Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
The peace of Wales inspires a War album
Lockdown is vehicle for The Alarms ‘sign of the times’ release
The Alarm’s new album title is A Sort of Home Coming with some strong emotional ties to Ireland. Mike Peters and (Electric) Co might’ve come up with an eyecatching War with the letter R in reverse to strongly differentiate it from U2’s third album.
But they’ve come full circle seeing as their own big break was supporting the Irish band on their massive War Tour. It produced Live at Red Rocks concert film and Under a Blood Red Sky live album.
Welsh-born Mike had decamped to the Big Smoke and was working around the clock to wake the city up to the sound of The Alarm when he got an unexpected phone call from U2’s frontman in 1983.
The support slot offer meant Mike – who later also became the vocalist for Big Country in the early noughties – could stop knocking on doors in London.
“When Bono phoned up and said, ‘I want you guys to come to America on tour with us’ – I just packed up the flat and moved back to Wales,” he told me. “I thought, ‘We’ve made it. We’re off. This is it!’”
And he was bang on too – with them soon later going to number six in the UK album charts with Declaration in 1984.
“Wales was a place I wanted to get away from as a kid, but when I was on tour in America and people were asking me, ‘What’s Wales like?’ I’d describe it to them and then I’d think myself, ‘That sounds amazing, doesn’t it?’” he said.
“I loved the fact that in Wales I could hear myself think. When we got to London and we turned up at rehearsal studios you could have Motörhead next door and Aswad on the other side – and you couldn’t hear yourself think.
“Whereas in Wales, I could set up my guitars and actually hear myself think in the silence and the beauty of the surroundings I’d find myself in.
“It was that creative space that allowed The Alarm to find the spark that ignited the whole thing.”
It all helped inspire their third album Eye of The Hurricane with its catchy top 20 hit single Rain in the Summertime.
“So that summer (1986), all the rest of the band went on holiday. We had played at Wembley Stadium with Queen and then I came home,” he recalled.
“I thought, ‘I’m not going on holiday, I’m sick of suitcases and touring in planes. I want a break from that’.
“I got in my car and travelled around Wales. And the music that I wrote on that trip became the Eye of The Hurricane album.”
Mike also had another reason for wanting to stay put – he had just fallen head over heels in love with his future wife (and future band mate for that matter).
It shows just how much of a romantic Mike really is that he can still recall the exact date he first laid eyes on Jules.
“We met on August 14, 1986 – it was a Thursday,” he recalled.
“I’d come home off the huge tour when we met. I met Jules on the high street in Prestatyn. Her Mum and dad had an estate agent business opposite my Mum and Dad’s clothes shop.
“And I just literally bumped into her – and bang! It was love at first sight. It was incredible.
“I invited her on a date. I took her out in the car and I was playing a tape, and she turned to me and said, ‘It’s a bit of a pose taking a girl out on a date and playing your own band’s music while driving along, ain’t it?’
“And I went, ‘That’s not The Alarm – it’s The Clash!’
“Jules didn’t know who I was, she didn’t know I was from a band, she’d been in university, she was 19-yearsold.
“And she never got to see me play live for a year. So I think that’s why we have such a strong relationship – that it wasn’t built out of rock ‘n’ roll.
“It was built out of two ordinary people falling in love with each other and starting a life together.”
It gets even better. “I proposed to her by the duck pond in Prestatyn one week later!”
Was she shocked? “No, I think Jules was hoping I was going to ask. Our relationship was immense straight away.”
He certainly got his father’s two thumbs up from the get-go. “I brought her back to my house, I didn’t have a key to get in, I had to knock on the door and my dad came down in his dressing gown to let me in,” he said.
“He went back up stairs and my mum used to tell me he said, ‘He’s got a right cracker down there!’”
He added: “Jules’ Mum was a bit shocked because Jules was only 19 and she turns up with this guy with big, spiky hair and leather trousers on! I was 27. And she was like, ‘What!’”
But affable Mike soon won her over. “My mum and dad and Jules’ mum and dad became fantastic friends and they’d go out together and come to our gigs,” he said.
Mike joked about how “some men probably used to come see The Alarm dragging along their partners, kicking and screaming” before Jules joined.
“All of a sudden they’re thinking, ‘Wow! There’s a female on the stage!’” he said.
“We broadened our appeal to the female fans – they have got their own heroine on the stage.”
He added: “Jules (right) has been on stage with me since ’92. She dropped out while we started trying to build a family with IVF and dealing with cancer.”
The War with a reverse R is an apt album title because they’ve both literally been through the wars battling the Big
C. Mike was diagnosed with leukaemia and then Jules with breast cancer.
“I thought I’d taken the cancer bullet for our family and then it hit again.
