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, you.
Speaker 2: End up bang, they said, crash at the end of
Speaker 2: the road.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 3: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 3: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 3: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 3: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 3: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 3: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 3: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 3: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 3: how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 4: Mike Peters was one of my earliest musical heroes. In
Speaker 4: high school. I probably listened to his band The Alarm
Speaker 4: more than any other. Their anthems of defiance, hope, and
Speaker 4: inner strength were a soundtrack for those formative years and
Speaker 4: later in life, Mike became a hero to me in
Speaker 4: an even deeper way for how he faced thirty years
Speaker 4: of blood cancer with astonishing grace, how he kept making
Speaker 4: meaningful music, and how he gave his life to service
Speaker 4: through his foundation, love, hope, strength. Sadly, Mike passed away yesterday,
Speaker 4: so today's episode is more than a conversation. It's a
Speaker 4: tribute to a beautiful soul. A few years ago I
Speaker 4: had the great good fortune to sit down with him
Speaker 4: before a show he was doing in Akron, Ohio. What
Speaker 4: unfolded was an open hearted talk about what it means
Speaker 4: to fight not just with force, but with love. We
Speaker 4: talked about instinct as a spiritual guide, about staying true
Speaker 4: to yourself when the world tries to pull you off course,
Speaker 4: and about how music can be both a weapon and
Speaker 4: a healing ball in a world that often glorifies noise
Speaker 4: and speed. Mike's life and his music we're reminders that
Speaker 4: strength can come from stillness, from surrender, and from the
Speaker 4: simple act of standing up for light when everything around
Speaker 4: you feels dark. I'm deeply grateful to have had this conversation.
Speaker 4: I hope it brings you some of the strength that
Speaker 4: Mike brought to me in my life and so many
Speaker 4: others I'm Eric Zimmer and this is The One You Feed. Hi, Mike,
Speaker 4: welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Nice to be eh.
Speaker 4: I am very excited to have you on. I was
Speaker 4: reading the other day you were talking about meeting Bruce Springsteen,
Speaker 4: you know, and how you what it's like when you
Speaker 4: meet somebody that you looked up to it at a
Speaker 4: certain age. And so when I was sixteen, I was
Speaker 4: a huge fan of The Alarm and have remained. So
Speaker 4: it's a real honor to meet you and get to
Speaker 4: sit down and talk with you. So our podcast is
Speaker 4: called The One You Feed, and it's based on the
Speaker 4: parable of two wolves, where they're as a grandfather who's
Speaker 4: talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are
Speaker 4: two wolves inside of us that are always a battle.
Speaker 4: What is a good wolf which represents things like kindness
Speaker 4: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 4: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 4: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 4: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 4: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 4: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 4: that parable means to you in your own life and
Speaker 4: in the work that you.
Speaker 1: Do well well, Straight off the top of my head,
Speaker 1: it means to feed the positive side of your personality,
Speaker 1: which is something I've always tried to do throughout my
Speaker 1: whole musical life and my life as an adult and
Speaker 1: human being. And you know, raise my own kids in
Speaker 1: a good way, treat the people I meet in the
Speaker 1: way I want to be treated myself. You know, even
Speaker 1: with an audience when I go on stage, I always
Speaker 1: try to put myself in the audience and think, well,
Speaker 1: what do they want from the show tonight, and and
Speaker 1: just try to have as much respect for the other
Speaker 1: people that come into the journey that I'm on in life.
Speaker 1: And there's times when we walk the path together. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people go off on their own and then they come back,
Speaker 1: and it's allowed people to always be it one with
Speaker 1: you as you in step and people come in step,
Speaker 1: that's great. If they fall out a 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 understanding,
Speaker 1: and you know, and there's times when life has forced
Speaker 1: people I know apart from me, and I always tried
Speaker 1: to see everything from both sides of the story and
Speaker 1: so that you can heal any rifts that happen in life,
Speaker 1: so that when life brings you back together, which it
Speaker 1: always does, either faithfully or through a strategy, you can
Speaker 1: still have a relationship with people from your history without
Speaker 1: ill will or rancor or bitterness. And it's all part
Speaker 1: of life's rich pageant of understanding and learning and and
Speaker 1: and that's the wolf.
Speaker 2: I trying to feed.
Speaker 4: Excellent. So you you sort of emerged onto the music scene.
