This is a special episode from our archives with one of my favorite musicians, Mike Peters. Mike recently passed away, and this episode is more than a conversation, it’s a tribute to a beautiful soul. In our chat, we explored the idea of our lives being anthems; how defiance, hope, and inner strength were a soundtrack for the formative years, and later in life. This was an open hearted talk about what it means to fight not just with force, but with love. We talked about instinct as a spiritual guide, about staying true to yourself when the world tries to pull you off course. And about how music can be both a weapon and a healing balm in a world that often glorifies noise and speed. Mike’s life and his music were reminders that strength can come from stillness, from surrender, and from the simple act of standing up for light when everything around you feels dark.
Key Takeaways:
- Mike’s experiences with cancer and resilience.
- The founding and mission of the Love Hope Strength Foundation.
- The significance of positivity and community support in overcoming adversity.
- The impact of music as a source of strength and healing.
- Reflections on the parable of two wolves and nurturing positive traits.
- Early musical influences and the evolution of Peters’ career.
- The deeper meaning behind the song “Strength” in relation to Mike’s health journey.
- The inspiration and themes behind the song “Blaze of Glory.”
- The role of spirituality and self-trust in navigating life’s challenges.
- The communal aspect of music and its ability to foster connection and unity.
Mike Peters is a Welsh musician, best known as the lead singer of The Alarm. Between 2011 and 2013, Peters was the vocalist for Big Country as well as The Alarm. Mike was the founder of the Love Hope Strength Foundation, which has found close thousands of potentially life saving bone marrow donor matches; built the first ever children’s cancer center in Tanzania; supported the Bhaktapur Cancer Center in Nepal with life saving equipment and registered over 60,000 donors through it’s ‘Get On the List’ program.
Mike Peters: Website | Instagram
If you enjoyed this conversation with Mike Peters, check out these other episodes:
The Journey of Life Through Song with Frank Turner
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Episode Transcript:
Mike Peters 00:00:00 When you take advice from someone else sometimes and you go along with it and you think it doesn’t feel right, you end up bang, there’s a crash at the end of the road.
Chris Forbes 00:00:16 Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:00 Mike Peters was one of my earliest musical heroes. In high school, I probably listened to his band, The Alarm more than any other.
Eric Zimmer 00:01:09 They’re anthems of defiance, hope and Inner Strength were a soundtrack for those formative years, and later in life, Mike became a hero to me in an even deeper way for how he faced 30 years of blood cancer with astonishing grace, how he kept making meaningful music, and how he gave his life to service through his foundation. Love, hope, strength. Sadly, Mike passed away yesterday, so today’s episode is more than a conversation. It’s a tribute to a beautiful soul. A few years ago, I had the great good fortune to sit down with him before a show he was doing in Akron, Ohio. What unfolded was an open hearted talk about what it means to fight not just with force, but with love. We talked about instinct as a spiritual guide, about staying true to yourself when the world tries to pull you off course. And about how music can be both a weapon and a healing balm in a world that often glorifies noise and speed, Mike’s life and his music were reminders that strength can come from stillness, from surrender, and from the simple act of standing up for light when everything around you feels dark.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:22 I’m deeply grateful to have had this conversation. I hope it brings you some of the strength that Mike brought to me in my life, and so many others. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Mike, welcome to the show.
Mike Peters 00:02:35 Nice to be.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:36 Here. I am very excited to have you on. I was reading the other day. You were talking about meeting Bruce Springsteen, you know, and how you what it’s like when you meet somebody that you looked up to at a certain age. And so when I was 16, I was a huge fan of the alarm and have remained. So it’s a real honor to meet you and get to sit down and talk with you.
Mike Peters 00:02:54 Nice to meet you too.
Eric Zimmer 00:02:55 So our podcast is called The One You Feed, and it’s based on the parable of two wolves, where there’s a grandfather who’s talking with his grandson. He says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Eric Zimmer 00:03:15 And the grandson stops, and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather. Which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your own life and in the work that you do.
Mike Peters 00:03:29 Well, well, straight off the top of my head, it means to, feed the positive side of your personality. And, which is something I’ve always tried to do throughout my whole musical life. And my life is an adult and a human being and, you know, raise my own kids in a good way. Treat the people I meet in the way I want to be treated myself. You know, even with an audience, when I go on stage, I always try to put myself in the audience and think, well, what do they want from the show tonight? And, and, and just try to have as much respect for the other people that, come into the journey that I’m on in life.
