THE BIG READ
Hendrix. Joplin. Morrison. Cobain. Winehouse. Some of the biggest names in music died at exactly the same age. Behind the eerie coincidences lies one of popular culture’s most enduring mysteries.
Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool in July 1969.
Fourteen months later, Jimi Hendrix was dead.
Sixteen days after Hendrix, Janis Joplin died.
Nine months later came Jim Morrison.
Four giants of rock music, gone in almost exactly two years.
Every one of them was just 27.
It was an extraordinary sequence of deaths that would eventually become part of rock folklore. Then Kurt Cobain died in 1994, followed by Amy Winehouse in 2011, both at the same age.
By then, the phenomenon had a name: the 27 Club.
There was no official membership, no particular reason why these people should be grouped together beyond the age at which they died, yet the list kept growing, drawing in musicians, actors and artists whose careers had been cut tragically short.
Some died through drugs or alcohol while others were killed in accidents or murdered.
A number took their own lives.
And when you examine the dates, some of the coincidences are enough to make you look twice.
Long before anyone had heard of the 27 Club, a young Mississippi bluesman was making music that would influence generations of rock stars.
Robert Johnson died on August 16, 1938, aged 27, in circumstances that have never been conclusively established.
Only a small collection of recordings survived him, but his influence was enormous. Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan were among the musicians who would later recognise his importance.
Johnson’s life also inspired one of blues music’s great legends: that he met the devil at a crossroads and traded his soul for the ability to play guitar.
There is no evidence it happened, but the story has followed him ever since.
Brian Jones founded the Rolling Stones, named the band and helped shape its early sound.
But by 1969, his relationship with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the other members had deteriorated. Jones left the group in June.
On July 3, he was found dead in the swimming pool at his Sussex home.
The coroner recorded a verdict of death by misadventure after finding that Jones had drowned while under the influence of alcohol and drugs.
He was 27.
Nobody could have known that Jones would become the first of four major rock figures to die at that age in barely two years. Nor that another would die on precisely the same date.
If you remember the unmistakable sound of Going Up the Country or On the Road Again, you know Alan Wilson.
The singer, guitarist and harmonica player helped establish Canned Heat as one of the great blues-rock bands of the late 1960s. They performed at Woodstock in 1969, where Going Up the Country became one of the festival’s defining songs.
Wilson died from acute barbiturate intoxication on September 3, 1970. His death was ruled accidental.
He was 27.
Within 31 days, two more musicians who had performed at Woodstock would be dead.
On September 18, 1970, Jimi Hendrix died in London after taking sleeping tablets and asphyxiating.
He was 27.
In only a few years, Hendrix had transformed electric guitar playing. His performance of The Star-Spangled Banner at Woodstock remains one of the most memorable moments in rock history.
His death stunned the music world.
There was barely time to absorb the news before another extraordinary voice fell silent.
Just 16 days after Hendrix, Janis Joplin was found dead in a Los Angeles hotel room.
The singer whose raw, powerful voice had made Piece of My Heart and Ball and Chain unforgettable died from a heroin overdose on October 4.
She was 27.
Her album Pearl, released after her death, would become one of her greatest successes.
Three musicians who had appeared at Woodstock were now dead, all at 27, within just over a month. The coincidence was becoming difficult to ignore.
Jim Morrison had made The Doors one of America’s most compelling rock bands with songs including Light My Fire, Riders on the Storm and People Are Strange.
By 1971, the charismatic singer had moved to Paris.
On July 3, he was found dead in the apartment he shared with his girlfriend, Pamela Courson.
He was 27.
His death was attributed to heart failure, although no autopsy was performed, leaving questions about the precise circumstances.
And there was that date. Brian Jones had died on July 3, 1969. Jim Morrison died on July 3, 1971. Exactly two years apart.
The deaths of Jones, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison became the foundation of the 27 Club legend.
The Grateful Dead lost one of their founding members when Ron McKernan, better known as Pigpen, died in March 1973.
An important figure in the band’s early blues sound, McKernan had been suffering serious health problems associated with heavy drinking.
He died from a gastrointestinal haemorrhage at 27.
Pete Ham’s name might not immediately ring a bell, but his music certainly will.
The Welsh singer-songwriter was a founding member of Badfinger, the band behind No Matter What, Day After Day and Baby Blue.
Together with bandmate Tom Evans, Ham wrote Without You, which became a worldwide hit for Harry Nilsson and, decades later, Mariah Carey.
Behind the success, however, Badfinger was experiencing devastating financial and management troubles.
Ham died by suicide in April 1975, just three days before his 28th birthday.
Eight years later, Evans also died by suicide, aged 36.
New Zealand-born Gary Thain was a gifted bass guitarist who found success with British rock band Uriah Heep.
He had previously played with the Keef Hartley Band, including at Woodstock.
Thain’s health deteriorated during his time with Uriah Heep, and he died in December 1975 following a heroin overdose.
He was 27.
Chris Bell helped found Big Star, an American power-pop band whose influence would grow enormously after its original recordings failed to find a mass audience.
Bell left the group after its debut album and continued recording independently.
In December 1978, he was killed in a car accident in Memphis.
He was 27.
Big Star would eventually become an inspiration to bands including R.E.M. and The Replacements.
