Love, Hope, Strength: The Legacy the Alarm’s Mike Peters Left Behind

A year ago, “love, hope and strength” were words that had lost meaning for Jules Peters.

She’d heard them nearly every day, of course, since they make up the name of the foundation she founded with her husband, the Alarm frontman Mike Peters, and American partner James Chippendale to raise awareness and funding for blood cancer research. But when Mike lost his 31-year-battle with chronic lymphocytic leukemia in April 2025, the mere idea of those three words rang hollow.

“In that moment, I really felt like I’d had enough and I didn’t want to continue the foundation, I’m sorry to say. I was so traumatized and thought, ‘I don’t know how I can carry on because we weren’t able to save him.’” She pauses, as if giving physical space to the time that passed which changed her perspective. “But thank goodness it was brief and I realized it was actually more important than ever for us to continue what we had started.”

To date, the Love Hope Strength Foundation has added more than 400,000 people to a global blood stem cell registry via “get on the list” promotions at concerts around the world while teaming up with supporters including Robert Plant, Ozzy Osbourne, and the Stranglers. Through the initiative, they’ve also helped secure thousands of potential life-saving matches for patients worldwide. Mike, who had largely been in remission for decades, had found a donor match in Poland and was scheduled to receive a transplant in October 2024, when he was diagnosed with a very aggressive complication of leukemia called Richter syndrome that eventually claimed his life. He was only 66 years old.

“All of those who have loved him and been blessed to have him in our lives try and take comfort that he was only very ill for the last few months, and he had 66 incredible years where he shone so brightly,” says Jules. “Maybe we’re all born with only so much light, and he just expelled his faster than others because he was always gigging, he was always touring, he was always thinking. And we take comfort from that.”

On the day of our video call, Jules, who played keys in the band for years, is at home in Wales, the same home she shared with Mike throughout their 39-year marriage. It’s where they raised their two boys, Evan and Dylan, and where the couple would often sit together in the living room listening to their favorite albums from Richard Ashcroft and David Bowie after long days in the studio or on breaks from tours.. She shares her home with a golden retriever named Ziggy Stardust, who got to go on a walk after Jules returned home from a morning spent at her coffeehouse/pub/community center, the Red.

“I bought the village pub a few years ago, which Mike thought was the craziest idea he’d ever heard,” Jules says with a hearty laugh. “Which says a lot because he was the one that always came up with the crazy ideas. He was like, why on earth would you want to buy the village pub? And I said, just trust me.”

Jules was on to something. In the past year, the Red has become a source of solace, with memories of Mike everywhere. “It’s next door to our chapel, which is where Mike did all his recordings over the last 20 years,” Jules explains, adding that the chapel space has partially been converted into apartments for cancer patients needing a retreat. “So, you’ve got the chapel here, you’ve got the pub here. And then directly opposite, Mike is buried in a beautiful old graveyard near a 70-foot waterfall that’s in walking distance. So, I can be in the pub, having a coffee, and then I can just literally walk two minutes and be standing at the grave.”

None of this was very well planned out. “We never really spoke about the future because he never really said goodbye,” says Jules. “He had no plan because he never believed he was going to die until much later on, in his 80s or 90s. … When he got diagnosed [with Richters], the doctors sat us down and said, the odds are very low about getting through this. This is a very serious condition. But he was not swayed at all. He was like, I’ll beat those odds. He just had this inner calm and confidence.”

She adds, “I used to ask him, how are you managing this so well? And he said to me, I can deal with it because of rock ‘n roll. Because from the time he was a young lad, born here in North Wales, he had a dream to start a band and make it in rock ‘n roll. He was always very determined. He had a list of who to see in London. He would knock on doors, and he ticked names off as he went through this list. So, he was used to rejection, but he never let it get him down.”

Mike founded the Alarm in 1981 and the band got caught up in a swell of arena rock and alt rock bands at the time. Delivering anthemic hits like “68 Guns” and “Strength,” the group galvanized a generation and a legion of fellow music acts who became fans, not the least of which was U2, Simple Minds, and the Cult. In fact, Bono used to call the Alarm “the second greatest rock and roll band in the world” and his mentorship became priceless over the years.

