Forever 27

Sex, Drugs, Rock ‘N’ Roll: Death, Myth and Media

By Erin E. Bruno-MuzikReviews.com Contributor

                                     

*For a more in-depth look into the “27 Club” Check out:  http://www.the27s.com

Since the beginning of western civilization, youth and creativity have likened towards hedonism, but it was not until the 1960s that overindulgence of alcohol and drugs became synonymous with the musician lifestyle. Over the past fifty years, through mass media outlets, such as magazines, television, film and Internet the “SEX, DRUGS, and ROCK ‘N’ ROLL” concept has been ingrained into the public mind. It seems like every musician and band from Ray Charles to Johnny Cash  to the Beatles to the Rolling Stones to Led Zeppelin has had its fair share of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. But for some musicians, this hedonistic lifestyle is just too much. As a result, some of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest musicians have died at a young age; mysteriously, many have died at the tender age of twenty-seven. This group of musicians has been immortalized in one of rock history’s most strange and interesting phenomenon known as the “27 club.”     

The decade known for its rock n’ roll decadence, the 1960s, saw the beginning of this “27 club” myth. It all started on July 3, 1969 when Brian Jones (founding member, lead singer and guitarist of The Rolling Stones) was found dead in his swimming pool having drowned a result of alcohol/drug use. A little more than a year later, on September 18, 1970, guitar legend Jimi Hendrix was found dead in London due to an an “accidental overdose” from barbiturates. In the fall of 1970, Janis Joplin was next in line to join the “27 club” overdosing on heroin and whiskey. Jim Morrison (lead singer of The Doors) was the final one to join “the club” on July 3, 1971, after being found dead in his bathtub in France due to heart complications. Although his true cause of death is still argued today, some believe it was due to his hard-hitting love for the bottle, others believe it was from a bad batch of heroin.

     Fascinatingly, Jones, Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison were all musicians who died at twenty-seven-years-old within a two-year time span (Jones and Morrison died on exactly the same day two-years apart) and all causes of death are thought to be, in one way or another, related to drugs and/or alcohol. Although these musicians, and several others before and since, have died at age twenty-seven, the media did not coin and start selling this phenomenon, the “27 club,” until 1994 when Kurt Cobain (lead singer/guitarist for the alternative band, Nirvana) committed suicide with a gunshot to the head at age twenty-seven. 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 and the media caught onto this strange phenomenon of legendary musicians dying at age twenty-seven.

      Although some have heard about this myth before, few have taken the time to examine the “27 club” a little more closely. Charles R. Cross wrote in a Kurt Cobain biography: 'The number of musicians who passed away at twenty-seven is truly remarkable by any standard. [Although] humans die regularly at all ages, there is a statistical spike for musicians who die at 27.” In addition to the musicians already mentioned, other famous musicians who have died at age twenty-seven, include: Robert Johnson (blues guitarist who influenced Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton), Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (founding member and keyboardist for The Grateful Dead), Dave Alexander (bassist for The Stooges), D. Boon (member of the great punk band the Minutemen), Pete Ham (Badfinger), Johnny Kidd (Johnny Kidd and the Pirates), Les Harvey (Stone the Crows), Raymond 'Freaky Tah' Rogers (Lost Boyz), Gary Thain (Uriah Heep), Alan Wilson (Canned Heat), Jeremy Ward (Mars Volta), Kristin Pfaff (Hole), Arlester Christian (the real father of funk), Pete DeFreitas (the sole drum hero of the eighties) and Gary Thain (the best deep-ender of the seventies). On the surface, this list seems much too endless to be just a coincidence.

     There are different popular theories behind the “27 club,” including some more mystical ones.  Members of the Astrological Lodge of London believe that it all has to do with the stars. Saturn returns, in astrological terms, every twenty-eight 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 twenty-seven among the general population, just famous musicians. Eric Segalstad, author of a book, The 27s—The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll (to be released in late October 2008) discussed the role of the number twenty-seven in an interview with MuzikReviews.com: “It has to do with the power of three. What does three mean? Cube three and you get twenty-seven. I can tell you this: Twenty-seven is a very powerful number that has been revered since the dawn of western civilization.”

     Perhaps, the more mystical interpretations behind the number twenty-seven are questionable. One must ask, what does this have to do with musicians, in particular? Perhaps twenty-seven just happens to be the age when the “on-the-road” lifestyle of musicians catches up to them. Regardless of the reason behind the myth, one must also ask, why does it matter? “The 27s matter because collectively they tell all the possible trajectories of artist-dom, success and failure, modesty and excess,” said writer Eric Segalstad (The 27s—The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll) in our interview about the “27 club.”

     Or maybe the “27 club” matters, simply, because of the exposure it is given in the mass media and popular culture, as further explained by authors Eric Segalstad and Josh Hunter: “The 27s are firmly rooted in popular culture…the fear of dying at that age is the plot for at least one book, ‘Basket Case.’ A popular off-Broadway play ‘27 Heaven’ is centered on Kurt Cobain meeting the three Js (Janis, Jimi, Jim) in heaven. Jack White was in a car accident on his 28th birthday and he said afterwards it was ‘a warning’ and that he got off easy. Gretchen Wilson’s fan club is called The 27s Club. And look at how The Mars Volta are blowing up and then consider that one of its founding members died at 27.”

      In the discussion of any popular culture myth, one must look directly to that which creates these myths: the mass media, which has created and perpetuated the “27 club” for consumption by the masses. Some visually striking media representations of the “27 club” myth are the “Forever 27” posters: one a surrealistic painting by Scott Lobaido, one a black and pencil-sketch version and another a photo-collage, all of which depict Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Brian Jones in their youthful state before their deaths at age twenty-seven. These posters, tee shirts, and many other similar products selling the “27 myth” are widely available for consumption by the mass public in malls and online-stores across the world. The “Forever 27” posters/products serve as an example of how the media romantically represents the death of young celebrities at any age to create enduring myths in the minds of the American public by depicting celebrities as larger in death than in life. In modern society, when a famous musician goes to rehab for a drug or alcohol addiction (take the recent examples of Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty of The Libertines/The Babyshambles) or commits suicide, either intentionally or unintentionally (although not a musician, a modern example is Heath Ledger), their creative genius and musical impact skyrockets. Even years after an entertainment celebrity is deceased, the media continues to romanticize his/her suicide using the deceased’s name and image to sell products.

     This media trend of romanticizing celebrity suicide shows no signs of stopping and for a clear reason; as Rockbeastone Magazine’s Kevin Davis’ “Perpetuating the Kurt Cobain Legend” sarcastically worded it: “We Americans love our dead rock stars, especially our dead rock stars whose deaths come with an asterisk (suicide, drug overdose, mysterious drowning, shot to death by the hired goons of a rival rapper, etc.), because this gives us the chance to theorize, to formulate wildly unfounded hypotheses, basically to play a real-life version of Clue.” Americans play into the myths they are fed by the mass media. As a country obsessed with celebrities, the more dramatic and romantic the story of a celebrity, the more interesting it is to the public. This obsession with celebrity has been fueled by the mass media for decades and has reached new heights in the twenty-first century. The mass media continuously romanticizes and glorifies entertainment celebrity “train wrecks” (as a popular celebrity website, TMZ.com, calls them) as the mass public’s obsession begs to be fed. Therefore, musicians like Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones and Janis Joplin will forever be twenty-seven in the eyes of the American public. As a result, their deaths will only be viewed through the lenses of their dramatic and romantic myths. The deaths of the “27 club” become tragedies, instead of real-life, bitter suicides committed by deeply tormented, however, artistic, souls.