The Alarm's Mike Peters has battled cancer so many times he says he's "lost count."
The Welsh singer-songwriter is healthy today, but a little over a year ago, he was in vastly different condition.
"I had a bit of a rough year in 2022," Peters tells Q104.3 New York's Out of the Box with Jonathan Clarke. "I was diagnosed with pneumonia ... and then my lungs filled with blood and it triggered a whole response from my leukemia and I was in hospital for a long time."
Peters suffers from chronic lymphocytic leukemia and has battled cancer on-and-off since the mid-'90s. When the disease returned last year for another round, Peters filled his time between tests and treatments by writing songs and performing occasionally for hospital staff and fellow patients.
"I just wanted to keep my fingers going and be able to play, you know, quietly, and the other patients in the ward said, 'Turn it up! Play a bit louder. We're enjoying this,'" he recalls. "The nurses were liking it; they were hanging around my bedside while I was playing. And they were like, 'Play us something new!' ... Next minute, I started writing a new song. It all came out of the hospital."
One song inspired from Peters' recent bout with cancer is "There's Always Another Way," which he performed for the show!
Check out the full conversation and Peters' live in-studio performance via the player above!
The Alarms latest album is Forwards and the band will be back on tour in June. Go here for tour dates and more information!
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Watch the music video for The Alarm's "Whatever" here: