Dead At 27 - The Darkest Myth In Rock 'n' Roll

The words in this gallery are taken from a new book, 'The 27s: The Greatest Myth Of Rock'N'Roll', by Eric Segalstada and Josh Hunter.

Brian Jones, The Rolling Stones. Known for his flamboyant attire and recreational drug habits, Jones was found motionless at the bottom of his swimming pool at Cotchford Farm July 3, 1969.

Alan Wilson. Acquiring the nickname “Blind Owl” owing to his extreme nearsightedness, the lead singer of American blues band Canned Heat died in California of a drug overdose September 3, 1970. Having suffered from depression, his death was reported as suicide, although this has not been clearly established.

Jim Morrison, The Doors. Morrison was found dead on July 3, 1971 in a Paris apartment bathtub by his long-term companion, Pamela Courson. No autopsy was performed due to there being no evidence of foul play - but many rumours have arisen of an accidental overdose.

Jimi Hendrix. Swallowing nine German-made Secobarbital sleeping tablets in a hotel room, Hendrix vomited and asphyxiated in unconscious sleep (September 18, 1970). At the time he had been working on a new song, which included the lyric “the story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye.”

Janis Joplin. The big-voiced singer died of a heroin overdose, possibly combined with the effects of alcohol, on October 4, 1970. At the time she'd been working on a birthday greeting for John Lennon - the tape arrived on Lennon’s doorstep the day after she passed away.

David Alexander. The original bassist for The Stooges, Alexander was sacked in 1970 after showing up at the Goose Lake International Music Festival too drunk to play. He died of pneumonia February 10, 1975 after being admitted to hospital for pancreatitis, which was linked to his drinking.

Kurt Cobain. Having checked out of a drug rehab facility and been reported suicidal by his wife Courtney Love, Kurt’s body was found at his Seattle home on April 8, 1994 by an electrician who had arrived to install a security system.

Richey Edwards, Manic Street Preachers. The day before a promotional visit to the US, Edwards disappeared from the London hotel where he was staying. His abandoned car was found two weeks later near the Severn Bridge. The guitarist/lyricist was declared presumed deceased in November 2008.
Kristen Pfaff. Best known for her work with Hole, Pfaff was an honours student and a driven activist. On the day she planned to leave for Minneapolis to make a new start, she was found dead (June 16, 1994) in the tub with a needle nearby - it's thought she died of an accidental heroin overdose.

Gary Thain, Uriah Heep. During his last tour with the band, Thain suffered an electric shock at the Moodie Coliseum in Dallas, Texas and was seriously injured. Drug addicted, he was unable to perform properly and fired from the band. Thain later died (December 15, 1975) of respiratory failure due to a heroin overdose.

Ron McKernan. Founding member of the Grateful Dead, McKernan – a notoriously heavy drinker - was found dead (March 8, 1973) of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage at his home in California. His epitaph reads: “Pigpen was and is now forever one of the Grateful Dead.”

Pete Ham, Badfinger. After finding success in the early '70s, Welsh rockers Badfinger became embroiled in financial and managerial problems. Broken spirited, Ham hanged himself in the garage of his Surrey home on April 24, 1975. Another member of the band, Tom Evans, also committed suicide eight years later.

Pete de Freitas, Echo And The Bunnymen. A garrulous figure, upon quitting the band, drummer de Freitas once asked for £15,000 restitution for all the cigarettes singer Ian McCulloch had bummed off him over the years. De Freitas died in a motorcycle accident on June 14, 1989 travelling from London to Liverpool.

Robert Johnson. Famous as the enigmatic bluesman who gave rise to the sold-his-soul-to-the-devil myth, Johnson died on August 16, 1938, having been poisoned, possibly by a woman with whom he'd been having an affair.

www.nme.com...

There are more at the above link with pictures included.

Very, very strange occurrence.

For anyone out there who is 27 and in a band......watch out!

They may be dead, but there music will Live Forever

You forgot to add that anyone who is 27, in a band, and overindulging in drugs and/or alcohol.

I'm of a liberal mind when it comes to drug use, if you want to then it should be your choice, but don't complain if it ruins your life and kills you.

Nice thread, and a subject that has always fascinated me. Oddly enough I was just talking about this very subject this weekend.

reply to post by LiveForever8


These people had so much money they didn't know what to do with it.

