27 Club | Is This a Celebrity Curse or Just a Tragic Pattern?

When a young person skyrockets to fame, how they deal with the pressure can often make or break the rest of their life. Drugs and partying, the classic rock star lifestyle is often the downfall of these young up-and-coming stars. And as the 60s faded into the 70s, some started to notice an odd pattern. Several of the most iconic musicians in the world all died within a very short time span, but the strangest part was that they were all the exact same age. Today, we're investigating the history and the theories behind the infamous 27 Club. This is Redweb. Welcome back, Task Force, to another episode of Redweb, the podcast all about unsolved mysteries, true crime, and the unknown. I'm your resident mystery enthusiast, Trevor Collins, and joining me hearing this case for the very first time, Alfredo Diaz. I think I've heard a second heard about this club. Tell me what you know. Break it down as much as you can remember. It's just not saying ballpark, people say the rules of three when someone passes. Totally, absolutely. So this was that on a grander scale, was my understanding, and that's it. That's all I know. Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I don't dig into the mysteries. I mean, again, we talked about this in the beginning, we were like, "Oh, would you want to do this true crime, internet conspiracy podcast?" And I was like, "Oh, I don't go searching for that stuff." You're like, "Perfect." Because I want to present it to you, and I was like, "Awesome, because whenever someone mentions anything, I'm in, right? I'm instantly like, that I bought my ticket, I'm in my seat, I'm listening, but it's not something I actively go and then search for." Yeah. So this is one of those things where I was like, "I heard about it." Someone mentioned it, but then it was never explained to me. And then also, most of the time, I'll be honest, most of the time, and I'm guilty of this, too. Someone would be like, "Oh, I heard about this thing, I'm like, that sounds awesome. Tell me more." And I'm like, "I don't know. It's something like that." It's just like. I'm like. Okay. Something. Okay. Yeah. "Titleate you and tantalize with the, with the intrigues of the world." And what's interesting is, I love it. As soon as I asked you, I was like, "Yeah, you're interested in the true crime stuff. You're interested in unsolved mysteries, internet mysteries, all this stuff that we started with." You're like, "Well, I don't know anything. I was like, perfect, qualified." Because all of this stuff just feels like this feels like common knowledge. And so I love it when you go, "I don't know, I think I've heard of it." I'm like, "Oh, this is great. I get to indulge in this. You're the perfect proxy for the audience, and you ask all these things." So the 27th Club, we're going to break down what this thing is because even if you kind of heard of it, and a lot of task force members are like, "I kind of know what this is already, you know, that what intrigue could there be, I think understanding why this has started, what the early patterns were, and how it continues. All the details are where the intrigue lie. And then, of course, as we like to do, I think, you know, people can kind of give you the napkin math of like, "Okay, well, this is what the 27th Club is, but when we start to break down some of the conspiracies behind it, why people believe in it, and what maybe the scientific analysis of it is, it almost like makes it even more interesting, because then you have suddenly a deeper conversation to follow up otherwise something that's really fascinating, but what's the fact in fiction behind it all? Why are we gravitating to things like this?" It almost reminds me a little bit of the Kennedy curse. We talked about that a few weeks ago. Right, we did. But yeah, but only instead of being like specifically a family, now we're talking about musicians, and even modern times, it's extended more into the world of celebrities, actors in recent years, stuff like that. So yeah, a lot of sensitive topics, check out the description task force if you want a list of some of those. And we also have a lot of things going on. So if you want to join us outside of the confines of this very specific podcast, Redweb is cooking every single week at redweb pod.com, for example, on Wednesday, Fredo Christian and I are doing our live show, a peek behind the curtain, we call it break room, but this break room will be extra special because we will be debriefing our West Virginia penitentiary ghost investigation, which is even more special because a, it's a travel thing, b, you guys earned it last year at the five year anniversary stretch goals and c, I wasn't able to make it this time. I get to watch this for the very first time, alongside all of you, as we get this apparently, I don't know if Fredo, you've been teasing me, apparently some stuff went down, and I'm very excited to see it. I mean, not to like overhype it or anything like that, but it's just like things have been escalating with these ghost hunts, I don't really know if I could say like, there's nothing out there. Really? Yeah, dude, I just don't know, man, this one was weird, this one was very weird. Okay, there's some sort of snowball effect happening. It's see, I don't know, man, that's, you know, she was talking about like energy just going from location to location, but like we've had a streak of things happening, and I don't know, man. I don't know. This one was, this one was a whole different device. Okay. Okay. And things were happening. And I was like, I just explained to me, please, task force, because now I'm at the point where I'm just like, I just, there's, I think there's made, there might be something, there might be something. Okay. We've got there task force, we have seen this man go from skeptic to like, well, why would I mess with, I don't believe in it, but why mess with it to full on messing with it, brave heart style and then going, but it's kind of mess with me back. This is a wild evolution to see in front of our eyes. Wednesday comes to the debrief on Thursday. Actually, we have the recording from last month's break room. So if you missed out on the live performance, you can, you can come watch it. And then on Friday, we have yet another game play ready for you guys. We do those every single month. And we're also approaching the end of July. So as a reminder, I've got it now in my hands. We've got our July exclusive merch. 