Roy Jurgens on October 25th, 2018

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Southern California holds a special place in the history of The Alarm and Mike Peters. The year: 1986, the place: UCLA’s athletic field, the concert: The Alarm – Spirit of ’76. It was the first show of its kind to be simultaneously beamed around the globe via satellite. MTV was at its peak, Martha Quinn was America’s sweetheart, and The Alarm’s earnest post-punk songs spoke to a generation of kids growing up amid the halcyon ’80s, an age that now seems so innocent in comparison. 

It’s been a long 32 years since that show and Peters, 59, is still marching on. A survivor of multiple bouts with cancer, he’s escaped not only stronger and more fervent, but as a man on a mission. Through his Love Hope Strength charity, Peters has been hosting bone marrow drives with the intent of finding potentially lifesaving matches, giving hope to those who are afflicted with blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. Fund-raising excursions have led to Peters trekking across the world, performing impromptu shows upon Mount Everest, Mount Snowdon, Mount Kilimanjaro, and to Japan for a dawn concert atop Mount Fuji, Japan. The award-winning documentary, Man in the Camo Jacket, followed Peters through his battle with cancer and how he came out inspired and even stronger for it with a new attitude on life.

Armed with a vibrant new album, “Equals,” Peters takes the stage at the Roxy tonight, kicking off a 17-date U.S. tour before heading back to the UK for the winter. One thing is certain in seeing Peters perform, you’ve never seen a man so happy to be alive. 

We spoke with the man about his mission on the night before his Roxy performance.

Buzz Bands LA: I saw you perform last year in Pasadena and I was exhausted just watching you. The set you played was on the level of Springsteen in terms of intensity. Where does a three time cancer survivor get the energy to play a 3½-hour show?

Mike Peters: The energy that you see when I’m playing live comes from being alive. I’ve been to some dark places, as people know my story. So whenever I’m denied that opportunity to play live by being tethered to the hospital bed for treatment, just being able to get out and being able to get back on the stage is everything. So when I have those opportunities to play live I feel very privileged and very honored. So when I have that opportunity I’ll give it everything I’ve got so when you see me it’s just the joy of being there and the joy of being alive. 

But there is something about the energy from artists of your generation — over the last couple years I’ve seen the Waterboys, Midge Ure, Echo & the Bunnymen, the Damned, the Church, U2, the Cult, Midnight Oil, it’s goes on and on. I mean Simple Minds is playing just down the street from you tonight. 

I know, I’d like to go. But I’m playing to the world tonight (laughs). I’m doing a live-streaming show from Kulak’s Woodshed. I think energy is inherent to the generation that we come from. We all grew up as fans of bands that entertained when they went out on stage. They put on a show. They didn’t have to be politically correct or be too cool. We were bands that talked to our audiences and got them involved and had them singing along to the music and learning every word. But then the opposite became the next thing along with the generation that followed us. They just seem to be a little afraid to let it go, to just let the music take over and influence the show. We were also from a generation that got support to make four, five, six albums. And the pressure now is for bands to have a hit straight away. It’s really tense, there’s no building yourself through a corridor of clubs, where it’s 100 people, 500 people, and then 1,000 and 5,000 and then the festivals. Those steppingstones have been eradicated from the pathway to becoming great. It’s a very rare breed of acts that are just superstars from the moment they get onto the stage. So many of the bands that followed us didn’t have the opportunity to develop in the same way as us. 

I get off on how relevant our songs still are and how they’ve grown with the times.

I also believe it was because you guys had to be more organic. There was no ProTools, there was no Ableton. There were no backing tracks. There was no cheating. You had to be able to really play. You couldn’t fake it.

But that comes from playing in the tiny clubs, and building up playing hundreds of shows and learning your way through each level. Not so much in the studio environment, but in a live concert. With our bands we all learned how to do it on the stage. But we had time to grow. But then again people are able to make great records a lot faster than we did because of ProTools. With the cutting and pasting of elements and moving the drums around, we didn’t have access to that. We had to lay it down and get a great take and there are benefits to that as well. That was the DNA of our generation, but time moves on. I think it’s great that we will be playing live to an audience who still wants to come and see us and engage in our music. I get off on how relevant our songs still are and how they’ve grown with the times and how we’re lucky to still have that connection with our fans. 

I can imagine it’s rather hard for you to put a set list together nowadays, as you’re not exactly a legacy act, you’re still putting out music. So with each album you end up having to pull some songs from the set, so there’s always going to be some punter who didn’t get to hear their favorite song.

