Mike Peters Video Interview On Battling Cancer, Playing WIth U2, The Alarm

Mike Peters, lead singer of The Alarm, holds forth on battling cancer, his new album and rocking in high altitudes.

Transcript:

Q: What are your memories of touring with U2?

A: I was sitting in a hotel room with The Edge on the War Tour. He came from a non-musical background and learned to play the guitar his own way. He didn’t know the traditional way to play a bar chord. I had to show him how to do it.

Q: Tell us about your guerrilla concert in Times Square.

A: Well, I did the guerilla concert in Times Square today and just thought it would be nice because the album is came out here in America on July 8, 2008, and we thought we’d celebrate the release of the album with a digital in-store, in-the-street [concert], and we’d have people turn up to get their albums the night before the concert, right in the center of the hustle and bustle in New York City. It was pretty crazy and it was great fun, and it was just nice, exciting thing to do on the day that the album comes out.

Q: Did any crazy fans show up?

A: The Naked Cowboy was there [laughs] getting out of his Escalade and we were great. We didn’t have a permit or anything, and the cops just stood by and watched it and let us get on with it. It was great you know. It was all the usual sort of saints and sinners of Times Square. It was fantastic.

Q: What is it like being back with The Alarm after your solo career?

A: It was a commutative effect really because The Alarm of today started in the year 2000, and we had the solo band and became The Alarm really because I had inherited or got the rights to The Alarm by catalog. And I became the curator and reissuing all the albums. So we went out on tour to perform The Alarm’s greatest hits, or just the music from the 80s as it was known and Eddie MacDonald our original bass player came to this as well. We did try to include more of the original lineup, but it wasn’t to be. The Alarm has always been with me in my heart and now it’s in the new music that we made. This is the third Alarm album of this decade and modern era, and it keeps growing and growing and getting more and more exciting.