Speaker 4: You know, some of your songs refer to seeing the
Speaker 4: sex pistols, seeing the clash, being involved in that scene.
Speaker 4: And yet everything you know, from the very earliest alarm work,
Speaker 4: there's a there's a positivity that in your music that
Speaker 4: that just is expressed differently than a lot of that
Speaker 4: other music. There's a there's a defiance in your music,
Speaker 4: but there's a there's a clear positivity. Where did that
Speaker 4: come from so early in your career?
Speaker 1: Well, I think you know, it's sometimes talk about it
Speaker 1: on the stage when I'm playing the spirit of seventy six,
Speaker 1: which was, you know, seeing the sex Pists and the
Speaker 1: Clash in early seventy six seventy seven period when punk
Speaker 1: broke into Britain. I saw both bands up close in
Speaker 1: the earliest days. I saw the sex Pists in seventy
Speaker 1: six in October seventy six, and it was a.
Speaker 2: Life changing experience.
Speaker 1: And hearing Johnny Rotten sing anarchy pretty vacant submission.
Speaker 2: I didn't know.
Speaker 1: They sounded amazing, but I didn't know what the language meant,
Speaker 1: and no one taught me what anarchy was in my
Speaker 1: high school or submission. They were brand new words. I
Speaker 1: heard them for the first time from the mouth of
Speaker 1: Johnny Rotten and I went up to him at the
Speaker 1: gig and asked him what anarchy in the UK meant
Speaker 1: and he told to.
Speaker 4: F off and that's surprising.
Speaker 1: No it's not, but he I think he was his
Speaker 1: way of just challenging me and smashing the free conceptions
Speaker 1: and almost like slapping you across the face to weight
Speaker 1: you up. And so that that was a big moment.
Speaker 1: And then and then I did see the Clash in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven on the White Riot tour in the
Speaker 1: Electric Circus in Manchester, and I was followed the tour
Speaker 1: down to Barbarellas to sit. They were doing this sort
Speaker 1: of secret gig there and they were supposed to play
Speaker 1: at Birmingham rag Market and it got canceled but they
Speaker 1: turned up and I was and they were playing a
Speaker 1: secret gig in Bob Brella's and I could see the
Speaker 1: amps going on. I knew they were going to come on,
Speaker 1: and I went to the bathroom and I was stood
Speaker 1: in the doing my thing in the toilet, and I
Speaker 1: ended up stood next to Joe's Strummer and the whole
Speaker 1: of the clash, and I asked Joe's Strummer on the
Speaker 1: way out what White Riot was all about, And because
Speaker 1: I didn't quite fully understand it from just hearing the record,
Speaker 1: I thought, I did, you know internally and viscerally, but
Speaker 1: right I didn't.
Speaker 2: Know what a White Riot was.
Speaker 1: And he said to me it was about the future,
Speaker 1: and he gave me something positive back, and I think
Speaker 1: so from having the sort of polarization of the seeing
Speaker 1: the two bands, and that was really it was like
Speaker 1: the flint, you know, it has created the fire that
Speaker 1: the alarm came from the positive and the negative, and
Speaker 1: I always leaned towards the positive. I always remember thinking,
Speaker 1: if I meet somebody who comes up to me in
Speaker 1: that way looking for advice, looking for a sign, a sign,
Speaker 1: then I'll give them something positive back. And so I
Speaker 1: wanted to put that into my music. I wanted it
Speaker 1: to be uplifting for people, liberating for them if they
Speaker 1: came 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.
Speaker 2: And there was no Internet. It wasn't brought to your doorstep.
Speaker 1: And when we came on tour in America, you know,
Speaker 1: I was from a small town. We had no spend
Speaker 1: Arlie up bring in. Like the Pistols had had the
Speaker 1: benefit of an older guy like Malcolm McLaren and Vivian
Speaker 1: Westwood to dress them and Jamie Reid to do their artwork.
Speaker 2: We had none of that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: The Clash had Bernie Rhodes and he'd been involved in
Speaker 1: the Pistols camp and they were helping shape those bands
Speaker 1: and shape the way, give them books to read, give
Speaker 1: them clothes to wear, help them with their stance, and
Speaker 1: the way educate them a little bit about when they
Speaker 1: spoke to the media.
Speaker 2: We had none of that.