It was a real shock when Jules was diagnosed with breast
I wanted to sing about lockdown while we where still in lockdown.
cancer,” he said.
“It was horrible seeing Jules being savaged by the surgery and cancer. But she soldiered on. Jules has been tirelessly mentoring other breast cancers survivors ever since.” He mused: “The Alarm is rolling with the punches and coming back stronger in ways that we never thought imaginable when we were in our darkest hours.”
I was given a sneak peak earlier this week of The Alarm’s new “work in progress” album while they’re still in the studio working on it.
I’m happy to report The Alarm are still at the top of their game and Mike’s powerful lyrics – inspired by COVID-19 and Trump – really resonate.
There’s some great anthems on it that will have their fans punching the air and waving obligatory lighters when concerts are eventually permitted again.
They decided to make the album “fast and furious” – with the recording starting on January 7 and it being officially launched a day after Mike’s birthday on February 25. “I feel like we’ve made ten singles,” he said.
They’ve even come up with the novel idea of advance-releasing the album “with no music in a special CD format in which fans can download and then burn the tracks one by one.”
The band promises “finished tracks will be sent electronically to fans once the final mix and mastering process has taken place”. There will also be a “hand-cut” vinyl edition.
“When I was buying The Sex Pistols’ God Save The Queen – you were buying it while the Queen’s Jubilee was happening. So it had massive relevance,” he explained.
“I bought White Riot by The Clash just weeks after the Nothing Hill Riots and it just felt so real.
“I thought with this record, ‘We’ve got to release it now while we’re in lockdown, while we’re still feeling the effects of the world changing all around us’.
“I didn’t want to have a record that looks back on these times: ‘Remember when we were all in lockdown?’ I wanted to sing about lockdown while we where still in lockdown.
“I bought the John Lennon retrospective album at Christmas. I was listening to Instant Karma. He made it really fast. He came up with the quote, he said he ‘wrote it for breakfast, recorded it for lunch and released it for dinner’.
“I thought, Yeah, that’s the immediacy I needed to find in the music I’m writing right now’ – so that was the trigger for the whole thing.”
I joked about Mike’s nicking U2’s album title War. “With the reverse R. He’s nicked a few off us, I’m sure!” he quipped.
There’s another Irish connection on The Alarm’s upcoming retrospective box set History Repeating 1981-2021 out in the summer.
When I spoke to Mike two years ago, he mentioned his first band The Toilets had a Northern Irish frontman named Richard “O’malley” Jones,who sadly died young.
“The Alarm began with The Toilets. Our official biography says the band started in 1981 but that was just to cover up all the sins of our earlier lives before that!” he half-joked.
“And for the inner sleeve I wanted to create a depiction of everybody that’s been in the band. And from talking to you, I thought, ‘O’malley’s got to be in it’.
“As will all the fans – because we’ve created the record sleeve in such a way that all the fans are having their name in this.
“We call it The Alarm Roll of Honour – everybody who pre-orders the vinyl or CD now can be part of the testimony of our time on the planet.
“It’s from doing that piece with yourself that really started me thinking, ‘How are we going to put this down as a marker for all time?’
“So O’malley’s going to appear on an Alarm record for the first time in his life – and he’s not with us anymore. But he deserves the praise and the immortalization that he’ll get from being on the record sleeve.”
Hear! Hear!
■ The Alarm’s new album ‘War’ is out on 26 February but can be pre-ordered now, as can their retrospective box set History Repeating 1981-2021 from www. thealarm.com
‘‘ Cold-blooded con artist has to battle with a hot-blooded killer for her wealth
I CARE A LOT ★★★
Cert 15
On Amazon Prime now
There’s no such thing as good people,” says Rosamund Pike’s Marla Grayson in an opening voiceover. If this was a heartwarming drama, this line would signal the “journey” that our poor, wounded heroine was about to embark upon. I Care A Lot is a much more mean-spirited affair.
Instead of watching Marla learn to reconnect with humanity, we end up agreeing with every word.
As the founder and CEO of Grayson Guardianships, Marla seeks out elderly people with no family and fat bank accounts. After bribing a doctor to diagnose them with dementia, she then petitions a judge to make her their “ward” so she can take over their financial affairs, lock them in a care home and bleed them dry.
Then she and her girlfriend and partner Fran (Eiza González) scam the wrong person.
According to the corrupt doctor, Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest) has a very minor memory problem and no family to look out for her.
But crime lords such as Roman Lunyov (Peter Dinklage) don’t appear on official records. So this time, the cold-blooded con artist will have to do battle with a hot-blooded killer with a vested interest in Jennifer’s wealth.
Pike (who has been nominated for a Golden Globe) was great fun being bad in Gone Girl, but for this character to work, writer-director J Blakeson needed to make us root for her against our better judgment.
