R.I.P. Mike Peters of the Alarm

The legendary rocker who did so much to raise awareness about cancer loses his own decades-long battle

Today has been a very devastating day for me, and though I was worried that it might be coming, I kept hoping and praying that the inevitable would be delayed, and that Mike Peters, frontman and primary creative entity behind one of my all-time favorite bands, The Alarm, would be able to win his decades-long fight against cancer. I’ll note that I’m writing this “30 Minute Experiment” style, and those who have been keeping up with my blog writing since COVID will know that these are written very stream-of-consciousness with no initial outline, and when I feel like I’m done writing (hopefully in 30 minutes or less ala Domino’s Pizza or the Jesse Eisenberg movie), I just hit post, and I never go back and read what I wrote. Fun, huh?

As you might have heard from my own socials or from other media outlets, Mr. Michael Leslie Peters died at the age of 66 yesterday, leaving behind his hugely supportive wife Jules, their two sons, and at least one dog named Bowie. This came almost a year to the date after when the Peters’ announced that Mike had been diagnosed with a debilitating new form of cancer, which would require the toughest fight of his life and a groundbreaking medical breakthrough that would be the best chance of him surviving. Jules had been documenting Mike’s latest journey with cancer over the year, as he tackled cancer with the same energy and enthusiasm that he has faced every adversity that has come his way. (It’s also important to note that Jules is also a cancer survivor, having dealt with breast cancer herself, often with both of them supporting one another through treatment.)

I’m going to come back to the cancer thing, but I want to first talk about my history of being such a huge fan of the Alarm, the rather sudden falling out I had with them and then returning to becoming a fan… and even having issues with remaining a fan over the past few years, and again, I’ll try to do this in thirty minutes or less.

As with many of my favorite bands of the ‘80s, I first heard the Alarm on WLIR, the Long Island alternative rock station that would play their early hits like “69 Guns” and “The Stand” and others, often dubbing them as their “Screamer of the Week.” WLIR and the Alarm were so closely connected that when someone made a doc about WLIR and it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, Mike’s new streamlined three-piece Alarm (with regular drummer Smiley and frequent collaborator, guitarist/bassist James Stevenson) played a couple songs after the screening. It was quite a night, but by that point, I was already fully back in the Alarm camp, but I feel like I need to go back to the ‘80s.

So I loved The Alarm when I heard them on WLIR, and I immediately bought their first album, Dedication, when it released in the States by IRS Records in 1984. I listened to that album a lot, and when its follow-up Strength was released just one year later, I finally had a chance to see them live at the Agora Ballroom in West Hartford, Connecticut, and to say that the gig changed my life would be an understatement. The Alarm was a real band at the time, not to lessen the contribution of Mike’s recent collaborators (including Jules) but it was a four-piece. They had great anthemic songs, a fantastic look that put them in a similar realm as Adam and the Ants, dressed in Western frontier gear and with hair so full of hairspray that one could blame the band for at least one small hole in the Earth’s ozone layer.

But that gig really changed my impression of what a live band could deliver with the help of its diehard fans, as the band already had a reputation as a live band with the audience singing certain sections, and during one pivotal bridge break during “Where Were You Hiding When the Storm Broke?” Mike would sing “All cards are marked, and all fates will collide,” where Mike would then throw a small stack of playing cards into the air. This was a tradition that would continue for 40 years, with the fans in attendance bringing their own cards and throwing them up in the air. I was already sold, but that one moment in the concert really stuck with me. I’m sure the people who have to clean up these venues after Mike and the Alarm play have never appreciated all the cards on the floor after a gig, but it’s a crucial aspect of being an Alarm fan.

