Speaker 1: When you take advice from someone else sometimes and you
Speaker 1: go along with it, and you think it doesn't feel right,
Speaker 1: you end up bang, they said, crash at the end
Speaker 1: of the road. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mike Peters,
Speaker 1: a Welsh musician best known as the lead singer of
Speaker 1: The Alarm. Between two thousand eleven and two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: Peters was the vocalist for Big Country as well as
Speaker 1: The Alarm. A two time cancer survivor, he founded the
Speaker 1: Love Hope Strength Foundation. The foundation has found close to
Speaker 1: one thousand potentially life saving bone marrow donor matches, built
Speaker 1: the first ever children's cancer center in Tanzania, supported the
Speaker 1: Bakta Poor Cancer Center in Nepal with life saving equipment,
Speaker 1: and registered over sixty thousand donors through its Get on
Speaker 1: the List program. Eric caught up with Mike in Akron
Speaker 1: on his tour supporting the thirtieth anniversary of the classic
Speaker 1: album Strength and now the interview with Mike Peters. Hi, Mike,
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show. I am very excited to have
Speaker 1: you on. I was reading the other day you were
Speaker 1: talking about meeting Bruce Springsteen, you know, and how you
Speaker 1: what it's like when you meet somebody that you looked
Speaker 1: up to it at a certain age. And so when
Speaker 1: I was sixteen, I was a huge fan of The
Speaker 1: Alarm and and have remained. So it's a real honor
Speaker 1: to meet you and get to sit down and talk
Speaker 1: with you. So our podcast is called The One You Feed,
Speaker 1: and it's based on the parable of Two Wolves, where
Speaker 1: there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. What is a good wolf which
Speaker 1: represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the
Speaker 1: other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed
Speaker 1: and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your own life and in the
Speaker 1: work that you do. Well, well, straight off, that's top
Speaker 1: my head. It means to feed the positive side of
Speaker 1: your piss. And I let's say, and the which is
Speaker 1: something I've always tried to do my whole musical life
Speaker 1: and my life as an adult and human being. And
Speaker 1: you know, raise my own kids in a good way,
Speaker 1: treat the people I meet in the way I want
Speaker 1: to be treated myself. You know, even with an audience
Speaker 1: when I go on stage, I always try to put
Speaker 1: myself in the audience and think, well, what do they
Speaker 1: want from the show tonight? And and and just try
Speaker 1: to have as much respect for the other people that
Speaker 1: come into the journey that I'm on in life, and
Speaker 1: and there's times when we walk the path together. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people go off from their own and then they come
Speaker 1: back and and it's allowed people to always be at
Speaker 1: one with you. As you instep and people come in step,
Speaker 1: that's great. They fall out of step, that's just life.
Speaker 1: And if once they come back into line again, then
Speaker 1: we just carry on. And I've never wanted to have
Speaker 1: enemies in life. I don't think I've got any enemies.
Speaker 1: And I've always tried to treat people with care and
Speaker 1: and and understanding, and you know, and there's times when
Speaker 1: life has forced people I know apart from me um
Speaker 1: and uh. And I always try to see everything from
Speaker 1: both sides of the story and so that you can
Speaker 1: heal any rifts that happen in in life, so that
Speaker 1: when life brings you back together, which it always does,
Speaker 1: either faithfully or or through a strategy, you can still
Speaker 1: have a relationship with people from your history without ill
Speaker 1: will or rancor or bitterness. And it's all part of
Speaker 1: life's rich pageant of understanding and learning and and and
Speaker 1: that's the wolf I trying to feed. Excellent. So you
Speaker 1: you sort of emerged on in the music scene. You know,
Speaker 1: some of your songs refer to seeing the sex Pistols,
Speaker 1: seeing the Clash, being involved in that scene, and yet
Speaker 1: everything you know from the very earliest alarm work, there's
Speaker 1: a there's a positivity that's in your music that the
Speaker 1: just is expressed differently than a lot of that other music.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a defiance in your music, but there's
Speaker 1: a there's a clear positivity. Where did that come from
Speaker 1: so early in your career? Well, I think you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes talk about it on the stage when I'm playing
Speaker 1: the Spirit of seventy six, that which was, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing the sex Pists and the Clash in early seventy
Speaker 1: six seventy seven period when punk broke into Britain. I
Speaker 1: saw both bands up close in the earliest days. I
Speaker 1: saw the sex Pistiness in seventy six in October seventy
Speaker 1: six and it was a life changing experience. And hearing
Speaker 1: Johnny Rotten sing anarchy pretty vacant submission, I didn't know
Speaker 1: they sounded amazing, but I didn't know what the language meant,
Speaker 1: and no one talked about anarchy was in my high
Speaker 1: school or submission. They were brand new words. I heard
Speaker 1: them for the first time from the mouth of Johnny
Speaker 1: Roth and and I went up to him the gig
Speaker 1: and asked him what anarchy in the UK meant, and
Speaker 1: he told him to f off, No it's not. But
Speaker 1: he I think he was his way of just challenging me,
Speaker 1: him smashing the free conceptions and and and almost like
Speaker 1: slapping you across the face to wait you up. And
Speaker 1: so that that was a big moment. And then and
Speaker 1: then I did see the clash in nine seventy seven
Speaker 1: on the White Right tour at the Electric Circus in Manchester,
Speaker 1: and I was followed the tour down to Barbarella's to
Speaker 1: say they were doing this sort of secret gig there.
