The magic, tragic number 27
A day after Amy Winehouse died at age 27 of still undetermined causes in her London home, U.K. rapper-provocateur M.I.A. uploaded "27" (listen here), a song she reportedly wrote in December and which she dedicates "to all my friends who died at 27."
Against an atmospheric downtempo, M.I.A. sing-songs, "Said your all mouth and no brains / All rock stars go to heaven / You said you'll be dead at 27 / When we drunk in a English tavern."
Clearly, 27 is not just another number. In the realm of rock and roll myth-making , 27 is magic and tragic.
Following Winehouse's death, the web was inundated with parallels to deaths at age of 27 of rock's biggest stars—in 1969, the Rolling Stones' Brian Jones (drowned); in 1970, guitar god Jimi Hendrix (choked on own vomit); that same year, kozmic blues singer Janis Joplin (heroin overdose); the next year, Lizard King Jim Morrison (heart failure); and in 1994, Nirvana's troubled Kurt Cobain (suicide).
Rocker Zero of the 27 Club
In 2008, Eric Segalstad and Josh Hunter of the production design group Samadhi Design Group released the graphic novel-like book, The 27's: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll. In it, they claim that "more famous musicians have died at the age of 27 than any other age."
They cited "more than three dozen rockers" that include, beyond the usual suspects, Malcolm Hale of Spanky And Our Gang, Alan Wilson from Canned Heat, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan of the Grateful Dead, Pete Ham of Badfinger, Gary Thain of Uriah Heep and Keef Hartley Band, Chris Bell of Big Star, D. Boon of Minutemen, Pete de Freitas of Echo & the Bunnymen, Kristin Pfaff of Hole, Raymond "Freaky Tah" Rogers of Lost Boyz, Sean McCabe of Ink & Dagger and Jeremy Michael Ward of De Facto and The Mars Volta.
Legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson, who died of suspected strychnine poisoning in 1938, is acknowledged as Rocker Zero of the 27 Club (which has also been called Forever 27 Club, Club 27 or the Curse of 27).
The Samadhi Design Group also opened a website called the27club.net as "an informational hub for trivia, facts, and news surrounding the musicians, artists, numeral, and mythology that makes up The 27s Universe."
Unlike the mystical number 3, the lucky number 7, the looking-out-for-number-one 1 or the auspicious number 8 (said to sound like "wealth" in some regional Chinese languages), the number 27 looks and sounds clunky.
The meaning of 27
But, it pops in other ways.
In math, 27 is the perfect cube—3 x 3 x 3.
In numerology, adding the numbers 2 and 7 in 27 equals 9, which represents humanitarianism, selflessness, obligations and creative expression.
In astrology, the planet Saturn is said to influence a person's life every 27 years or so. Saturn is a "taskmaster," said astrologer Susan Miller, ruling authority, discipline, fear and pain, as it does permanence, tenacity, ambition and tangible rewards.
And, in psychology, 27 is the penultimate year before the age one realizes that "the provisional character of the twenties is ending and life is becoming more serious," said psychologist Daniel Levinson.
(And, if you're so inclined, 27 is also the issue when Detective Comics first introduced Batman in 1939.)
During key events, people like to look for signs of foretelling or meaning. These clues (often, with little basis in fact) make it easier to explain away or make sense of occurrences our minds can't fathom. In the case of Winehouse, 27 was our mystical peg.
And because the shock of her death trumps the banality (and, so far, lack) of facts, Winehouse's death returns us to rock and roll myth-making mode.