They did drugs, drank like fish and the end logical result was death.

They blew more on "entertainment / drugs & booze" then we spend on our mortages.

They never had to get up every single day at six am and work 9-5 at a grueling number crunching job.

Most of these folks had houses as big as ten of our houses put together.

Don't feel sorry for them.

Money is sometimes wasted on the stupid.

I ever had that much money I'de spend it wisely and not hand it over to the local drug dealer.

Stupid stupid stupid.

Money can buy happiness. I know because I've had to struggle my whole friggin life to get some. If I ever had millions I sure in the hell wouldn't blow it on drugs, booze and fair weather friends.


[edit on 20-7-2009 by ofhumandescent]

reply to post by ofhumandescent


Some of the greatest music, poetry and other writing of our age has come from the tortured minds of drug-addicted or alcoholic souls who felt so much pain that sometimes drugs and alcohol was an illusion of escape to which they could dissapear.
Sometime it was the drugs or the alcohol that released that creative genie ... some of these people deliberately destroyed themselves in giving us the essence of their greatness.
Without them, life would be very very poor indeed.

I wonder if one could get the same results searching for stars which died of an overdose with 25y or 30y or what have you. I think the combination of too much money and heroin doesn`t work out very well.

There is a baseball myth about the age of 27 too. Where it is generally said that is the age in which a hitter will "break out" and start being a good hitter etc.

Debunking the "Age 27" myth

The article says "debunking", but personally I follow it on my fantasy teams.

So I think it's when people are at their "prime", and those people all died in their prime which puts my emphasis on them. They didn't have time to put out all those late career failures where they sold many records based only on their name.

I'll tell you what, I bet there are a lot more musicians out there who haven't died at the age of 27 than those who have. Yeah, some of these guys died of overdoses, however, I am sure that foul play was involved in the deaths of some as well. Who knows?...maybe a few even faked their deaths and still walk among us. Not that I would really care to see what some of them look like 40 years later.

S$F for you, great thread, alot of good musicians but that is crazy I did not realize there were so many

Many musicians start off with barely any money and still contain most of their brain cells. At this point in their lives they are "discovered", or win the lottery as like to call it.

It is at this point that they are creative, its usually only after they have been discovered and created "good" music that they fall inot the drugs and start losing their minds.

I would hardly attribute drug use to their creative ability, but instead the cause of their own demise.

I recently heard an interview with the Eagles where they stated the album "Hotel California" was created while they were more or less straight and together. However, the riches they attained from that album turned them into drug and alcohol addicts so badly they were completely lost.

And after several years they finally put out a follow up which did ok but not nearly as well as the previous one for which they blame all the drugs.



When you suddenly throw money and fame at young people there is a high percentage of them that cannot handle it and they lose it / themselves. The younger hollywood crowd is another good example of this.

reply to post by PowerSlave


Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction:

According to Paul Wolf, M.D., Professor of Pathology at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, artists ranging from Renaissance sculptors Benvenuto Cellini and Michelangelo to Romantic poets Coleridge and Keats, may have been creatively driven by the effects of their disease or the drugs and chemicals they ingested.

Link

Unfortunately, genius has often been unlocked by the least savoury of the human condition:

Michelangelo depicted his own mental and physical conditions in paintings and sculpture, as did subsequent painters, according to Wolf. His right knee was swollen and deformed by gout, depicted in the painting, "School of Athens" by Raphael that is displayed in the Vatican.
Obsessed with his work, Michelangelo would go for days on a diet of bread and wine, drinking wine processed in lead containers and possibly working with lead-based paints. Lead can injure the kidneys, inhibiting the excretion of uric acid, resulting in increased serum uric acid and gout.
It is also commonly believed that he suffered from depression, exhibiting the signs and symptoms of a depressive illness, Wolf states in his paper. Would Michelangelo have been driven to create the marvelous fresco paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel had this depressive disease been diagnosed and treated?

Opium mostly likely contributed to the creativity of many famous composers and poets, among them French composer Hector Berlioz, who took opium to relieve agonizing toothaches, and poet Coleridge, who saw the palace of Kublai Khan in a trance and sang its praise, "in a state of Reverie, caused by two grains of opium."

If it wasn't for drugs then I don't think Black Sabbath would have been as great as they were.

Ozzy has only written one album while he was sober and that was his latest on, Black Rain. While it was good it pales in comparison to his other albums that he has done.

