Celebrating 30 years of The Alarm’s definitive album Change and with a new album, Mike Peters talks to Oliver R Moore-Howells about Sigma, the band’s upcoming tour and what inspires him to write.
It’s 8.45am on a Friday. The bed’s cosy, eyes are heavy – sleepy time. But wait! What’s that noise? The alarm? No. The Alarm. Mike Peters is on the blower.
Seemingly up with the sun, Mike’s spent his morning breakfasting on omelettes, seeing the kids off to school and planning a weekend hike with his wife in the hills of his native north Wales. But does he normally get up this early to plan, Buzz wonders? He laughs. He does, obviously.
Chatting away, Mike’s pumped, leaving little or no opportunity for an empty crevice to open up in the conversation. The questions, however, are queuing up, eager to probe the man’s extraordinary, if turbulent, life. He and his wife Jules’ battle with cancer is well documented, though both are now in a ‘good space’. “I’ve still got leukaemia, obviously, and if I stop taking [the anti-cancer tablets] I’m gonna fall off the edge of the planet!” he says. “Still, whilst I’m taking them, I’m as normal as the next person.”.
Despite his family’s illnesses, it would seem that with suffering comes creativity. Mike has formerly taken to art or else recording his feelings into his mobile phone in a bid to make sense of it all – he also helped nurse his wife back to health in 2016. With the condition of both steadily improving, he decided to share with her all he’d written. “I think you’re looking at your next Alarm record here, Mike,” Jules told him, spawning both Equals and that of the upcoming Sigma. Originally planned as a double album, Peters decided instead to release them separately, one year and one day apart.
Greek for ‘summation’, Sigma is a summary of a four-year period dating back to the time The Alarm played at the Wales Millennium Centre with the BBC National Orchestra Of Wales – around the time Peters suffered a relapse whilst Jules was diagnosed with breast cancer. Containing mathematical symbols, the album’s artwork’s indicative of the answers he was searching for in regards to “navigating the waters I’d been placed in the middle of.”
And having always written from the heart, it looks set to be an honest retelling of the struggles he’s been through as well as some of the troubled times we’re facing as a country. “My lifeblood’s not playing safe. The Alarm’s built on smashing things up, tearing things down and starting again!”
Seeing himself as a ‘midwife’ to the ideas that come to him, he recounts the time he toured with Bob Dylan. Standing behind a mysterious figure at immigration control, he says he could see the words, Robert Zimmerman, written on the passport in front. Immediately, a melody arrived in his head which, in turn, became the song No Frontiers. “It’s like the big man upstairs was sending some music down to planet Earth, it missed Bob Dylan and got me instead! I feel I’m the recipient of these energies.”
With his upcoming gig at Cardiff University, Peters feels well enough to travel again rather than letting the fans come to him in North Wales. Titled The Midsummer Gathering 2019, he says it’s based on the fan-centric gatherings The Alarm have had in their neck of the woods over the last 27 years: their way of maintaining their relationship with their fans in the flesh rather than merely keeping in contact via social media. An all-day event, there’ll be music, films and a Q&A session, plus Mike will play some solo sets, all commemorating 30 years since The Alarm put out what might be the first bilingual album in Wales – Change/Newid.
Not enough to quench his musical appetite, Peters is also be going on an acoustic tour titled Hurricane Of Change later in the year. “It’s an opportunity to represent those albums (Hurricane and Electric Folklore) in a historical context. Something I feel I can only do on my own as the Alarm family has changed over the years,” he says.
It appears, then, that Mike Peters is unstoppable. Seizing life by the proverbials: “Every day’s a miracle in the Peters household. We’re hitting the road and living life to the full!”
The Alarm, Great Hall, Cardiff University Students Union, Sat 29 June. Tickets: £27.50. Info: 029 2978 1458 / www.cardiffstudents.com / www.thealarm.com