Mike Peters 00:04:10 And, and there’s times when we walk the path together, sometimes people go off on their own, and then they come back and, and let’s allow people to, always be at one with you as you are in step with people. Come in step. That’s great. They fall out of step. That’s just life. And once they come back into line again, then we just carry on. And I’ve never wanted to, have enemies in life. I don’t think I’ve got any enemies. And I’ve always tried to, treat people, with care and, and, and understanding and, you know, and there’s times when, life has forced people I know apart from me, and, and I always try to see everything from both sides of the story and so that you can heal any rifts that happen in, in life so that when life brings you back together, which it always does, either fatefully or, through, strategy, you can still have a relationship with people from your history, without ill will or rancor or bitterness.
Mike Peters 00:05:21 And, it’s all part of life’s rich pageant of understanding and learning and, and and that’s the wolf I try to feed.
Eric Zimmer 00:05:28 Excellent. So you you sort of emerged onto the music scene. You know, some of your songs refer to seeing the Sex Pistols, seeing The Clash being involved in that scene. And yet everything you know, from the very earliest alarm work, there’s a there’s a positivity that’s in your music that that just is expressed differently than a lot of that other music. There’s a there’s a defiance in your music, but there’s a, there’s a clear positivity. Where did that come from so early in your career?
Mike Peters 00:05:58 Well, I think, you know, I sometimes talk about it on the stage when I play in the spirit of 76, that that which was, you know, seeing the sex and the clash in that early 76, 77 period when punk broke into Britain. I saw both bands up close. In the earliest days, I saw the Sex Pistols in 76, in October 76th, and it was a life changing experience.
Mike Peters 00:06:22 And hearing Johnny Rotten sing anarchy Pretty Vacant Submission. I didn’t know they sounded amazing, right? But I didn’t know what the language meant, and no one taught me what anarchy was in my high school or submission. They were brand new words. I heard them for the first time from the mouth of Johnny Rotten. And I went up to him at the gig and asked him what anarchy in the UK meant, and he told me to f off.
Eric Zimmer 00:06:47 And that’s not surprising.
Mike Peters 00:06:49 No, it’s not, but he I think he was his way of just challenging me and Smashing the preconceptions and, almost like slapping you across the face to wake you up. Right. And so that was a big moment. And then and then I did see the clash in 1977 on the White Riot tour in the Electric Circus in Manchester. And I was, followed the tour down to Barbarella to see they were doing a sort of secret gig there, and they were supposed to play at, Birmingham Rag Market, and it got cancelled, but they turned up and I was and they were playing a secret gig in Barbarella, and I could see the amps going on.
Mike Peters 00:07:26 I knew they were going to come on, and I went to the bathroom, and I stood in the doing my thing in the toilet, and I ended up stood next to Joe Strummer and the whole of the clash. And I asked Joe Strummer on the way out what the riot was all about. And, because I didn’t quite fully understand it from just hearing the record, I thought I did in, you know, internally and viscerally, but I didn’t know what a white riot was. Us. And he said to me it was about the future. And, and he gave me something positive back. And I think so from having, the sort of polarization of the seeing the two bands, that was really it was like the Flint. You know, it was created, the fire that the alarm came from, the positive and the negative. And I always leant towards the positive. I always remember thinking, if I meet somebody who comes up to me in that way, looking for advice, looking for, a sign, a sign, then I’ll give them something positive back.
Mike Peters 00:08:26 And, so I wanted to put that into my music. I wanted it to be uplifting for people, liberating for them. If they came to see a gig, especially if they were, you know, young and naive like I was when I saw the pistols, I, I didn’t know how to become a punk. Right. There was no manual. I didn’t know how to get skintight black jeans. I had to find them and I didn’t know how to get certain records. You had to go on incredible journeys across Britain to get records, and there was no internet. It wasn’t brought to your doorstep. And when we came on tour in America, you know, we were I was from a small town. We had no Svengali upbringing, like the pistols that had the benefit of an older guy like Malcolm McLaren and and Vivienne Westwood to dress them and Jamie Reed to do their artwork. We had none of that. You know, The clash had Bernie Rhodes and he’d been involved in the pistols camp, and they were helping shape those bands and shape the way give them books to read, give them clothes to wear.
