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The 27 Club: A Brief History

From Robert Johnson to Anton Yelchin, 20 stars who died at 27

Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse and Kurt Cobain 27 club

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The 27 Club has become one of the most elusive and remarkably tragic coincidences in rock & roll history. The term became widely known after Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994, with rock fans connecting his age to that of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones and Jimi Hendrix – though it was notable to fans in the early 1970s when those four visionaries died within just two years of each other. When Amy Winehouse passed away at age 27 in 2011, it attracted even more attention to the significance of the age. While the club has been largely connected to musicians, it has expanded since, as many young actors and artists have lost their lives due to everything from addiction to suicide to freak accidents. Here are some of the unfortunate and untimely losses connected to the club.

From Rolling Stone US

Amy Winehouse

What Amy’s state of mind was when she took her last gulps of vodka at home in London in July 2011 is impossible to know. She had said there were things she still wanted to do with her life, but she seemed unable to take action. Despite being a remarkably honest and open person in many respects, she had always been cagey about her inner life. Observing Amy as we have, there is a strong sense that she was sick of her career. Like Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain, she had become a prisoner of her image. And, as with Janis Joplin, her man was glaringly absent at the end. So were other people Amy had depended upon and, in many cases, exhausted.

Anton Yelchin

Anton Yelchin did a lot of work in his 27 years – from 2011 to 2015 alone, he appeared in 18 films, not including various voiceover gigs – and yet not nearly enough. A sensitive actor with a penchant for visionary auteurs such as Jim Jarmusch, Drake Doremus, and Jeremy Saulnier, his best years had barely begun when he died in a freak accident, pinned against a brick pillar by his own car. But he leaves behind a versatile, stellar filmography jumping from blockbusters (he made for an excitable Chekov in the Star Trek reboots) to horror homage (he was the spine of 2011’s Fright Night remake) to small-scale romance (he courted Felicity Jones in Like Crazy). There’s no telling what he could’ve done, but now, all we can do is be grateful for what we’ve got.Entries 2-7, 9, 14, 15 and 19 adapted from 27: A History of the 27 Club through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse by Howard Sounes. Reprinted courtesy of Da Capo Press.