Hallowed Ground first appeared on the Eye Of The Hurricane album released in November 1987.

Lee : I still listen to Eye of the Hurricane. It’s a brilliant album. There’s a couple of songs I just wanted to touch on quickly. ‘Hallowed Ground’ – it’s one of my favourites from the album. It’s quite a magical, mystical Celtic piece. Where did that one come from?
Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Well, to be honest, the album before that – ‘Strength’, we toured extensively. I think we’ve been on the road pretty much from ‘84, ‘85, ‘86 without stopping because we’d started making the album in late ‘84. We didn’t get to produce the record in the way we would, even though we booked the tour to go with it. It was gonna be called “Absolute Reality”. And then the producer had to pull out, so we went on the tour, and we toured for almost 18 months between touring, straight into the studio, back out on the road, and had a lot of success. When we came home, we were returning home, the return for us was playing at Wembley with Queen, and we did two nights there. We played it for 25,000 people in LA. It was amazing, a dream come true. And I got home to Wales, and the last thing I wanted to do is pack another suitcase and go and stay in a hotel. And all through the tour, people have asked me what Wales is like? It’s, well, it’s a place I wanted to get away from, but now I’m answering the question, I think, wow – it’s a beautiful country. It has a great community spirit. I look out over the sea, and I look across the Irish Sea. It’s incredible. I started thinking. Actually, it’s really good. I’ve got tired of being in London, trying to rehearse and write when you’ve got Motorhead on one side and Aswad on the other. You couldn’t think because of the bass rumbling through the walls. And so when I got home after all that, I was staying with my Mum and Dad, and it was right at the time when video cameras became accessible with microphones in them, and I’d always recorded my songs onto a Walkman before that. So I got home, and I decided to get a little car. I’m going to go on a journey of discovery. I’m going to visit Wales, where I come from, and I’m going north and south, east and west. And I took the car, and I took the video camera, and I used to drive around and find these amazing places, set up the camera and just start writing about what I could see. And at one point, I went to Mostyn docks on the north Wales coast, and I set my camera. I could see some abandoned shipping in the harbour and a few of the old cranes (that aren’t there now), but they were there, and I thought, what about what happened here..(singing) “Well, the docks lie crippled in the northern towns…” and it just came out, and I had it there and then. Later I went back and sort of transcribed it, and it became The Alarm song. But I suppose because it was all written in Wales. On all the songs on the album, you’ve got brackets, parentheses after the song, and that’s where the songs were written. I think ‘Hallowed Ground’ might say ‘Mostyn’ on the inner sleeve?
Lee : Vale of Clwyd.
Mike: Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s where I live, you see, and that’s above the Mostyn docks on The Vale of Clwyd on the coast. I went down there and wrote that song, and it was about coming home and seeing people that I’d grown up with were not in the town anymore – they’d gone. It had been the 80s, and it was the Norman Tebbit / Maggie Thatcher, ‘get on your bike’ era – if you can’t get a job in the crippled docklands, move away, get on your bike. Many people had left the community and were struggling in the cities trying to make a new life for themselves without the support and proper training, having to relearn new industries, all this sort of thing. And that’s really when the song was born, in those moments. – From an Interview between Lee Campbell and Mike Peters for XSNoise.com website 31st March 2021

Eye of the Hurricane recording details
Running length: tbc
Written By: Macdonald/Peters

Musicians & Credits
Mike Peters – Lead vocals & acoustic guitar
Dave Sharp – Lead acoustic guitar
Eddie Macdonald – Bass guitar
Nigel Twist – Drums
Mark Taylor – Keyboards

Backing track recorded May/June 1987 at Great Linford Manor Studios, Milton Keynes, England.
Produced by John Porter. Engineered Tony Platt. Mixed by David Leonard

(Page updated 26/05/2021)