Barry Manilow is now cancer-free after undergoing a successful surgery to remove part of his lung. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” the singer told People in a new interview, adding, “This really rocked me, but I’m getting stronger.”
Manilow revealed that he’d been diagnosed with stage 1 lung cancer late last year, when he announced he would have to cancel a run of Christmas shows in Las Vegas. He underwent a lobectomy and spent seven days in the ICU before being discharged. While Manilow called the experience “a nightmare,” he acknowledged that the successful surgery meant he didn’t have to undergo any additional treatments, like chemotherapy.
“It has really, really made me take stock of my life,” Manilow said of the ordeal. “This made me stop and think about: Have I done what I wanted to do, and have I made people happy? Have I been a good friend? All of those cornball things that I’ve read for all of my life, I started to think about that, too. It really did stop me in my tracks. And the answers are yes. And as a matter of fact, there are more yeses than I ever thought.”
Manilow was also lucky that his doctors caught the disease early. He explained that the cancerous spot was discovered after a doctor ordered him to get an MRI of his lung after learning the singer had recently battled bronchitis.
“If he hadn’t done that, man … He saved my life, because there’s no symptoms for what I had,” Manilow said. “I could go on, nothing hurt — but they found the dot in my lung. They called me and said, ‘Could be cancer.’ That’s a bad word. ‘Not me. Fuck you. I can’t have cancer.’”
Manilow said it wasn’t clear how long the spot had been on his lungs, and noted, “If it had gone any further, then I would be up shit’s creek. It just so happened that it hadn’t spread, and boy oh boy, I thought I might be dying.”
Along with calling off the Vegas shows, Manilow also had to postpone his arena tour to continue focusing on his recovery. But the singer is primed to return soon. On June 5, he’ll release his first new album in nearly 15 years, What a Time, and his rescheduled tour is slated to launch April 13 in Belmont Park, New York, at the UBS Arena.
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