Rob Halford has urged men to get their "prostate checked" after his cancer battle.
Rob Halford Rocking Sweden Rock Festival
The Judas Priest frontman was diagnosed with prostate cancer amid the COVID-19 pandemic last year, but, fortunately, he is in remission.
And now, the 70-year-old heavy metal icon has explained the reason he updated his version of his 'Confess' autobiography to include his diagnosis was in order to encourage men of a "certain age" to get themselves checked out regularly.
In an interview with MariskalRock, Rob began "It's in remission. I count my blessings — thanks to God. It was a time when … You know, timing is everything in rock and roll and heavy metal. And, of course, this was going on during the pandemic — the initial stages of the pandemic — so the world was completely closed down.
"Priest would have been on a bit of a hiatus anyway, because we had just been around the world three times with [Priest's latest album] 'Firepower', so we were gonna be on a kind of a break although we were writing for the new album.
"And so I was able to take care of three things, really — promote [my autobiography] 'Confess', do some writing with the band before I came back [home] to Phoenix, and then get this cancer business sorted out."
He then urged: "It's just a miracle what they can do with health care these days; it's absolutely remarkable. So in my story, my main message is to guys everywhere around the world, when you get to a certain age, it's very important that you get your prostate checked, your bloodwork checked, get a colonoscopy.
"It's all these things that old blokes like me go, 'Wait, wait, wait.' That's the worst thing to do. So that was part of the reason I wanted to push the message out. And the fact that it's been out for a while anyway — it's been out since last September in the final edition of the 'Confess' paperback — so it was gonna surface anyway."
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