Stephen Stills 'Revitalized' After Cancer Scare

For years, Stephen Stills wasn't feeling like himself. "I was really out of sorts and I didn't know why I was in such a funk," he tells Spinner. "I let myself get so fat." In 2008, he found out why. "I didn't realize for the previous five years I had been dragging a cancer around in there," he says. "When that stuff starts getting in there, it sort of f---s with your whole system, your mentality, your whole neurological system."

In June of 2008, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer had successful surgery for prostate cancer and a now he says the experience has given him a new appreciation for life and music. "Yes, there's an 'oh s---' factor to it that'll wake you up," he says of the harrowing experience. "But mainly I was just revitalized."

After the surgery, Stills knew exactly how to celebrate -- musically, of course. "I decided to get myself on film with my quartet right after playing a real long Crosby, Stills and Nash tour, while my chops are up, get loud and be just a keyboard player, bass player and drummer and do my favorite acoustic songs and be able to talk and tell stories and make fun of myself," he says.

It wasn't easy to get the film made. "I had to fight like hell to get anybody to go for it because I hadn't done anything. I'd been fallow for years and just sort of slogging along doing CSN tours," he says. "[My manager] Elliot Roberts said, 'You've got to get out there and just slug it out.' This is the result of a few months of that and saying, 'We've got to film this now. Even if I get better and we do other films later, we've got to film this and do it as best we can.'"

The result is the DVD, 'Live at Shepherd's Bush,' which is available now. "We've got me at the same theater where the Beatles filmed 'A Hard Day's Night,' right there at Shepherd's Bush and the fans were great. They laughed at my jokes and appreciated the stuff that I actually most like about my work," he says. "But there are some real surprises and the main thing is I carry the thing and it's beautifully filmed. We did the sound ourselves and developed a film of what it feels like onstage for us."