Speaker 1: We were just four kids from real North Wales who
Speaker 1: wanted to be in a band and we learned our
Speaker 1: lessons the hard way, and so we wanted our politic
Speaker 1: if you liked, to be personal, and we wanted it
Speaker 1: to be a message that the listener got that empowered
Speaker 1: them a little bit or made them ask questions to
Speaker 1: go and find their own answers. And again we grew
Speaker 1: up in a very extreme political time in the eighties.
Speaker 1: That was you know, came down from the iron Lady
Speaker 1: at Margaret that and you know, we were brought up
Speaker 1: in a very musically aggressive time in the music papers
Speaker 1: in Britain that the enemy was very politicized in the eighties.
Speaker 1: There was the minor strike and they were closing steel
Speaker 1: works down and it was a tough time and every
Speaker 1: band that walked into the enemy offices that was demanded
Speaker 1: that they had the political rhetoric to back up what
Speaker 1: they wanted to hear, and we weren't like that. Our
Speaker 1: politics were different to that. It was easy to me
Speaker 1: to write about the villains. They were all there on
Speaker 1: the newspaper every day. You could knock them down easily.
Speaker 1: But to write about somebody was struggling to make something
Speaker 1: from nothing in the aftermath of the political turmoil. That
Speaker 1: required a different sort of approach musically, and that was
Speaker 1: what I was interested in. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: I'm lucky that still people who come to see me
Speaker 1: play now, who were at a gig in Omaha, Nebraska
Speaker 1: have their life change by seeing the Alarm in a
Speaker 1: positive way. Or someone who comes back to me and
Speaker 1: say they were at the brink of doing something drastic
Speaker 1: with a life and they put on the Strength album
Speaker 1: as their last record before they were going to do
Speaker 1: something they would regret, and it pulled them back from
Speaker 1: the bring And to me, how having that those testimonies
Speaker 1: come to me through the Internet now, through the Facebook
Speaker 1: or the Alarm dot com. That's That's all I ever
Speaker 1: wanted from our music was to touch people and be
Speaker 1: meaningful to them and have some value.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: And so you are out now. We're sitting in Akron, Ohio.
Speaker 4: You're going to play here in a little bit, and
Speaker 4: you are a big part of what you're doing. Is
Speaker 4: the thirtieth anniversary of the Strength record. I was curious
Speaker 4: looking back on that record now and you've done some
Speaker 4: re recording of it. What does the song Strength mean to
Speaker 4: you today, thirty years after you wrote and recorded it
Speaker 4: the first time?
Speaker 1: Who are like the.
Speaker 2: Fire than any egavi? Who a life blood passing through
Speaker 2: not read the fo doesn't never change, honey hole.
Speaker 1: Well, it means it's more to me than it ever did,
Speaker 1: because the in the opening lines, it says, who will
Speaker 1: be the lifeblood coursing through my veins?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 1: That was more of a metaphoric line when I was
Speaker 1: writing it in nineteen eighty five, but it's a literal
Speaker 1: line for me now because I've had to live with
Speaker 1: cancer for twenty years. You know, I'm at the point
Speaker 1: in life where I might need to have a transplant
Speaker 1: and have somebody else's lifeblood flowing through my veins. That's
Speaker 1: a very real step in life I might have to
Speaker 1: take at some point in the future. So when I
Speaker 1: sing that song and particular that line, it always stops
Speaker 1: me dead every night because it's literally come true in
Speaker 1: my own life.
Speaker 4: Now. One of the things that you did as you
Speaker 4: have battled cancers, you founded the Love Strength and Hope,
Speaker 4: Love Hope, Strength and Love Hope Strength. Thank you foundation
Speaker 4: that has done a lot of work for people with cancer.
Speaker 4: One of the things you've done is been registering a
Speaker 4: lot of people to be as I understand bone Mirrow donors.
Speaker 4: Will you be doing that at the show tonight? Yeah,
Speaker 4: we will be tonight.
Speaker 1: Always hosted donor register at a lot of gigs and
Speaker 1: through the Charities Formation in two thousand and seven, we've
Speaker 1: been able to it with over ten thousand other recording
Speaker 1: working artists in the world, from Robert Plant and the
Speaker 1: Foo Fighters, Enrique Glaz Frank Turner.