Speaker 1: And I was supposed to play at Birmingham rag Market
Speaker 1: and they got canceled, but they turned up and I
Speaker 1: was and they were playing a secret gig in Barberella's
Speaker 1: and I could see the amps going on. I knew
Speaker 1: they were going to come on and I went to
Speaker 1: the bathroom and I was stood in the doing my
Speaker 1: thing in the toilet, and I ended up stood next
Speaker 1: to Joe Strummer and the whole of the clash, and
Speaker 1: I asked Joe Strummer on the way out what White
Speaker 1: Riot was all about? And because I didn't quite fully
Speaker 1: understand it. From just hearing the record, I thought, I
Speaker 1: did you know internally and viscerallyever, right, I didn't know
Speaker 1: what a white riot was. And he he said to
Speaker 1: me it was about the future, and and and he
Speaker 1: gave me something positive back. And I think so from
Speaker 1: having the sort of polarization that that seeing the two bands,
Speaker 1: that was really it was like the flint, you know,
Speaker 1: it was created the fire, that the alarm came from
Speaker 1: the positive and the negative. And I always lent towards
Speaker 1: a positive. I always remember thinking, if I meet somebody
Speaker 1: who comes up to me in that way looking for advice,
Speaker 1: looking for um, a sign, a sign, then I'll give
Speaker 1: him something positive back. And and and so I wanted
Speaker 1: to put that into my music. I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be uplifting for people, liberating for them if they came
Speaker 1: to see a gig, especially if they were, you know,
Speaker 1: young and naive like I was when I saw the Pistols.
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to become a punk. There was
Speaker 1: no manual. I didn't know how to get skin type
Speaker 1: black jeans. I had to find them. And I didn't
Speaker 1: have to get certain records. You had to go on
Speaker 1: incredible journeys across Britain to get records and there was
Speaker 1: no Internet. It wasn't brought to your doorstep. And when
Speaker 1: we came on tour in America, you know, we were
Speaker 1: as from a small town. We had no Sveengaria upbringing.
Speaker 1: Like the Pistols had had the benefit of an older
Speaker 1: guy like Malcolm McLaren and and Vivian Westward to dress
Speaker 1: them and Jamie Reid to do their artwork. We had
Speaker 1: none of that. You know. The Clash had Bernie Rhodes
Speaker 1: and he'd been involved in the Pistols camp and they
Speaker 1: were helping shape those bands and shape the way, give
Speaker 1: them books to read, give them clothes to where, help
Speaker 1: them with their stance, and the way educate them a
Speaker 1: little bit about when they spoke to the media. We
Speaker 1: had none of that. Was we were just four kids
Speaker 1: from real North Wales who wanted to be in a
Speaker 1: band and we learned our lessons the hard way. And
Speaker 1: so we wanted our politic if you like, to be personal,
Speaker 1: and we wanted it to be a message that the
Speaker 1: listener got that empowered them a little bit, or made
Speaker 1: them ask questions to go and find their their own
Speaker 1: answers and and again we we grew up in a
Speaker 1: very extreme political time in the eighties. That was you know,
Speaker 1: came down from the iron Lady at Margaret Thatcher. And
Speaker 1: you know, we were brought up in a very musically
Speaker 1: aggressive time in the music papers in Britain that the
Speaker 1: enemy was very politicized in the eighties. There was the
Speaker 1: minor strike and and they were closing steel works down
Speaker 1: and it was a tough time. And every band that
Speaker 1: that walked into the enemy offices that was demanded that
Speaker 1: they had the political rhetoric to back up what they
Speaker 1: wanted to hear. And we we weren't like that. We
Speaker 1: we were are politics were different to that. It was
Speaker 1: easy to me to write about the villains. They were
Speaker 1: all there and on the newspaper every day, you could
Speaker 1: knock them down easily. But to write about somebody was
Speaker 1: struggling to make something from nothing in the aftermath of
Speaker 1: the political turmoil, that that required a different sort of
Speaker 1: approach musically, and and that was what I was interested in.