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We have red web radio three and we also have at the very top if we can reach it, adding another gameplay every single month, doubling up our gameplay over on Patreon. But that is where we are at right now. Thank you all so much for the support and back to the episode. All right. We are at redwebpod.com, let's dive in the 27 club. So the 27 club is the cultural term used to describe the observed phenomenon surrounding the unusual number of celebrities that have died at the age of 27. More specifically, these celebrities were most often popular musicians, though, like I said, throughout the years, many people have started to tuck in other actors or artists associated with this club, dare I say, as well. The very first origins of the 27 club can be traced to the untimely deaths of four iconic musicians, who, again, all died at 27 within a short time span between 1969 and 1971. Ultimately, this shocking pattern would lead to the urban legend that the age of 27 was somehow particularly harrowing for any young, up-and-coming artists and celebrities. So, Fredo, I'm going to break down, kind of, in order, these four names. I've seen them referred to as the Holy Trinity, though there are four of them here. The Trinity refers to the later three, because they all have J names, but I will say the first person has a J in their last name. And so, you can almost call this the J club. So, you can have a J in your name, watch out. I'm like, I'm very interested to see, because, you know, there's so many years of humans on this earth. And so, like, I just feel like, at that point, you can nitpick names. Totally. Put them in this category. So, I'm looking for the little extra something that makes it weird and unique, as opposed to just, you know, just coincidence. I totally hear where you're coming from. And we're going to analyze all of that. We're going to get hands-on with the science, the tangible, the statistics, which is going to be really refreshing for a case like this. But hold on to that energy, because that's what we're going to analyze as we break down each of these cases. And each of these individuals, we're going to be doing a light overview. They could almost each of them be a true crime case of their own. Each of them almost deserves a documentary about their life and their death. So, just know that these are kind of cursory glimpses into the end of their lives. And again, a lot of sensitive topics along the way. So, the first of these deaths was Brian Jones, who died on July 3rd, 1969. And of course, we're starting off with an image. So, you have a face to go with the name. Task Force, if you want to see the pictures, you can see that in the video version on Spotify, YouTube, or on our social media. Okay. You know, light man with a bowl haircut. Yeah. The tie that cleaned up looked chisel jawline. Very chiseled. Skinny, black tie. Okay. Very, very 60s. You know, that it's kind of that cleaned up image that also kind of merged with rock at that time. Yeah. If you go the later years, alternative kind of look, they're very clean alternative. Yes, totally. So, Jones here was a founding member of the legendary rock band The Rolling Stones. Look from other. Yeah. And in the mid 1960s, he developed a serious issue with substance abuse. And this led to issues within the studio. He'd show up late. He'd be unable to play well. Things like that, you know. And it all came to a head in June of 1969. When fellow founding members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards kicked Jones out of the band simply because of this behavior. Then, unfortunately less than a month later, Jones was found deceased at the bottom of his swimming pool. Per his autopsy report, Jones had drowned under the influence of drugs and alcohol. And although drowning is what officially killed him, the corner reported that his heart and liver were also enlarged due to his continuous drug and alcohol abuse that had been happening over the many years leading up to this. And in his report, the corner concluded that his death was quote death by misadventure end quote. So so far, not really anything to point out other than you're going to start noticing a pattern here. But otherwise, this was just an unfortunate death of a very talented individual who fell prey to substances, right? Next up is the iconic Jimmy Hendrix. And as iconic as he was, what you might not know is that Jimmy Hendrix's incredible career was quite short lived as you'll come to find he did pass away at the age of 27. Yeah, I was about to say I did not know he passed away at 27. Yeah, man. What he did in his short life was so grand that it just doesn't feel like at a glance that like, oh, okay, this is something that was accomplished by a person that's been here for only 27 years. That's okay. It is wild to think about. I mean, this is pretty much everybody we're about to talk about. I think that is why this is a huge part of why this pattern stood out so much and shined as bright as their talent, you know, because you're right. And 27 years to accomplish as much as any of these individuals have to shine as bright as stars and but burn it at both ends is, um, I think kind of the foundation with which this 27 club rests upon. Now here is Hendrix's photo of which there are many. There are many, but take a look, man, that's just he has it, you know, that like hippies, 70 styles, get the headband. Yep, all the different colors. He's got, you know, his guitar and everything like that. It's just iconic Hendrix. Absolutely, just singing on that guitar. Yeah, you know, he was just rocking that night. Yeah, now he had been a musician for most of his life and his band was called the Jimmy Hendrix Experience and it was formed just a few years prior in 1966. Now after a swift rise to fame, his life would be cut short as he passed away on September 18th 1970 after choking on his own vomit. Now he had reportedly taken nine sleeping pills called Vesparax and washed them down with red wine to give you an idea because this medication has since been discontinued. It's no longer manufactured due to the advent of equally effective medications with far fewer side effects. I believe by the 90s was this was completely gone. Nine Vesparax pills would have been by many accounts 18 times the recommended dosage. And this is a sedative. You take it at a great volume like this. I believe it can be a hallucinogen, but yeah, you can imagine that's why you're in a completely subdued and sedated state, which is how you know, you can essentially drown on your own vomit to not wake up. Right. Devastating now given the volume of pills he took many theorized that it could have been intentional that maybe he decided to take this volume to end his own life, though the coroner found no other evidence whatsoever of suicide. Many also point to Hendrix's active plans and positive outlook to the future that he had to kind of affirm the corners conclusion that this was not suicide. And this left some to theorize that Hendrix might have been unaware of what he was doing when he was taking these pills because he was previously a heavy drug user. And he might have been under the influence of something else and then you know, whether it be the euphoria or not knowing just kind of caught up in the moment, make a simple mistake that then ends it all. Yeah, everything