Speaker 4: Yeah we had Frank on the show. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, we've worked with all Dropped Kick Murphy's, all
Speaker 1: kinds of bands right down to the Alarm, and thousands
Speaker 1: of bands you know that are just up and coming
Speaker 1: who embrace what we do, which is we try to
Speaker 1: turn rock concerts into life saving events by holding a
Speaker 1: donuboo that those gigs, getting people to sign up to
Speaker 1: the International Bow Donor Registree, by giving a cheek swab,
Speaker 1: giving their information personal information so we can track them
Speaker 1: in life if they're lucky enough to be called to
Speaker 1: save the life of someone who has blood cancer like
Speaker 1: leukemia like I have. And we've signed over one hundred
Speaker 1: thousand people to the registry. We've we've found close to
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred potentially life saving matches for people, and it's become,
Speaker 1: you know, as much of my life's work as the
Speaker 1: Alarm and you know. But it's a real communal effort.
Speaker 1: It's run by volunteers. We haven't hardly got any staff.
Speaker 1: I've got no staff in Britain. It's a completely voluntary
Speaker 1: charity in the UK. But with America being so big
Speaker 1: and we're working with so many bands every night, we've
Speaker 1: got staff to facilitate some of it, but we still
Speaker 1: rely on volunteers and public donation to help fund what
Speaker 1: we do. We work in partnership with Delete Blood Cancer.
Speaker 1: They're an organization with a massive donor registry and we
Speaker 1: put the people we find our gigs who all get
Speaker 1: on the list campaign onto their registry and so someone
Speaker 1: who signs up to the show tonight in akro And
Speaker 1: Ohio could become a life saver of someone in Britain
Speaker 1: or Germany or anywhere in the world who matches their
Speaker 1: DNA profile. And now if you do become a life
Speaker 1: saving donor, it's just an outpatient procedure. Ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the times is just giving blood in hospital and
Speaker 1: it's an in and out procedure in the day, and
Speaker 1: then your blood will then give someone life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we'll definitely put on the show. Notes to the
Speaker 4: page and all that links to the foundation and fantastic thanks.
Speaker 4: In the two thousands there was some new alarm work.
Speaker 4: I love the energy and the and the aggressiveness of
Speaker 4: some of it. One of them is a song called
Speaker 4: Situation is under Control.
Speaker 5: Everything is black and wide, there's the room sins all around,
Speaker 5: everything is upside down.
Speaker 2: There's a corbook box with my feet.
Speaker 1: I'm going through hell and I can't speak.
Speaker 2: I'm going through hell and I can't breathe. This situation
Speaker 2: is under good trol.
Speaker 4: Everything is as it should be with that sent Can
Speaker 4: you tell me a little bit about the what went
Speaker 4: into the writing of that song and what was going
Speaker 4: on with you when you wrote it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think life was completely out of control when
Speaker 2: I wrote that song.
Speaker 1: I had not long been diagnosed with leukemia, and I'd
Speaker 1: just made an album for the longcle Under Attack, and
Speaker 1: I didn't know really one hundred percent why my instinct
Speaker 1: was telling me that was the album title.
Speaker 2: And we'd finished making the album.
Speaker 1: We'd recorded a video for every single song in twenty
Speaker 1: four hours. It was an audio visual release as much
Speaker 1: as it was just about the songs. I want people
Speaker 1: to see the music as well as hear it. And
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden I was diagnosed with leukemia.
Speaker 1: For it was my second cancer diagnosis. I'd had lymphoma
Speaker 1: before that, and I was off the charts ill and
Speaker 1: I didn't know it, and I went into hospital with
Speaker 1: some symptoms and then they wouldn't let me home. They
Speaker 1: sent me immediately to another hospital for treatment to bring
Speaker 1: me out of the danger zone. The doctors didn't had
Speaker 1: even walked in the hospital. My blood was so thick
Speaker 1: with what I thought was dead white blood at the
Speaker 1: time that it was like oil it just and even moving.
Speaker 1: And so I was taking to hospital to get out
Speaker 1: of the critical region I was in. And while I
Speaker 1: was there, my wife brought my iPod in so I
Speaker 1: could have some music to play while I was going.
Speaker 2: Through these procedures, and and I'd forgotten i'd put this.
Speaker 1: Under Attack old mom while I was out and about
Speaker 1: listening to it randomly to get a sequence going for
Speaker 1: the record.
Speaker 2: And I was lying in the hospital. I was having
Speaker 2: this pretty intense procedure called Luca Faresis, and I was.
