Come On Down And Meet Your Maker

Mike Peters
1959 - 2025
Welsh rock star Mike Peters passed away today after a thirty year battle with cancer.  The lead singer of The Alarm was 66 years old.

His band is best known for their singles Sixty Eight Guns, Strength, Rescue Me, Rain In The Summertime, and Sold Me Down The River, but the first song that comes to mind when I think of The Alarm is their 1984 homage to my favorite book, Stephen King's The Stand, which Mr. Peters co-wrote the song with guitarist Dave Sharp and bassist Eddie Macdonald.

Mr. Peters spoke about the origin of this song, titled "The Stand (Prophecy)" in a 2020 interview with Greg Prato of SongFacts, saying "I had this song that was like a folky version of The Magnificent Seven by The Clash...  and I thought I could take it into the folk area, and set the story of The Stand to the music of the A minor and G chords, and the E minor and the F. It was something that came about pretty fast...".

The Stand (Prophecy)

The Alarm (1984) 

Come on down and meet your maker

Come on down and make the stand

I have been out searching, and with the black book in my hand

I have looked between the lines that lie on the pages that I tread

I met the walking dude, religious, in his worn down cowboy boots

He walked liked no man on Earth, I swear he had no name

I swear he had no name

Come on down and meet your maker

Come on down and make the stand

Come on down, come on down

Come on down and make the stand

As I crawled beneath the searchlights

Looking through the floorboards of this life

I met Doctor Strangelove's cousin, he bore the marks of time

Hey, Trashcan, where you going, boy? Your eyes are feet apart

Is that the end you're carrying? Shall I play the funeral march?

Play the funeral march

Come on down and meet your maker

Come on down and make the stand

Come on down, come on down

Come on down and we'll make the stand

When I looked out the window on the hardship that had struck

I saw the seven phials open, the plague claimed man and son

Four men at a grave in silence with hats bowed down in grace

A simple wooden cross, it had no epitaph engraved

It had no epitaph engraved

Come on down and meet your maker

Come on down and make the stand

Come on down, come on down

Come on and make the stand