FANS of rock legends Big Country are set to descend on Dunfermline next week to pay homage to late lead singer Stuart Adamson.

On what would have been the iconic musician’s 60th birthday, a number of the band’s followers are set to be embark on a pilgrimage to the city that set them on their way to stardom worldwide.

Singer-songwriter Stuart, who founded another legendary West Fife band, The Skids, before forming Big Country alongside Bruce Watson, was just 43 when he took his own life in a Hawaii hotel on December 16 2001.

His death shocked the rock world but, more than 16 years on, he and both bands remain revered both at home and around the globe.

The event on Wednesday will provide Big Country fans with the ‘Chance’ to explore the city that was Adamson’s ‘Wonderland’ and provided the sights, inspiration and scenes behind the music that saw them sell millions of records across the world.

It will start at 11am at the front steps of the Glen Pavilion, which hosted Big Country’s first-ever gig in February 1982 with a line-up consisting of Stuart and Bruce, together with Clive Parker, Pete and Alan Wishart.

Its stage also hosted the inaugural gig with the members who would record the signature album, ‘The Crossing’, when Stuart and Bruce were joined for the first time by bass player Tony Butler and drummer Mark Brzezicki.

The gathering of fans will end in Tappie Toories – which Stuart previously owned – before a Big Country tribute band perform an acoustic gig at Balmule House in the evening.

The sold-out show by Irish three-piece The Buffalo Skinners will include a tour of the historic building – now a four-star hotel – once owned by Stuart, where rehearsals for the 1988 album Peace in our Time were held in an outbuilding that was turned into a recording studio.

Stuart, who was born in Manchester on April 11, 1958 and grew up in Crossgates, was a big Dunfermline Athletic fan and the team still run out to one of his songs, The Skids hit Into the Valley, which he wrote with Richard Jobson.

Big Country continue to tour both at home and abroad and, speaking to Press:ON ahead of their year-ending hometown gigs, Bruce said: “As long as the band remains healthy we all want to do it. There are still countries that want to hear Big Country play their back catalogue of music.

“People still want to hear the first three albums – the big ones – and as long as they’re willing to support us, we’re willing to play for them.

“You’ve got the fans who have been there since day one, now in their fifties, standing beside people who weren’t born when we started.

“You still see the same faces which is always great; they’ve had the same warmth and affection from the start.

“It’s been fantastic to be received well wherever we’ve gone, that includes in our home town.”

Some of Big Country’s biggest hits are likely to be aired at the gig, including the likes of Fields of Fire, In a Big Country and Look Away.