Lemmy of Motorhead is another example of greatness while under the influence.

Not saying that one must be under the influence to become hit artists, but in the Rock genre it seems to be the ones who have indulged are the ones who become legends.

The exception of course is Ted Nugent and Randy Rhoades.

It isn't just rock stars that die in their 20's from drugs.

I live in an area with more than normal wealthy families.

I have seen many "trust fund" young people spend all their money on drugs and end up on that stainless steel table at the funeral home.

What a waste of good money.

We could argue all day about the excess of these musicians and its moral implications but i think its fascinating that so many have died age 27.

Is there any symbolism behind the numer 27?

Does it have associations like other numbers,666 for example?

Some things i found out:

In religion - There are a total of 27 books in the New Testament.

Twenty-seven is the smallest positive integer requiring four syllables to name in English, though it can be unambiguously defined in just two: "three cubed.

A website exploring the consistent occurrence of number 27:
www.chrismore.com...

And this:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

And this:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

27 is probably the magic number for some folks because the frontal lobes of the brain the determine your perceptions and discipline strategies to life don't finish fully forming until 26.

Who ever you are, what ever your outlooks on communication, work ethics, honesty, morality, ego etc., etc., becomes 'sealed' so to speak at 26.

These people were dedicated to excess, to push the envelopes in their life, their skills, their tollerances, their limits as a way of life.

People dedicated to excess often produce a byproduct called 'excellence' in their music, in their art, in their body of work.

There exists a fine line between insanity and genius and that line is called success.

Success for some people does not stop at the undertaker's door by the way, they just no longer get to keep enjoying it themselves.

Thank's folks, you all left something interesting and entertaining and sometimes even informative in your wake.

You were also rank amatuers...

John Bonham and Keith Moon managed to consume many times more for many more years before hitting 'their' walls.

You were also usurped too!

The Powers that Be managed to turn all your loftier ideas into nothing but a mindless ideal of excess and self destruction.

Hurry on back now and try to get it right the next time around would ya!

Age 27 is an important a pivotal time.

It is the beginning of your Saturn Return in Astrology. Now, yes Saturn is the Roman God of the Underworld, but generally the Saturn Return in one's Astrological Chart denotes death of your old life, and birth of your new life.

Age 27 is the death of your 3rd body (Biologically your body's cells are on a 7 year cycle)

Age 27 is the 3rd Sabbatical Year in your life. It is supposed to be a year of rest.

Age 27, according to Shakespeare, this is the time when the Lover must become the Soldier in the 7 Stages of Life "And then the lover, Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier, Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard, Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel, Seeking the bubble reputation Even in the cannon's mouth."

Perhaps these lovers with their woeful ballads just simply did not have the heart to move on to become soldiers in their lives.

27 was the toughest time for me too, personally, but it was perhaps the best year of my life.

Amy Winehouse - 27

reply to post by JakiusFogg


Usually I find it tough to believe there could be any "conspiracy" in something like this, but I have to admit, It is a little bit unusual. There's a lot of names in the "27 club" after all it seems, only a couple being added to this thread alone. I'd hazard a guess and say this age is affected more than any other as well.

Coincidence maybe? Who knows but It's a very interesting conspiracy to ponder over still.

So sad to hear about Amy Winehouse as well. Despite what some say, there really was a lot of potential there. Such a shame this happened..

It is indeed. Most would say it is just down to excess and self harm. However looking at the list of the 27 Club in wikipedia, there is a large proportion that although "may" have had personal problems in fact were murdered or died in accidents. all at 27.

I don't hold with satanic stuff, find it quite funny. But I have to wonder whether there is some kind of deal with the god of rock and roll, that you can be famous, you music will live forever. A Shooting Star destined to die. And 27 seems to be the cut off point.

Terry Pratchett wrote about it in Soul Music.

Die young, live forever!

reply to post by JakiusFogg

there is a large proportion that although "may" have had personal problems in fact were murdered or died in accidents. all at 27.

Well, the last I heard, the flat of Amy Winehouse is currently being treated as a "crime scene" (according to Sky News). So who knows if it was self inflicted, which is pretty much what most people suspect, or whether something more sinister occurred here..

It's all speculation right now I guess and I'm sure we'll learn more about this in the coming days. But, what you just said there may very well apply to this incident also at this stage.