Mike Peters Dies: The Alarm’s Frontman Was 66

Mike Peters, who as frontman for The Alarm sang on such tracks as “Strength,” “Sixty Eight Guns,” “Spirit of ’76” and “Rain in the Summertime,” died Tuesday of blood cancer in Manchester, England, a spokesman announced. He was 66 and had been battling chronic lymphocytic leukemia for decades.

Born on February 25, 1959, in Wales, Peters played in 1970s punk bands The Toilets and Seventeen before forming The Alarm in 1981. The group supported its eponymous first EP — which featured “The Stand” –with a key opening slot on much of U2’s breakout 1983 world tour, including the Red Rocks Amphitheatre show captured for U2’s EP Under a Blood Red Sky.

Already a powerhouse live act, the quartet released its debut album, Declaration, the following year and make the UK Top 10 helped by the Top 20 single “Sixty Eight Guns.” The song was a minor Mainstream Rock hit in the U.S., pushing the album into the Top 50.

The Alarm broke through Stateside with its third album Strength, which made the Top 40 fueled by the anthemic title track hitting No. 12 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart. Follow-up single “Spirit of ’76” — which Peters co-wrote, as he did for most of the band’s songs — recounted his early days of discovering punk rock and name-checks the likes of Johnny Rotter and Siouxsie Sioux.

“The song is about the most important time in my life,” Peters wrote in the program for the Strength tour. “I had my whole life mapped out before me and life seemed pretty unexciting. Then I saw bands like The Jam and The Buzzcocks and U2, and things and they really had an impact on my life. It gave me the courage to leave something behind and go out and try to build a new life for myself.”

The Alarm continued to hit charts on both sides of the pond, scoring its biggest hits in 1987 with “Rain in the Summertime,” from the album Eye of the Hurricane. It peaked at No. 18 in the UK and No. 6 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart.

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The band’s other popular tracks include “Presence of Love,” “45 RPM,” “Sold My Down the River” and a cover of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s “Happy Christmas (War Is Over)” that was included on The Alarm’s 1990 compilation album Standards. The band’s songs were used in several films and TV shows ranging from the Tom Hanks movie Bachelor Party and British soap EastEnders in the 1980s to 13 Reasons Why and Animal Kingdom in more recent years.

In all, the group would release five full-length albums from 1984- through 1991, when Peters first was diagnosed with cancer. The Alarm was inactive for most of that decade before regrouping and continuing to record and tour. Peters co-founded the charity Love Hope Strength in 2005 and was featured in a documentary the following year titled Mike Peters on the Road to Recovery.

In 2007, Peters and other musicians made a two-week trek to Mount Everest Base Camp to perform a fundraising concert for cancer awareness. It was billed as the highest-elevation show ever put on. Peters was awarded the MBE in 2019 for his contributions to cancer awareness.

Peters continued to record and tour as recently as last year. Survivors include his longtime wife, Jules, who beat breast cancer and also was an activist against the disease, and their sons Dylan and Evan.