Speaker 1: Kind of in a bit of shock at the time
Speaker 1: as well, and going under and my iPod was on
Speaker 1: and this track came on. I didn't know what it was,
Speaker 1: and it had the title came to the title and
Speaker 1: it said I'll never give up without a fight, and
Speaker 1: I knew that was that was the alarm that was
Speaker 1: our new record, and and and then I realized that
Speaker 1: I was so ill my subconscious was driving this record.
Speaker 1: And and and then Situation Under Control was part of
Speaker 1: a series of music we created. It was called counter Attack,
Speaker 1: and it was like the opposite to Under Attack, where
Speaker 1: I'd written the record under the pressure of cancer coming
Speaker 1: into my life taking over. I decided to write music
Speaker 1: that was my counter attack, So that was me fighting
Speaker 1: back against the cancer, and songs like Situation Under.
Speaker 2: Control were really me.
Speaker 1: Writing music that gave me a mental arsenal to be
Speaker 1: able to fight cancer.
Speaker 2: In my mind and.
Speaker 1: Fight it psychologically as well as physically. And I think
Speaker 1: I've always believed that music is a great tool to
Speaker 1: have whenever you're facing any adversity in life.
Speaker 2: It can release you from some of the pressure.
Speaker 1: It can help you fortify yourself for that big day
Speaker 1: that's coming up, or when you've got to face that
Speaker 1: situation that you're nervous about. You can play that favorite
Speaker 1: piece of music and it lifts you up and you
Speaker 1: that little bit of courage to face the day. And
Speaker 1: so the situation and the control and the counter attacks
Speaker 1: it was. The music was really my way of being
Speaker 1: able to put myself in a position to stand up
Speaker 1: to cancer.
Speaker 4: You've battled cancer twice, you know, so you're still battling it, right.
Speaker 4: That's got to take a toll. You remain so outwardly positive,
Speaker 4: where do you turn when you are really internally struggling,
Speaker 4: when you just you know that that optimism isn't there.
Speaker 4: What do you turn to to give you the strength
Speaker 4: that you're then able to project out in 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. He's my best friend, we've been married for
Speaker 1: twenty eight years. You know, we met, we got engaged
Speaker 1: within a week and nothing has to 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 my wife had to go
Speaker 1: through IVF to get the kids. Because of all situations
Speaker 1: we've been in. She's been to kill a Manjara with me,
Speaker 1: help build an accounts center in Dorslom in Africa, and
Speaker 1: suffered a DVT, nearly lost a life on the way
Speaker 1: back from Africa, and we've both been through an incredible
Speaker 1: amount together and we fall back into each other when
Speaker 1: when we're really struggling to cope with certain situations in
Speaker 1: life as they crop up. But I always feel grateful
Speaker 1: for the life I've got because my music started out
Speaker 1: life as a hobby and it still is a hobby
Speaker 1: for me.
Speaker 2: It's still my passion.
Speaker 1: It's still where I would go if I had a
Speaker 1: normal nine to five job, I'd be playing in the
Speaker 1: garage at night, or setting up a gear at the
Speaker 1: weekend and ripping into a gig because I love it,
Speaker 1: and that's and I'm very lucky that I can express
Speaker 1: myself within my passionate thing in life every day. And
Speaker 1: I'm also grateful for the life I can come home
Speaker 1: to and I've got people there who love me. You
Speaker 1: understand me, You'll stand up for me when the stones
Speaker 1: are getting thrown, you know, which is because that's what happens.
Speaker 2: That's what you put your head above the parapet in
Speaker 2: rock and.
Speaker 1: Roll, And it's not always praise. Stones are thrown as well,
Speaker 1: and you know, you have to have a really good
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 challenge everything
Speaker 1: you do. And you can't please all the people all
Speaker 1: of the time, as the famous American quote goes, But
Speaker 1: so you need that. And when I close the door
Speaker 1: on rock and roll, when I come home and I
Speaker 1: see my boys and it's the best thing in the world.
Speaker 4: How old are they know?
Speaker 1: My boys are eight and a Dylan and ever. They're
Speaker 1: into music. They play piano and drums and guitar. They
Speaker 1: brought up to see it as a hobby like I am.
Speaker 1: And they come to the shows with jewels and we're very,
Speaker 1: very very close.
Speaker 4: Wonderful's funny how they shoot you down with your hands.
Speaker 2: Out of mine and you want put up your hard asshole.
Speaker 1: But that's not enough.
