The Alarm put out their post-pandemic record War in 2021 and weren’t exactly ready to jump back into work on another record. But them co-founder, frontman Mike Peters was hospitalized for pneumonia. That medical issue was quickly eclipsed though when it was discovered that his leukemia – first diagnosed in the mid- ‘90s – had relapsed.
Cooped up in the hospital undergoing months of treatment with little more than his guitar to keep him company, Peters started writing. Taking brief respites from the hospital between treatments, he and the band were able to quickly commit these new songs to tape in the studio and not long after he was discharged from the hospital, he and the band took the stage for their annual homecoming concert, The Gathering (suspend fore the last couple of years due to the global pandemic). Just months later, The Alarm is releasing Forwards on June 16th, a 10-track album brimming with optimism and hope – surprising given the circumstances under which it was written.
Peters, prepping for the release of Forwards and a U.S. version of The Gathering – taking place June 23-24 in New York – he got on Zoom recently to talk through the genesis of this record, his time in the hospital and keeping a positive attitude through it all.
Had you considered going ahead and starting work on this album before you had the relapse and ended up in the hospital?
Not really. I had a few songs knocking about that I had started. We made our last album in the lockdown in 50 days and released it on CD-Rs and then deleted it that night. We made it by file shares. We actually made hand cut vinyls and it was an amazing experience. We filmed it all, documented everything and reissued it a few months later because we got so many good reviews. But when we finished it, I kept going.
The challenge had started on the day that the Capitol building was being occupied. I thought that was the last straw of the pandemic; we were all in lockdown in Britain. I thought “that’s it, we’ve gotta make an album someone’s gotta document this all.” It had to come out during lockdown where everyone could listen to it. I thought after the lockdown no one’s gonna listen to a record about the lockdown, we were going to want to get as far away from it as we can. We sort of dropped it in the middle of the ocean and it got incredible reviews, putting it out and then deleting it but we were blogging about the sessions every day and it got such great reviews.
So, what happened I just kept on going and wrote a few songs and then a few months later I was actually diagnosed with pneumonia, during the tour and then it became a situation where I wasn’t sure I was going to escape once I was put in the hospital for a long time. I was very ill and wasn’t quite sure what the outcome might be and so I had my guitar brought into the hospital just so I can strum and keep the fingers going and then all the patients on the ward were saying “keep going, don’t play quietly because you think we’re listening or something.” So, I was playing, and the nurses would come round and everyone seemed to enjoy it and before you knew it songs were appearing. I wasn’t quite prepared for that, so I started recording on my iPhone. Phrases appeared that became songs. There was one window between hospital sessions where I was able to leave and record the demos really fast. I had enough voice in me to get the vocals down on the demo, so when I came out and started thinking about making a record based on the experiences. I took it to my producer George Williams and he said “mate these are amazing. you’ve already started it there’s no need to start over and do it again, let’s just go from where we are.” I had lost my voice at that time and was only speaking in a whisper so there was the fear that I couldn’t get any more vocals together. George said, “obviously it could be better, but what you have it good enough.” At the last minute I got my voice back. I didn’t stop. I was like Forrest Gump running. I did all 12 songs in a day. It was like a concert. It was all there. We did probably 12 days-worth of recording time for the entire album.
How did you get the other musicians involved to start working on the drums and bass and additional parts?
When I shared the demos with my producer he said “listen mate you got to start working on this now. He said, “the studio is available tomorrow, get Smiley (drummer Steve “Smiley” Barnard) up here on the train.” The next minute he arrived, and I got James (Stevenson) involved and did a couple of days on the guitars. I’d done a lot of the guitar work and mapped it out on the demos. The demos were very clear as to what needed to be done. They just needed replacing sonically really. Everyone got their part straight away. It was effortless really. We arrived at the album really quickly. We put it out on vinyl and CD rather quickly because another bit of luck fell into our hands. I got phoned up by a manufacturing company that said, “we had someone drop out of a pressing and you can jump 16 weeks ahead of the queue if you can get us the music now.” We had to finish it over a weekend to get it to him quickly and now it’s out on vinyl and everything.