Speaker 1: And and you know, I think I'm lucky that there
Speaker 1: still people who come to see me play now who
Speaker 1: were a gig in Omaha, Nebraska, who have their life
Speaker 1: changed by seeing the Alarm in a positive way, or
Speaker 1: someone who comes back to me and say they were
Speaker 1: that the brink of doing something drafted with their life,
Speaker 1: and and they put on the Strength album as their
Speaker 1: last record before they were going to do something they
Speaker 1: would regret, and they pulled them back from the bring
Speaker 1: And and to me that having that those testimonies come
Speaker 1: to me through the Internet now or through the Facebook
Speaker 1: or the Alarm dot com, that's um. That's all I
Speaker 1: ever wanted from our music was to touch people and
Speaker 1: and be meaningful to them and have some value. And UM,
Speaker 1: so you are out now. I'm We're sitting in acron Ohio.
Speaker 1: You're gonna play here in a little bit and you are. Um.
Speaker 1: A big part of what you're doing is the thirtieth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the Strength record. I was curious looking back
Speaker 1: on that record now and you've done some rerecording of it.
Speaker 1: What does the song Strength mean to you today, thirty
Speaker 1: years after you wrote and recorded it the first time?
Speaker 1: Would like to fire survived Chase, Well, it means more
Speaker 1: to me than that ever did because the in the
Speaker 1: opening lines, it says, who will be the lifeblood courseing
Speaker 1: through my veins? Now? That was more of a metaphoric
Speaker 1: line when I was writing, but it's a literal line
Speaker 1: for me now because I've had to live with cancer
Speaker 1: for twenty years. You know, I'm at the point in
Speaker 1: life where I might need to have a transplant and
Speaker 1: have somebody else's life blood flowing through my veins. That
Speaker 1: that's a very real um step in life I might
Speaker 1: have to take at some point in the future. So
Speaker 1: when I sing that song, and particularly that line, it
Speaker 1: always stops me dead every every night because it's literally
Speaker 1: come true in my own life now. One of the
Speaker 1: things that you did as as you have battled cancer,
Speaker 1: as you founded the Love Strength and Hope, Love Hope, Strength,
Speaker 1: Love Hope Strength, Thank you foundation that has done a
Speaker 1: lot of work for people with cancer. One of the
Speaker 1: things you've done has been registering a lot of people
Speaker 1: to be as interested in Bone Mirror donors. Will you
Speaker 1: be doing that at the show to night? Yeah, we
Speaker 1: will be tonight always hosted Donor Registrate all our gigs
Speaker 1: and through the charity's formation in two thousand seven, we've
Speaker 1: been able to work with over ten thousand other recording
Speaker 1: working artists in the world, from Robert Plant and Food
Speaker 1: Fighters and Rique Glaciers, Frank Turner, Yeah, we had Frank
Speaker 1: on the show. Yeah, And you know, we've worked with
Speaker 1: all drop Kick Murphy's, all kinds of bands, right down
Speaker 1: to the Alarm and and thousands of bands you know
Speaker 1: that are just that I'm coming who embraced what we do,
Speaker 1: which is we try to turn rock concerts into life
Speaker 1: saving events by holding a donor booth at those gigs,
Speaker 1: getting people to sign up to the International Balmrrow Donor Registreet,
Speaker 1: by giving a cheek swab, giving their information personal information
Speaker 1: so we can track them in life if they're lucky
Speaker 1: enough to be called to save the life of someone
Speaker 1: who has blood cancer like leukemia like I have. And
Speaker 1: we've signed over a hundred thousand people to the registry
Speaker 1: and we've we've found close to eighteen potentially life saving
Speaker 1: matches for people, and it's become, you know, as much
Speaker 1: of my life's work as the Alarm and and you know,
Speaker 1: but it's a real communal effort. It's run by volunteers.