Speaker 2: Foremos I've renne.
Speaker 5: But this much.
Speaker 1: Now they shoots two cards.
Speaker 5: They have got some of the ship. I no want
Speaker 5: to be scanned out to scan them out of the
Speaker 5: Going out in a blazer.
Speaker 2: Cory Bound, don't word. You can tell anything that you
Speaker 2: want from me. There is nothing left to hide.
Speaker 5: Going out in.
Speaker 2: A blaser Cory Man's out of mine.
Speaker 5: I'm learning out in it back, I'm learning out.
Speaker 4: Tell me about the song Blaze of Glory.
Speaker 1: Well, that was written really when we first played with
Speaker 1: You Too. It was on the water and we played
Speaker 1: with them in December nineteen eighty two, just before New
Speaker 1: Year's Day came out as a single and the album
Speaker 1: wasn't out to eighty three, and we played a momentous
Speaker 1: night with them in London, and one of the songs
Speaker 1: that were new to their audience and them as a
Speaker 1: band was a song.
Speaker 2: Called Surrender that was the theme of war. I think
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Bonna described it as like a you know, slap in
Speaker 1: the face against pop music was his quote.
Speaker 2: But really it was.
Speaker 1: Seeing war as a different from a different perspective, seeing
Speaker 1: war from the through the color, well without the color
Speaker 1: with a white flag, the war where people surrender to win,
Speaker 1: And that was what Bonner was putting across in that music.
Speaker 1: And I saw them rip to pieces in the music
Speaker 1: press in Britain, and I think it was really it
Speaker 1: was only because I think people were envious of the
Speaker 1: fact that they were taking their music to America and
Speaker 1: they were starting to help other bands. I think the
Speaker 1: British press thought it was their preserve to make or
Speaker 1: break bands. And all of a sudden, the band like
Speaker 1: You Two came along and opened the door for unknown
Speaker 1: musicians like the Alarm to get to America for the
Speaker 1: first time, which we did. We came with them in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three. No one had heard of us in America.
Speaker 1: We were almost unknown in Britain. We had our first
Speaker 1: hit record in America because of the tour we did
Speaker 1: with You Too, and you two were going on the
Speaker 1: radio and championing the Alarms record the Stand and saying
Speaker 1: don't play Newyear's Day, play the band that are opening
Speaker 1: for us tonight.
Speaker 2: Come and see them.
Speaker 1: They're amazing, and they were breaking us and they were
Speaker 1: creating their own power base. And the music press in
Speaker 1: Britain didn't like it one bit, and they started trying
Speaker 1: to smash them, and they tore them down.
Speaker 2: I could see and I had.
Speaker 1: This image, saw this image Uponna with his arms held high,
Speaker 1: surrender on the water, and the line came into my head.
Speaker 1: It's funny how they shoot you down when your hands
Speaker 1: are held up high, because up to that point you
Speaker 1: two have been praised, and all of a sudden, here
Speaker 1: they were on the verge of breaking and they were
Speaker 1: being torn apart. And it was so obvious to the
Speaker 1: world that you set them up, you knock them down.
Speaker 1: And it was such a cliche. And here's the music
Speaker 1: press accusing bands like you too being cliched when they
Speaker 1: were pulling out all the cliches in the book. There
Speaker 1: was no depth to the criticism of you two. It
Speaker 1: was just targeted at them. They would target their Christianity
Speaker 1: or target the fact that we're selling out playing huge gigs,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't the same anymore, and there was no
Speaker 1: real balance to it. So that prompted the line it's
Speaker 1: funny how they shoot you down when your hands are
Speaker 1: held up high. But the song really became more than
Speaker 1: that when the full lyrics came down and it was
Speaker 1: all I think. It's all about really staying strong, believe
Speaker 1: in yourself. You know when out first went out as
Speaker 1: a punk rocker and real and ripped up my jacket
Speaker 1: and went out.
Speaker 2: With safety pins.
Speaker 1: People want to tear you down because they're scared of
Speaker 1: the way you look, but you have and it's easy
Speaker 1: to back down to that kind of peer pressure. It's
Speaker 1: easy to give in and think, oh, I'll just go
Speaker 1: along with the flow of the river and I look
Speaker 1: like everyone else and life will be easier.
Speaker 2: 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 find your own.
Speaker 2: In a self, find you the place where you belong
Speaker 2: 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 they suppress who they really are. So we wanted
Speaker 1: our songs to liberate people, allow them to find the courage.
