical treatment, emanating from some recently successful clinical trials, along with the ongoing support that the Cancer Awareness Trust is providing.
“The incredible support of Duran Duran will mean many more people will benefit just like Andy has.”
Andy, 62, has revealed he’s hoping to undergo new “nuclear therapy” to fight his cancer.
He told the ‘Rockonteurs’ podcast how after being diagnosed with incurable stage four metastatic prostate cancer he has gone from not expecting to live much longer to wanting to get back to full health.
Andy said: “I’m starting my nuclear therapy. I’ve been having tests and scans and all kinds of far-out science stuff… so the stage I’m at – which was stage four – like s***, basically, this therapy came into the UK only recently. It’s very, very new.
“Essentially it’s a nuclear medicine. It’s put into your body and it detects the cancer on the outside of the cells and it only hits cancer cells in your bones, which is mainly where it is with me, and zaps them. But if there’s a healthy cell next to it, it doesn’t touch it.
“So it’s not curative, but it can knock out and then it’s got to start again and from what was kind of – I’ll not even say the term they used to have on the thing – but I can get back (to) full fitness. I’ll be fine for five years.”