or just yeah, everything compounded onto itself stuff like that. Right. And so this would have been a little over a year later. Again, as far as people are concerned, we've lost now two great talents in in the world of music. But over, you know, over 12 months have gone by, you know, we're not even thinking of the rule of three or anything like that. But this is where things start to kick up because not but three weeks after the death of Hendrix, the music industry would quickly face the loss of another immense talent this time with Janice Chaplin. So let's talk about her real quick. She rose to fame in 1967 as the lead singer of a San Francisco-based band, Big Brother, and the holding company. Have you ever heard of them being from SF or was this a different genre from what you grew up with? No, I didn't, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was bearish. I mean, like any city or state, they're very proud of, you know, yeah, absolutely. SF Pride goes deep. So here is one of the many stage images of Janice Chaplin. If you want to take a look, she had a very unique style and a very charismatic sense of performance for sure. Yeah. It's a lot of energy in that photo. A lot of energy in that photo, absolutely. And I mean, that's the thing that the star power of each of these individuals, you hear it in their music. You feel it in their presence. You can see it in these images. They just have very potent presences. And I'm not trying to put anybody on a pedestal. There's a lot of other amazing immense talent out there. But you know, I think it just like, it's elevated because of their unfortunate and untimely deaths. You know what I mean? I agree. But yeah, I mean, these were people who were incredibly talented, but also deeply passionate. And you feel that when they perform. Now, Joplin had released two albums with the band before moving on as a solo artist where her career absolutely skyrocketed. And she became known for her strong stage presence, her unique vocals. However, as her career grew, so did her addiction to heroin and alcohol. Again, this is going to be a very strong and prevalent pattern through each of these cases. She died just three weeks after Hendrix on October 4th, 1970, unfortunately from a heroin overdose. At around 1 a.m. Joplin had injected her arm, her left arm, and she went down then to the hotel lobby to get a pack of cigarettes. And this is kind of how quickly it all happened because by the time she got back to her room, when she went to set the pack down, she seemingly keeled over, hit her head on the coffee table, and she was found the next morning by her road manager, a man named John Cook. Cook found her in her Hollywood hotel room after she had failed to show up for a recording session at sunset studios. You can't undo something like that. And it's just, you know, and you have that much access to money and fame and everything, you know? Absolutely. Those are very much cornerstones to the conversation I think we'll have. So, as we go through some of these cases, we'll see more of the patterns that emerge. But I think this of the four here to really kick off this so-called 27-club, this is where we really start to solidify this idea. Because now a pattern is starting to emerge, but people aren't really talking about it yet until this next one. Because the timing of this next case, you know, it doesn't really do anything to deny the early rumors of a pattern. Because his death would arrive exactly two years after that of Brian Jones. And this left us with the death of four major musicians within exactly two years all at the age of 27. So next up, let's talk about him. It's Jim Morrison. Now, Jim Morrison was famously the leader of the band, The Doors, which he founded with his friend in 1965. Again, here's another image for you. You want to take a look at that feathery, long, flowing locks. That's some feathery, long hair kind of a length of my hair out to. Yeah, go for it. Yeah, my thought was like, you know, let's go for that Aquaman Jason Mobile look. And I was like, sure. And then I could just chop it down and see where I like it. The leather pants, tight leather pants. Oh, I didn't even see that. And that's like, that's a great photo. That's a photo you take and show your kids like that. Like back in the day. Yeah, they go, that's what you wore like that. I know it's all wet down below. You know, I know your sweat and your socks are pooling. You know, but you look good. What was it? The dust boys, one of the music videos we had. We had tight pants on those and that stuff does not breathe does not breathe. That leather trench coat does not did just holding all the juices, sealing it all in all of it. Task Force, if you know us, Fredo and I and a man named Gavin free, in our previous iteration has the dust boys, power to you. Okay. Flower power to you. In fact, because Segway Jim Morrison was also known as one of the leaders of the flower power movement. And movement that as you might know, championed peace, love, nonviolence. It arose kind of in the late 1960s in response to the escalation of the ongoing Vietnam War. Now this shift was intended to disarm the violent reactions to anti-war protest and create positive momentum using flowers, music, basically a really big positive spectacle. And this was to create more momentum, more progress with the anti-war because up into that point, anti-war protests were, you know, your standard protests, completely nonviolent, but they had been responded to it with increasing violence. And so they're like, all right, well, how do we juxtapose that violence? Let's come at it. You know, flowers and gun barrels, you know what I mean? Something that creates a very powerful image, but even goes further away from the violence. Now throughout this time, the doors, as you know, was rising to great success. And so he's moving more and more into the spotlight. However, by 1969, Morrison had become a heavy drinker, causing him to be late for many performances. He was acting unsightly on stage. For example, in March of 1969, a drunk Morrison flashed himself on stage to a crowd. He was then charged with three misdemeanors for the incident and was later convicted. He was in the process of appealing this conviction when he died. Now in the doors, last live concert, these behaviors kind of continued though. In this time, again, it's the last concert that he was therefore, Morrison was sitting on the drum, essentially refusing to sing before smashing the microphone into the stage and storming off. Then in 1971, he left the band. To focus on writing poetry, he moved to Paris with his girlfriend, Pamela Corson, and then unfortunately, exactly two years later after Brian Jones specifically, it was July 3rd, 1971. Girlfriend Corson found Morrison dead in the bathtub of their Paris apartment. And while some sources say the cause of death was unclear, others report that he had died of a heart attack