Unit 10 – Task 3

This is my final essay for unit 10. It will answer my question that I have been working on over this last term.

The question I am going to answer in this essay is “What is the 27 club, and who are the key figures involved?”. So, I want to start by telling you that the “27 Club” is not a real club, and that is a term used in the papers headlines/members of publics speech. What it actually is, is a collective of celebrities that have all passed away at the age of twenty-seven. I conducted some research myself, and also got some better results compared to what I did for task two of Unit 10. I asked 16 people, “Have you heard of the 27 club and what it is about?”. They all answered with reasonably similar answers, for example my friend Dom said, “Yeah, it’s a group of musicians who have all died at 27, right?” And my friend Lucy quoted, “It’s where musicians have died tragically all at 27 years old.” So, 16/16 people knew what it was, but I realised I did ask people who happen to be on the music course with me, so I did a survey on my Instagram asking the same question, and it was a 90% Yes from people against 10% of my followers saying No. 670 people saw that story so technically only 67 people out of them didn’t know what it was. I then asked a random collective of people who they might think is involved in it. I asked a range of ages including my grandparents and some of my slightly younger cousins. I asked about 12 people, and they all answered ‘Amy Winehouse’ and 7 of them also said ‘Kurt Cobain’, and then two of them mentioned ‘Jimi Hendrix’ but weren’t aware of any others involved.

When researching the project I decided to talk about, I went straight to YouTube to find more facts as I know a lot of websites say the same sort of thing to do with the ‘club’. Whereas on YouTube you will find videos that actually go into more depth about what it is I am talking about. The video that I watched was this one I have attached below…

The video gives facts about the club and how it came about, and also the theories about Robert Johnson and how he may have ‘started it’ in some senses. I will talk more about him and this situation later as my next part of the research project is where I am going to talk about the key figures who are involved in the 27 club.

The first person who I researched about was Amy Winehouse (who I think has the most interesting story). I found out that she died 23rd July 2011, due to alcohol poisoning and was found dead at her home in London. A coroners report told us that her blood alcohol content was five times more than the legal limit to drive, at 0.416%. She was one of the most latest artists to join the “club” and she was even aware of it before she died. One of the scariest things said was that she “always knew she’d join it”. Amy’s claim to fame, began when she was only 16. A classmate of hers sent a demo to a record label and she of course got given a contract from it, and signed to a jazz label. From then her music grew and she moved from Jazz to more of an RnB/Soul feel in her music. Then winning many awards in 2006 for her songs and albums. Alongside of her career, unfortunately she also became well known for her drug abuse and drinking, to the point where people would book tickets to her gigs, just to ‘boo’ her and make her feel awful due to how she lived her life. Of course though, this is a common theme with celebrities, especially singers. Due to the constant pressure of up-keeping her appearance, she eventually let it slip and started giving less of a care on how she came across to her audience. This then led to her final ever appearance on stage, which is probably the saddest video I have ever watched as she really is fighting for her life. Soon later (about a week) she was found dead in her home. I have attached the link below to show you this last performance. It is truly heart breaking as you can see she is doing her best to be as good as possible. And unfortunately she became a member of the 27 club.

The second figure I would like to mention, is Kurt Cobain. He is one of my idols, as I simply fell in love with his music, and also was very interested in his life. He was the lead singer of a band called Nirvana who are one of my favourite bands ever. Unfortunately they weren’t around for that long as Cobain sadly ended his life on April 5th 1994, with their best album (and most well known album in music) being released only three years before. He committed suicide by shooting himself in the head and his body, and was found with a suicide note written near him. Although some believe it was written for him and his girlfriend Courtney Love may have influenced it all. But that is just a theory so I won’t go into that too much. After his death, he was known for joining the 27 club as millions of people mourned his tragic death, due to him dying at the age of twenty-seven. This was when the “club” became more known, as publicity was a bigger thing in the nineties then it had been before then, and therefore headlines became about his death and the theories of it, and also mentioning the fact he died at twenty seven.

Thirdly, I am going to talk about another key figure that was Jimi Hendrix. He also became a member of the 27 club when he died on 18th September 1970. This was due to him going out to a party and getting back to a hotel in London with his girlfriend around 3am. He was extremely drunk and intoxicated, and decided to take a lot of sleeping pills. He then fell to sleep and from then, never woke up. Unfortunately dying that morning by choking on his own vomit. He had taken so many pills that it didn’t wake him up, and he passed due to the choking caused from this. Sadly his girlfriend woke up to it, and from then, the news broke to the world that the legend had died. What is odd, is that some people think it was usicide, although there is no real proof. He even made predicitons known to the world that he always knew he was going to die young. His last words were also noted down by journalists when his girlfriend had to talk about the events of that night. She quotes that he said “This is bad, man.” And of course because of this, he became known as another member of the 27 club due to dying at the age.

Finally I will be talking about Robert Johnson. This is a weird one as there is a lot of conspiracy about his death and also his life. Robert Johnson started the 27 club and became the first member. He died on 16th August 1938 by drinking poisoned whiskey which was believed to have been caused by his partners ‘jealous ex-lover’. Just before he died, he was found laying on his bed by his mother with his guitar against his chest. He then passed it to her, asked her to hang it on the wall and said “this is the devils instrument, I don’t want it no more.” That quite just then may have confused you or not made sense to his death, but this is where the conspiracy part comes into play. Robert Johnson was known for alledgedly ‘selling his soul to the devil’, and said he stood in the crossroads of Mississipi to do this. He did this as if he was to sell his soul, he would gain musical ability and a success in the industry. Some theorists say that the wau he died was meant to happen and was planned by the ‘devil’ as a way to get back at him. He was known for a lot of blues music in the thirties, one of his biggest hits was ‘Sweet Home Chicago’. From his death, a ‘club’ was created and he was the influence for this. As the members who have joined are all of the same age, and died in some sort of quite tragic way, along with having a really rough life leading up to the death.

Overall I hope you enjoyed this as I thought it was a really interesting topic that people don’t know enough about. It was very fun to research as I am a huge fan of the artists I have spoken about above. I think I answered the question quite well.