Yeah, that’s always true. Well, what we try to pride ourselves on is never playing the same set twice. That way there’s always room for improvisation. Some songs don’t get played one night, and then they do the next. You mentioned Springsteen earlier in the interview and that’s what he does. He moves his set around. He plays his songs when he feels they fit the best. He’ll drop in the occasional B-side that’s very rare alongside the favorite that everyone requests, and that’s what happens at Alarm gigs, too. We’ve always been a band that has never performed one concert and then carried it to the next city. We’ve always been aware of the dynamics in different cities and try to tap into that wherever we are and play to that audience as a unique first-time experience instead of trying to replicate what went on the night before. 

Yeah, I think Springsteen draws from about 80 songs and then just picks from those every night. I imagine that’s what you do certain extent. 

Absolutely, when we were recording the “Strength” album in ’85, Gary Tallent, Springsteen’s bassist, came by the studio to see us play around the time they were playing three shows at Wembley Stadium the week before Live Aid. Gary invited us to the show and during the half-hour break between the first and second sets he gave us a set list for the second set. I thought, oh fantastic, they’re going to play “Racing in the Street.” Well, when they came back out they hardly played anything that was on the set list. And when I saw Gary after the show in the backstage area I ask him what happened to the setlist, why didn’t you play “Racing in the Street?” Gary explained, “Well, when we came back out Bruce felt like the crowd was ready to rock and not really into anything more mellow and introspective so he just started calling songs out.” And so they just started playing songs that weren’t not the the set. And I thought that was brilliant, to just go off the plan in front of 70,000 people. And I thought if we can do that in front of 700 or 7,000 people, we’ll make our events human and alive in concert. We’re not just replicating, we’re not a musical theater show. We are a live, living, breathing dynamic entity when we hit the stage and the audience is part of what we do and they have the right and the opportunity to influence the way that show takes, and I’m all for that. 

Well, in keeping with the Springsteen theme, I always thought the “The Spirit of 76” was the Welsh “Born to Run.” 

Yeah, you may have a point there. I’m not sure we would’ve play the song as lengthy as that if we hadn’t seen Springsteen doing “Jungleland” and all that sort of thing. 

I still enjoy that song as much as I did the first day heard it.

Well, thanks. It’s a real story and the people in it are real and there is a truism to it. 

This record has been making new fans for the Alarm. That’s partly because we did the Vans Warped Tour last year and that connected us to a younger audience.

So tell me about the new record. I know it’s been out a while.

Yeah, it’s just taking on a life of its own. From the first day it came out it resonated with our audience as one of the great records we’ve made. The word spread out to people who maybe had the Alarm in the their rear-view mirror and never really had a chance to connect with us. But day by day, this record has been making new fans for the Alarm. That’s partly because we did the Vans Warped Tour last year and that connected us to a younger audience. Some of our old songs got played on “13 Reasons Why” on Netflix and other shows. And that attracted 1.5 million listeners on Spotify who were never there before. The record is a living, breathing piece of music from the day and age that we’re living in now. It’s made to be played live. It fits alongside our other songs like “Spirit of 76,” “The Stand” and “Strength.” And it’s refreshed all of those songs because you’re hearing them now in a new context. And it has come from a deep place, a place from where we’ve had to face a lot of challenges, in our case from a health point of view. To find the will to overcome life’s challenges is a parallel everyone can relate to. Everyone has to face these challenges whether they are young, or in their middle youth, or veterans at life, as well. It’s really made a lot of connections and it energized and pumped up our live show. We are really excited about what is going on. 

Neither the Alarm, nor you, have ever been really seen as an overtly political songwriter, yet because your lyrics are aspirational and working class they do ring true with what the current political climate is. What did you think of Brexit?

I don’t know what to make of Brexit. I feel the way it was presented was in a very strange way. You see I come from Wales, which is a very small country, so I’m all for independence and taking control of your own destiny and as an individual in a smaller community. But you see, Brexit was sold on all negative values. And that’s why I think people need to rethink politics. I’m not going to vote the way my father or my community all voted. So because I live in a blue-collar town I’m expected to vote for that kind of politician. I think people need to be very open now because that’s the only way that we can make these politicians work for us. Not so they think because we voted that way once in our life we’ll be voting that way for the rest of it. You know, so they put us in a little box and they tick it, “OK, got them, he’s boxed off, she’s boxed off. OK, I can count on those voters.” I think we need to make politicians get back to real politics, not all the showbiz, soundbite, social media type of politics that’s going on, but get back to real politics representing people the way they want to be represented as human beings and in the way they represent themselves in their own lives. And so I’m not party political, but I want to see people make their voices heard so their representatives can hear them to take on their viewpoints.