Speaker 1: We haven't hardly got any staff. We've got no staff
Speaker 1: in Britain. It's a completely voluntary charity in the UK.
Speaker 1: But with America being so big and we're working with
Speaker 1: so many bands every night. We've got the staff to
Speaker 1: facilitate some of it, but we still rely on volunteers
Speaker 1: and public donation to help fund what we do. We
Speaker 1: work in partnership with delete Blood Cancer. They they're an
Speaker 1: organization with a massive donor registry and we put the
Speaker 1: people we find our gigs who are get on the
Speaker 1: list campaign onto their registry. And so someone who signs
Speaker 1: up to the show tonight in acre And, Ohio could
Speaker 1: become a life saver of someone in Britain or Germany
Speaker 1: or anywhere in world who matches their DNA profile. And
Speaker 1: how if you do become a lifesaving donor, it's a
Speaker 1: it's just an outpatient procedure. Nine of the times is
Speaker 1: just giving blood in hospital and it's an in and
Speaker 1: out procedure in the day, and then your blood will
Speaker 1: then give someone life. Yeah, we'll definitely put on the
Speaker 1: show notes to the page and all that links to
Speaker 1: the foundation and fantastic thanks. And here's the rest of
Speaker 1: the interview with Mike Peters. In the two thousands, there
Speaker 1: was some new alarm work. Um it came out. It
Speaker 1: was a little bit I love the energy and the
Speaker 1: and the aggressiveness of some of it. One of them
Speaker 1: is a song called Situation is under Control. Everything is
Speaker 1: black and white. It's the room sends all the round me.
Speaker 1: Everything is upside down. There's a cardboard box at my feet.
Speaker 1: I'm going through well then I can't speak. I'm going
Speaker 1: through hell lacking. This situation is not a good chop.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a little bit about the what
Speaker 1: went into the writing of that song and what was
Speaker 1: going on with you when you wrote it? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think life was completely out of control when I wrote
Speaker 1: that song, had not long been diagnosed with leukemia, and
Speaker 1: I just made an album for the long cale under Attack,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know really why. My instinct was telling
Speaker 1: me that was the album title. And we'd finished making
Speaker 1: the album. We we'd recorded a video for every single
Speaker 1: song in twenty four hours. It was an audio visual
Speaker 1: release as as much as it was just about the songs.
Speaker 1: I want people to see the music as well as
Speaker 1: hear it. And and then all of a sudden, I
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with luke kemia for it was my second
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis. I had limp foma before that, and I
Speaker 1: was off the charts hill and I didn't know it
Speaker 1: and I went into hospital with some symptoms and then
Speaker 1: they wouldn't let me home. They sent me immediately to
Speaker 1: another hospital for treatment to bring me out of the
Speaker 1: danger zone. The doctors didn't know I had even walked
Speaker 1: in the hospital. My blood was so thick with I
Speaker 1: thought was dead white blood at the time that it
Speaker 1: was like oil him. It just wasn't even moving. And
Speaker 1: so I was taking to hospital to get out of
Speaker 1: the critical region I was in, and and and while
Speaker 1: I was there, my wife brought my iPod in so
Speaker 1: I could have some music to play while I was
Speaker 1: going through these procedures. And and I'd forgotten that to
Speaker 1: put this under attack all the moment while I was
Speaker 1: out and about listening to it with randomly to get
Speaker 1: a sequence going for the record. And I was lying
Speaker 1: in the hospital, I was having this pretty intense procedure
Speaker 1: called Luca paresis, and I was kind of in a
Speaker 1: bit of shock at the time as well, and going under.
Speaker 1: My iPod was on and this track came on. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was, and it had the title
Speaker 1: came to the title and it said I'll never give
Speaker 1: up without a fight, and I knew that was that
Speaker 1: was the Alarm. That was a new record, and and
Speaker 1: and then I realized that I was so ill my
Speaker 1: subconscience was driving this record, and and and then Situation
Speaker 1: Under Control was was part of a series of music
Speaker 1: we created. It was cooled counter attack, and it was
Speaker 1: like the opposite to under Attack, where I'd written the
Speaker 1: record under the pressure of cancer coming into my life
Speaker 1: taking over. I decided to write music that was my
Speaker 1: counterattack to that was me fighting back against the cancer.
