A bit of bad news for fans of Elvis Costello. Today the legendary singer-songwriter revealed that he’d recently been diagnosed with a “very aggressive” cancer. Fortunately, his doctors caught in time however and it seems that he’s going to be okay. “Six weeks ago my specialist called me and said, ‘You should start playing the Lotto,’ he said in a lengthy statement posted to his official website. “He had rarely, if ever, seen such a small but very aggressive cancerous malignancy that could be defeated by a single surgery.”
After going under the knife, Costello proceeded with a summer tour, but as he noted, “The spirit has been more than willing but I have to now accept that it is going to take longer than I would have wished for me to recover my full strength. Therefore, I must reluctantly cancel all the remaining engagements of this tour.”
On the good news front however, it looks like he’s ready to drop a new, as-yet-untitled album come the Fall. “The Imposters and I — together with several of our other friends — have made a magnificent new record of which we are truly proud. It will be issued in October, I believe. We will return at the soonest opportunity to play that music and your favourite songs that still make sense to us all.”
You can read Elvis Costello’s entire note explaining his diagnosis here.