The unlucky 27 club
Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse were extraordinarily talented, successful, famous and rich by 27. And by 28 all were dead.
They’re not alone. Blues legend Robert Johnson, Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, rock icon Jim Morrison – all dead at 27, too. It’s one of music’s creepiest coincidences.
Or is it just a coincidence?
In “27: The Legend and Mythology of the 27 Club,” Gene Simmons looks behind these legends.
The tongue-wagging bassist from KISS, Simmons, 69, has written six other books and has never shied from saying what’s on his mind. As far as sex, drugs and rock’n’roll, well, he’s been upfront about it before — he never got the drugs part. And he was critical of those who did, which might foreshadow a lack of sympathy for his subjects.
But his research surprised him. And the book might surprise readers with his insight and empathy.
Simmons casts a broad net. He makes room for artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, actor Jonathan Brandis — who starred in the original “It” miniseries — and Avicii, a DJ on the EDM music scene. Mostly, though, he focuses on musicians.
And the parallels among the book’s subjects are there from the start.
Most of them — Robert Johnson excepted — grew up in relatively comfortable surroundings. But their fathers were often strict and sometimes, eventually, absent. And while they were sensitive, even quirky kids, the world kept at them, pushing them to fit in.
Cobain, for example, was hyperactive as a toddler and almost immediately put on drugs, first Ritalin, then sedatives. Meanwhile, his father “had a hard time handling Kurt,” Simmons writes, quoting Cobain’s mother. “He would sort of ridicule him, occasionally hit him about the head or smack him around a little bit.”
Cobain’s parents divorced when he was 9. He bounced among relatives and eventually dropped out of school. He also began complaining of terrible stomach pains, an illness no doctor could ever diagnose, but which he soon self-medicated with booze, pot, and finally, harder drugs.