Boon was the guitarist and singer of Minutemen, a fiercely independent American punk band known for its short, energetic songs and political commentary.
In December 1985, Boon was killed in a road accident while travelling in Arizona.
He was 27.
Unlike many deaths associated with the 27 Club, his had nothing to do with drugs or alcohol.
The strange association with 27 eventually extended beyond music.
Jean-Michel Basquiat had risen from New York’s street-art scene to become one of the most celebrated young artists of the 1980s.
His paintings, filled with words, symbols and striking figures, attracted international attention. He also developed a close friendship with Andy Warhol.
But Basquiat struggled with heroin addiction.
He died from an overdose in August 1988, aged 27.
In 2017, one of his paintings sold for $US110.5 million.
Seattle’s alternative music community was devastated when Mia Zapata, the singer with punk band The Gits, was murdered in July 1993.
Zapata was 27.
Her killing remained unsolved for years before DNA evidence eventually led investigators to her murderer.
The tragedy came less than a year before another death would bring Seattle, and the 27 Club, worldwide attention.
When Nirvana released Nevermind in 1991, the music world changed almost overnight.
Songs such as Smells Like Teen Spirit turned Kurt Cobain into the reluctant voice of a generation, although he struggled with the pressures of fame and personal difficulties.
Cobain died by suicide at his Seattle home on April 5, 1994.
He was 27.
His death revived interest in the earlier losses of Hendrix, Joplin, Morrison and Jones.
For a new generation, the 27 Club was no longer simply a story about the rock stars of the 1960s.
It had lost one of their own.
Just over two months after Cobain’s death, another tragedy struck the alternative rock community.
Kristen Pfaff was the bassist for Hole, the band fronted by Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love. She had played on Hole’s acclaimed album Live Through This, released only days after Cobain died.
On June 16, 1994, Pfaff died from a heroin overdose in Seattle.
She was 27.
The 27 Club’s reach extended into hip-hop with the death of Freaky Tah, a member of New York rap group Lost Boyz.
Born Raymond Rogers, he helped the group achieve success during the 1990s.
He was shot and killed in Queens in March 1999.
He was 27.
For television and movie audiences of the 1990s, Jonathan Brandis was a familiar face.
He starred in The NeverEnding Story II, appeared in the television adaptation of Stephen King’s It and became a teenage heart-throb through the science-fiction series seaQuest DSV.
Brandis died by suicide in November 2003.
He was 27.
Although the 27 Club is primarily associated with musicians, Brandis is sometimes included in broader lists of entertainers who died at that age.
Amy Winehouse had one of the most distinctive voices in modern popular music.
Her album Back to Black brought enormous international success, with songs including Rehab, You Know I’m No Good and the title track becoming instant classics.
But her struggles with addiction were played out under relentless public scrutiny.
On July 23, 2011, Winehouse died from alcohol poisoning at her London home.
She was 27.
The news immediately revived the legend of the 27 Club, and this time, scientists had something to say about it.
One of the most shocking accidents involving a celebrity aged 27 claimed the life of Anton Yelchin.
The actor was best known for playing Pavel Chekov in the rebooted Star Trek films, alongside appearances in Like Crazy and Green Room.
In June 2016, Yelchin was killed when his Jeep Grand Cherokee rolled backwards down his driveway and pinned him against a brick pillar and security gate outside his Los Angeles home.
His vehicle was a model covered by a safety recall concerning an electronic gear-selector design that could leave drivers mistakenly believing the transmission was in Park.
He was 27.
A talented musician as well as an actor, Yelchin is another name sometimes included in expanded versions of the 27 Club.
For all the extraordinary coincidences, the evidence suggests otherwise. In 2011, researchers examined whether famous musicians really were more likely to die at 27.
Their findings, published in the British Medical Journal, covered 1,046 musicians who had achieved a UK No.1 album between 1956 and 2007.
Of the 522 musicians who were at risk at age 27, just three died at that age.
The death rate was almost identical at 25 and 32.
There was no special spike at 27.
The researchers concluded that the supposed club was likely the result of chance and our tendency to recognise patterns, particularly when famous names are involved.
There was an important limitation, however. The study’s criteria excluded several of the 27 Club’s most famous members, including Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison, because they had not achieved a UK number one album within the study’s definition.
Nevertheless, the findings challenged the belief that 27 was an unusually dangerous age for successful musicians.
And the study revealed something far more troubling.
Famous musicians in their 20s and 30s had a risk of death roughly two to three times higher than people of comparable ages in the general UK population.
The study was limited to a particular group of chart-topping musicians, so it could not explain every death associated with the club. It did, however, provide strong evidence against the idea that turning 27 carried some unique danger.
There was also an Australian connection: the research was led by statistician Adrian Barnett from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane.
Perhaps the real mystery isn’t why so many famous people died at 27, but why we have become so fascinated by that particular number. Rock music, after all, has lost plenty of stars at other young ages.
Yet the coincidences remain remarkable.
Brian Jones and Jim Morrison dying on the same date, exactly two years apart. Three Woodstock performers dying within 31 days. Kurt Cobain and Kristen Pfaff dying barely two months apart.
And Amy Winehouse joining that extraordinary roll call decades later.
There may be no curse, but the 27 Club remains one of popular culture’s most haunting coincidences.
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