Mike Peters (The Alarm)

With Mike Peters belting out anthemic songs such as “Sixty Eight Guns” and “Spirit of ’76,” the Alarm could rouse an audience no matter the size—and it often was big. “Rain in the Summertime” and “Sold Me Down the River” boosted this Welsh band’s U.S. popularity before Peters broke up the group in 1991 and re-started it years later. In the meantime he was diagnosed with leukemia, and he wrote much of the Alarm’s new album, Forwards, during a recent, harrowing hospital stay. Now he is performing again and reflecting on the concert that changed his life, the folly of kidnapping a journalist, all those U2 comparisons, the lightning bolts of inspiration and how he has created what he calls his own little soundtrack of hope to lead him out of the darkness.