Mike Peters 00:09:20 Help them with their stance and the way. Educate them a little bit about when they spoke to the media. We had none of that. It was we were just four kids from Real North Wales. We wanted to be in a band and we learnt our lessons the hard way and so we wanted our politics. If you like to be personal and we wanted it to be, a message that the listener got that empowered them a little bit or made them ask questions to go and find their their own answers. And and again, we grew up in a very extreme political time in the 80s that was, you know, came down from the Iron Lady at Margaret Thatcher. And, you know, we were brought up in a very musically, aggressive time in the music papers in Britain. The enemy was very politicized. In the 80s. There was the miners strike and and they were closing steelworks down. And it was a tough time. And every band that that walked into the enemy offices, it was demanded that they had the political rhetoric to back up what they wanted to hear.
Mike Peters 00:10:26 and we we weren’t like that. We our politics were different to that. It was easy for me to write about the villains. They were all there on the newspaper every day. You could knock them down easily. But to write about somebody who was struggling to make something from nothing in the aftermath of the political turmoil, that that required a different sort of approach musically. And, And that was what I was interested in. And, and, you know, I think I’m lucky that there’s still people who come to see me play now who were at a gig in Omaha, Nebraska, who had their life changed by seeing the alarm in a positive way, or someone who comes back to me and say they were at the brink of doing something drastic with their life and and they put on a strength album as their last record before they were going to do something they would regret, and it pulled them back from the brink. And and to me, how having that those testimonies come to me through the internet now or through the Facebook or the alarm com that’s, that’s all I ever wanted from my music, was to touch people and, and be meaningful to them and have some value.
Eric Zimmer 00:11:32 Yep. And, so you are out now. We’re sitting in Akron, Ohio. You’re going to play here in a little bit. And you are, a big part of what you’re doing is the 30th anniversary of the the strength record. I was curious, looking back on that record now. And you’ve done some rerecording of it, what does the song strength mean to you today, 30 years after you wrote and recorded it the first time?
Speaker 4 00:12:03 Who would like to fire that you need to survive? Who will be the lifeblood coursing through my veins like a river flowing. That will never change. I need someone I can’t keep. Oh.
Mike Peters 00:12:40 Well, it means more to me than it ever did. Because the. In the opening lines, it says. Who will be the lifeblood coursing through my veins. Now, that was more of a metaphoric line when I was writing it in 1985, but it’s a literal line for me now, because I’ve had to live with cancer for 20 years. You know, I’m at the point in life where I might need to have a transplant and have somebody else’s lifeblood flowing through my veins.
Mike Peters 00:13:06 That’s a very real, step in life I might have to take at some point in the future. So, when I sing that song and particular that line, it always stops me dead every, every night, because it’s literally come through in my own life.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:23 Now, one of the things that you did is, as you, have battled cancer is you founded the love, strength and hope of hope.
Mike Peters 00:13:29 Strength.
Eric Zimmer 00:13:30 Love, hope. Strength. Thank you. Foundation that has done a lot of work for people with cancer. One of the things you’ve done has been registering a lot of people to be, as I understand, bone marrow donors. Will you be doing that at the show tonight?
Mike Peters 00:13:43 Yeah, we will be tonight. We always hosted donor registry All our gigs. Okay. And through the charity’s formation in 2007, we’ve been able to work with over 10,000 other recording working artists in the world from Robert Plant and the Foo Fighters, Enrique Iglesias, Frank Turner.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:01 Yeah, we had Frank on the show.
Eric Zimmer 00:14:03 Yeah.
Mike Peters 00:14:03 And, you know, we’ve worked with all Dropkick Murphys, all kinds of bands, right down to the alarm and thousands of bands, you know, that are just up and coming who embrace what we do, which is we try to turn rock concerts into life saving events by holding a donor booth at those gigs, getting people to sign up to the International Bone Marrow Donor Registry by giving a cheek swap, giving their information, personal information so we can track them in life if they’re lucky enough to be called to save the life of someone who has blood cancer, like leukemia, like I have, and we’ve signed over 100,000 people to the registry. And we’ve we’ve found close to 1800 potentially life saving matches for people. And and it’s become, you know, as much of my life’s work as the alarm and and, you know, but it’s a real communal effort. It’s run by volunteers. We haven’t got any staff. We’ve got no staff in Britain. It’s a completely voluntary, charity in the UK.
