Wikipedia

The 27 Club is a term that refers to the belief that an unusually high number of popular musicians and other artists have died at age 27, often as a result of drug and alcohol abuse, or violent means such as homicide or suicide.
Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison all died at the age of 27 between 1969 and 1971. At the time, the coincidence gave rise to some comment, but it was not until the death of Kurt Cobain, about two and a half decades later, that the idea of a “27 Club” began to catch on in public perception.
According to Hendrix and Cobain biographer Charles R. Cross, the growing importance of the media—Internet, television and magazines—and the response to an interview of Cobain’s mother were jointly responsible for such theories.
In 2011, seventeen years after Cobain’s death, Amy Winehouse died at the age of 27, and there was a large amount of media attention devoted to the club once again.

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  1. shinichi Post author

    P-I’s Writer in Residence Charles R. Cross explores the darker side of ‘only the good die young’

    by Charles R. Cross

    http://www.seattlepi.com/news/article/P-I-s-Writer-in-Residence-Charles-R-Cross-1229072.php

    Without intending it I’ve spent the better part of the past decade writing about members of the 27 Club.

    This is not a club that most would want to join, since the price of admission includes both fame and premature death. In truth, it’s not a club at all but a name for a grouping of obituaries. It refers to the surprising number of famous musicians who have passed away at the untimely age of 27.

    The list includes Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix — the subjects of my last two biographies — and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin all knew each other and bizarrely they all died within one ten-month span. Add in Cobain’s modern passing, and consider that four of the most famous musicians in rock ‘n’ roll history passed away at the same age.

    That is either an extraordinary coincidence or, if you believe in the ominous idea of the 27 Club, a curse. Hendrix, Morrison and Joplin all were at least lucky enough to die before the Internet, “Entertainment Tonight” and People magazine. It wasn’t until Kurt Cobain took his own life in 1994 that the idea of the 27 Club arrived in the popular zeitgeist.

    Cobain’s suicide set off a worldwide media onslaught and Cobain’s mother added to the launch of the Club concept. Upon hearing of her son’s death, Wendy Fradenburg Cobain O’Connor told one reporter, “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.”

    P-I’s Writer in Residence Charles R. Cross explores the darker side of ‘only the good die young’
    By CHARLES R. CROSS, P-I WRITER IN RESIDENCE Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, February 22, 2007

    Charles R. Cross Photo: Mike Urban/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Photo: Mike Urban/Seattle Post-Intelligencer
    Charles R. Cross

    Without intending it I’ve spent the better part of the past decade writing about members of the 27 Club.
    This is not a club that most would want to join, since the price of admission includes both fame and premature death. In truth, it’s not a club at all but a name for a grouping of obituaries. It refers to the surprising number of famous musicians who have passed away at the untimely age of 27.

    The list includes Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix — the subjects of my last two biographies — and Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. Hendrix, Morrison, and Joplin all knew each other and bizarrely they all died within one ten-month span. Add in Cobain’s modern passing, and consider that four of the most famous musicians in rock ‘n’ roll history passed away at the same age.

    That is either an extraordinary coincidence or, if you believe in the ominous idea of the 27 Club, a curse. Hendrix, Morrison and Joplin all were at least lucky enough to die before the Internet, “Entertainment Tonight” and People magazine. It wasn’t until Kurt Cobain took his own life in 1994 that the idea of the 27 Club arrived in the popular zeitgeist.

    Cobain’s suicide set off a worldwide media onslaught and Cobain’s mother added to the launch of the Club concept. Upon hearing of her son’s death, Wendy Fradenburg Cobain O’Connor told one reporter, “Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club.”

    Her quote was carried worldwide by The Associated Press. Critics later mocked O’Connor’s comments, calling them insensitive. In O’Connor’s defense, coming up with a good sound bite is not something that most grieving parents are concerned with upon immediately hearing that their firstborn has died of suicide.

