Written by Ben Province

“GOING OUT IN A BLAZE OF GLORY/Setting your sights for the sky … You can take anything that you want from me/But you cannot take my soul.”

The words that the late Mike Peters sang on The Alarm’s early-’80s track “Blaze of Glory” have never been more powerful than they are today.

The frontman of a music group that Bono once called “the second greatest rock and roll band in the world” has died at the age of 66, following 30 years of battling cancer.

His fight inspired him, along with his wife and Alarm bandmate Jules Peters, to co-found Love Hope Strength Foundation.

In 1995, he was diagnosed with lymphoma, and later chronic lymphocytic leukemia. A year ago, he was diagnosed with Richter’s Syndrome, a complication of CLL.

But his life, character, inspiring courage and musical influence will continue to vibrantly echo.

In 2019, when The Killers played The Alarm’s homeland of Wales, they performed the Welsh band’s classic “Rain in the Summertime,” knowing Mike was in the audience.

A few months later, he told me, on an episode of this site’s podcast, how the surprise happened.

“Actually, I’d been contacted by The Killers before the show,” Mike told me in 2019.

“They announced the show and said, ‘Look, we want you to come down to Wales and play. We want to play some Alarm songs with you singing, and then you stay up and we do a Killers song together.’”

The exact plan didn’t come to fruition, as the Las Vegas rockers were about to play Glastonbury Festival and told Peters they had bitten off more than they could chew but hoped to do something together later. They invited him to the show and asked him to hang out after the concert had ended.

“So, I went to the show, but I had no idea they were going to play “Rain in the Summertime.” When it hit, that was a complete shock,” and he’d go on to say that he didn’t recognize it at first. “This isn’t on “Sam’s Town.” Which one’s this?”

Backstage, The Killers had a copy of The Alarm’s latest album at the time, “Sigma,” with them that they wanted Mike to sign, he recalled at the time.

The Alarm saw success early in the band’s career, when 1983’s “Sixty Eight Guns” went to No. 17 on the U.K. singles chart. “Rain in the Summertime” would peak one spot shy on the same chart four years later.

The band would initially disband in 1991, but would begin releasing music again in the 21st century, with Peters leading a new lineup.

2004’s “45 R.P.M.” and 2006’s “Superchannel” became hit singles, and the former was initially released under the band name The Poppy Fields. The idea was that if listeners believed this was a song by a younger band (portrayed by a real band, the Wayriders, lip syncing in a music video), the song would become a hit. The hypothesis was correct, and it re-jumpstarted The Alarm.

According to Mike Peters, that story, which inspired the 2012 film “Vinyl,” is what made members of the Killers fans of the band.

The Alarm released more than 15 albums since the beginning of the new millennium. The planned LP “TRANSORMATION” had been announced in January, to be released in the summer.

The lead single, “Chimera,” was released earlier this year.

It was released the day he received a revolutionary transplant called CAR-T therapy.

Though it proved to be unsuccessful, the takeaway is how defiantly relentless Mike Peters was. He never stopped creating. He never stopped fighting. He never stopped inspiring others.

I only had the privilege of spending less than an hour with him, and that’s all I needed to be inspired by the quality of his character, something that’s stayed with me years later.

Perhaps nothing sums up a life well lived better than a post on the Alarm’s Instagram, which reads in part, “TOTALLY FREE.”

Free indeed.