the stupid 27 club

With the news today that Amy Winehouse has been found dead in her apartment at the age of 27 from what must have been drink and drugs related it makes me wonder why it is that 27 year olds are so fundamentally stupid. Think about it. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain , Brian Jones, Robert Johnson, Alan Wilson (canned Heat) ,Kristen Paff (Hole). That is a pretty impressive list of people.

The causes are all different but often related to the excess's of wealth and fame achieved at a young age. You do however get the sense that many of them just took too many risks and were so impressed with their own fame and ability that they thought it was always going to be the way it was. Until the time they went too far and that was that. Gone. The bones of their ability to be picked at for decades to come by the families and hangers on that should have done something at the time to have kept them from themselves.

I have no doubt that for the next few weeks we in the UK will get an almost endless stream of memories and anecdotal stories about how Amy was a lost soul and wasn't able to help herself. The fact that it suited her hangers on to keep her name in the headlines and to ensure that their own particular little golden goose was kept in a state where she needed them has meant they have to take some of the responsibility for her death.

She had a great voice. And it is a pity that we will not get anything more of the white girl blues/ jazz voice.

It is interesting that so many of the names in the stupid 27 list were considered to be so very good and above their peers at what they did. I do wonder if it is because of the sense of loss in so far as that it is definite that we will get no more from them, or is the idea of the tortured artist being the unbalanced genius able to provide greater art closer to the point that appeals to us all. I guess by appeals I mean talks about places darker than we care to go to.

This is a picture that has lived with me since I first saw it re-produced in an obituary for Kurt Cobain

It was apparently taken backstage immediately after a performance by Nirvana. The story goes that when asked what was wrong, Kurt tried to explain that he had realised the audience was cheering before they had heard the music. That anything he actually did was irrelevant and it was his fame they cheered. I have no idea of knowing if that story is true or not. It is a powerful image though. In light of him eventually putting the shotgun in his mouth it starts to make sense a tiny little bit. More with him than some of the others I do have a sense of his music being an outlet of what was really going on inside. It actually being too much to bear in the end. When I think about songs like Dumb, On a plain, and in fact the entire set list for the unplugged album. Watch the video some day , it is Kurt playing at his own wake.

The others though? I do not think that Jim Morrison or Janis Joplin were tortured geniuses. I think they both had difficult childhoods that meant that they were messed up. But that meant that they craved the limelight and then the access they had to the various substances that eventually killed them meant they followed the path. There was not a sickness, other than addiction, that drove them. Let's be honest here, Morrision was hardly the world's greatest poet. The lyrics to the songs he wrote are good, sometimes interesting and inventive. in a free form type of way. But genius? No.

Janis had an amazing voice. Truly one of a kind and in that she found an amazing level of fame. I am 'friends' with her on Facebook and she gets a huge amount of comments every time someone posts to that page. She clearly found some sort of escape and sanctuary in her abuse of the drugs of the day. But I would say like Hendrix, she was naturally gifted and went down the addiction route. Not so much to take away from the pain, but more to keep herself amused. A sense of entitlement rather than one of true despair.

Is that fair do you think? There is little doubt that at the time, and for a very long time after Jimi Hendrix was and will be acknowledged as a great guitarist. He was, end of story. If he had been born at another time I have little doubt he would have been part of Opeth or some similarly talented and amazing band who needed a guitarist that could make the instrument do things no one else could. But as with Janis, he just got it wrong one night. Went too far and his body could no longer deal with it in the right way. or the way it had been done before. So it gave up. Different ways, I know that, but neither made it through.

It will be interesting to see how many people suddenly draw similarities between Janis and Amy. it is very easy to see these things when they are pointed out. the fact that one is acknowledged as one of the best of her and subsequent generations, and one sung well on a album will of course be reasonably easily left to one side.

There is also the part of us that feels a little sense of the injustice of it. I mean, how does Nikki Sixx from Motely Crue make it through three near death experiences and Jimi Hendrix doesn't? There seems to be little sense of karmic justice to all of this does there really? Still I guess it is the way it goes.

It is interesting that the myth continues to live on. The myth is that if you sell your soul for fame that the devil would one day take it back. this started with Robert Johnson. I saw a show on him recently. It said that he was a reasonably ordinary singer who used to go on stage at the blues club in the intermissions. He was so bad that no one would pay him. Then he disappeared for a couple of years and came back as one the best Blues guitarists.

Of course songs such as the one there then perpetuated the myth that he had sold his soul to the devil in order to learn how to play. I think maybe more the first Marilyn Manson than actual in league with the devil. However, when he died mysteriously, officially of poisoning, it was claimed that the devil took his soul back.

If that is the case, then I dare say that the people on the list are all enjoying themselves still now. Afterall, hell sounds like a much more fun place reallt doesn't it.

I do think though that it is perhaps the heavily christian deep south of America trying to explain away the things that he sung about in such a way as to continue to hold of the church over the under educated and gullible.

So RIP Amy, I hope that whether it is heaven or hell, the wheel of life or simply the end, that you got what you wanted out of this life and the next perhaps take it a little easier.  . . .