Speaker 1: And songs like Situation Under Control were really me writing
Speaker 1: music that that gave me a mental arsenal to be
Speaker 1: able to fight cancer in my mind and fight it
Speaker 1: um psychologically as well as physically. And I think I've
Speaker 1: always believed that music is a great tool to have
Speaker 1: whenever you're facing any adversity in life. It's a It
Speaker 1: can release you from some of the pressure. It can
Speaker 1: help you fortify yourself for that big day that's coming up,
Speaker 1: or when you've got to face that situation that you're
Speaker 1: nervous about. You can play that favorite piece of music
Speaker 1: and it lifts you up and it gives you that
Speaker 1: little bit of courage to to face the day. And
Speaker 1: and and and so the situation and the control and
Speaker 1: the Counter Attacks series of music was was really my
Speaker 1: way of being able to put myself in a position
Speaker 1: to stand up to cancer. You've battled cancer twice, um,
Speaker 1: you know, so you're still battling it, right. That's got
Speaker 1: to take a toll. You remain so outwardly positive. Where
Speaker 1: do you turn when you are really internally struggling, when
Speaker 1: you just you know that that that optimism isn't there.
Speaker 1: What do you turn to to give you the strength
Speaker 1: that you're then able to project out of the music.
Speaker 1: I'm lucky to have a really solid life outside of
Speaker 1: rock and roll. I've got a really strong relationship with
Speaker 1: my wife. She's my best friend. We'd been married for
Speaker 1: twenty eight years. You know, we met, we got engaged
Speaker 1: within a week and nothing has taught. We've been tested
Speaker 1: and tested all through life in that time, but nothing
Speaker 1: has ever tours apart from each other. And we've got
Speaker 1: two beautiful boys that we've had to fight hard to get.
Speaker 1: I had to go through all my wife had to
Speaker 1: go through IVF to get kids. Because of all the
Speaker 1: situations we've been in. She's been to kill a man
Speaker 1: Jaro with me. Helped build an accounts center in Dara
Speaker 1: slam in Africa and suffered a DVT, nearly lost a
Speaker 1: life on the way back from Africa, and we've we've
Speaker 1: both been doing incredible amount together and we fall back
Speaker 1: into each other when when we really um struggling to
Speaker 1: cope with certain situations in life as they crop up.
Speaker 1: But you know, I always I feel grateful for the
Speaker 1: life I've got because my music started out life as
Speaker 1: a hobby and it still is a hobby for me.
Speaker 1: It's still my passion. It's still where I would go
Speaker 1: if I had a normal nine to five job, I'd
Speaker 1: be playing in the garage at night or setting up
Speaker 1: a gear at the weekend and ripping into a gig
Speaker 1: because I love it. And that's and I'm very lucky
Speaker 1: that I can express myself within my passionate thing in
Speaker 1: life every day. And I'm also grateful for the life
Speaker 1: I can come home to and and I've got people
Speaker 1: there who love me. You understand me, or stand up
Speaker 1: for me when the stones are getting thrown, you know which,
Speaker 1: because that's what happens. That's what you put your head
Speaker 1: up up the power of pitting rock and roll, and
Speaker 1: it's not always praise. Stones are thrown as well. And
Speaker 1: you know, you have to have a really good um
Speaker 1: fall back to be able to cope with that, because
Speaker 1: it is hurtful at times, you know, and you see
Speaker 1: it from people who love you the most musically, they
Speaker 1: can still want to tear you down and and challenge
Speaker 1: everything you do. And you can't please all the people
Speaker 1: all of the time, you know, as the famous American
Speaker 1: quote goes, But so you need that. And when I
Speaker 1: close the door on rock and roll, when I come
Speaker 1: home and I see my boys and it's the best
Speaker 1: thing in the world. How old are they know that
Speaker 1: my boys are eight and eleven, Dylan and even then
Speaker 1: into music. They play piano and drums and guitar that
Speaker 1: they brought up to see it as a hobby like
Speaker 1: I am. And they come to the shows with jewels,
Speaker 1: and we're very, very very close. Wonderful Blaze of Glory.