Speaker 2: And be who you really want to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's a sense in a lot of your music.
Speaker 4: I'll say this, a military sense in that there's there's
Speaker 4: a lot of marching you you you put on the
Speaker 4: camouflage when you were battling cancer. There's there's those sort
Speaker 4: of analogies. And yet there's maybe the right word that
Speaker 4: you used is is you know, fighting war by surrendering.
Speaker 4: But I've always been sort of amazed how you've managed
Speaker 4: to weave those two things together in a really powerful way. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how we've done it. Really, it has
Speaker 1: always been there, and I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think we fit. The first thing
Speaker 2: that I sort of got into where I remember seeing.
Speaker 1: The Who with medals on their jackets and that was
Speaker 1: pop art, and I remember putting some medals on my jacket,
Speaker 1: and then I and then I will I saw. I
Speaker 1: got into this sort of seeing the sixties psychedelia thing
Speaker 1: and people were those red guardsman's jacket and that was
Speaker 1: sort of the start of our early look in the
Speaker 1: alarm of Western psychedelia look. But the term military got
Speaker 1: attached to us rather than pop art psychedelia, and I
Speaker 1: think that there was that I think our image didn't
Speaker 1: help on music in some ways because I think it
Speaker 1: threw up some conflicts that that people would read these
Speaker 1: lyrics and they wouldn't quite kind of lie with the
Speaker 1: big hair or the over the top look that we
Speaker 1: had on stage because we all adopted it and it
Speaker 1: was it was very the front line of the band
Speaker 1: was it was all attack, it was all out bang,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have a John Entwistle like the who
Speaker 1: did that we could be the polar opposite of We
Speaker 1: had three guys flowing themselves around the stage and there
Speaker 1: wasn't the quiet member, you know, the who amplified the
Speaker 1: power of the individual in the band.
Speaker 2: We came across like for like a gang.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think and we weren't really a gang
Speaker 1: that I think when people met as they could see
Speaker 1: that we were all quite different. But we did have
Speaker 1: this gang mentality that came out of the look of
Speaker 1: the band and the way we are played on stage.
Speaker 2: And I don't think that helped some of the subtlety
Speaker 2: that was in the music in.
Speaker 1: A way, which is you know, as you go through
Speaker 1: life and you know that you make a record in
Speaker 1: the eighties, it stays, it stays in the eighties. But
Speaker 1: you write a song in the eighties, it lives beyond that.
Speaker 1: It comes alive in the nineties, comes.
Speaker 2: Alive again as you get older in life.
Speaker 1: And that's what interests me about the Alarms music, not
Speaker 1: just what we made in the eighties, but what it
Speaker 1: continues to be today.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm really looking forward to seeing how you interpret
Speaker 4: that music this evening. What would you say is the
Speaker 4: lesson that's taken you the longest to learn in life?
Speaker 2: To keep my mouth?
Speaker 1: You know, I always have an I always have been
Speaker 1: brought up to be answer people politely. And if someone
Speaker 1: answers your question and you ask answered it back, and
Speaker 1: sometimes I should just stay quiet.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: One of the things we talk about on the show
Speaker 4: a lot is we talk about spirituality being this very
Speaker 4: nebulous thing. Does does the words spiritual have any meaning
Speaker 4: to you? And if so, what what does that word
Speaker 4: mean to you?
Speaker 2: I equate it with with with faith.
Speaker 1: Really, I'm in faith that life is going to work
Speaker 1: out the way you hope it is going to work out.
Speaker 1: And you know, some people think in the short term
Speaker 1: and some people I think in the long term, and
Speaker 1: I like to think I've fall in the latter cads agree.
Speaker 1: And so I've always trusted my instinct in life, and
Speaker 1: I think that sometimes gets confused with spirituality. Is I
Speaker 1: think instinct is a very powerful force and it's and
Speaker 1: if you can learn to trust your instinct, then you
Speaker 1: won't go far wrong in life. And there's so many
Speaker 1: outside forces you makers distrust ourselves and on the way
Speaker 1: we think as individuals that it's easy to be sidestepped
Speaker 1: from your mission in life and your goals or what
Speaker 1: your your hopes are. Again, I think spirituality I think
Speaker 1: of 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 my instinct is it's never very rarely let me down,
Speaker 1: if ever. And when you take advice from someone else
Speaker 1: sometimes and you go along with it and you think
Speaker 1: it and you think it doesn't feel right, and you
Speaker 1: end up bang, it's a crash at the end of
Speaker 1: the road, and you think, why didn't I trust Why
Speaker 1: didn't I trust myself?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And so last question, I think the song we
Speaker 4: Are the Light, that's sort of what I took from that.