This time, Pike’s arch delivery and Marla’s devilish ingenuity aren’t enough. Blakeson stages the effective kidnapping of Jennifer so powerfully that I was never going to be on Marla’s side.
As the pitch-black comedy gave way to a tense game of cat and mouse, I found it impossible to care.
Newtownards native Ricky Warwick has already lived a remarkable life – and he’s likely just getting warmed up. For many, he’ll always be the guy from 90s metal titans The Almighty – though he’s since fronted a reformed Thin Lizzy (who morphed into Black Star Riders), has played with New Model Army and collaborated with some of the biggest names in rock on the planet.
I should say at this point – I’ll talk about Glentoran FC at any given opportunity – but – bizarrely – the greatest football club on the planet are directly responsible for Ricky’s refreshed solo career, one which continues to blossom with When Life Was Hard and Fast, released today.
Introducing Sam Robinson – Glentoran diehard and renowned football historian, having published two well received books on his chosen specialist subject. Sam and Ricky – a match made in heaven – fell for each other on the Sydenham end.
“Primarily, it’s all about the football” Sam explains. “We are disciples of Glentoran Football Club, a team raised under the shadows of the east Belfast shipyard gantries. After the friendship and the football, there’s the music.”
But how did Sam – with his limited musical chops (“I can just about hold down a B7 chord on the acoustic guitar”) – end up writing lyrics for Ricky’s 2016 double album – and subsequently this brand new release? A big two boxing day postponement a few years back played it’s part. The snow forced Sam and Ricky to the local pub where they stumbled upon the idea of lyrical collaboration.
“The challenge set us both off on a mad musical odyssey, that neither of us could have contemplated when we had stood frozen on the terraces at the Oval in the beginning.”
Ricky – almost inevitably – lives in Beverly Hills – so the writing and collaborating is mostly done online or on the blower.
“We talk all the time” explains Sam. “I’ve learned through writing with my mate, that the words that tell the story are – to paraphrase Al Pacino – everywhere around us. During one of our cross Atlantic phone calls, he asked me. ‘What do you think of this for a song title? Easy to Hold, Hard to Break’. I told him I loved it and asked where he had found the words.
“On the back of my daughter’s Crayola crayon box,’ he explained.”
Curious inspiration aside, the new solo record is set up nicely. Lead single ‘When Life Was Hard & Fast’ is bittersweet and reflective, yet utterly relentless – something of a theme throughout Ricky’s recent work.
‘No one thought to tell me… the faces in the picture would fade away so soon’ he sings – before duelling guitars, Joe Elliot backing vocals and an epic solo put paid to any sepia tinted distress. Another taster – the incredible ‘You Don’t Love Me’, has an almost alt. rock / college rock feel, alongside another instantly memorable, belter of a chorus. It bodes well for what could end up noted as his most concise – and likely his finest solo album to date.
“As the title track declares, we grew up together… along a rain lashed road” reflects Sam – forever the modern day poet, before reflecting on a partnership like no other.
The challenge set us both off on a mad musical odyssey, that neither of us could have contemplated when we had stood frozen on the terraces at the Oval in the beginning.
”Sometimes – when the planets line up – I get to watch a packed Barrowlands or Ulster Hall roar our songs back up at Ricky on stage. Incredibly the musicians who shaped our love of music through those difficult teenage
years, thanks to my mate, I now get to call friends.
“Except for Neil Diamond… cause I’ve never seen him at the Oval…”
When Life Was Hard and Fast is out today on Banquet Records with an album launch happeniung tomorrrow evening via Zoom. Check Ricky Warwick’s social media for more info.
BARCLAYS has set aside almost £5billion to cover loans it fears may turn toxic due to the pandemic.
In annual results yesterday the bank revealed it loaned around £27bn to support British businesses last year to help them survive the economic impact of coronavirus.
On top of that it waived approximately £100million of fees and interest charges.
And it provided more than 680,000 payment holidays to its struggling customers.
But after businesses, consumers and the wider economy showed escalating levels of stress due to Covid-19, Barclays more than doubled the amount it had allocated to potentially problem loans – from £1.9bn to £4.8bn.
Despite the increase in its loan loss provisions, Barclays still achieved a profit in every quarter. It made a £3.1bn pre-tax profit for 2020, a 30% reduction on the previous year.
Revenues were up 1% at £21.8bn. Barclays chief executive Jes Staley said given the business’s robust performance during 2020 and its financial strength, it would be able to hand £875m back to its shareholders.
This will be done by paying a 1p per share dividend and spending £700m on buying back some shares, a move that should push their value higher.
Barclays cancelled its annual dividend when the pandemic began last spring. But Staley said: “Given the strength of our business, the time is right to resume capital distributions.”