Ronnie Wood revealed in a new interview he battled and beat cancer for the second time during the pandemic.
Speaking with U.K.’s The Sun, the Rolling Stones guitarist said, “I had lung cancer in 2017 and I had small-cell [cancer] more recently that I fought in the last lockdown.” Fortunately, Wood’s doctors caught the small-cell cancer early, and he said he was given “the all-clear” once again.
Wood touched on how dealing with cancer affects his sobriety saying, “I’m going through a lot of problems now, but throughout my recovery, you have to let it go. And when you hand the outcome over to your higher power, that is a magic thing. That brings you back to the [AA and NA’s] Serenity Prayer: ‘Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change’. That’s incredible. What will be will be, it’s nothing to do with me.”
Wood’s first battle with cancer came in 2017. He discussed his diagnosis in his documentary Somebody Up There Likes Me saying, “I smoked for England for 54 years. 25 to 30 [cigarettes] a day, at least, for 50 odd years. So I got away with having it cut out of one lung, the cancer, luckily it just stayed there. They said, ‘We got rid of that and while we were there, we got rid of the emphysema on the top lobe of your lung.’ They said, ‘Your lungs now are like you never smoked.’ I went, ‘How is that for a get out of jail free card! Somebody up there likes me and somebody down here likes me too.’”