Although I’m here, the Mike Peters that made all the other Alarm albums might not be.

It was a really powerful record, and I carried a lot of that energy” into this one.Īfter adding drums to the new demos with longtime producer George Williams, Peters told him frankly, “We might have to look at this as a posthumous album. “We learned to do file sharing to make our last album and released it within 50 days. Once Peters was discharged, recording the enthralling new studio album Forwards commenced.Ĭlick here to pick up Forwards on CD from our Rock Cellar StoreĬlick here to pick up Forwards on LP from our Rock Cellar Storeīut “the new drugs stripped my vocal cords” while Peters was getting used to them, and he says “I wasn’t sure if I was going to get my voice back.”Ī dozen demos were created in “a little caravan studio I have at the top of the driveway that we brought back for lockdown,” Peters added. “I signed off with ‘forwards.’ As soon as I did, I thought, ‘That’s telling me something’…and it gave the songs an impetus to move forward and have a very specific direction of travel.” The musician suddenly had to be proactive.Ī post shared by The Alarm wrote a letter to fans, let them know the status of what was happening and tried to reassure them that it wasn’t as bad as it maybe sounded,” Peters recalled. They would ask him to “play that again,” say it was “lovely” and encourage him, “you’ve got to make that into a song.”Īn Alarm enthusiast from America visiting his father nearby caught wind of Peters’ hospital serenades and spilled the beans online. “The auxiliary staff would come in to clean the bed and return to sweep.”

I’m enjoying it.’”ĭoctors, nurses, patients, and others became a sounding board for new material. “A big guy across the way said, ‘Keep going. Peters found the music welcomed by many people. Some previous COVID-19 protocols remained in place at the facility, so there was still a big gap between occupied beds. In between, I would play guitar, really just to keep my fingers going at first.” “It was a very difficult time” having to “teach my body to accept this new drug. “I knew I was in there for a long time, having to transition from one drug that stopped working - even though I was still dependent on it heavily,” explained Peters. Playing an acoustic guitar by his bedside and writing songs helped get the Welsh musician through the horrible ordeal. That’s what happened last year after The Alarm front man Mike Peters was admitted to the North Wales Cancer Treatment Centre for a relapse of leukemia and, later, pneumonia. Imagine being in a hospital room when suddenly you hear live music by a local world-renowned musician wafting through the corridors.

Bed screen curtain hospital