It’s odd to think that vinyl had almost completely disappeared and now it’s one of the most import parts of a new album release. I know you put a lot of thought into the look, color and design of Forwards.
I think we all love that about our records in the beginning; those of a certain generation anyways. And it was a massive part of it. That’s how you connected with the records. A big part of it is that you would go and buy it in the store, and you couldn’t play it until you got home and you were on a train or on a bus and all you had with the lyrics and the cover to look to and you almost fell in love with that before you even heard the music. And I think that was a sort of gateway into a lifelong relationship with a certain record.
I think younger people are discovering now that it’s better to own a record, to have something to hold on to rather than just have something in the air that you can skip to the next track. Music, when I got into it, was underground. It was punk rock. It didn’t sell millions of records. If it sold millions, it was not cool. In the ‘90s when bands like Oasis were around it was almost like if you hadn’t sold a million records or 200,000 tickets at Knebworth you’re no good. The whole thing got skewed and I think now it’s all about cool again and being part of something and having a band for yourself. Now bands have to go on Eurovision and other contests to get themselves known and the only TV outlet they’ve got is Strictly Come Dancing. What happened to Cutting Edge in 120 minutes? There’s nowhere cool for bands to go on nowadays.
One thing that really surprised me about this record is I had assumed it would be a lot angrier considering all that you had gone through. I was expecting this to be an angry record. And it’s not. There’s a lot of optimism here and hope. Was there a conscious decision on your part not to make a record about being bitter and angry about your situation?
Not really, but when you’re in the hospital nowadays, we live in such a litigious society that doctors and nurses can’t give you any hope. They can’t tell you “Mate it’s gonna be OK. The drugs are gonna work and it’s gonna make you better.” They won’t say that in case they don’t. There’s always the exception to the rule, but people don’t give you any hope when you’re in the hospital nowadays and so a lot of time you spend on Dr. Google typing in your symptoms and second guessing the doctor. I felt like I needed to generate my own optimism, my own way out of the situation. I was basically experiencing a situation where a drug regime that had kept me alive for a long time had failed and now there was no guarantee that it was going to work again. There was a lot of uncertainty, so I had to sort of project myself into the future and think I was gonna find a way, I am going to get out of this. And that drove the songs to be honest. In my mind, I didn’t want a record about where I’d come from, a little bit like the last album we had made in the lockdown. I don’t want it to necessarily be about where we’ve come from but where we’re going to and what we’re going to do when we get out of here. I’m sure there’s a few angry songs I wrote, and I sort of overlooked them and just focused on the ones that were speaking to my more positive self.
One song that really stands out to me, because of the sentiment, is the song “Whatever.” The sentiment, whatever gets you through, seems so positive and so relatable to what society has been through over the past few years.
I was in the hospital and had a lot of time on my hands, there were a lot of post pandemic protocols in place so there was not a lot of visitation, so I had a lot of time alone. I was listening to the hospital radio to while away the time. I’d had enough on my iPod and so thought let’s hear what the hospital is playing. I tuned into the radio one night and the DJ played “Whatever Gets You Through The Night” by John Lennon. And I thought, never mind the night what about life? How am I going to get through this whole thing? I made-up this thing in my head and the next minute the songs arriving and I’m scribbling it all down, tapping it into my iPhone. I’m wired up to the IV and singing the melody on my phone quietly. Straight away it was there. I was Googling “has anybody written a hospital song before?” I couldn’t find any references to anything. I stumbled into some kind of songwriting goldmine that no one’s found before.
When you were in the hospital hooked up to the IV with your guitar there did you ever get any pushback from people in the hospital telling you to take it easy, put the guitar down and just rest, you need to conserve your energy?
