"About two months ago, I started feeling this little lump in my throat, like you would feel if you had swollen glands," said Yauch, who was on tour in Europe at the time. "I called my doctor and saw him when I got back, this was about two weeks ago, and he sent me to a specialist and they did tests. I actually have a form of cancer…it's in a gland called the parotid gland, and it's also in the lymph node...I have to have surgery, probably next week, and after that, I'll have to have radiation, localized in that area.

But the good news is that they did scans of my whole body, and it's only localized in this one area, and it's not in an area that affects my voice, so that's nice...It's a little bit of a setback, it's a pain in the ass, but this is something that's very treatable. In most cases they're able to completely get rid of it and people don't have continuing problems with it. And they've caught it early, and it's not anywhere else in my body, so that's the good news."