allegedly caused by a heroin overdose. Some have even stated that Morrison accidentally inhaled of some of Corson's heroin, believing it to be cocaine at the time. And maybe this is what caused the overdose. And unfortunately, three years later, Corson herself would also die of a heroin overdose also at the age of 27. Now, I don't know if this is tragic irony, simply coincidence, but it does point to the underlying theme that I think we have kind of loudly seen now. This theme of drugs and substance abuse and these deaths, all kind of, again, seemingly being a product of the industry during this particular time. You know, these are the only people doing all of these things in the music industry. These are the people we're focusing on because they're the ones that kind of passed away also at 27. But, you know, musicians throughout the 60s and 70s, you know, were infamous for their overuse of drugs. It's in the album. It's in the artwork. It's on the stage. It was very public. Even if it was illegal, it was just very, very prevalent. And maybe this is the unfortunate byproduct, you know, this 27 club of the dangerous and risky industry wide trend of substance abuse. And maybe to put a silver lining here, one can hope that as this trend started to emerge, these untimely deaths might have encouraged caution amongst their peers, amongst the industry. And maybe other musicians would learn from these tragic occurrences to pull back or, I don't know, you know, hopefully people, again, trying to be positive here, were saved in learning from these tragic deaths, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I mean, when you see that this is happening and it starts to become rampant, right? Then the spotlight is shined on it. It becomes more media based. And then from there, it becomes this whole, like, shock value to people that are experiencing that, right? They go, oh my goodness, that could be me. It's so vivid. I see it there. Or, you know, since they're famous, I know of this person or even possibly I know this person. And so it's definitely a rude awakening for a lot of people. Absolutely. You know, it's innate, I think, until something maybe rattles you that we all kind of feel in our youth, immortal, whatever it is, those are things that happened to others. Those are things you hear about. But when it hits such iconic names at such young ages, I do think it starts to rattle you a little bit. And maybe, maybe those like, oh, this impermanence of life, the magic in wonder that life is, however short it might be, starts to sink in a little bit. But regardless, you know, I want to look at the 27 club at the time. We will talk about it in modern lenses looking back. But at the time, the public was so focused on the fact that these iconic musicians had died in such a short span of time in such similar ways, especially Hendrix Joplin and Morrison, that they weren't really keyed in on the fact that they were all the same age when they passed away. So we're kind of watching over the decades now, this 27 club form. Now, it wasn't in fact until the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994 that the term 27 club became more commonly used. Kurt Cobain was 27, he passed too. Kurt Cobain was 27 years old. Dang dude. Yeah, your brains about to get rattled because at the end, I'm going to talk about, I don't know if I'm going to be completely exhaustive on this list, but I'm at least going to hit you with a wide array of names you might know. Oh my god. That's one of the things I was like, I wish I went to, you know, I go to a lot of concerts, but like to have been able to see Nirvana or farm or, you know, for that most part too, like Lincoln Park. I mean, I've seen Lincoln Park with their news lead singer. She's fantastic. Yeah, absolutely. But I never got to see Chester like do a thing. Yeah, Nirvana is definitely one of those ones. I'm like, oh, that would have been amazing. Oh, absolutely. Just peak grunge, just everything it stood for, like a counter movement among counter movements. Just, yeah, that would have been wild because you know, a lot of those early concerts are genuinely like garage band style things like, yes, we just found a small room. You could find VHS tapes of some of these first performances where they're rocking in like a library, just wherever they can be. And there's like 50 people crowded in because it was so hyper local. It was like, and it felt special because it was so locally owned in that way. Yeah, that's cool stuff right there. Very cool stuff. You know, especially in the world of arena rock stars, which certainly harkens back to the British invasion in the 60s with the Beatles and everybody else. I mean, it's not new by the time the 90s roll around, but like just to go so local, so small. And yeah, I don't know. There's something really cool about that. But yeah, let's continue to talk about this history now. The the etymology of the 27 club through the lens of Kurt Cobain. And why maybe he was the catalyst for this forming into even more of a pattern circling specifically around the age of 27. So Cobain, as you astutely pointed out, was the frontman for Nirvana. And sadly, he did take his own life at the age of 27 on April 5th, 1994. Now to give some context, and I can't do it all justice. Again, this is one of those deaths that there's a lot to unpack here and a lot to talk about. But just to give some more context behind this decision, Cobain had been suffering long before his death. He dealt with chronic debilitating stomach pain and he had turned to heroin to numb this feeling. And this led to a full-blown heroin addiction that significantly impacted his life, his relationships, and it certainly comes out in a lot of his music as well. And he had been battling with severe depression over this time. And he had also intentionally overdosed before there were other suicide attempts before this one. So he had there's a lot of darkness in this young man's life, unfortunately. So again, not doing the full service to this man's life, but I did want to give some context behind this, this moment, because it was very, very, very in the spotlight, a very emotional moment, you know, his own mother was quoted by the Associated Press. And she says, quote, now he's gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to join that stupid club. End quote. Wow. Okay. So at this point, you know, people are kind of aware of it. So we talked about with like Janice Chaplin and some of the earlier names that people weren't quite keen yet to it, which, you know, makes sense because how many times have we covered like a true crime and then people, you know, as we're going along the story, it's like, oh, we're recognizing a pattern here. This could be a serial killer, right? And this is like one of those things where it's like people of past are focusing on the artists and then you start to see a pattern. Yes. And so now we're at that point because