Speaker 1: There's nothing they tell me about the song Blaze of Glory,
Speaker 1: well that that was written really And when we first
Speaker 1: played with you two was on the water and we
Speaker 1: played with them in December, just before New Year's Day
Speaker 1: came out as a single and the album wasn't out
Speaker 1: to eighty three, and we played a momentous night with
Speaker 1: them in London, and one of the songs that were
Speaker 1: new to their audience and them as a band was
Speaker 1: a song called Surrender, and that was the the theme
Speaker 1: of war. I think, you know Bonner described as like
Speaker 1: a you know, slap in the face against pop music
Speaker 1: was his quote, But really it was it was seeing
Speaker 1: war is a different from a different perspective, seeing war
Speaker 1: from the through the color, well without the color, with
Speaker 1: the white flag, the war where people surrender to win,
Speaker 1: and and that that was what Bonner was putting across
Speaker 1: in that music. And I saw them ripped to pieces
Speaker 1: in the music press in Britain, and I think it
Speaker 1: was really it was only because I think people would
Speaker 1: envious to the fact that they were taking their music
Speaker 1: to America and they were starting to help other bands.
Speaker 1: I think the British press thought it was their preserved
Speaker 1: to make or break bands, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: your band like you two came along and opened the
Speaker 1: door for unknown musicians like the Alarm to get to
Speaker 1: America for the first time, which we did. We came
Speaker 1: with them in no one had heard of us in America.
Speaker 1: We were almost unknown in Britain and when we had
Speaker 1: our first hit record in America because of the tour
Speaker 1: we did with You Too, and you two were going
Speaker 1: on the radio and Champion in the Alarms record the
Speaker 1: Stand and saying, don't play New Year's Day. Play the
Speaker 1: band that are opening for us tonight. Come and see them.
Speaker 1: They're amazing and and they were breaking us and they
Speaker 1: were creating their own power base. And the music press
Speaker 1: in Britain didn't like it one bit, and they started
Speaker 1: trying to smash them, and they tore them down. I
Speaker 1: could see and I had this image, saw this image
Speaker 1: upon with his arms held high surrender on the wa tour,
Speaker 1: and I the line came into my head. It's funny
Speaker 1: how they shoot you down when your hands are held
Speaker 1: up high, because up to that point you two have
Speaker 1: been praised, And all of a sudden, here they were
Speaker 1: on the verge of breaking and they were being torn apart.
Speaker 1: And it was so obvious to the world that you
Speaker 1: set them up and you knocked them down, and it
Speaker 1: was it was such a cliche. And here's the music
Speaker 1: press accusing bands like you two being Lee Shade when
Speaker 1: they were putting out all the clayches in the book.
Speaker 1: There was no depth to the criticism of you two.
Speaker 1: It was just targeted at them. They would target their
Speaker 1: Christianity or target the fact that were selling out playing
Speaker 1: huge gigs, and it wasn't the same anymore, and there
Speaker 1: was no real balance to it. So that prompted the
Speaker 1: line It's funny how they shoot you down when your
Speaker 1: hands are held up high. But the song really became
Speaker 1: more than that when when the full lyrics came down
Speaker 1: and it was all I think. It's all about really
Speaker 1: staying strong, believe in yourself. You know when at first
Speaker 1: went out as a punk rocker and rill and ripped
Speaker 1: up my jacket and went out with safety pins. People
Speaker 1: want to tear you down because they're scared of the
Speaker 1: way you look. But you have and it's easy to
Speaker 1: back down to that kind of peer pressure. It's easy
Speaker 1: to give in and think, I'll just go along with
Speaker 1: the flow of the river and I look like everyone
Speaker 1: else and life will be easier. But life isn't like that.
Speaker 1: You have to have courage to take those steps forward
Speaker 1: out of the crowd, to to find your own in
Speaker 1: a self, find you the place where you belong in life.
Speaker 1: Because we're all brought up in the image of our parents,
Speaker 1: and really we're all individual and we want to be ourselves,
Speaker 1: and some people they give in to the peer pressure
Speaker 1: and then and they suppress who they really are. So
Speaker 1: we wanted our songs to liberate people, allow them to
Speaker 1: find the courage and be who you really want to be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a sense in a lot of your music. I'll
Speaker 1: say this, a military sense in that there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of marching you you you put on the camouflage
Speaker 1: when you were battling cancer. Um, there's there's those sort
Speaker 1: of analogies, and yet there's maybe the right word that
Speaker 1: you used is is you know, fighting war by surrendering.
