‘A Concert For KILLING Cancer’

“A Concert For KILLING Cancer” is off to a good start merely by having two music pros at the helm – long-time manager of The Who, Bill Curbishley, and Harvey Goldsmith who plays a key role in the music biz as a promoter and manager. It was Goldsmith who did the impossible by putting together the ultimate one-off performance – the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion at the O2 in London.

The concert, scheduled Jan. 13 at London’s HMV Hammersmith Apollo, will benefit the KILLING Cancer charity, specifically to raise public awareness of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT), which works by combining light with a drug that switches off the oxygen reaching target cells. Developed at several hospitals, PDT is approved by the National Institute For Health and Clinical Excellence for treating skin, mouth, lung and oesophageal cancers.

By raising PDT awareness, the charity hopes to extend the treatment to other forms of cancer.

“Robert [Plant] and I had lived through the final months and days of close friends battling with cancer,” Curbishley said, “but also fighting to overcome the effects of their treatments. Only later we discovered that PDT could perhaps have saved their lives – and certainly given them some dignity in their final weeks.”

“I have seen how PDT is a much more gentle treatment and the funds Bill, myself and some great friends in the business have already pledged, is giving pancreatic cancer patients real hope,” Goldsmith said. “With this cancer there is currently only a three percent chance of survival.

“In the PDT trial this concert is funding, we have hope and expectation that we can dramatically improve the survival odds for patients.”

Expect more artists to be announced. Pre-sales begin Nov. 16. For more information, click here for the KILLING Cancer website.