the bomb is like, don't join that club. So this is already a thing at this point. Yeah. Absolutely. Now, I love that you pointed that out because like, I really like to live these cases, so to speak in the real time as they were as they unfolded. And I think it really gives a better insight into the origins of it. Maybe the thinking of the zeitgeist, et cetera, but you're totally right. But when it comes to the idea of a club here, you know, many journalists believe that she was in fact referring to the 27 club. As people began to connect the dots between Cobain's death, the many other musicians, I've kind of skipped over through the 70s, through the 80s. I'll talk about them here in a bit. But again, Kurt Cobain's death was kind of the solidification of this club. And I think this quote is why that became more concrete, why it became more solidified in the zeitgeist. However, her referring to a stupid club and joining this club has been debated what she truly meant. Some believe it was possible that she was, yes, in fact, referring to the 27 club and dying during the age of 27. Others think she was referring to her own family. You know, two, two of Cobain's uncles and one of his great uncles, in fact, all of them unfortunately committed suicide. And so you see this devastating trend just in his own family, which I had no idea about until we kind of dove into the case here. Yeah. Which is like, it's unfortunate when you can even look within your family, within your age and see these struggles too. You know, whether it be genetics or upbringing or what have you, there's a lot to unpack with psychology, but like mental illness and, and, you know, where it comes from, whether it's inherited or, or, you know, nature and nurture the whole conversation there. So yeah, the interpretation of 27 club is there. The interpretation of the so-called club of family suicide is there. And then I also saw that they were rumblings through a few journalists there that I think there were two heroin-related deaths of other younger musicians in Seattle. Now, he didn't, he wasn't born in Seattle, but he was born nearby, maybe like a hundred miles down the road kind of. And so some think that maybe that's the club she was referring to, regardless of what she meant, this certainly stoked the flames of the idea of the 27 club. And due to this, Cobain's death and the reporting that followed began to popularize the idea. Again, as I've said, the 27 club, cementing its place in Rockstar Urban legend. Oh, so she kind of kicked it off. Yeah, whether she meant to or not, it's the way she said it, and I think I don't know if her saying club is what specifically coined it. But it certainly is what solidified it, I would say. Oh, I mean, if you give it a name, right, then it starts to gain popularity. You see that in just everything in general. You personally, you see it in like collectibles. A good example is that there's is there's this mu card, right? This is mu. He's in a bubble and everyone's like, yeah, that's a $9 card, but someone started corning the term bubble mu, and so that gain attraction had a name. Now it's like a $1,000 card, you know what I mean? And so like, when you give something a name, it just gives it so much more popularity. It's got a namesake. It's got it's a thing, right? Yes. It's like a club. That's the big thing there, right? It's like this club, it's like, oh, a club, and it's got a whole name to it. Instead of just like, yeah, people pass away at this age, like, no, that's a club. It's like, oh, right. For better or worse, I mean, for the for the language of your collectible, it's like the marketing, right? Or the PR. Yeah, yeah, it's a PR of it. But you pointed this out earlier on when journalism can bite into it in a succinct way, get its headline on. Yes, there you go. It juices the headline game and makes it very conversational. And then it then like you kind of implied, it kind of goes viral from there totally. And again, I got excited about the information here. I do want to share before we continue on too far here an image of Kurt Cobain. He's an iconic individual. I'm sure many people know his face, but many might not. So this is the the face to go with the iconic name. Yes, sir. We're watching all these videos in high school. Yeah. Really high school. You can tell he's sat on a stool on the front of the stage with that acoustic guitar in his hands just by the posture alone. Yeah, they're there were failures too. Oh, yeah. I mean, they weren't the first to smash up a stage, but they certainly amped it up. Pun intended. Yeah. Now what I can't give you, Task Force is his iconic voice. The copyright trademarked whatever the voice that you got to just go listen and hear yourself. But yeah, that's Kurt Cobain. Now, before we move on, this is where again, 27 Club being solidified here. It starts to make me think of the term that we discussed in the Kennedy Curse episode, apaphenia, permerion webster is kind of truncated here. It's like the human tendency to perceive meaning and patterns and otherwise unrelated events. Yes, we can see the relation to all of these things and a lot of underlying substance abuse tones here. But otherwise, they are isolated events. There isn't so it's not like there's some sort of like secret society that's going the icon is hit 27. We got to take them out. You know, like there isn't some unified effort here that we will talk about a curse when it comes to the the theories that I actually hadn't heard about. But again, we'll also talk about the science behind it all. So moving on as we kind of come to a close on our more in-depth discussion on the musicians of this 27 Club, you might know about this when Fredo, I'm sure because it is much more recent history in 2011. The term had a resurgence in media following the death of Amy Winehouse. Here is an image of the iconic Amy Winehouse and her. I mean, I just know her for that long updo black hair, very iconic image she had. Yeah. And then the eyeliner, the big extended eyeliner, the thick wings. Yeah. Dang. Amy Winehouse too. Yeah. There's this are iconic like artists here. Whether you listen to them or not, I'm telling you you've either heard of them or heard them directly for sure. This is wild. I did not know they all died at the same age. Yeah. Yeah. It's wild to think about. So like I said, she died at the age of 27 on July 23rd, 2011. And this was due to alcohol poisoning. Now according to her personal assistant, Winehouse had feared her final fate. Her assistant had said this quote, she reckoned she would join the 27 Club of Rockstars who died at that age. She told me I have a feeling I'm going to die young. End quote. I mean, yeah, you know, I feel like that's just things that people say, you know, they have inkling feeling or they know that the things that they're doing isn't there. It is fast for them. Right. I mean, again, the pattern here is people, a lot of people are substance