No, I think people realize that these things strengthen your mental capacity to be able to deal with what you’re going through. I liked to go for walks around the hospital ward, keep my muscles up. Some people didn’t like to do that and just wanted to stay in their beds and I would always try and encourage my fellow patients. I’d play quietly and they would say “keep going we like to hear that; it’s soothing.” And there was one moment when there was a patient in the ward, there was this one guy shuffling around near my bed and he caught my eye and he said “It’s Mike Peters isn’t it?” and I said “yeah.” He said “I knew it was. My dad’s a couple of beds down and I’ve come from the USA and I posted online that I’m sure it’s Mike Peters here in the hospital and he doesn’t look very well. I’m glad to hear you speaking.” He said, “I’ve told all the fans that you’re here,” so I had to go online and write a letter to my fans reassuring them that I am in the hospital having a relapse but it’s gonna be OK. And I signed the letter off with the word “Forwards” and as soon as I wrote that down I said “that’s gotta be the title. There’s got to be a song there” and there was.
Can you talk about what inspired the song “New Standards”?
That’s a song that I sort of wrote mostly in between the last album and when I started work on Forwards. It was really more post pandemic and the new standards we are all living with. How society has changed through the pandemic, everyone’s got something to say on the Internet these days and I was brought up in a family where if I hadn’t got anything positive to say don’t say anything and it’s naive to think that’s gonna happen now because it’s not. I just wanted to put a song out there about how the world’s changed. Especially in the way we communicate, and we all have to take some kind of responsibility for our manners and how we treat other human beings on the Internet. Because we probably spend more time virtually with humanity than we do physically these days.
The other thing I wanted to ask you about was The Gathering. Obviously, this has become a huge event for fans of The Alarm. You weren’t able to put one on because of the pandemic, but you were able to host another one in January in the UK, right?
Yeah, we did.
After having a couple of years off, how was it to finally be on that stage again with all of these people?
We did one quick Christmas gathering on the Internet and that was fantastic. We were able to go into a studio in London during the pandemic and it was strange driving down there through the night with no traffic on the road. We put a big Christmas tree up in the studio and we did a live broadcast and all of the Alarm songs kind of had a Christmas theme. And it was great. For us it was a lifeline for us to the fans and other musicians. Captain Sensible (of The Damned) came on and Billy (Duffy) from the Cult, The Stray Cats, all of our friends talking live on the air to The Alarm fans. It was a great experience. So, when The Gathering was allowed to go on live this year after everything, I’ve been through it was a big rush and a big release for everyone. Everyone brought their A Game. We all just wanted to be together. It was a fantastic occasion, and I was able to rise to it and I was able to sing really great both nights. I was actually amazed when I got to sing a song like “Strength” from 1985. I hadn’t been able to sing that range in a long time. I was singing better than I’ve been singing it for years. Turns out now is the first time I’ve had a proper blood count in 30-odd years.
So, you’ve got songs going back three decades that people love, but you’ve also got a lot of really good new material. It’s not like you stopped writing in 1989. Do you ever get tired of playing some of those songs off of Declaration or Strength, and just want to focus on your new songs?
No because yes, we have new things and I think those new things refresh the old songs. I think if you’re a band who hasn’t made it album in 30 years and you’re still touring off your history in a way it can lead to certain elements of exhaustion with what you’re doing because there’s nothing new to add in there. There’s nothing like adding in new songs that change the context of the story. They carry through the ideas that you first started decades ago. We’re really lucky to have that in The Alarm. We’ve always been a modern band.
And you’ve got shows coming up in New York as well, right?
Yeah, the 23rd and 24th of June. I’m actually coming to New York on Sunday and doing a week of interviews, plugging back in and doing a gig a week on in LA. I’m doing a song with Wayne Kramer from the MC5 for a benefit concert.
Is there any possibility for more shows in the US once the record comes out?
Yes, definitely, especially because up until two weeks ago I was in the hospital once a week with IVs and different treatments. And now one of them is over with so now I’ve got at least a three-week window where I can come back to America before having to go back in again for hospital treatments. I’m meeting my New York agent next week to talk through some more possible shows.