“Mike did his formative years with U2 when he came to America. And Bono taught him, look, you might turn up tonight in Los Angeles and there might be thousands of people, but you might be in Missoula a few days later, and there might only be 50 people, but it doesn’t matter. Play your best show as if it was 50 or as if it was 2,000,” Jules recalls, adding that the philosophy transferred to the couple’s daily lives, too. “Me and Mike always took that to heart and tried to live our life like that. Rock ‘n roll taught us to never give up and to not collapse if someone said no … And now it’s our job, me and the boys, to be positive and optimistic just the way Mike always was, right to the very end.”

It’s why Jules was keen to move forward with releasing the Alarm’s final album Transformation in late May, with songs full of the same vigor and hope Mike always brought to his life and work. One of the most affirming tracks is the single “Live Today” with bittersweet lyrics that declare, “Let’s talk about tomorrow when we’ve lived through today / I beg, steal, or borrow, I do whatever it takes,” followed by a chorus that pleads, “I don’t want to live forever / I want to live right now.” The accompanying music video is just as tender, featuring Mike with his guitar on a beach in the north of England. It was filmed just before Mike was headed to the Christie cancer center in Manchester to undergo a progressive form of cell therapy called CAR-T that doctors hoped would eradicate the Richter’s, though sadly that wouldn’t be the case. Almost prophetically, the video concludes with Mike walking off into the sunset.

“I find it hard to watch at the moment,” Jules admits. There are some videos she takes comfort in, however. Every day on the band’s Facebook page, Jules posts a new “this day in Alarm history memory” for the “Alarmies” fans to remember all that Mike contributed to music and culture. There’s a few that Jules has been getting a kick out of lately, like Mike’s cover of Frankie Valli’s “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” with a backing orchestra.

“I was able to watch that video, but it just made me want him back, I miss him,” says Jules, with a lovable honesty. She met her future husband when she was just 19 and enrolled in university studies. Their chemistry was so palpable, they were engaged within a week when Mike proposed at a duck pond they liked to visit. “I know it’s what everyone will say when they lose their partner. It’s just the complexity of this incredible life, you love so hard and then, like that, it’s taken away from you.” It’s a cautionary tale she hopes fans will take away from Transformation, too. “Don’t fuck about, be with the people you love,” Jules instructs. “We’ve got so little time on this planet.”

As Jules explains, Transformation was not Mike’s swan song but rather a message for how to live your life, and in true alignment with that message, Mike worked on the record up until the very end. “He turned his hospital bed into a studio,” Jules says, chuckling at the memory. “He managed to open his laptop, and he pointed out where all the different work was. He did all the artwork in the hospital. It was so important to him that this album went out the way he envisaged it.”

In addition to steering the posthumous release of Transformation , Jules has been busy working on the third installment of Mike’s autobiography. “After years of people and journalists approaching us and saying we want to write Mike’s biography or get Mike to write his autobiography, he finally got to it in the last few years before he died,” Jules shares, explaining that Mike typed it all out with one finger. “I knew his life story was in no way going to fit in one book. So, he broke it out. He wrote Love . Then he wrote Hope , and then he finished Strength , which will be coming out later this year.”

The name of the trilogy mirrors the Alarm song “Strength,” in which Mike sings, “Give me love, give me hope, give me strength.” Says Jules, “Little did he realize that line would become so prophetic.” Of course, it also became the basis for the Love Hope Strength Foundation, which Jules and Chippendale are committed to continuing in the years ahead.

The trio started it in 2005, the same year Mike was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia after a decade in remission (his original non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis came in 1995). “I am more determined than ever now,” Jules admits of her work with the foundation. “There’s so much that we can do.” In addition to encouraging fans to “get on the list” and become a potential donor, the heart of Love Hope Strength is to encourage people to take control of their own health, one step at a time. The foundation grew out of the literal idea that you can climb mountains when you put your mind to it.

“Mike came up with the idea of turning cancer into a positive and remembering who you were the day before you got diagnosed. So when he was in the hospital in 2005, he was constantly looking out of the window at Snowdon, which is the highest mountain here in Wales. And he just said to me, ‘Jules, when I get through this, and I will, I’m going to encourage everyone to come and climb Snowdon with me and put money in a bucket, and then we’re going to bring the bucket and give it to the hospital so it goes straight to the horse’s mouth.’ And that’s exactly what he did.”

