“I’m gonna fight this thing”: Great White guitarist Mark Kendall reveals Stage 4 cancer diagnosis

Great White guitarist Mark Kendall has announced he’s been diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and is currently undergoing treatment.

Kendall broke the news to fans via a statement posted to social media, in which he says, “Just wanted everyone to know I was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer a few months ago. I wanted to wait to go public until I knew a little more about it.”

The guitarist, who helped Great White hold down their position as one of the last hard rock acts to hit it big in the 1980s, goes on to say he is receiving radiation treatment to manage his cancer.

“Just to give you an update the tumor has shrunk from 13 centimeters to 8, so I’m going in the right direction with my first scan,” he continues. “There isn’t a cure for cancer but what I have is manageable. I have the best doctors in the world and one of them invented Immunotherapy which is the treatment I’m on.

“I only had to do 3 radiation treatments which is a good thing! To be clear, I don’t need any financial help but I’ll take prayers & encouragement!

“I’m gonna fight this thing and be okay. People in my support group were diagnosed with my exact issue up to 20 yrs ago, so that is encouraging! Blessings All!”

In 2013, Kendall sat down with Guitar World to look back on his Great White career, reflecting the highs and lows of the band ahead of their then-new 30th anniversary album.

“The real magic of that song is the fact that a lot of my blues influences showed up on it,” he noted of the band’s breakout hit, Rock Me. “As a teenager, I was really into those 'feel' kind of players, like Billy Gibbons, Ritchie Blackmore and Carlos Santana.

“I like players who play from the heart and the pores of their skin. The more songs we wrote, the more those blues overtones started to come through. Rock Me was the first song that had that. It was a defining moment for the band, and a song I could tell was going to be special.”

And, in 2021, as part of Paul Brannigan’s Eddie Van Halen biography, Eruption (UK) / Unchained (US), Kendall remembered Van Halen’s early backyard shows.

“I was shocked by how good Eddie was,” he said. “No-one had seen anybody playing outside of the box like that.”