Speaker 4: You know, we are the light of our lives, We're
Speaker 4: our own light.
Speaker 2: I think. So, Yeah, that was written for declaration. It
Speaker 2: was written in in London.
Speaker 1: It was a little folk song I put together in
Speaker 1: a major key, and I think that's what I was
Speaker 1: trying to get to. I didn't understand spirituality or instinct
Speaker 1: so much in nineteen eighty one when we moved to
Speaker 1: London and eighty two when that song was written.
Speaker 5: There's a bad who was standing on the corner for
Speaker 5: he cannot see.
Speaker 2: There's a blind man standing at the classrooms more you
Speaker 2: can see that, and there's we fire the candles.
Speaker 4: We must make sure that he had heard.
Speaker 2: But it fakesure dies.
Speaker 4: We are that.
Speaker 1: You play it in concert and you see people really
Speaker 1: get hold of it and they're all saying we are,
Speaker 1: And you think, wow, what that's how come that's taken
Speaker 1: hold and and you start asking a few questions yourself
Speaker 1: and thinking what does it mean to not just to me,
Speaker 1: but to others?
Speaker 2: And it was always the song that was It was
Speaker 2: like a little communion in the gig. It was this.
Speaker 1: It was the moment really when the sound and the
Speaker 1: fury would come to an end, and our instinct there's
Speaker 1: a band, or my instinct as the singer of the band, well.
Speaker 2: Let's not leave everyone right, up there.
Speaker 1: Let's just let's have a moment to calm it all
Speaker 1: down and just celebrate in a really human way this
Speaker 1: experience we've all had where the audience have given everything
Speaker 1: to this band. They've I've jumped up on the stage,
Speaker 1: They've given the physically, they've lost tons of weight jumping
Speaker 1: them down to the band. They've sung along every word.
Speaker 1: And I always remember saying, let's get down to the
Speaker 1: front of the gig. Let's leave the drums behind there,
Speaker 1: Let's get one acoustic guitar. We'll gather around the microphone
Speaker 1: and we'll sing this song with the audience, and we'll
Speaker 1: just enjoy what we've all just been through. And I
Speaker 1: think that's how it seemed to us that we were
Speaker 1: creating a little bit of light for ourselves in the darkness.
Speaker 1: You know, we were again, as I say, in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, it was a very dark time in Britain. Politically,
Speaker 1: it was divisive. We saw all the politicians I saw.
Speaker 1: I always thought politics were supposed to be about bringing
Speaker 1: us together as a community and uniting people, and here
Speaker 1: they were doing the complete opposite and really polarizing opinion.
Speaker 1: And I think it was the first time, you know,
Speaker 1: in the war time that you know, I wasn't that
Speaker 1: there was only a couple of decades before US politics
Speaker 1: brought everyone together, and then all of a sudden in
Speaker 1: the sixties we started to see that division come and
Speaker 1: I think it really became massive in the eighties and
Speaker 1: so I think we all felt like.
Speaker 2: Unsure of who we were.
Speaker 1: It 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 find that light in the of
Speaker 1: enlightenment that you needed. So we I think thinking back
Speaker 1: to it now, that they were the moments that really
Speaker 1: made the relationship. We have the audience strong, that little
Speaker 1: communal moment when we just all sang together.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we'd lose the power in a gig and we
Speaker 1: just jump in the middle of the audience and it
Speaker 1: was always we other light and we'd play that stood
Speaker 1: in the middle of the audience and there was no amplification. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's no stage lights, just complete darkness. And that I
Speaker 1: remember doing it in Hamburg and one of the most
Speaker 1: amazing special nights of all time. And special moments because
Speaker 1: it was taking us back to the simplicity of music.
Speaker 1: We love Woody Guthrie in the simplicity of one person
Speaker 1: with one guitar singing in the street with a message wonderful.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to
Speaker 4: talk with me. That's a real pleasure.
Speaker 2: Look forward to hearing the podcast now.
Speaker 4: All right, bye, thik you. Thank you so much for
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