Mike Peters with guitars. (Image: PA)
The heartbroken family of pop star Mike Peters MBE of 1980s rock band The Alarm have tragically revealed he has died aged 66 following a 30-year battle with blood cancer. The married father-of-two had been a tireless global advocate for blood cancer patients and set up a foundation to help get more stem cell donors and match sick patients with life-saving strangers.
In January in an emotional interview with the Daily Express while undergoing treatment at The Christie hospital in Manchester, defiant Mike told how he was “not afraid of dying” – as started a tough new CAR-T immunotherapy treatment he hoped could finally cure him. Mike, who supported U2 on tour and Queen at Wembley, stressed his career highlight has been rocking cancer for three decades with his boundless positivity.
Mike and Jules Peters (Image: Jules Peters/PA Wire)
He passed away on Monday night at his home in North Wales, and surrounded by his wife of 39 years Jules, 58, and their sons Dylan, 20, and Evan, 18.
Diagnosed with lymphoma in 1995 and later with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia, Mike refused to let his illness silence him and instead turned his fight into a mission to help others.
In January – ahead of weeks of gruelling CAR-T therapy – Mike poured his heart out to us about life and death and his dream of creating a legacy to help other sufferers.
Mike explained: “When I reach the point of no return I will know.
“The longer I can stay alive in the moment the more chance the future is going to provide the next opening, and science is breaking down the walls of cancer all the time.
“Cancer has been a part of my life for 30 years, a big part of my life. I’m focussed on a really strong outcome, making sure it works and create an environment which has so much positive energy inside, it can only enhance the pathway for the CAR-T to come in and take over.”
Born in Prestatyn, North Wales, Mike never forgot his roots, often performing in support of Welsh causes and championing the community spirit of his homeland.
He first rose to prominence in the early 1980s with The Alarm, whose powerful anthems like “68 Guns” and “Strength” helped define a generation of alternative rock.
Known for their rallying cries and heartfelt lyrics, The Alarm garnered a devoted international following, with Peters’ raw vocals and commanding stage presence at the heart of it all.
During a music career that spanned five decades, Peters performed with some of music’s greatest artists and bands including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and U2.
(L-R) Bassist Eddie MacDonald, guitarist Dave Sharp, drummer Nigel Twist and vocalist Mike Peters (Image: Getty Images)
Mike was aged 36 when he first discovered he had cancer in October 1995 on his way to a gig in South Shields having felt a lump on his collar bone.
Mike and Jules went to the doctors for a blood test and while waiting a leaflet was handed to them that read ‘Let’s talk about cancer’ and he said: “Our minds just went blank then.”
He was told he had a 60-70 per cent chance the chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) cancer would go against him and medics wanted to send him for a bone marrow transplant at The Christie.
Back then there was a huge risk Mike would not survive the new treatment so he declined and initially trying to treat it with non-conventional medicine, before starting to have regular bouts of chemotherapy at the North Wales Cancer Centre from 2005 to keep it at bay.
From then on Mike has been playing weekend gigs around his chemo treatments, when he is not touring with his band, while his boys run the family-owned Red Lion pub in Dyserth, North Wales.
During this time he and Jules founded the global Love Hope Strength Foundation with their friend James Chippendale who had received a life-saving bone marrow transplant.
With the support of Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Ozzy Osbourne, The Stranglers, and a host of other music stars the foundation has registered more than 250,000 people onto blood stem cell registries through its ‘Get On The List’ partnership with blood cancer charity DKMS – although Mike wants to double that to 500,000 donors.
Incredibly, over 4,500 of those already registered with Love Hope Strength have been identified as potentially lifesaving matches, giving hope to those with a blood cancer.
Mike did a number of expeditions to places all over the world such as the summit of Kilimanjaro, while putting on star-studded concerts at places like the Sahara, Mount Snowdon, Mount Fuji and the Alps.
In 2007 they hosted the world’s highest concert on land at 18,500 feet on Mount Everest which was witnessed by over 3 million people on the Internet – raising millions of pounds over the years for local cancer projects abroad.
But since then Mike said cancer has “never let me off the hook” and he would go into remission before falling ill again. By now his CLL had become the more aggressive, rarer and deadly Richter’s Syndrome.
Mike Peters – The Alarm (Image: Western Mail)
Five days before he was due to fly to Chicago for a 50-date US tour in April last year, he found a lump in his neck and referred to Manchester’s The Christie hospital for a drug trial with targeted therapy called acalabrutinib.
Again he went into remission last summer but by September it had yet again returned and as chemo is not working well enough to get him into remission to have a stem cell transplant – leaving CAR-T his last hope.
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy – or CAR-T for short – is a cancer treatment using genetically modified white blood T cells to fight cancer.
Mike told us in January: “Music can change the world and the foundation has been a tangible thing – I have gold discs at home from record sales but they don’t really mean anything.
