R.I.P. Mike Peters (The Alarm)

Marching On in the Presence of Love—

Mike Peters MBE, the legendary Welsh frontman of rock band The Alarm and a tireless global advocate for blood cancer patients, has died at the age of 66 following a 30-year fight with various forms of the disease.

A career that spanned over five decades, Peters’ voice spoke for both the defiant and the hopeful, during his time with the band in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and his very prolific output in the years following.

Last April, just before a scheduled 50-date US tour (that we were so looking forward to), Peters was diagnosed with Richter’s Syndrome, an aggressive form of lymphoma, and despite extensive treatment at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, the cancer continued progressing until the end.

Peters was born in Prestatyn, Wales on February 25, 1959, and grew up with future Alarm band member Eddie MacDonald as a best friend. In school, he fronted an early band called Hairy Hippie to perform at his sister’s birthday doing covers, with his first proper band coming after, called The Toilets, inspired after seeing the Sex Pistols perform in 1976.

Peters and MacDonald, along with Dave Sharp and Nigel Twist would form a band called Seventeen in 1978, releasing a single the following year. The lineup would transform into the classic lineup of The Alarm (named after a Toilets song Peters penned) with the band getting signed by IRS Records and moving to London.

The band’s first single was “Unsafe Building” in 1981 on their own label, and meeting U2’s agent early on, would prove fruitful, as the bands played together at London’s Lyceum in December 1981 and the Alarm would go on to open the U2’s breakthrough War Tour, less than two years later.

“Sixty-Eight Guns” was the highest-charting UK single- just one of so many classic songs that would follow- “Marching On”; “Absolute Reality”; “The Stand”; “Spirit of ‘76”; “Rain in the Summertime”; “Sold Me Down the River”; and so many more songs of urgency and spirit.

Peters would announce his departure from the band in 1991, famously on stage at Brixton Academy, and the four would reunite only once more, coaxed by a VH-1 program over a decade later, for a one-off reunion.

Post-Alarm, Peter’s musical output only increased and this, despite getting that initial lymphoma diagnosis in 1995, just ahead of releasing his second solo album. Instead of cowering him, his condition empowered Peters further, both as a musician and a resilient advocate with a mission to help others.

In February 2004, Peters fooled the music world by blindly releasing the single”45 RPM” under the name The Poppy Fields, recruiting a much younger band to lip-sync the song in the video and the song charted in the Top 30, before the truth was revealed. As his core fan base grew, many live and limited releases were issued and fans pilgrimaged annually to Llandudno, Wales for “The Gathering” – a weekend event in celebration of the man and his music.

In 2005, Peters discovered that he was now suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia and at the same time, started a cancer foundation called Love Hope Strength (named after “Strength” lyrics) to help with the fight. The charity has since added over 250,000 people to the global stem cell registry and helped secure thousands of potential life-saving matches for patients worldwide.

In 2007, 38 musicians (including members of The Fixx, Stray Cats, and Squeeze) including Peters made a 14-day trek to the base camp at Mount Everest to perform the highest concert on land to raise cancer awareness and money to fight cancer, which was also made into a documentary.

The lymphocytic leukemia would return in 2015 before briefly going into into remission, with Peters still fighting, working and touring along with the way (he was even Big Country’s lead singer for a time!) Later projects included those with The Poets of Justice (with his wife on keyboards) re-imagining previous Alarm albums and reforming a new version of the band for more original music and live shows.

Peters is survived by his wife of 39 years, Jules (herself a cancer survivor as well) and their sons, Dylan and Evan.

“I’m walking in the presence of love, I’m walking in the seven heavens
I’m alive with the agony, the ecstasy, strive for the pleasure and the pain
I’m walking in the presence of love” – Mike Peters, The Alarm- “Presence of Love”