Mike Peters, firebrand frontman of Welsh rockers The Alarm, has died after a three-decade battle with cancer. He was 66.
Born in North Wales in 1959, Peters grew up a stone’s throw from future bandmate Eddie MacDonald. After early stints in punk bruisers The Toilets and the more polished Seventeen, he co-founded The Alarm in the early 1980s alongside MacDonald, Dave Sharp and Nigel Twist. The band quickly found a home on I.R.S. Records, sharing label space with R.E.M. and The Go-Go’s.
The Alarm tore out of Wales in 1981 with guitars held like lances and hearts braced against the gathering gloom. Peters’ voice – ragged, rallying, relentless, led the charge through The Stand, Sixty Eight Guns and Strength, songs that felt less like hits than survival hymns. The Alarm’s sound took punk’s battered rebellion collided with classic rock’s wide-eyed yearning. They opened for U2 during the War Tour, stood alongside Dylan, and shared stages with Springsteen. Their 1984 debut, Declaration, lodged itself in the UK Top 10, followed by a steady chain of charting singles and loyal transatlantic crowds who found communion in the band’s no-frills creed.
Peters left The Alarm in 1991 but could never stray far from the flame. He reformed the group a decade later, stepped briefly into Big Country’s boots, and built new battlesongs alongside his wife, Jules, in Poets of Justice.
In 1995, cancer struck. Mike Peters met it the only way he knew: head-on and hand-in-hand with community. Love Hope Strength, the charity he and Jules founded, fought to find new lives in marrow registries and mountaintop concerts alike. Their Get On The List campaigns signed up a quarter of a million stem cell donors across the globe.
Even as hospital stays grew longer, the music kept coming. Forwards, written from the bedsides of both struggle and survival, stands as a fierce reminder of Peters’ spirit.
“I literally took my guitar into [the] hospital with me,” Peters said. “I was on the ward for such a long time, I started writing these songs in between IV sessions and the first people to hear the music were the very people who were trying to keep me alive…A lot of artists have to kill to make a record like Forwards and with the challenges that came my way in 2022. I certainly had to kill or be killed to realize the ambition in these songs. It was literally life or death making this record. I’ve already taken so much from life, that when I was in the hospital stricken with chronic illness, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be spared another opportunity to live. Fortunately for me, I was granted more time on earth and the challenge remains as ever, to make the most of every single second — forwards.”
Peters directly addressed his health scare by filming the Next video in hospital corridors. “I wanted to film something that captured the elation of knowing you are going home, moving on, going forwards ready for what lies ahead, for what’s next,” he said. “At night and in between IV sessions, I would walk the very same empty hospital corridors of the North Wales Cancer Centre, trying to preserve whatever human strength I could hang on to.”
Last year, just as remission seemed near, Richter’s Syndrome surged through him. He sought treatment, fought with the old stubborn light, but the illness returned.
Mike Peters’ passing roars in the streets he once rallied, it stirs in every outstretched arm, every battered drumbeat. His story is written not in chart positions or magazine covers, but in the stubborn sparks he lit in others. Peters had the soul of a warrior, showing true bravery and courage in the face of illness.
Transformation, the final Alarm album Peters completed, will be released on July 6. His second memoir, Volume 2 HOPE – 1991–2005, is out now. He is survived by Jules, and their sons Dylan and Evan, who carry the rhythm of his life forward.
“Live right up to the last breath and stay positive about the world, your family and the environment you live in.”
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