abuse. And so you do recognize that ahead of time. It's not something where you just keep abusing substances and go, it's going to be fine. Like you abuse it long enough and you go, hmm, this ain't good, but I can't stop. You're aware of what you're doing. Right. I think that's part of what this is. I don't know if she knew she would pass at 27. But a lot of people look into these quotes and things and start to like, it's almost like when you believe fate so much, can it become real? Do you, can you, um, manifest? Yeah. Yes. Can you subscribe to the idea so hard that you start to recklessly put yourself into that path? No point. Yeah. That's a more nebulous theory to discuss. And we can kind of just discuss it now. It's like, you know, it's not like the, the four that we started off with nor Kurt Cobain. I don't think any of these individuals intentionally ended their own lives or died at 27. I don't think anyone believed it hard enough that 27 happened and then they just started doing more wild stuff. I think we're just, you know, seeing a pattern here. But as we come to a close on some of these cases, there's a lot of names I wanted to throw out there. And again, there's a lot. And so I don't know if I'll be exhaustive here. But I want to go back because he has been retroactively included in the 27 club. The Delta Blues Pioneer, the blues musician and guitarist Robert Johnson. If you've never heard of him, I deeply encourage you to take a look. I had no idea that he died at 27, but there's a lot of lore and folklore surrounding him and his story about meeting the devil at the crossroads has been a story that has been told throughout blues music since he was alive and playing his songs. Long story short, the folklore is that he met the devil at the crossroads in Georgia or at least down in the south. And again, I don't want to do it to service here. This is my vague memory here, firing from the hip that he met the devil and made a deal with the devil for his abilities to play and I don't know if this has any relation to like challenging the devil to playing the fiddle situation. Oh, yeah, that. Yeah, because that's where my memory starts to get really hazy. I haven't really looked into Robert Johnson in many, many years. But anyway, just take this as a door opening to Utah's Forest to go look deeper and get more facts for yourselves so I don't misspeak here. But I had no idea that he had passed away at 27. So that was a pretty shocking one for me, again, kind of looking at my list here, firing off Ronald McCurnen from the grateful dead. He was a founding member there and he's come to internal hemorrhaging in 1973 caused by alcoholism, bad thing or singer songwriter Pete Ham in 1975 passed away due to suicide. An interesting one here also in 1994 with a very close relation to Kurt Cobain was Kristen Faff. She was the basis for Courtney Love's band called Hole and she also died of a heroin overdose and this would have been just two months after Kurt Cobain's passing. Damn. Yeah. Yeah, these are big names that just seem like they're larger than life. Yes. Yes. Let's see here. There was a person named Randy Walker, aka Stretch in 1995. He was a rapper and producer and he was very close to Tupac Shakur who was killed in a targeted assassination, which actually then made me think about Tupac and Biggie. They were not 27, which would have only added it, it would have added even more to this artist list. Yeah. Right. Right. I believe Tupac was, I want to say 25. I think Biggie was 24. I might be wrong. Still young as hell. Yes. And then like in recent years, you have like juice world. I just looked this up before the episode. He was 21. Wild stuff. Yeah. That was a big one. He was a hook beast. Whenever he was like on a hook or a song, you knew as fire. Yeah. And I know there's a lot of conspiracy theories around him that I'm not well informed on, but about his young death and I think that honestly, there's just a trend about the Rockstar lifestyle in youthful deaths 27 or not. I think that that's just that juice or cans would come to the substance abuse too, I believe. Oh, really? Okay. The other one here, which is not a musician, but he was a very prolific actor for, you know, the early teens was Anton Yelchin. I remember when he passed away, it was an absolute shock. This was 2016 and it was a complete and freak accident. I believe he got out of his vehicle, went down the hill at the driveway of his house to get something out of the mailbox. The car was in gear still. It rolled back and I don't really want to describe it much more than that because it's pretty devastating, but, um, but suffice to say that that was the cause of his death. Also 27. Really? That's such a freak accident seems. I remember that happening because I think it was on the heels of tremendous success with Star Trek. And again, he had been in like 18 movies across a few years at that time. And so he was extraordinarily like a shooting star really making it to the higher echelons acting. Yeah. And it is, you know, extra devastating when it's someone who is rocketing to fame. And I do think that there's something to be said about that spotlight being so hot, whether it be the lifestyle or just the attention that is garnered. And so when these accidents happen, again, we can't help as humans, but to see patterns even if there aren't any, but with that said, let's dive into the theories a little bit. We'll talk about the two that I have broken down and then you and I can kind of just give our casual thoughts here, because I think you and I are orbiting around the same opinion. But here's an interesting one. I can't believe I never knew about this, but this is one of the myths that has circulated around the 27 club for quite some time. It's the idea of the white lighter curse. Now it's not too deep. It states that many of the members of the 27 club died while they were in possession of a disposable white cigarette lighter. I'd never heard of this, I don't even have a list of names to kind of back this up. It's just a casual thing that's been discussed out there. But this has led many to become superstitious about white lighters, believing them to be bad fortune, whether it be death or otherwise, that they, you know, if you're going to be carrying around a lighter at all, that it shouldn't be a white one. I mean, it's interesting, seems very superstitious. I'd like to see the amount of people that do have white lighters. Yeah. There's nothing going on there. Yeah, that's very, yeah, that, that, that, for me, that's the realm of superstition. Oh, a totally superstition. It is interesting, I think, you know, whether you're a skeptic or a believer in superstitions, the paranormal, what have you. I find it very interesting to see the origin of these things, the origin of a ghost story, the origin of a superstition. Where did this come from and why? Now this theory has been disputed. Of course, it is a