Mike Peters 00:15:05 But with America being so big and we’re working with so many bands every night, we’ve got staff to facilitate some of it. But we still rely on volunteers, and public donations to help fund what we do. We work in partnership with Elite Blood Cancer. They they’re an organization with a massive donor, registry. And we put the people we find our gigs through our get on the list campaign onto their registry. And so someone who signs up to the show tonight in Akron, Ohio, could become a lifesaver for someone in Britain or Germany or anywhere in the world, who matches their DNA profile. And our if you do become a life saving donor, it’s it’s just an outpatient procedure. 99% of the times, it’s a just giving blood in hospital. And it’s an in and out procedure in a day. And then your blood will then give someone life.
Eric Zimmer 00:15:57 Yeah, we’ll definitely put on the show notes to the page and all that links to the foundation and fantastic.
Mike Peters 00:16:02 Thanks.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:13 In the 2000, there were some new alarm work that came out. It was a little bit I loved the energy and the and the aggressiveness of some of it.
Eric Zimmer 00:18:20 One of them is a song called Situation is Under Control.
Speaker 5 00:18:28 Everything is black and white. As the roof sings all around me everything is upside down. There’s a cardboard box at my feet. I’m going through hell. And I can’t speak. I’m going through hell and I can’t breathe. Oh, the situation is under control. Everything is as it should be. But that’s acceptable.
Eric Zimmer 00:19:02 Can you tell me a little bit about what went into the writing of that song, and what was going on with you when you wrote it?
Mike Peters 00:19:07 Yeah, I think life was completely out of control when I wrote that song. I had not long been diagnosed with leukemia, and, I just made an album for the local under attack, and, I didn’t know really 100% why my instinct was telling me that was the album title, and we’d finished making the album. We’d recorded a video for every single song in 24 hours. It was an audio visual release as much as it was just about the songs we want people to see the music as well as hear it.
Mike Peters 00:19:42 And, and then all of a sudden now I was diagnosed with leukemia for a it was my second cancer diagnosis. I had lymphoma before that. And I was off the charts ill and, I didn’t know it. And I went into hospital with some symptoms and they wouldn’t let me home. They sent me immediately to another hospital for treatment to bring me out of the danger zone. The doctors didn’t know how to even walked in the hospital. My blood was so thick with what I thought was dead white blood at the time that it was like oil. It just wasn’t even moving. And so I was taken to hospital to get out of the critical, region I was in. And and while I was there, my wife brought my iPod in so I could have some music to play while I was going through these procedures, and, And I’d forgotten that I’d put this Under Attack album on while I was out and about listening to it randomly to get a sequence going for the record. And I was lying in hospital.
Mike Peters 00:20:38 I was having this pretty intense procedure called Luka paresis. And, I was kind of in a bit of shock at the time as well. And going under and my iPod was on and this track came on. I didn’t know what it was. And, and it had the title that came to the title and it said, I’ll never give Up without a fight. And I knew that was that was the alarm that was on new record. And, and, and then I realized then I was so ill, my subconscious was driving this record. And then situation under control was was part of a series of music we created. it was called counterattack. And it was like the opposite to Under Attack, where I’d written the record under the pressure of cancer coming into my life and taking over, I decided to write music. That was my counterattack to that was me fighting back against the cancer. And songs like Situation Under Control were really me writing music that gave me a mental arsenal to be able to fight cancer in my mind and fight it, psychologically as well as physically.
Mike Peters 00:21:47 And I think I’ve always believed that music is is a great tool to have whenever you’re facing any adversity in life. It’s, it can release you from some of the pressure. It can help you fortify yourself for that big day that’s coming up, or when you’ve got to face that situation that you’re nervous about. You can play that favorite piece of music, and it lifts you up, and it gives you that little bit of courage, to, to face the day and, and, and so the situation and the control and the counter-attack series of music was, was really my way of being able to put myself in in a position to stand up to cancer.
Eric Zimmer 00:22:29 You’ve battled cancer twice. you know, it’s you’re still battling it, right? That’s got to take a toll. You remain so outwardly positive. Where do you turn when you are really internally struggling? When you just, you know that that that optimism isn’t there? What do you turn to to give you the strength that you’re then able to project out in the music?