    What The Associated Press didn’t report, and what might have made the cynical idea of the “27 Club” less attractive to Internet bloggers, was O’Connor’s full quote to the Aberdeen Daily World reporter she spoke to. She said of her only son, “I’ll never hold him again. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.” Unfortunately, it was O’Connor’s condensed “stupid club” quote that went out on the wire, and that radio disc jockeys were talking about in the days to come.

    While Cobain’s lifestyle is defenseless, it is worth noting that he found fame — and thus infamy — because, like the other members of the 27 Club, he created a body of work that has had lasting impact.

    The 27 Club theory has its own Web sites and Wikipedia entry. References to the 27 Club pop up regularly in films, television, books, and across the Internet. Florida writer Carl Hiaasen penned a novel called “Basket Case” with a plot centered on one has-been rocker who was obsessed with the fact that his career would have done better had he died at 27. There are several bands with “27 Club” in their name, including a U.K. hip-hop outfit called The 27 Club who are all over Myspace.com. An off-Broadway play titled “27 Heaven” opens in New York in March. And, just last month, the Astrological Lodge of London held a two-part seminar seeking to explain the 27 Club as an astrological phenomenon.

    One set of conspiracy theorists suggests the absurd notion that Kurt Cobain intentionally timed his death so he could join the 27 Club. Cobain was an astute student of rock history, but he had been troubled for years and suffered from a long history of depression and addiction. He had nearly died from drug overdoses on at least two dozen occasions in the year before his death. He had also made several previous suicide attempts at various ages.

    The Internet bloggers don’t mention that Cobain was one of more than 30,000 people who took their own lives in America in 1994, a statistic that surely reflects an epidemic that is rarely talked about and doesn’t make for fun banter on drive-time radio. Three quarters of a million Americans attempt suicide in a given year. Cobain had turned 27 only two months before he took his own life, and to suggest he waited the additional 70 days to have a different number in his newspaper obituary is insane but does pop up in 27 Club debates on the Internet.

    It is true that Cobain predicted he would die young, but that is a function of family history, social circumstance and adolescent morbidity. He knew that Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison all had died at 27, but at least as a teenager Kurt was under the mistaken impression that they had all taken their own lives. “I want to be rich and famous and kill myself like Jimi Hendrix,” Kurt told a friend in junior high. He also bragged to his adolescent buddies that an uncle had killed himself “over” the death of Jim Morrison, another fabrication.

    These kinds of discussions of suicide and unnatural death are frequent topics for adolescent boys, though Cobain had what has to be considered an obsession with suicide. He grew up in a family where three other members had taken their own lives and he witnessed a suicide during his childhood, all of which predisposed him.

    Adolescent boys as a group are at highest risk for suicide, and even at 27 Cobain suffered from the kind of extended adolescence that made such morbid talk an almost daily part of life. Cobain would have turned 40 this Feb. 20 if he were still alive, and this April will mark the 13th anniversary of his death. That the idea of a 40-year-old Cobain seems so odd is a testament to the way Kurt created and marketed an image of youth rebellion.

    Another set of conspiracy theorists suggests on other Web sites that Cobain didn’t commit suicide, despite the fact that all the forensic evidence suggests such. These ideas owe mostly to the popularity of a fictionalized “documentary” film that hints at foul play without ever offering any substance of proof. This DVD has been a popular rental with a generation that seeks urban legends and distrusts authority by nature. On a psychological level, the denial of suicide is widespread enough to be a cultural phenomenon. Add celebrity to that, and fans who want to blame anyone other than their departed idol, and you’ve got a tailor-made audience for any rumor.

    Arguing the individual points of Cobain’s death scene is hardly worth the time, but consider this grisly undeniable truth: Two years before his death, Cobain tracked down through great effort and expense a bootlegged video (this was in the era before YouTube). It showed a Pennsylvania state official shooting himself in the head on live television. Cobain watched this video repeatedly and was obsessed with it to a point where even his highly cynical friends found it repulsive. Could that behavior possibly be an indication that he was troubled?

