Five months after announcing he’d fallen ill again and that “this time the cancer is lethal,” The Pogues guitarist Philip Chevron — who joined shortly the band after the release of the Celtic rockers’ 1984 debut Red Roses For Me — today lost his battle with cancer, the group revealed via Facebook, saying he “passed away peacefully this morning.” He was 56.
The band’s full statement: “After a long illness we are sorry to inform you that Philip passed away peacefully this morning and we all send our sincere condolences to his family.”
After first battling head and neck cancer in 2007, Chevron announced in May that it was back, and that it’s “inoperable and will prove fatal in time, though it is at present impossible to measure life expectancy.”
The disease returned in the summer of 2012, and while Chevron performed with the band in September of that year for the concerts that were recorded for its The Pogues in Paris live audio/video package, he said in May that he would take a break from The Pogues and his other, even longer-running project that he fronts, The Radiators From Space.
The Pogues recently announced a four-date U.K. tour during which the band will perform its classic 1985 album Rum, Sodomy & The Lash each night plus “other favorite songs.”
PREVIOUSLY ON SLICING UP EYEBALLS
- The Pogues to perform ‘Rum, Sodomy & The Lash’ on U.K. tour this December
- Philip Chevron of The Pogues announces grim diagnosis: ‘This time the cancer is lethal’
- The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ single getting 25th anniversary reissue
- Video: ‘The Pogues in Paris’ trailer — preview of new 30th anniversary live set
Rest in Peace Phil. You’ll be missed!
Good bye, Phil…… Respect from Russia, Moscow
Very sad news. RIP Phil.
RIP, Phil.
Very sad news one of my all time favourite bands are now missing a good man
DAMN IT.
This sucks. RIP. Shane will probably live to be 100. Not that I wish him an early demise, just seems like it will be the case.
God bless, Good journey Phil.Thanks for the tunes.
No doubt Shane will outlive them all. My dad drank and smoked his entire life (bourbon and a pipe…hey, that’d be a keen name for a book or a song) and gave it up at 75, still going strong at 83.