“Now we say we have 250,000 people to sign up to the stem cell register and out of them thousands have stepped forward as a match and saved a life – that’s tangible.
“Love Hope Strength has realised the power of rock and roll. I see it with Bono and the work he’s done on Aids in Africa and what about Bob Geldof?
“I remember walking down the King’s Road after playing some gigs with him and seeing him getting into a taxi and asking where he was going.
“He said ‘I just saw this documentary about Ethiopia and I’m going to see Midge Ure about writing a song!’ I should have jumped in the cab with him right there and then! He changed the world and that’s tangible.”
Speaking about the strength he gets from his boys Dylan and Evan – who he and Jules had through IVF – he added: “We live on through them. We continue, so I’m not afraid of life or death – they are one and the same to me now.
“If I can live another day to see the sunlight tomorrow that’s all I’m aiming for.”
Mike Peters outside the Paterson research building at The Christie hospital (Image: PA)
Mike had been with wife Jules since August 1986 when he spotted her in the street back in Rhyl, North Wales.
He explained: “I was back home and kept bumping into her – but whenever I did it was like electricity. I needed another fix. One night I went to a nightclub and she was there but I didn’t speak to her.
“The nightclub owner grabbed be at the end of the evening and said ‘Mike, you two have been staring at each other all night long, it’s time you met. Mike, this is Jules’ and we became instant friends then – 14th August 1986.”
Mike had just come back from supporting Queen at Wembley Stadium for two gigs but the fact Jules wasn’t aware of his fame or music bonded them even closer and they were engaged in a week and married a couple of years later.
In that time – as well as Mike battling decades of cancer – Jules has fought and beaten breast cancer too.
Mike said of Jules: “We’ve had 39 years of life together now and that has seen us through incredible moments of exhilaration and devastation and we’ve been able to cope with both.”
Blood cancers are the fifth most common type of cancer, with more than 12 million new cases diagnosed worldwide every year.
They are the third most common cause of cancer death in the UK with nearly 13,000 people dying from blood cancer in the UK every year. At any one time there are around 2,000 people in the UK in need of a stem cell transplant.
Anyone between 17 and 55 years can be added to the stem cell register – which boasts around five million donors – once they’ve answered a few health questions.
Please visit www.dkms.org.uk and sign up to join the stem cell register and save a stranger’s life.
Jules Peters with Mike Peters at The Christie (Image: PA)
EXCLUSIVE – HOW A BOY FROM NORTH WALES FOUND FAME:
By Chris Riches
The Alarm’s Mike Peters told the Daily Express in January 2025 how he first got into music hearing fans sing Slade’s ‘Because I Love You’ on the terraces at his beloved Manchester United.
Mike, who grew up in Prestatyn, North Wales, explained how as a youngster he was “seriously” into football and grew up obsessed with United and George Best.
But once on the terraces at the Stretford End he heard fans singing the Slade anthem ‘Because I Love you’, as the fans stomped their boots and clapped their hands, and I thought “what’s this?”
He added: “I got home, it was 1972, and my sister had Top of The Pops on and I said ‘who’s that?’ It was David Bowie singing ‘Starman’ and I was blown away. That was the start of it then.
“My sister was a hairdresser and said ‘Can I give you a David Bowie haircut?’ I was like ‘go on then!’ Then fate intervened and I started going to music clubs on the North Wales coast and saw artists like Jackie Wilson, Mud and Sweet.
“There was a rock club in Chester and I saw the Sex Pistols with Johnny Rotten in 1976 and that changed my life – they were the most brilliant band I had ever seen. On another scale.
“After the gig I plucked up the courage to talk to Johnny Rotten at the bar and said ‘Mr Rotten, what’s Anarchy In The Uk about? He said ‘f**k off!’ Wow! He was waking me up saying you don’t need my, go and find out for yourselves.
“Later I saw The Clash in Manchester and asked Joe Strummer ‘what’s your song White Riot about?’ He said ‘The future – it’s unwritten’.
“The negativity of Johnny Rotten and the positivity of Joe Strummer that was the magnet there. I wanted to be able to have somebody come up to me, ask a question and I can give them something affirmative.”
Mike started a band called the Toilets in 1977, playing with the Buzzcocks and The Clash. After one early gig Bob Geldof jumped in stage to shake Mike’s hand and they were soon touring with US rockabilly band the Stray Cats.
In 1980 when John Lennon died Mike said he was driving home to North Wales from London and they were playing The Beatles on the radio and felt his songs were “meaningless” compared to Lennon who put his life on the line for music.
So he went to his bandmates the next day and said: “We’re going to change our name. We’re going to tear it all down to build it back up – we’re going to be called The Alarm with whole new songs.”
He told us: “We had a song we were playing around with called ‘Sixty Eight Guns’ and it became a huge hit.”
Mike Peters chatting to Daily Express’s Chris Riches in hospital (Image: The Alarm)