Mike Peters 00:22:49 I’m lucky to have a really solid life outside of rock and roll.
Mike Peters 00:22:53 You know? I’ve got a really strong relationship with my wife. She’s my best friend. We’ve been married for 28 years, you know, we met, we got engaged within a week and nothing has taught. We’ve been tested and tested all through life in that time. But nothing has ever taught us apart from each other. And we’ve got two beautiful boys that we’ve had to fight hard to get her to go through. My wife had to go through IVF to get my kids because of all the situations we’ve been in. She’s been to Kilimanjaro with me, helped building the cancer center in Dar es Salaam in Africa and suffered a DVT. Nearly lost a life on the way back from Africa. And we’ve both been through an incredible amount together and we fall back into each other when when we’re really, struggling to cope with with certain situations in life as they crop up. But, I always feel grateful for the life I’ve got because my music started out life as a hobby, and it still is a hobby for me.
Mike Peters 00:23:55 It’s still my passion. It’s still where I would go if I had a normal 9 to 5 job. I’d be playing in the garage at night, or setting up the gear at the weekend and ripping into a gig, because I love it. And that’s. And I’m very lucky that I can express myself within my passionate thing in life every day. And and I’m also grateful for the life I can come home to. And, and I’ve got people there who love me, who understand me, who stand up for me when the stones are getting thrown, you know, because that’s what happens. That’s what you put your head up, up the parapet in rock and roll. And it’s not always praise stones or get thrown as well. and, you know, you have to have a really good, fallback to be able to cope with that because it is hurtful at times, you know, and and you see it from people who love you the most musically. They can still want to tear you down and challenge everything you do.
Mike Peters 00:24:53 And you can’t please all the people all of the time. As the famous American quote goes. But, so you need that. And and when I close the door on rock and roll, when I come home and I see my boys and it’s the best thing in the world.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:09 How old are they now?
Mike Peters 00:25:10 My boys are eight and 11. Dylan and Evan, they’re into music. They play piano and drums and guitar. They’re brought up to see it as a hobby like I am. And they come to the shows with jewels and we’re very, very, very close.
Eric Zimmer 00:25:23 Wonderful.
Speaker 5 00:25:27 It’s funny how they shoot you down, but your hands are held up high and you open But that’s not enough for most. I remember this much. There is nothing. You should have. Because if you’ve got something to say and there’s no one to be scared, I’ll just get them out of the way. Going out in a blaze of glory. My heart is open wide. You can take anything that you want from me. There is nothing left to hide. Going out in a blaze of glory. My hands are held up high. I’m learning how to hit back. I’ve learned how to fight.
Eric Zimmer 00:26:16 Tell me about the song Blaze of Glory.
Mike Peters 00:26:18 Well, that was written. Really? When we first played with U2. It was on the water and we played with them in December 1982. just before New Year’s Day came out as a single and the album wasn’t due out till 83, and we played a momentous night with them in London and one of the songs that were new to their audience and them as a band was a song called Surrender. Now that was the the theme of war, I think. You know, Bono described it as like a, you know, slap in the face against pop music was his quote. But really it was it was seeing war as a different from a different perspective, seeing war from the through the color. Well, without the color, with the white flag, the war where people surrender to win.
Mike Peters 00:27:11 And and that was what Bono was putting across in that music. And I saw them ripped to pieces in the music press in Britain. And I think it was really it was only because I think people were envious of the fact that they were taking their music to America, and they were starting to help other bands. I think the British press thought it was their preserve to make or break bands, and all of a sudden a band like U2 came along and opened the door for unknown musicians like The Alarm to get to America for the first time, which we did. We came with them in 1983. No one had heard of us in America. We were almost unknown in Britain, and we had our first hit record in America because of the tour we did with U2. And you two were going on the radio and championing the alarm’s record, The Stand, and saying, don’t play New Year’s Day. Play the band that are opening for us tonight. Come and see them. They’re amazing. And and they were breaking us and they were creating their own power base.