Speaker 1: But I've always been sort of amazed how you've managed
Speaker 1: to weave those two things together in a really powerful way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we've done it, really, Uh, it
Speaker 1: has always been there, and I don't know why. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I think we fit. The first thing that
Speaker 1: I sort of got into where I remember seeing the
Speaker 1: Who with medals on their jackets and that was pop art,
Speaker 1: and I remember putting some medals on my jacket, and
Speaker 1: then I and then I will I saw I got
Speaker 1: into the sort of seeing the sixties psychedelia thing and
Speaker 1: people were those red guardsman's jacket and that was sort
Speaker 1: of the start of our early look in the alarm
Speaker 1: of western psychedelia look. But the term military got attached
Speaker 1: to us rather than pop art psychedelia, and I think
Speaker 1: that there was that I think our image didn't help
Speaker 1: on music in some ways, and I think it threw
Speaker 1: up some conflicts that that people would read these lyrics
Speaker 1: and they wouldn't quite kind of lie with the big
Speaker 1: hair or the over the top look that we had
Speaker 1: on stage because we all adopted it and it was
Speaker 1: it was very the front line of the band was
Speaker 1: it was all attack. It was all out bang, and
Speaker 1: we didn't have a John ent Will still like the
Speaker 1: who did that we could be the polar opposite of
Speaker 1: We had three guys flowing themselves around the stage and
Speaker 1: that there wasn't the quiet member, you know, the who
Speaker 1: amplified the power of the individual in the band. We
Speaker 1: we came across like four like a gang, and I
Speaker 1: think and we weren't really a gang that I think
Speaker 1: when people met as they could see that we were
Speaker 1: all quite different. But we did have this gang mentality
Speaker 1: that came out of the look of the band and
Speaker 1: the way we had played on stage, and I don't
Speaker 1: think that helped some of the subtlety that was in
Speaker 1: the music in a way, which is you know, as
Speaker 1: as you go through life, and you know that that
Speaker 1: you make a record in the eighties, it stays, it
Speaker 1: stays in the eighties. But write a song in the eighties,
Speaker 1: it lives beyond that. It comes alive in the nineties,
Speaker 1: comes alive again as you get older in life. And
Speaker 1: that's what interests me about the Alarms music, not just
Speaker 1: what we made in the eighties, but what it continues
Speaker 1: to be today. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing
Speaker 1: how you interpret that music this evening. What would you
Speaker 1: say is the lesson that's taking you the longest to
Speaker 1: learn in life? To keep my mouth, you know, I
Speaker 1: always have an I always have been brought up to
Speaker 1: be answer people for likely if someone answers your question
Speaker 1: and you asked answered it back, and sometimes I should
Speaker 1: just stay quiet. Yeah. One of the things we talked
Speaker 1: about on the show a lot is um. We talked
Speaker 1: about spirituality being this very nebulous thing. Does does the
Speaker 1: word spiritual have any meaning to you? And if so,
Speaker 1: what what does that word mean? Do you? I equate
Speaker 1: it with with with faith. Really, I'm in faith that
Speaker 1: life is going to work out the way you hope
Speaker 1: it is going to work out. And you know, some
Speaker 1: people think in the short term and some people I
Speaker 1: think in the long term, and I like to think
Speaker 1: I've fall in the latter category. And so I have
Speaker 1: always trusted my instinct in life. And I think that's
Speaker 1: sometimes gets confused with spirituality, is I think instinct is
Speaker 1: a very powerful force, and it's and if you can
Speaker 1: learn to trust your instinct, then you won't go far
Speaker 1: wrong in life. And there's so many outside forces you
Speaker 1: make as distrust ourselves and are on the way we
Speaker 1: think as individuals that it's easy to be sidestepped from
Speaker 1: your mission in life and your goals or what your
Speaker 1: your hopes are. Again, I think spirituality I think of
Speaker 1: as as instinct really, and you know, I try to
Speaker 1: always try to follow me instinct. And when I've really
Speaker 1: followed me instincts, it's never very rarely let me down,
Speaker 1: if ever. Um And when you take advice from someone
Speaker 1: else sometimes and you go along with it and you
Speaker 1: think it and you think it doesn't feel right, and
Speaker 1: you you end up bang, there's a crash at the
Speaker 1: end of the road, and you think, why didn't I trust?
