Michael Leslie Peters MBE DL (born 25 February 1959)[1] is a Welsh musician, best known as the lead singer of the Alarm.
Peters was born in Prestatyn and grew up living in The Crescent Hotel in Edward Henry Street, Rhyl, with former the Alarm band member Eddie MacDonald.
[1] Peters' musical debut was on 10 October 1975,[3] when he fronted Hairy Hippie (named by the disc jockey James Alexander Barr), a band formed with his schoolmates to perform at his sister's 21st birthday party at the Talardy Hotel in St Asaph.
Peters wrote the song that day and as it suited the three acoustics and drumkit line-up, the band used to rehearse it during the soundcheck.
This set included a version of the Alarm's best known song, "68 Guns", which reinstated an extra verse that the band had trimmed out early in the writing process.
The new millennium saw Peters release Flesh and Blood, based on the stage play of the same name written by Helen Griffin.
), Glen Matlock (former Sex Pistols), Captain Sensible (the Damned), and Kirk Brandon (Spear of Destiny), the band played a mixture of old and new material spanning their combined careers.
In "Edward Henry Street" of the album with the same name, Peters sings "bought Aladdin Sane from Greaves records" in reference to the song by David Bowie.
In 1986, in the middle of the height of the fame of the Alarm, whilst based in London during the week, Peters was still living with his parents in Rhyl.
Having hitch-hiked home one weekend, he met his future wife, Jules, then an undergraduate student at Bangor University studying English.
In 1996, Peters made a recovery from lymph cancer,[3] and began recording and touring again, sometimes with members of the re-formed band.
[3] At this time, Peters co-founded the Love Hope Strength Foundation with fellow leukaemia patient James Chippendale, the president of CSI Entertainment in Dallas, Texas.
Other musicians included Cy Curnin and Jamie West-Oram of the Fixx, Glenn Tilbrook of Squeeze, Slim Jim Phantom of the Stray Cats and Nick Harper.
[9] He was appointed a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2019 New Year Honours for services to cancer care.
[10] In September 2022, he announced that his chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) had relapsed, and he was being treated with chemotherapy at the North Wales Cancer Centre.
[11] In September 2024 Peters was reported to be in remission from Richter’s Syndrome following a clinical trial at the Christie NHS Foundation Trust, Manchester.
[12][13] In December 2024 Peters reported that he had not been able to achieve complete remission and will undergo Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell therapy in early 2025 [14]