Mike Peters 00:28:08 And the music press in Britain didn’t like it one bit. And they started trying to smash them and they tore them down, I could see and I had this image. I saw this image of Bono with his arms held high. Surrender on the war tour and I the line came into my head. It’s funny how they shoot you down when your hands are held up high, because up to that point you’ve been praised. And all of a sudden here they were, on the verge of breaking. And they were being torn apart. And it was so obvious to the world that you set them up. You knock them down. And it was it was such a cliche. And here’s the music press accusing bands like U2 being cliched when they were pulling out all the cliches in the book. There was no depth to the criticism of U2. It was just targeted at them. They would target their Christianity or target the the fact that was selling out, playing huge gigs and it wasn’t the same anymore. And there was no real balance to it.
Mike Peters 00:29:04 So that prompted the line. It’s funny how they shoot you down when your hands are held up high, but the song really became more than that. When the full lyrics came down and it was all, I think it’s all about really staying strong. Believe in yourself. You know, when I first went out as a punk rocker and real and ripped up my jacket and went out with safety pins. People want to tear you down because they’re scared of the way you look, but you. And it’s easy to back down to that kind of peer pressure. It’s easy to give in and think, oh, I’ll just go along with the flow of the river and I look like everyone else, and life will be easier. But life isn’t like that. You have to have courage to take those steps forward out of the crowd to to find your own inner self, find you the place where you belong in life. Because we’re all brought up in the image of our parents, and really, we’re all individual and we want to be ourselves.
Mike Peters 00:30:06 and some people, they give in to the peer pressure and, and they suppress who they really are. So we wanted our songs to liberate people, allow them to find their courage and be who you really want to be.
Eric Zimmer 00:30:19 Yeah. There’s a sense in a lot of your music, I’ll say this, a military sense in that there’s there’s a lot of marching you you put on the camouflage when you were battling cancer. there’s, there’s those sort of analogies, and yet there’s maybe the right word that you used is, is, you know, fighting war by surrendering. But I’ve always been sort of amazed how you’ve managed to weave those two things together in a really powerful way.
Mike Peters 00:30:42 Yeah. I don’t know how we’ve done it, really. it has always been there, and I don’t know why. I don’t know. I think we, for the first thing, I sort of got into where I remember seeing the who with medals on their jackets, and that was pop art. And I remember putting some medals on my jacket, and then I.
Mike Peters 00:31:03 And then I thought, I saw I got into the sort of seeing the 60s psychedelia thing, and people were those Red Guardsmen jacket, and that was sort of the start of I really look in the alarm of Western psychedelia look. but the term military got attached to us rather than pop art, psychedelia. And, and I think that there was that. I think our image didn’t help our music in some ways, because I think it threw up some conflicts that that people would read these lyrics and they wouldn’t kind of lie with the big hair or the over the top look that we had on stage, because we all adopted it. And it was it was very the front line of the band was it was all attack. It was all out bang. Yep. And the we didn’t have a John Entwistle like the who did that. We could be the polar opposite of. We had three guys flowing themselves around the stage, and there wasn’t the quiet member, you know, the who who amplified the power of the individual in the band.
Mike Peters 00:32:09 We we came across like four. Like a gang. Yeah. And and I think and we weren’t really a gang that I think when people met us, they could see that we were all quite different. But we did have this, gang mentality that came out of of the look of the band and the way we played on stage. And I don’t think that helped some of the the subtlety that was in the music in a way. which is, you know, as, as you go through life and you know that you make a record in the 80s. It stays. It stays in the 80s. But you write a song in the 80s, it lives beyond that. It comes alive in the 90s, comes alive again as you get older, in life. And that’s what interests me about the alarm’s music, not just what we made in the 80s, but what it continues to be today.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:02 Yeah, I’m really looking forward to seeing how you interpret that music this evening. What would you say is the lesson that’s taking you the longest to learn in life?
Mike Peters 00:33:10 To, keep my mouth shut? You know, I always have an I always have been brought up to be answer people politely.
Mike Peters 00:33:19 And if someone answers your question and you ask answered it back. And sometimes I should just stay quiet.
Eric Zimmer 00:33:25 Yeah. One of the things we talk about on the show a lot is, we talk about spirituality being this very nebulous thing. Does the word spiritual have any meaning to you, and if so, what? What does that word mean to you?