In a way it’s very difficult to be party political in the U.K. or America anymore. I think there is an inherant corruption and it runs so deep, each side takes it’s constituency for granted. 

Absolutely, the lines are so blurred.

So you’re left with a bunch of people in the middle. Most of us are stuck in the middle and therefore left in the wind. 

Because we can be tolerant and understanding and listen to both sides of the story, and so we end up being forgotten about because we don’t have that big entrenched viewpoint that we will fight for till the end of the earth. Yes, we will get to that position in our lives, but we should also be open-minded. There’s a lot there to be swayed either way and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Have choices, make choices, but choose wisely. And I think what we try to do with our charity Love Hope Strength is to switch people on to make the right decision for themselves, and don’t be swayed by the glitter and the glamour and the soundbite and the bullying that’s going on by certain people in our country, and to not be afraid to stand up for themselves and their own community, and effect change by not being afraid to say what they really think. And that’s the problem with group think and all the social media that people are a little afraid to say what they really think because people just attack them straight away.

||| Watch: The video for “Transatlantic”

I’m glad you brought up Love Hope Strength. How many donors have you signed up  now? 

Well, we’ve got over 180,000 people signed up to the bone marrow registry. And just this month, we’ve had just over 4,000 potentially life-saving matches. We say potentially life-saving, because once someone donates their blood to save someone else’s life, the transplant procedure remains anonymous unless both sides want to make it public regarding the outcome. So we know we have 4,000 matches but we don’t know the outcome of all of them so that is why we say potential. We know we’ve been directly involved and 4,000 situations where we’ve given hope to people who had no hope before.

That’s beautiful. You know, you might end up being knighted one day for this.

(Laughs) I’m not so sure about that. 

I saw that you had taken Love Hope Strength to Capitol Hill. Were you trying to lobby congressmen and senators?

We were basically doing a bone marrow drive in the Capitol. We were coaching congressmen and senators to come down, highlighting the fact of how simple it is to become a life-saving match in this day and age, that it’s not the old way of bone marrow transplant, where it was very painful for the donor. It’s quite a simple process for the most part nowadays, giving blood and people haven’t really grasped that as a whole yet. If everyone was on the list, then everybody would have a match. But everyone is not on the list so that is our challenge. So it’s our mission to try to change that if we can. We’re making inroads every day, and we’ve had some amazing support from Ozzy Osbourne to Kenny Chesney and everyone in between, Frank Turner, Flogging Molly, so many people have stepped forward and allowed bone marrow registries on their tours and that saves lives. 

Speaking of saving lives, how is your Mrs.? 

She’s doing fantastic. She’s out here with us.

She had a pretty courageous battle with breast cancer herself. 

Yeah, she was diagnosed with breast cancer two years ago, and it was pretty intense. And we had to put rock ’n’ roll aside for 12 months while we tackled that. Together with the family, the community, my bandmates, the fans, there’s been incredible support. The BBC was making a documentary about me during the time of Jules’ diagnosis. She was actually diagnosed live on camera. And so it allowed the BBC to continue telling the story, but switching from my perspective to the show being about her and us together as a family. And it’s a pretty powerful piece of TV and it will hopefully come out here in the USA soon. It showed Jules going through her cancer treatment in real time. Most people aren’t diagnosed on camera, most people are telling their story retrospectively. But in the U.K. on BBC people got to see Jules’ journey actually happening in real time so it connected us with thousands and thousands of people who saw it and it took some of the anxiety out of the situation. So the message is cancer is not as bad as you think, so if you catch it early and you hit it head on and stay positive everyone’s got a fighting chance now. We don’t all come out in the end the same, but we’ve got a fighting chance to at least gain some time. Life is so valuable as it is, so you if you can get more days, more hours, more seconds, that’s what you’re fighting for.

||| Live: The Alarm play the Roxy Theatre tonight (for the first time since they did a lunchtime show there for KROQ on Dec. 11, 1987). Tickets.

||| Stream: The Alarm’s new album “Equals”