    Laying aside Kurt Cobain’s sad fate, the number of musicians who passed away at 27 is truly remarkable by any standard. Though humans die regularly at all ages, there is a statistical spike for musicians who die at 27. In addition to Cobain, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones also died at 27. Others include Chris Bell, of the legendary power pop band Big Star; D. Boon, of the great punk band the Minutemen; Pete Ham, of Badfinger; Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, of the Grateful Dead; bluesman Robert Johnson; Johnny Kidd, of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates; Les Harvey, of Stone the Crows; Raymond “Freaky Tah” Rogers, of Lost Boyz; Gary Thain, of Uriah Heep; Alan Wilson, of Canned Heat; Jeremy Ward, of Mars Volta; Dave Alexander, of The Stooges; and the list goes on and on into more obscure bands. Seattle has two other statistical members: Kristen Pfaff, of Hole, who died of a heroin overdose just three months after Cobain; and Mia Zapata, who was murdered in 1993 in what is surely one of the most tragic chapters in the Seattle rock history book.

    There are other years that also seem to stand as death milestones for musicians. The age of 33 took rock critic Lester Bangs, AC/DC’s Bon Scott, and Blind Lemon Jefferson. (It was also the age of Jesus Christ upon his death.) The 42 mark claimed DJ Alan Freed, The Band’s Richard Manuel, Peter Tosh and Elvis Presley. Certainly an inordinate number of rock musicians have died in their twenties, which is not surprising considering that lifestyle factors, including drug and alcohol abuse, played a role in most of these deaths. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols only made it to 21, though if there is anything such as a “Stupid Club” in rock ‘n’ roll, one imagines Vicious deserves honorary membership both for the murder of his girlfriend and his own death from drugs.

    At least part of our fascination with the 27 Club may be biological; scientists have suggested that we are captivated with analyzing death because such investigations make us better able to stave it off. The urge to scan the obituaries and to look at the ages of the deceased appears to be universal and across cultures. It may come from a need for assurance that most deaths fall within a normal range. When someone like Anna Nicole Smith passes away at the age of 39, her age ends up in every headline. Early death is almost expected for those who are famous, perhaps as a precautionary tale of excess and as a warning.

    As for explaining the statistical spike of the 27 Club, the members of the Astrological Lodge of London steadfastly maintain that it is all about the stars: Saturn returns, in astrological terms, every 28 years, marking a life transition. Saturn’s return marks the end of youth and the beginning of maturity. There is, however, no statistical increase of death at 27 among the general population, just famous musicians.

    Rock ‘n’ roll, a medium obsessed with youth and rebellion, is a profession that carries certain career risks. Seattle’s own Jimi Hendrix was an adherent of astrology, and in a bizarre prescience he predicted his own accidental death at 27. Hendrix, who was born in Harborview Hospital on Nov. 27, suggested in several conversations that he would die at 27. Just days before his death, he told one interviewer, “I’m not sure I will live to be 28 years old.” Though quotes like this are the spine-tingling meat of a biography and stranger than fiction, it is worth noting that Hendrix had enough near-death incidents that such predictions are hardly the provenance of insurance actuaries.

    Nevertheless, one incident that occurred in the last year of Hendrix’s life was enough to send a shiver up the neck of this biographer. One of Jimi’s close friends mentioned to me a trip they took to Africa a few months before his death that she was convinced resulted in his demise. “You know about the Tarot card, don’t you?” she asked.

    She said a famous fortune teller read Jimi’s Tarot. When the “Death” card was drawn, Hendrix acted as if he had been given a diagnosis of cancer. Despite the efforts of Jimi’s friends to convince him the card had numerous interpretations, rebirth and a new career direction being one of them, Hendrix began to act like a condemned man. The lifestyle choices he made thereafter, mixing alcohol and pills on several occasions, eventually led to his accidental choking death in London on Sept. 18, 1970. That reckless behavior can either be seen as the action of someone spooked by a coincidental random act or the final page in the life of a man preordained to leave the world at the age of 27.

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