In fact, he did one better, climbing to a base camp at Mount Everest. That idea came from Chippendale, who the Peters first met at SXSW in the early 2000s, after learning of his own battle with leukemia and successful transplant as well as a charity he had started. The trio decided to join forces in the mission and the climb, which happened in 2007, was one of their first real expeditions to bring awareness to the cause.

They led a team of about 40 trekkers, including musicians like Slim Jim Phantom from the Stray Cats, Glenn Tilbrook from Squeeze, Nick Harper, and more. They brought instruments too, ultimately setting a then-Guinness World Record for the highest land-based concert. The journey was the basis of the 2012 documentary Everest Rocks, commissioned by MTV. Proceeds from the trek were used to purchase mammography and internal radiation equipment for a local hospital in Nepal (while later missions to Mount Kilimanjaro have also supported children’s cancer wards in Africa).

“We raised a heck of a lot of money,” says Jules, who was homebound at the time. She had just given birth to Evan. But when she too was diagnosed with breast cancer years later, in 2016, she kept up the spirit, walking 10 miles back and forth from her chemotherapy sessions. “We always turned cancer into an adventure,” Jules shares.

In honor of the 20th anniversary of the expedition in 2027, Jules, Evan, and Dylan plan to do it all over again. “Mike’s ambition was that we were going to return as a family to Everest next year, 20 years further on, so much so that we kind of started booking it,” says Jules, adding that some musicians may join, including Billy Duffy from the Cult. “We’re not going to base camp because that’s a bit more complicated now, but we are going to where Edmund Hillary trained for Everest, where you will get the best view. And we’re going to take a few little ashes of Mikey Peters and scatter them to keep his dream going.”

Jules is finally ready to keep going, too. She recently started adding events at her home away from home, the Red, with salsa dancing, line dancing, yoga, jam nights, and trivia every week. She’s also working on a grief podcast, produced by the BBC and recorded at the Red as well. “We’ve had people coming in, going through their own grief or having lost someone years ago and talking about how they’d learn to incorporate it into a positive life. I’ve met this tribe of women who are all going through the same thing,” says Jules, taking comfort in not being alone in her journey. “You realize everyone’s got shit to contend with, especially as you get older. Once you’re in your 50s, we joke it’s like sniper alley. Like what catastrophe is going to happen today? So, we’re turning this into a kind of community center where we can all go through it together.”

Alarmies are also front of mind for Jules and her family. One of the rooms in the chapel is now being converted into a massive Alarm archive that fans will be able to visit once complete. “Fans can visit the archive, then walk through the door of the Red and look around to see if any of us are in, and we can have a great chat and then say, oh, please go over and visit the grave,” Jules recommends, adding, “We joke that we’re becoming like Graceland for the U.K.” Jules is also planning to keep up The Gathering, an Alarm fan meetup in North Wales near where Mike spent his formative years. The next one will be in January 2027, right near a music stadium that has just been renamed the Mike Peters Arena.

While Transformation may be the final Mike Peters album, it’s not the end of the Alarm, says Jules. Their son is now embarking on Evan Peters Presents the Alarm, having recently toured around the U.K. with Big Country, another band Mike was also close with. The idea first came up at Mike’s funeral in May 2025, which featured Evan singing in the church in front of 4,000 fans, friends, and family. “He sang [the Oasis song] ‘Wonderwall’ because Mike taught Evan how to play it,” Jules remembers. As Evan sang, a bird flew in through the door of the chapel and landed right on Mike’s guitar that Evan had been playing. “I don’t know what to believe in anymore,” says Jules about her thoughts on spirits and the afterlife. “But I do believe in the father-to-son connection. There’s something there. And it’s been the most crazy, surreal situation watching him go out on stage and command the audience, just like his father did. He can sing like Mike, too.”

It’s one more way Jules is able to honor Mike and keep his spirit living on, even as his time on Earth was cut too short. “Everything that drives me is to honor his memory, honor his legacy, and honor the incredible person he was.” She pauses for a second, coming upon perhaps a new revelation in her journey with grief. “I love the fact that this is so hard, it just proves how much we loved each other. There are so many things that I’m feeling gratitude for, and I’m trying to channel all that positivity into now,” she shares. “Otherwise, the human race would be extinct, wouldn’t it, if we all expired after losing the people we love? There are a million people out there ahead of me that have done it, and there’ll be a million more behind me. And hopefully, if we can all keep sticking together and sharing how we’re getting through it, we’ll keep surviving. That’s my plan.”