Cut forward a few years later, and The Alarm were back in Connecticut, but this time they were opening for Pat Benatar (I know, it’s a weird pairing even thinking about it now) at the Hartford Coliseum. This was now early 1986, and apparently, it was March 3, which would have been one day after my 21st birthday, so I would finally be able to go to clubs like Toad’s Place and New York’s The Ritz to see the bands that would play there. This concert was pivotal for another reason, since I remembered the playing cards from the previous show, and I stuffed four decks of cards into my long black trenchcoat — I was already quite the goth at this point — to throw during “Where Were You Hiding?” The Alarm came on to a half-filled stadium of mostly disinterested Pat Benatar fans — but could you blame them? — and… they didn’t play the song. So basically, they finished their set, I had two pockets filled with playing cards and nothing to do with them, so… I threw them anyway. We were seated in an upper tier, rather than anywhere near the floor, so in the break before Pat Benatar, the people below were showered with four packs of playing cards being thrown seemingly at random. If you are a Pat Benatar fan and were at that show and have spent 40 years wondering what was up with all those playing cards… that was me. (Oddly, I was hoping to tell Mike and Jules this story when they did a fan Zoom a bunch of years ago but never had the chance.)

The other thing that was weird about this show was that I had gone with my work colleague and one my regular concert-going friends, David, to this show, and since I had an extra ticket, he invited his Bridgeport. Sometime during Benatar’s set, this roommate wandered off, and the concert ended, and he never had returned. We spent a good 40 minutes or more wandering around the slowly-dissipating Hartford Colliseum looking for this guy (whose name I don’t even remember) and never found him, so I think we drove back without him. It’s been a long time, and I honestly have no idea if I ever figured out what happened to the guy. I barely remember David (except that he ended up inviting another coworker who I had a major crush on, to see The Thompson Twins, so I ended up being a third-wheel to a concert to which I had hoped to ask her.)

Anyway, back to the Alarm… because the story does continue. In January 1987 I moved to New York City and began a stream of weekly concerts at The Ritz, and anywhere else that had shows by cool ‘80s bands. In October of 1987, my favorite band released their new album, Eye of the Hurricane, and to be brutally honest, I HATED IT, I mean really loathed it. You need to remember (or be informed) that I moved to NYC to become a recording engineer and producer and by October, I was already working in the studio, I had already learned about music production, and I had spent 10 months getting into all sorts of new bands and records that I found at some of NYC’s great downtown record stores like Sounds, Rebel Rebel, and others. This was also a month after Pixies released their first EP, Come On Pilgrim, and you can believe whatever you want to believe, but I was buying almost EVERY album released in the UK on import, and I still have an ORIGINAL PRESSING of that record. I’m sorry, but you can’t discover Pixies’ amazing debut release and then go back to Eye of the Hurricane, which to me was an overproduced (sorry, Tony Visconti) attempt at making a pop record to capitalize on the success of the Alarm’s first two albums. I listened to that album once and that was enough, though I’ve become more of a fan of the record in more recent years, including “Rain in the Summertime,” which is many fan’s favorite Alarm song… me? I can take it or leave it, but I had to merely grit my teeth when Mike played it live, since it’s been just as much a staple as the playing cards.

(Note that I’ve already exceeded my 30-minute cap, but I have more to say about Mike and The Alarm, because this is not where the story ends.)

To be honest, I forgot about The Alarm, and in my 23-year-old opinion, they had “sold out.” Maybe I heard about them breaking up a few years later in a well-publicized concert where Mike walked off stage and ended the band, but I was already working in the studio and making other cool records, so I just forgot about The Alarm.

Cut forward to sometime in the early 2000s, and I discovered this VH1 show called “Bands Reunited,” and they had an episode reuniting the Alarm with all four original members. I literally had no idea what Mike or any of them had been up to over the previous 13 years, but that show kind of reinvigorated my interest. I then learned that they were playing at the nearby Knitting Factory, and apparently, they were doing a residency, playing one show a week over the course of a month. I decided to go check them out, and at that point, it was Mike Peters on vocals and guitar, James Stevenson from Gene Loves Jezebel (who I had gotten into since I moved to NYC) on lead guitar, Craig Adams from the Mission (another long-time fave) on bass, and the drummer from Stiff Little Fingers. I didn’t even realize that The Alarm had been releasing a number of albums during this period, but I soon became a fan again. I don’t remember what year this was, but because the internet was around at the time, including the band’s website, I was able to keep track of when they were playing in town, and I saw them a bunch.

