Philip Chevron of The Pogues announces grim diagnosis: ‘This time the cancer is lethal’

Photo by Zuzana Pernicová

After first battling head and neck cancer in 2007, Philip Chevron — who first joined The Pogues shortly after the release of the Celtic rockers’ 1984 debut Red Roses For Me — this week announced that his cancer is back, and that, this time, it’s “inoperable and will prove fatal in time, though it is at present impossible to measure life expectancy.”

In a statement posted on The Pogues’ website, Chevron says, “This time the cancer is lethal.”

The disease returned last summer, and while Chevron performed with the band in September for the concerts that were recorded for its The Pogues in Paris live audio/video package, he is now taking a break from The Pogues, who are described as being on a “prolonged time out,” as well as his other, even longer-running project that he fronts, The Radiators From Space.

Read the full statement from the Pogues’ website (via Consequence of Sound):

Pogues and Radiators from Space guitarist Philip Chevron has revealed that the head & neck cancer for which he received treatment in 2007 and a clean bill of health in April 2012 has in fact returned. In August 2012, Chevron and his doctors noticed a new tumour and this one is in a position whereby treatment is seriously ill-advised and would almost certainly cause Stroke or worse. The cancer is, in short, inoperable and will prove fatal in time, though it is at present impossible to measure life expectancy. Chevron, who was last year part of the releases “The Pogues In Paris” on Polydor and the Radiators’ “Sound City Beat” on Chiswick, is currently taking a break from both bands. The Pogues are on a prolonged time out, emerging only in support of matters relating to their 30th anniversary this year, while the Radiators from Space have formed a splinter group, The Trouble Pilgrims, in which Chevron plays no part. In recent times, Chevron has accepted several theatre music commissions, including the Old Vic Theatre in London and Galway’s Druid Theatre.

Philip thanks his friends, colleagues, family and management team for their enduring support and hopes to make some notable musical contributions before, as he puts it, the cancer becomes “lethal”.

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