superstition, but disposable lighters were not widely available until Bick came along with their production of disposable lighters in 1973. So really, the foundation of this, again, 27 club was laid several years prior to this kind of being a thing. So I think, you know, maybe it was just unfortunate circumstance or what have you, but task force members everywhere checking their pockets to see if they got a white lighter or a white lighter. Yeah. Like off white beige stuff, okay, also 37, not quite the 27 club, but still a 7 in there. Yeah, you're like hurry up birthday, I need to get out of this and I need to get older. I do remember, and this is maybe a silly thought, but I knew about this so passively or colloquially that, you know, I'm not famous whatsoever. But you know, at Rooster Teeth, you know, there was a public eye. There was an audience of some kind and so like I remember being 27 and being like, I hope this doesn't extend to this realm. I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious, you know, just just a little bit. I'm precious about my life and the people around me that I care about. So I remember turning 28 and being like, well, I don't know, I don't know if I dodged anything, but I don't know, I felt a little relief. Right. You know, can do anything but help. Can do anything but help every year you get older is just another blessing, another blessing on the blessings. All right. So let's talk about now a very interesting study. I love it when someone with a buff-ass mind comes to play with that data. And honestly, we have a researcher named Diana Kenney who collected data on musician deaths to specifically evaluate the 27 club. I love this. There's always someone studying something, so yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, you know what? That's true. I'm glad people are studying our specific niche interest, though, because it helps us out, because you know, like when we start breaking it down, it feels like, I don't know, I'm not an expert. I'm not a buff-mind. Not at all. So let me rely on someone smarter than me. So due to the kind of public interest, especially with the resurgence a few years prior, 2014, Diana Kenney steps up to collect this data. Now, interestingly, she found that popular musicians were actually more likely to die at the age of 56, not 27. Okay. That's a whole different number. Decay is later. Totally. Double, in fact. Now, she has an article out there titled The 27 Club Is A Myth. 56 is the bum-note for musicians. And in that article, I'm going to quote her, she says this, quote, "In a population of dead musicians spanning seven decades from 1950 to 2010, for which an accurate age of death could be identified and equals 11,054." So that's the sample size. We have a little over 11,000 musicians for which they can get an accurate age of death spanning seven decades. Now here, I'll continue to quote her. She says 1.2% or 128 musicians died at 26. 1.4% or 153 musicians died at 28, and 1.3% or 144 musicians died at 27. So just looking at 26 to 28, we're not seeing like a huge spike. It's pretty level if not a slight increase all the way to 28. She goes on to say, quote, "Age 56 had the highest frequency of deaths, 2.2% or n equals 239 musicians," end quote. But see, this is where I think it comes back to what I was talking about, right? 27 had the name recognition, 27 clubs. Yes. Yeah, the branding. I had the branding on it, yeah, exactly. Okay. So that's where my mind is at. It's like because of the branding, that's what made it so popular. But I do love, again, we love it. of someone getting in there and getting into the weeds of things and the data and all that kind of stuff and sussing it out, that's where I like to see. - Yes, now to help visualize this, because I know it can be task force a little difficult to just all really hear raw data and statistics. So take a look at this graph, Fredo. This plots on the X values the age at death of musicians from 1950 to 2010, and then on the Y-axis, it is the percentage, and you can kind of see a trend. You see it kind of bump up in the early years, flatten out into the 40s and then bump up again as the 50s come along and then kind of fade off as people get older and natural causes take effect there. - Yeah, you know, see, look at this graph. It does seem like there's, you know, late 20s is kind of that plateau, that first plateau. - Yes. - And then from there, you gradually work your way up to another plateau, mid-50s or so. - Mm-hmm. - Let's see, again, it goes to show you the name recognition, right? 'Cause 27 Club has, it's branded for better or for worse, but clearly, you know, you have an increase in percentage here when you're in your mid-50s that cascades away above into late 20s. - Yeah, it is interesting, I will say. This graph leaps off the ground because, you know, you would hope that there's not a lot of musicians passing away in their teens or early 20s or what have you, but that graph does show some data there. And you see it rock it off the ground from 15, pretty much up to 27 to 30. You see a very straight line correlation. Like you said, it plateaus and then it kind of stays level until the early to mid-40s goes up through the early 50s, plateaus and then mid to late 60s, you see it start to fade off as, you know, natural events take their toll on lives. But, you know, it's rare to live up into the 90s, you know what I mean, but yeah. It's a very interesting graph to see this data. And it does show that there isn't some sort of particular spike at 27, but there is a small hump around it. And so you can almost say like maybe 27 is just the name that has captured this otherwise phenomenon that's wrapping around the rock star lifestyle. These young individuals, whether it be, I don't know, like getting affiliated with gangs or getting into substances or living reckless lifestyles, flying around in helicopters, which is definitely raising your risk profile, you see all that tucked into, you know, this graph. - And it's cool to see it and you're taking a step back and seeing it in such a bigger picture. - Absolutely. And ultimately, while it might not be backed by statistics, there is no denying the tragedy that comes with up and coming artists dying before their careers really have fully hit their stride. Of course, many of them have made immense impacts on the world prior to their deaths, even with their youth. But you can't help but think about the lost potential, about everybody we talked about today and then some who they could have gone on to be, how they could have shaped the world through their arts. It, there's just so much lost. - Oh, I agree. If they did what they did in such a short amount of time, imagine if they had a whole lifelong career. - Yeah. And I think it's that exact thing that not only were they in the spotlight, not only were they young, not only is their lost potential, but it's all of these things combined that I think