Frontman of The Alarm Was 66

Mike Peters, the frontman of ’80s Welsh rock band The Alarm, has died after a three-decade battle with cancer, a representative for Peters confirmed Tuesday. He was 66.

Peters co-founded The Alarm in the early ’80s with Dave Sharp, Eddie McDonald and Nigel Twist, and the band signed with I.R.S. Records, whose roster included popular groups like R.E.M. and The Go-Go’s. The Alarm found success with singles like “The Stand,” “Strength” and “Sixty Eight Guns,” the latter of which charted in the U.K. They’d open for U2 during the band’s War Tour in 1983, as well as for Bob Dylan years later. Peters also played with Bruce Springsteen.

Peters was born in North Wales in 1959, and grew up in the same neighborhood as future bandmate McDonald. He is survived by wife Jules, 58, and their 20-year-old son Dylan and 18-year-old son Evan.

Peters became a prominent activist in the fight against cancer after he was diagnosed with lymphoma in 1995, co-founding the Love Hope Strength Foundation with his wife Jules. Fighting the disease for over 30 years, Peters and his charity fundraised and sought to raise awareness on new treatments for cancer patients. According to the charity, the Love Hope Strength Foundation’s “Get On The List” campaigns have helped add 250,000 people to the global stem cell registry.

Peters continued to tour for decades while he fought cancer, going into remission and relapsing several times. But last year, he was diagnosed with Richter’s Syndrome, another aggressive form of lymphoma, just before he was set to embark on a set of U.S. shows. He sought treatment and the BBC reported he’d gone into remission in Septemberbut the cancer came back and Peters succumbed to the illness.

Peters was open about his cancer fight for his entire career, saying in an interview in 2008 that his first diagnosis “made me focus on what’s important in my life, and what I’d take with me on that next journey beyond what we all are on planet Earth.”

Peters left The Alarm in 1991, but he revived the band years later, releasing new albums and touring. Peters cited music as a key force in lifting his spirit while fighting illness. As he recalled in an interview with Paste in 2023, he wrote many of the songs on the group’s most recent album Forwards while he was in the hospital for treatment.

“The nursing staff would come to clean in the morning, or it was the orderlies who would do the cleaning up, and I could see them lingering a little bit longer by my bed while I was working out a chord sequence In front of them,” he said. “So I always had a little audience that started to become quite receptive to me, and it was quite nice for me—and for them, too—to have a bit of music and a bit of life going on around the whole situation.”