The 27 Club: Curse or Coincidence?

By Chance Edwards

The myth of the 27 Club "curse" started in 1969 with the untimely death of Rolling Stones founder, Brian Jones, which was soon followed by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison. They were all only 27 years old.

But they weren't the only ones. It seems each new generation loses another beloved celebrity to the 27 Club.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nysa Media
• Release date: Jul 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9798869202208

Book preview

Introduction

Ancient Egyptians believed people die twice - once when they take their final breath, and again when their name is spoken for the last time. Only after they have been completely forgotten from living memory are they truly gone. For a lucky few, their names and memories live on in the legacies they leave behind. Most have an entire lifetime to create their legacy. Others have only 27 years. 

They have become known as The 27 Club.

Rolling Stone Magazine calls The 27 Club one of music’s most tragic coincidences. But musicians are not the only members of this notorious list. There are also actors, athletes, and other celebrities. The mystique of The 27 Club revolves only around the age of death, not the cause of death, nor the odds of these deaths occurring. 

First things first: there is no statistical evidence of a spike in deaths of artists or famous people at the age of 27. But when you dig deeper into the phenomenon of The 27 Club, there are some unusual threads and connections that link many of the various members.

As with any other group, The 27 Club has its headliners; Brian Jones (founder of the Rolling Stones), Jim Morrison (founder and lead singer of The Doors), Janis Joplin (one of the most highly regarded female blues singers in history), Jimi Hendrix (considered the best guitarist in the world), and Kurt Cobain (the face of grunge). 

Since Brian, Jim, Janis, and Jimi all passed away within a few months of each other, it’s natural for people to associate them together. Also, they all succumbed to substance abuse. The topic of addiction is unavoidable when discussing The 27 Club. But it’s not the only cause of death.

In this book, there are chapters dedicated to athletes, actors, and entertainers, celebrities from all around the globe. Every single one of them has left an undeniable legacy - some for being trailblazers in their field, others because their deaths sparked conversations and realizations about our society. 

These chapters may feel uncomfortable because no matter how engaging a person’s life story, we already know how it ends. There are no surprises to the tragedies. There are no plot twists. No happy Hollywood endings.

The field of psychology is no stranger to the justification of death. When dealing with loss, we tend to point fingers, put on labels, and analyze every second until the last heartbeat announces the end of life. But all of this is just a way of coping that leads to more unanswered questions. Nothing leaves us more perplexed and overwhelmed than death. And when talking about untimely deaths, the search for answers grows even stronger. 

Dying youth shock us because they embody the opposite of what we were taught is the natural order of life: we are born, we grow old, and we die. Maybe that’s why the phenomenon of The 27 Club appeared. It’s a way to collectively remember those who we have lost too soon. The added mythology of a curse makes them seem farther and more detached from the reality of their deaths. Their faces get grouped together in paintings and street art. We keep count as the list grows. 

You’ll notice I refer to the people spotlighted in these pages by their first names. This is an active choice, to differentiate this publication from encyclopedic works. I approach them as human beings, and some of the stories depicted are very intimate. I wanted to address them with the closeness these details bring.

This book aims to unearth the hidden threads between the lives of The 27 Club members while bringing light to their legacies. In their struggles and successes, we’ll encounter issues that relate to all of us. Perhaps in their stories, we’ll see echoes of ourselves.

Chapter 1:

Joseph Merrick

A hundred and fifty years ago, the world behaved differently than it does now. The second half of the nineteenth century was defined by humanity’s search for enlightenment, while simultaneously displaying its most barbaric instincts.

Born: August 5, 1862 Leicester, England Died: April 11, 1890 Whitechapel, London, England Known As: Circus Entertainer Cause Of Death: Asphyxiation

Global geography lay at the hand of a few selected countries, and the British Empire was at its peak. It was into this world, and this England, that our first member of the 27 Club was born. He was considered a celebrity by the standard of his time, or at least a notoriety. His name was Joseph Carrey Merrick but history remembers him as The Elephant Man.

Joseph was born August 5th, 1862, to Joseph Rockley Merrick and Mary Jane Merrick, in Leicester, about 158km from London. He had a brother and a sister who both passed away from illnesses in childhood. Joseph, for the first years of his life, looked like any other boy. But at age five, his body started growing differently. The skin on the right side of his face grew wider and turned grey. His right hand also stretched abnormally. The changes in his face made his speech impaired and barely intelligible.

The medical cause behind Joseph’s condition is still debated even today. An autobiographical pamphlet published in 1884 claimed his pregnant mother had been frightened and almost trampled by an elephant during a carnival parade. Throughout his life, Joseph believed he owed his horrible deformities to this shock suffered by his mother. 

When Joseph was around thirteen years old, his mother passed away from broncho-pneumonia. Like the start of a fairytale, his father remarried, and Joseph’s stepmother taunted and rejected him. But that’s where the fairytale similarities end. Joseph left school and looked for work with scarce results. His right hand grew too big for rolling cigarettes. He tried becoming a door-to-door salesman, but his form frightened the housewives who answered the door. Crowds began following him on the street. His body grew, forcing him to sleep sitting up, for fear that the weight of his head might break his neck. The line between the cruelty of his household, the streets of Leicester, and the physical pain his own body caused him, began to blur.

At seventeen, Joseph left home for good. He lived with his uncle, Charles Merrick, until he could no longer support him. Joseph was forced to live in a workhouse, a place for those who couldn’t find the means to support themselves. It would become his home for the next four years. 

He underwent surgery to remove the protuberances that kept growing on his head, but the results weren’t permanent. Finally, Joseph decided that the only way to support himself was to join a freak show. He wrote Sam Torr, who agreed to meet him. Joseph was promptly hired on Torr’s act as a curiosity. He later joined a traveling show with other managers. They advertised Joseph as The Elephant Man.

After touring the East Midlands, Joseph began working for Tom Norman’s penny gaff shop in East London, right across the street from The Royal London Hospital. Word got around of Joseph’s condition and he caught the attention of surgeon Frederick Treves. The surgeon asked Joseph to join him at the hospital so he could showcase him to his colleagues. Treves initially diagnosed Joseph as mentally impaired, but he later backtracked on that statement when they crossed paths again.

Joseph didn’t enjoy his visits to the hospital. Instead, he joined a traveling sideshow to continental Europe. Some might argue it was the selfish interests of the medical community that pushed Joseph to join the show as a way of taking ownership of his life. 

Societal changes were also a factor. The audience that once gleefully gawked at human curiosities started to see sideshows as dehumanizing. With freak shows falling out of favor, Joseph’s livelihood was in jeopardy. He toured in Europe until his manager robbed him of his life savings and abandoned him in Brussels. He managed to make his way back to London entirely alone. His only contact was Frederick Treves.

Here his public image would take another turn. In order for Joseph to keep permanent residency at the hospital, the chair of the hospital committee, Francis Carr Gomm, wrote a letter to The Times asking for help. He became a cause célèbre in the media. People who had once gawked at him as a freak in a penny gaff began rooting for him. 

The hospital received enough donations so Joseph could move out from the attic to a private room in the hospital’s basement. He walked the courtyards of the hospital late at night to avoid people. He didn’t want to be seen, not even by himself; there were no mirrors in his apartment, according to Frederick Treves.

The hospital walls didn’t always restrain Joseph’s life. With the help of donors and Treves’ efforts, Joseph was able to attend the theater once. He took at least three trips to the countryside. Well-known members of London’s High Society, including the Princess of Wales, came to visit