Chance? Conspiracy? Synchronicity? These are words tossed around by those of us in the know who want to get to the bottom of this mystery. Why have so many musicians fallen to the curse of the 27 Club?
What is the 27 Club Curse?
During a tumultuous time for music when artists were again using their voices for social action in the fight against corruption, four of the largest stars of the period all died in the same two year span… and all at the age of 27.
Between the years of 1969 and 1971, we lost:
- Brian Jones
- Jimi Hendrix
- Janis Joplin
- Jim Morrison
This in itself could easily be chalked up to coincidence.
That is… until the statisticians started doing the math.
You see, when you consider the general population there is nothing of statistical relevance when you look at the number of deaths at this age than at any other age. But narrow your sample population down to musicians and you see an odd pattern, one that defies the odds and enters the realm of very statistically significant.
The Development of the Curse of 27 Theory
You may or may not recognize the names listed above, but you know the acts they were associated with, such as The Rolling Stones and The Doors. The timely nature in which these four deaths coincided led to a few comments here and there until the talk faded out completely.
Fast forward to 1994, over two decades later, and once again the absolute most popular musician in the most popular band dies at the age of 27. When Kurt Cobain of Nirvana died, talk of the 27 Club exploded again.
Members of the music community really began looking into it and building a database of information. But in 2011, when Amy Winehouse died at 27 years old, talk of the 27 Club exploded into the public scene. Especially since Amy had gone on record stating that she feared she would meet an untimely death at that age…
Of course these six names are only a fraction of the full mystery.
If you want to only consider musicians that achieved a high level of fame, we are still talking about at least 60 members of the club. Extend it down to semi-famous and even down to local fame, and the numbers explode exponentially.
So what’s going on with this 27 curse Conspiracy?
How deep does this rabbit hole go? Let’s peer into it without jumping in. It turns out that some of these musicians had ties to the military-industrial complex to help seed certain social concepts and ideas in order to influence the public.
It turns out that some had occult ties. It appears some may died in a corporate conspiracy to cash out on insurance claims. Some may have been privy to insider secrets and had to be silenced. Others may truly fall into the club coincidentally.
Lots think it has to do with the Saturn Return, an astrological event that begins at the age of 27. There’s an unbelievable amount of albums and songs having to do with this concept, for instance, the well known (and great album):
If you stay on the surface level and take the reports surrounding these deaths as truthful, then nothing looks too strange. But as you begin to do even the tiniest amount of investigation, it becomes obvious that a lot of very untruthful information is being passed around to cover up for… something.
It could be as simple as a label wanting to not taint the legacy of their stars in order to continue milking money out of them post-mortem. Or it could be far more sinister.
What’s clear is this is not natural, which means it’s being orchestrated. It gets even more fishy when studies come out conflicting with and attempting to disprove each other. There is a motivation behind the effort. I draw no conclusions other than “something is up with this and we’ll likely never know the full truth.”
For instance, take a look at the list of card-carrying club members here and read the “official” cause of death column. Some of the oldest admit to poisoning and murder, but so many after are listed as overdoses.
Car crashes, road accidents, drowning, asphyxiation, fall from a great height, suicide, undisclosed illness… all of those could easily fall under the banner of “the M-word.” And many of them had fishy circumstances surrounding the event.
Other Notable 27 Curse Club Members
To show you why this idea has touched so many people deeply enough to be investigated, think about the following cursed 27 Club members and how passionate their fan bases are even to this day:
- Robert Johnson (Blues Legend)
- Ronald McKernan (The Grateful Dead)
- Dave Alexander (The Stooges)
- Rudy Lewis (The Drifters)
- Pete Ham (Badfinger)
- Mia Zapata (The Gits)
- Jeremy Michael Ward (The Mars Volta)
What we know is the elite side of the entertainment industry is in bed with lots of other special interest groups that want to push certain narratives and social norms. Almost every member of the 27 Club was a revolutionary with a strong counter-culture message that may have achieved too much fame and played the guitar a little too good.