03/07/2026
SWEET MEMORIES - ZIGGY AND SICILY.
Some dates never leave. They settle quietly, then echo for years.
On this day in 1973, David Bowie stepped onto the stage at London's Hammersmith Odeon and ended Ziggy Stardust.
I was 13 and over excitedly in London on a school trip. Thrilled to be buying my first ever pair of platform shoes, even more so to be bound for Italy - when the news came through on radio. "David Bowie is retiring from music. He will never record or perform live again."
That's what the voice on air said. It wasn't quite true though. He wasn't retiring at all, he was simply done with Ziggy, and done with the band too.
But I didn't know any of that. I had seen Ziggy in Glasgow only a few weeks before and was utterly obsessed. All I heard was that it was over, and I mourned profoundly.
Still, life mysteriously finds ways of carrying you forward. Always does. Over the next decade Bowie, forever restless, would go on to work with an endless amount of innovative collaborators while performing live repeatedly.
Likewise, a decade later, still 22 on that very same week, my own life was taking shape in ways I could not have previously imagined.
Alongside a few school mates, we had formed a band I had spontaneously named ‘Simple Minds’ and had spent much of the previous four years touring the world. By then five albums into our career, including New Gold Dream, we were headed towards Sicily for the first time.
On a ramshackle stage overlooking the mystical Strait of Messina on that first night, we would play beneath a jet-black sky, thick with silver stars - the kind that makes you look up and linger for entire moments. Captivated instantly. It felt as if the island of Sicily was announcing itself to me.
The very next day then brought Taormina, a name that until then meant nothing. Jeez…. I thought I knew beauty. I thought I had seen enough of the world to be unsurprised. I was wrong. The light, the stone, the volcano, the sea - I fell for it immediately.
Earlier this week, walking down from Madonna della Rocca in Taormina, I listened to Bowie’s Aladdin Sane. It brought it all back - sweet memories that never leave.
Jim Kerr. Villa Angela. Taormina. Sicily
