The first and time I saw Mike Peters, the frontman of the Welsh Alarm who disappeared yesterday at 66 years due to a lymphoma, was in an evening of early June 12 years ago. He descended from a van that is anything but luxurious in via Sammartini, in Milan, together with the family: his wife Jules and their children. They looked like four classic Brit tourists, just a little eccentric him, with his out -of -fashion Mullet, and a little flashy she, with her very blond hair.
The time to address a large smile and greeting with the hand to the few present intent on smoking a cigarette and Peters slipped into the tunnel, in the sense of the place that that evening housed a slightly particular formation of the big country, contemporary Scottish band of the Alarm: two of the original members (the drummer Mark Brzezick and the guitarist Bruce Watson), the son of art of one of them of them of them of them (Jamie Watson), bassist Derek Forbes (already in the Simple Minds until the first half of the 80s) and Mike Peters, a natural substitute of Stuart Adamson, who passed away 12 years earlier, victim of his ghosts. Natural substitute because in the formation of a band the most difficult member to replace is the singer, yet that evening Peters put himself at the service of the cause and, difficult to explain it but it was like this, gave voice and stage presence to the friend that those songs had written and interpreted originally.
Personal memories aside, for the British rock scene Mike Peters has been many things. Certainly not a coconut of criticism. Too Classic Rocker and too little refined, too many chess shirts too before grunge (and even too much later). Yet the Alarm sold five million records and placed 16 singles in the top 50 at home. But they have always been considered a second row band among those whose “rock rock” had in U2 the most striking example and in the big country themselves as the very valuable bearers.
The debut on the IRS label with the five pieces of The Alarm It is from 1983, the year of War and the debut of Big Country. But already the following year the U2 are on another planet, with the sounds of Eno and Lenois and the megades of The Unforgettable Firewhile the Scottish confirms themselves with gold disc with Steeltown. Declarationthe real debut on the long distance of the Welsh, it sells significantly less, and it is already here that the Alarm start playing a different championship. Starting from the second work Stunning (1985) Peters and his decides to care about fashions and commercial strategies, exercising a consistency that does not consist in remaining faithful to one's sound, but if anything in playing only what he likes. Memorable pieces come out like Spirit of '76a song-world on how beautiful it is to be friends when you have common passions and dreams, whose text is an intersection between the Springsteenian Bobby Jean And Stay Free of the Clash. But also occasional mess such as those with ambient, electronics and even hip hop, combined in the mid -90s by Peters in Feel Free (programmatic as almost always the titles of his albums), one of his first solo records.
Live has always been the central moment of the life of the Alarm, who worked on the concept of community like few others. Just think that with their Alarmstock (Alarm's Woodstock, in practice) they even entered the Guinnes primates. In the summer of 2003 they gathered their fans in Wrexham, in Wales, performing in eight themed sets (one of which, hosting the aforementioned Bruce Watson, was significantly entitled The Alarm Vs Big Country). More than 120 songs, an experience successfully repeated even in the following years, also in prestigious studies (to say the least) such as Abbey Road, the Electric Lady in New York and the Capitol study in Los Angeles, where in front of a restricted audience the Alarm recorded kilometers live albums. Listening to them you get an idea of the many paths beaten by the band during his long career. Between Maggie May And Maggie's Farmbetween solid Brits and Dylanian suggestions, always with punk in DNA and Wales as a safe harbor to return to. Peters will never move from there, a tourist tour, and the Alarm will long be the group most loved by their countrymen, at least until the advent of manic street preachers.
In 2003, to demonstrate that his band is not old stuff and that the music industry focuses a little too much on the look, Peters invented the Poppy Fields experiment. 45 RPM (Speaking of programmatic titles) It is a passage from the Alarm, but a group of sbarbatelli (the Poppy Fields, in fact) interpreted by the dark English band of the Wayriders appears in the video. Result: number 28 in the British ranking (and 6 in the independent one), and a little more lines in the newspapers. The story will also inspire a film, Vinylplayed among others by Phil Daniels, already the protagonist of Quadrophenia and in the shape of the blur of Parklife. Who knows if the idea came to him thinking about Malcolm McLaren. Certainly the sex pistols had also had damage in Wales, if it is true that the desire to found the toilets, his first band, had come to Peters after having witnessed their concert in Chester. After all, in Rhyl, coastal town in North Wales, there was much more to do. Steve Strange, the same age as Peters and the future founder of the Visage, had also lived as a child, and who knows if they have ever met.
The last thirty years of his life have been accompanied by the disease. We use this verb with intention, because the number of albums published (as a soloist and with the band), the many concerts and the great social commitment (in 2019 he was appointed member of the British Empire for his activity in favor of cancer patients) do not make one think of a man marked by lymphoma diagnosed in 1995 and subsequent leukemia. “I am fighting a war,” he repeated several times, and the image of the fighter is in fact the most recurring among those used by those who yesterday who wanted to remember him, including Nicky Wire of Manics and Billy Duffy of the cult, with whom Peters had collaborated in one of his thousand projects.
Love Hope Strength (speaking of programmatic names) was the foundation he set up with his wife Jules (she herself hit by breast cancer) to support their business. While fighting for the cause of the sick, Peters has come to play at the top of Kilimanjaro. “You live until the last breath, with a positive attitude towards life, your family and the environment you live in,” he told the journalist a few years ago Guitar World who asked him if a man who had crossed so much suffering had a message to give readers.
At this moment on the home page of the Alarm website there is the name of Mike Peters with its date of birth and death and the word “Totally Free”, accompanied by the song of the same name. “I'm free and I'm not afraid of dying,” sings in a sort of last farewell to fans. Certainly he was never afraid of living.