really almost encourages us to find a pattern because it's more comfortable. We want to find meaning in this loss rather than it being random. You know, you don't want random tragedy to strike, people that have like. - Accomplish some of my action. - Yeah, who were changed, their lives which, you go to the comments of Janice Chaplin concerts that are recorded and uploaded to YouTube and you see people who have loved loss in life impacted immensely by each of these artists. And they, so they have impact and you don't want it to be random. You don't want life to be meaningless or that it can end like that. It is precious, but I think all of these things are what really go into the 27 club. That it isn't necessarily 27, but it is the risky, hard, maybe lifestyle that especially the late '60s and '70s saw for artists, even into the '80s and '90s, that kind of made this more of a pattern. I think, you know, just like a higher risk profile for the industry. Now, in fact, kind of back this up, there was a study done by the British Medical Journal that did note that young musicians do have a higher death rate than general non-musician in the young adult population. I think that just once again reaffirms that fame, exposure to drugs and alcohol and the intense pressure that society might bring to, you know, being in the public eye. Heck, you're an actor doing a thing on screen and then people turn to you for politics or to as a role model. And whether that's justified or not, I think that's in the eye of the beholder, but ultimately it does bring a lot of pressure. And so all of those things, I think, you know, I'm just kind of like, again, reiterating the same point here, but ultimately there might not be scientific backing, but the 27th club has certainly cemented itself in the cultural zeitgeist. And it's become a way to remember, maybe even honor musicians who would pass away too soon, even if they weren't 27 years old. These deaths have potentially become cautionary tales and have opened doors for broader discussions around things like addiction, substance abuse and mental health for young people and young artists. And I think just even in art lifetime, Fredo, we've seen the development and the destigmatization of a lot of these conversations. Not that, you know, when you're young, you know, much about this stuff, but I do know now that I'm an adult, I definitely am aware of these conversations in a way that I don't know if we were talking about them when these young artists were passing away, you know? - Yeah, no, I completely agree. It's just unfortunate. It's, you know, it's the lifestyle. It's the access that you have to things and-- - Yes, yes. - It's just wild, just that step up in lifestyle, how crazy things can get, you know? And it doesn't even have to be that grand. I remember when I was younger and I was professionally gaming and I go to professional events. Some of the things that I saw with like, approach teams and their coaches and stuff like that and like, you guys are having access to things that we should not have access to right now. - Dude, it's wild out there. - And we're just people that play video games professional. Physicians or anything too crazy and all of a sudden it's like, oh, we're getting access to this. That's not good. - Yeah, some people pine for that lifestyle. So it creeps down. You know, I remember like, I was at straight edge but I remember, and I was a pretty straight lace kid and I remember going through high school and being like, oh, you know, these are the parties that happen in college. This is the stuff you hear about, blah, blah, blah. - Oh yeah, I guess you see it too, right? Like if you're a part of like a popular group or something like that, you know, everyone wants to hang out with those kids, everyone's giving access to those kids and then it's snowballs, right? It's like, oh, we're cool. We want to do cooler things. And so it's like, maybe we start drinking early, all that kind of stuff or staying up like way too late, sneaking into places we shouldn't be sneaking into. All that. - Yeah, I remember, dude, just 10 years after I was out of high school, the scene had changed. People were doing stuff. I couldn't have possibly dreamt that my peers were doing. It's just, it is interesting how all that stuff kind of settles down and settles in. Like it starts from age wise, the top, certain industries, certain specific accesses and whether it's like put on a pedestal or not. It kind of, it simmers down into like, hold on. We're just high schoolers. Well, what are we doing? What are we, why are we trying to chase this drag and literally sometimes this ain't the place I want to be? 'Cause I, you know what the potential has been anyway. That's now, that's just me. But it is interesting how it spreads. You're totally right, you're totally right. It is, it is, well, look how cool the Rockstar lifestyle is. And I know we're focusing in on some of the more dark and tragic elements of it. And there's a lot of people that have survived it. But carefully don't get blinded by the survivorship bias. You know, there is the dark side to me anything, you know. But as we come to an end task force, I just want to say thank you all so much. Again, for the support on the stream the other week, if you want to go check out the VOD of that, we left it live on the YouTube channel. We had a great time doing a lot of crowd control with various games and things. But yeah, you could support us directly with store.redwedpod.com, get some of that moich, the July specific merch, that Japanese streetwear will continue to support the stretch goals that we had during the stream. So you can still support us there or become a Patreon member at redwebpod.com. Many ways to support us, you can also just review us here, wherever you listen to us. Share us with your mom, share us with your friend. However, however you want to share the podcast, some shout outs for today. Thank you to our newest elite member, Jordan Cuevas for joining us at redwebpod.com. And I want to give a shout out to the buff scientist this week. It's a small world who is also one of our amazing mod team members over on our discord page. So you want to join the discord redwebpod.com. It's also there. And then our squanks for the week. We've got Andy Schrock, Gavin Day, and Holster just to name a few. You guys have been amazing. Thank you all so much. And Fredo, this has been the infamous 27 club. Is it everything you maybe heard about before we dove in? It's a double-sided coin. It's very much like, okay, we kind of cherry picked here. But also the amount of like big names is stunning. And so you can see maybe how even you in the world of gaming and collectibles and things like you see the rumblings of something like this because with such potent names, it just, it travels. It does, true. Yeah. Yeah. But with that said, Frado, I'll see you right back here next Monday for yet another mystery.