Mike Peters 00:33:38 I equate it with with with faith. Really? I mean, faith that that life’s going to work out the way you hope it is going to work out. And, you know, some people think in the short term and some people think in the long term. And I like to think I fall in the latter category. And so, I, I’ve always, trusted my instinct in life. And I think that’s sometimes gets confused with spirituality is I think instinct is a very powerful force. And it’s, and if you can learn to trust your instinct, then you won’t go far wrong in life. And, there’s so many outside forces who make us distrust ourselves.
Mike Peters 00:34:19 and and the way we think as individuals, that it’s easy to be sidestepped from your mission in life and your goals or what your your hopes are. Again, I think spirituality I think of as instinct, really. And, I, you know, I’ve tried always tried to follow my instinct and, and when I’ve really followed my instinct, it’s it’s never very rarely let me down, if ever. and when you take advice from someone else sometimes and you go along with it and you think it and you think it doesn’t feel right and you end up bang, there’s a crash at the end of the road and you think, why didn’t I trust? Why didn’t I trust myself?
Eric Zimmer 00:35:02 Yep. And, so last question. I think the song, We Are the Light, that’s sort of what I took from that. You know, we are the light of our lives. We’re our own light.
Mike Peters 00:35:10 I think so, yeah. That was written for declaration. It was written in, in London. It was a little folk song I put together in a major key. And, I think that’s what I was trying to get to. I didn’t understand spirituality or instinct so much. In 1981, when we moved to London, and 82, when that song was written.
Speaker 5 00:35:36 Who was standing on the corner? For he cannot see hope. There’s a blind man standing at the crossroads. For he cannot see light. Unless we find a candle. We must make sure they burn through the night. But if they should die. There’d be no light. We are the light. We are the light. We are the light of our life. We are the light.
Mike Peters 00:36:25 Like when you play in concert and you see people really get hold of it and they’re all saying. We are. And you think, wow.
Mike Peters 00:36:33 That’s how come that’s taking hold? And you start asking a few questions yourself and thinking, what does it mean? Not just to me, but to others? And, and it was always the song that was it was like a little communion in the gig. It was the it was the moment, really, when the sound and the fury would come to an end.
Mike Peters 00:36:53 And our instinct as a band or my instinct as a as the singular band. But let’s not leave everyone right up there. Let’s just, let’s have a moment to calm it all down and and just celebrate in a really human way, this experience we’ve all had, where the audience have given everything to this band, they’ve jumped up on the stage, they’ve given physically, they’ve lost tons of weight.
Mike Peters 00:37:17 Jumping up and down to the band. They’ve sung along every word And I always remember saying to man, let’s get down to the front of the gig. Let’s leave the drums behind there. Let’s get one acoustic guitar. All gather around the microphone and we’ll sing this song with the audience, and we’ll just enjoy what we’ve all just been through. and, and I think that’s how it seemed to us that that we were creating a little bit of light for ourselves in the darkness. You know, we will again, as I say, in the early 80s, it was a very dark time in Britain politically.
Mike Peters 00:37:49 It was divisive. We saw all the politicians I saw. I always thought politics was supposed to be about bringing us together as a community and uniting people. And here they were doing the complete opposite and really polarising opinion. I think it was the first time, you know, in, in the war time that not, you know, wasn’t that only there was only a couple of decades before us politics brought everyone together. And then all of a sudden in in the 60s, we started to see that division come. And, and I think it really became massive in the 80s. And so I think we all felt like unsure of who we we were. He felt very difficult to have an opinion because everyone was telling you what to think. The government was telling you who to vote for. The NME was telling you who to get behind, and it was very hard to think for yourselves and and find that light in the of, of enlightenment that you need that. So we I think, thinking back to it now that they were the moments that really made the relationship, we have the audience strong, that little communal moment when we just all sang together, you know, sometimes we’d lose the power in a gig and we’d just jump in the middle of the audience, and it was always way other light, and we’d play that stood in the middle of the audience.
Mike Peters 00:39:10 And there was no amplification, no, there’s no stage lights, just complete darkness. And that I remember doing it in Hamburg and it was one of the most amazing special nights of all time and special moments, because it was taking us back to the simplicity of music. We love Woody Guthrie in the simplicity of, one person with one guitar singing in the street with a message.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:35 Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me. It’s been a real pleasure.
Mike Peters 00:39:40 I look forward to hearing the podcast now.
Eric Zimmer 00:39:42 All right. Bye.
Mike Peters 00:39:43 Thank you.
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