Crazy or not, hardcore drug addict or not, Amy Winehouse was a star. “Rehab” was named the Best Song of 2007 by Time Magazine, and won her Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance at the 2008 Grammy Awards. “They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no no,” she crooned to the audience by satellite—her visa to the U.S. had been denied, preventing her from performing in person. She tacked on two more Grammys to her resumé for Record of the Year and Best New Artist. She is usually credited for the revival of soul music in recent years, overcoming the idea that soul is “retro” despite her outrageous signature beehive hairdo and Ronettes-inspired Cleopatra makeup. She also refurbished the somewhat defunct bridge between the British and American music industries, a development that other female British artists, such as Adele, have since capitalized on. But all success aside, maybe she shouldn’t have said “no, no, no” to rehab. Once called “mouthy, funny, sultry, and quite possibly crazy,” she was discovered beyond all hope at her London flat just this past Saturday, on July 23, 2011.
It’s not news anymore. Amy Winehouse is the most recent inductee to the 27 Club, a group of musicians that have been posthumously clumped together for dying at just 27 years old. Winehouse’s ticket was a suspected overdose, though official toxicology reports may take another month to complete. According to recent tabloids, her doctors had informed her that if she did not immediately curtail her drug use, she would not be long for this world. For once, the tabloids were right. Like those who joined the 27 Club before her, Winehouse enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame and a tragic, though not wholly unexpected, fall. The names of many of her fellow members are practically synonymous with sex, drugs, and rock and roll glory. Janis Joplin overdosed on heroin. Kurt Cobain took his own life (allegedly—conspiracy theories abound) with a shotgun. Jimi Hendrix suffocated in his own vomit after combining wine and sleeping pills. Jim Morrison’s cause of death is usually listed as “heart failure,” though no official autopsy was performed due to one of the oddities of French law. Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones was found floating face down in a swimming pool. Ron “Pigpen” McKernan died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage induced by long-term alcoholism.
Why 27? Some cite conspiracy. Others point to plain old bad luck. But it seems more likely that it’s the age when the body starts breaking down after a lifetime of rock and rolling. After all, it’s an age of compromise. At 27, many artists have garnered enough celebrity to earn them a place in the limelight. But at 27, that limelight begins to reflect poorly on the personal demons many of them have accrued by this point in their careers, whether they take the form of the psychological or physical damage that accompanies substance abuse or real-life enemies. 27 is the middle ground between fame and bad fortune; the line between youth and “being older.” It’s an age that proves fatal to far too many musicians, most of them not even at the peak of their careers. Musicians at this age are just old enough for their bad habits to have finally caught up to them, and just famous enough for people to take notice.
This is not to say that 27 is the end-all, be-all of a musician’s lifetime. Plenty of other musicians younger than 27 have bitten the dust, and many others have survived it. For instance, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens died in a plane crash on February 3, 1959, in a tragedy known as “The Day the Music Died.” Holly was 22 and Valens was only 17. In an more recent, fairly eerie coincidence, R&B artist Aaliyah died at 22 in a plane crash, like Holly had so many years before. Tupac Shakur and his arch nemesis, Notorious B.I.G., met violent ends at 25 and 24, respectively. On the flip side, Keith Richards is still alive and kicking. But for many musicians, especially those with habitually risky behavior, a 28th birthday is cause to breathe a sigh of relief.
