The '27 Club'

There have been many musicians over the years that could easily be given the 'legendary' status. Sadly, this status is more often that not only gained in the time after that musician's death, perhaps because the story and rumours around their death are splashed over the front covers of every newspaper around the world. Take Amy Winehouse as a prime example. Her death was quite shocking as she was so young, yet she is not the first to have died aged 27 - in fact, this particular age has taken a fair few of our legends of the music industry. Here are perhaps the 3 best known examples:

Jimi Hendrix
Hendrix is famous as being one of, if not THE greatest guitarist ever. Adored by hippies everywhere in the '60s and still loved by many today, his stage presence and I-don't-care attitude earned him a place in the history books. Unfortunately, the hippie culture that surrounded him and which he was a part of himself, encouraged recreational drug use - mainly psychedelic hallucinogenics to go with the psychedelic music and fashion. In the long run these drugs inevitably had a negative effect on Hendrix's body and mind; reports from acquaintances claim that they made him angry and violent when he was drinking whilst high. Although the official post-mortem verdict states that the cause of death was an overdose of sleeping tablets, there is no doubt that the recreational drugs were a gateway to the more dangerous tablets. Hendrix passed away on September 18th, 1970, aged 27. Personally, I'm devastated that I wasn't around when he still was. To see him live, to be in his presence, would have been the ultimate dream.

Kurt Cobain
Frontman of highly successful US grunge band Nirvana, Cobain is hailed as being one of the best songwriters of a generation. Nirvana have sold over 75 million albums worldwide, and this massive success had a detrimental effect on Cobain. With the media surrounding him, wife Courtney Love and daughter Frances, he became depressed and started doing heroin frequently, struggling with the pressure and fame. In the days before his death, he checked out of a rehab clinic, having been persuaded to go by his friends and wife. However, although supposedly clean, he was still unhappy. He died on April 5th 1994, aged 27. Though there are several theories behind the cause of his death, including murder, the generally accepted one is that he committed suicide by shooting himself with a shotgun. The part that saddens me the most is his suicide note. The last sentences read, "Please keep going Courtney, for Frances, for her life will be so much happier without me. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU." 

Amy Winehouse
Singer-songwriter Winehouse's unique voice and soulful music, rewarded with 5 Grammy Awards among others, proved to all that unconventional female musicians can have mainstream success. What is extremely regrettable is that she is perhaps more well known now for her personal life than her career. As her death was more recent than Hendrix and Cobain's, the amount of paparazzi and tabloid papers was higher; photos of her being drunk and disorderly emerged, and her vast drug and alcohol abuse became known to everyone. Previous to her death, she was suffering from mental illnesses such as depression and eating disorders on top of the drug abuse. This all became too much for her body to handle, and she passed away on July 23rd 2011, aged 27. I have to admit, I wasn't too shocked when it emerged she had died, or that the verdict was that it was a result of alcohol poisoning. However I was saddened; someone so young, with such a wonderful voice, didn't deserve to go so soon.

An unusually high number of musicians have died aged 27; others include Jim Morrison of The Doors and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. It is a tragically young age for anyone to lose a life, let alone someone cherished by thousands like these musicians, and I very much hope, as interesting as it is, that this 'pattern' of deaths does not continue in the future. Written by Molly McGrath.