Article: 2nd SIGHT

It’s been 18 months since their debut album `Declaration’ and the success of `68 Guns’ has yet to be topped. The Alarm’s future is on the Iine. Rest your legs lads and tell us about it�

“We’re not preaching anything any more. We like to think that we never have preached or forced people to think a certain way.”

Mike Peters takes a break from recording the video for the new Alarm single `Strength’ to tell The Hit about their long awaited album of the same name.

“The songs are very direct. We�re talking about what’s happened in our lives; our friends and what�s gone on in our little part of the world. �� We�re not singing about how to change the world or run the government.

“There were- times in the past when we talked about things we didn’t really know a hundred per cent about. People confused our politics because of the imagery we used, which was probably due to naivety in the songwriting. But now we’re sure of what we’re writing about�

It�s been 18 months since The Alarm’s debut album `Declaration’. Finding the right producer caused the delay – they finally settled on Mike Howlett – but the break gave them a chance to re-think and write new material.

��Spirit of 76′ is a very personal song: I felt I wasn’t capable of writing it at the time. I wanted to save it for the next album, but the lads liked it and we pushed it through. It�s about working as a computer operator with no real hope and then going to Eric�s (a legendary punk club in Liverpool) and hearing The Clash and The Sex Pistols, punk, for the very first time and feeling the gut reaction and freedom of that music.

�lt’s also about the dear friends that I used to go with and some of the disasters that happened in their lives. One ended up in Walton Jail. But I go home now and they’ve got jobs and they�ve come through their struggle, learned from their mistakes, got up and started again.

�We�ve learned from our mistakes, same as the people in `Spirit of 76′. We were four lads whipped up from Rhyl for Top of the Pops and then America.

�It�s a hell of an achievement but it takes a long time to be able to sit back and think how to guide it properly to achieve what I realty want.

“But genuine talent doesn’t just mean getting to number one. It means being able to weather a few storms. We’re not bothered about .being total number ones, we just want to make records we�re proud of and that fans are proud to say their favourite band is The Alarm. That’s good-enough for us.”

Mike Peters, come on down.

Publication::Publication:The Hit
Author::Pete Picton