Speaker 1: Why didn't I trust myself? Yeah? And so last question, um,
Speaker 1: I think the song we Are the Light, that's sort
Speaker 1: of what I took from that. You know, we are
Speaker 1: the light of our lives? Were our own light? I
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah, that was written for declaration that it
Speaker 1: was written in in London. It was a little folks
Speaker 1: song I put together in a major key, and I
Speaker 1: think that's what I was trying to get to. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand spirituality or instinct so much in one when
Speaker 1: we moved to London. And two when that song was written,
Speaker 1: there's a bad who was standing on the corner. There's
Speaker 1: my class and it's read by the candles. We must
Speaker 1: make sure but if they should do were You play
Speaker 1: it in concert and you see people really get hold
Speaker 1: of it and they're all saying we are and you think, wow,
Speaker 1: what how come that's taken out holder? And you start
Speaker 1: asking a few questions yourself and thinking what does it
Speaker 1: mean not just to me, but to others? And it
Speaker 1: was always the song that was it was like a
Speaker 1: little community and in the gig it was. It was
Speaker 1: the moment really when the sound and the fury would
Speaker 1: come to an end, and our instinct there's a band
Speaker 1: or minstincts as the singer the band, Let's not leave
Speaker 1: everyone right up there. Let's just let's have a moment
Speaker 1: to calm it all down and and just celebrate in
Speaker 1: a really human way this experience we've all had, where
Speaker 1: the audience have given everything to this band. They've jumped
Speaker 1: up on the stage, they've given the physically, they've lost
Speaker 1: tons of way in jumping them down to the band.
Speaker 1: They've sung along every word. And I always remember saying
Speaker 1: about let's get down to the front of the gig.
Speaker 1: Let's leave the drums behind there, Let's get one acoustic guitar.
Speaker 1: We'll gather around the microphone and we'll sing this song
Speaker 1: with the audience, and we'll just enjoy what we've all
Speaker 1: just been through. And and I think that's how it
Speaker 1: seemed to us, that we were creating a little bit
Speaker 1: alight for ourselves in the darkness. You know, we will again,
Speaker 1: as I say, in the early eighties, it was a
Speaker 1: very dark time in Britain. Politically, it was divisive. We
Speaker 1: saw all the politicians I saw. I always thought politics
Speaker 1: was supposed to be about bringing us together as a
Speaker 1: community and uniting people, and here they were doing the
Speaker 1: complete opposite and really polarizing opinion. And I think it
Speaker 1: was the first time, you know, in in the war
Speaker 1: time that not it wasn't that only it was only
Speaker 1: a couple of decades before US politics brought everyone together.
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden in the in the
Speaker 1: sixties we started to see that division come and I
Speaker 1: think it really became massive in the eighties, and so
Speaker 1: I think we all felt like unsure of who we were.
Speaker 1: He felt very difficult to have an opinion because everyone
Speaker 1: was telling you what to think. The government was telling
Speaker 1: you who to vote for, the enemy was telling you
Speaker 1: who to get behind, and it was very hard to
Speaker 1: think for yourselves and and find that light in the
Speaker 1: of enlightenment that you need, you know. So we I
Speaker 1: think thinking back to it now, that they were the
Speaker 1: moments that really made the relationship. We have the audience strong,
Speaker 1: that little communal moment when we just all sang together.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we'd lose the power in a gig
Speaker 1: and we just jump in the middle of the audience
Speaker 1: and it was always weird the light and we play
Speaker 1: that stood in the middle of the audience and there
Speaker 1: was no amplification, no p as, no stage lights, just
Speaker 1: complete darkness and that remember doing it in Hamburg and
Speaker 1: one of the most amazing special nights of all time
Speaker 1: and special moments because it was taking us back to
Speaker 1: the simplicity of music. We love Woody Guthrie in the
Speaker 1: simplicity of one person with one guitar singing in the
Speaker 1: street with a message wonderful. Well, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to talk with me. Pleasure. Look
Speaker 1: forward to hearing the podcast now. All right, thank you.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about Mike Peters and this podcast
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net slash Peters