By the time I was writing for ComingSoon, I was going to the UK a lot more, and I even got to see the band at the world-famous Marquee club in Leicester Square since I had a night off, and saw in Time Out that they were playing. Went down there and a nice chap told me he had an extra ticket that he gave me free of charge. That was a FANTASTIC show, and by that point, I was back to being as big a fan as I was in the ‘80s.

I have to say that was probably almost twenty years ago, and over the past few years up until Mike’s diagnosis in 2024, they were regularly playing New York City shows as a branch of the popular Gathering shows Mike was doing in Wales every January. (Oh, wait, did I mention that Mike and the band are from Wales? That’s kind of important, because he has become a massive legend in that country to the point where there have been statues of Mike erected, and he supplied a song for the country’s World Cup team.)

Anyway, I’m not going to get into the entire history of the band or Mike over the past few decades. I loved the band and its music, especially live, but I would hold up any of the albums from the last 20 years with the earlier albums, but it was also a bit of a love-hate thing, because I sometimes found the band’s fans (mostly guys and women in their 40s and 50s from Jersey and Long Island) to be somewhat insufferable at concerts at time.

I know that I never really felt like I fit in with the fandom, even though I regularly communicated with many of them in various FB groups, but oftentimes, I’d go to in-person events either before or at concerts, and I’d just be standing there by myself, since I never really felt part of that community despite being such a fan and having seen them so many times in concerts. It also bummed me out that the band never truly found a younger audience, even though there were plenty of opportunities, like “The Stand” being on some popular Netflix series that the kids loved. Maybe if the old folks weren’t always buying up all the tickets, some younger rock lovers could have discovered the band, but I never really saw that happening… and this is coming from someone who regularly sees bands and groups where I’m sometimes the oldest person in the club… by DOUBLE! I also was getting pretty upset that due to his illness, Mike wasn’t able to come to the States anymore, and his fans in the UK and Wales were always being quite vocal about creating FOMO for those of us who can’t afford to fly there to see Mike and the band play, which became less and less over the past few months, for obvious reasons.

Either way, the point is that Mike’s death has hit me hard. Although he wasn’t as known or as famous as Bowie or Prince, and he had been fighting cancer for so long, it was to be expected, but still, learning that cancer finally won in its battle against Mike — and mind you, I had my own tough fight with leukemia, so I know what’s involved — has really crushed me.

If you want to know more about Mike and The Alarm, there’s a lot of information out there, and I’d advise checking out Jules Peters’ Instagram account for how she’s documented the past year and how it’s affected her to watch her soulmate slowly fading away due to his cancer.

I will finish with one last thing, and that has as much to do with my own battle with cancer as Mike’s. One of the things I learned when I was diagnosed with leukemia and learned I would need a stem cell transplant was how important it was for anyone between the ages of 18 and 44 to be on the DNA registry, because someday, someone with their exact DNA might need a bone marrow or stem cell transplant and being on that registry could literally save a life. As it did mine. (Thanks forever to Mike Levin for being my donor!) During his own fight against cancer, Mike began the Love Hope Strength Foundation, which became the UK equivalent of BeTheMatch.com (now called NMDP — no, I don’t know what that stands for) where Mike, Jules, and others in the rock world would stage events to raise awareness for people to get on the DNA registry and donate stem cells for those suffering from blood cancers who might need a donation to live a longer life. If you’ve read this far and get nothing else from this ridiculously long typo-filled post, be aware that if you are in that age range, you lose nothing by getting on the DNA registry. You may never even be called, but if you do, it means that someone with some form of blood cancer might need a transplant, and you can literally SAVE THEIR LIVES. The fact that Mike (who never got a transplant, as far as I know) went so far to promote this fact is what makes him such a special and beloved person who will be missed by millions across the globe.

Rest in peace, Mike, and all my love and thoughts and prayers to Jules and their two boys. What Mike has accomplished while fighting for survival is what makes him a legend in my mind. He wasn’t just a great musician, songwriter, or performer, but he was what I consider the pinnacle for a human being — A MENSCH. I’m devastated that I’ll never get to tell him this in person.

Hopefully, I’ll soon be able to listen to the Alarm’s music again without bawling, but I’m not quite there yet. (Apologies again for the length of this piece and all the inevitable typos.)