The ’27 Club’ recently inducted a new member – Amy Winehouse. For those of you not familiar with this infamous club, it only has two criteria: you must be famous, and you must have died at the age of 27.
The name was coined surrounding the deaths of Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, soul singer Janis Joplin, guitarist Jimi Hendrix and Doors frontman Jim Morrison – the first four to be included in this morbid mob. All, bar Joplin’s death, were considered suspicious in nature
The 27 Club ‘curse’ now flares whenever a famous actor or musician dies aged 27 – mostly under suspicious or ambiguous circumstances.
After a lull between the late 70s and late 80s, the pattern of musicians dying at age 27 was brought up again with the death of Nirvana front man Kurt Cobain. Who’s death was also a bit suss. The idea then kicked into over drive when 27-year-old Kristen Pfaff, the bassist of Hole, died two months after Cobain. Although her death was less conspiracy worthy – a heroin overdose.
The question arises why have so many influential musicians died at the not so ripe-old-age of 27 and what could possibly be the common factor amongst them? Well, it’s actually pretty anti-climactic…too much alcohol and/or being too stoned off your face to see say, a swimming pool and falling in it.
There are a lot of famous people who have died at the age of 27…there are also a lot of people who have died of the same issues who weren’t 27; Michael Jackson, John Belushi, Heath Ledger, Adam Goldstein, River Phoenix… the list is endless.
The case of the 27 Club is simple, those that were unlucky enough to make the morbid members list fell into one or all of these categories – one; heroin users, two; freaked out by their sudden rise to fame, or three; had alcohol problems. For a lot of them it was a mixture of all three. Some were booted out of their bands because of this bad behaviour and they just spiralled out of control from the rejection.
In short, the musician side of the club has seen 7 drug overdoses, 4 car crashes, 1 plane crash, 4 suicides, 1 diabetic coma, 1 drowning and the rest are listed as organ failures (due to alcohol or drug abuse), murder or “uncertain”. It is the suspicious deaths that let the imagination run wild with ideas of why and how they died. There is even a book on this if you really want to get amongst it titled The 27’s: The Greatest Myth in Rock & Roll. There are some very entertaining theories out there.