The 27 Club

EXCESS AND TRAGEDY ARE THE STUFF OF MUSIC LEGEND, but it is only with hindsight that deeper patterns emerge. None of these is more striking than the deaths at age 27 of some of the greatest musicians of our time.

Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin. Jim Morrison. Brian Jones. Kurt Cobain. Founding bluesman Robert Johnson. All died at 27. Their stories, as well as those of ill-fated members of the Grateful Dead, The Stooges, Badfinger, Big Star, Minutemen, Echo & the Bunnymen, and The Mars Volta, are here presented for the first time as a profound and interlocking web that reaches beyond coincidence to the roots of artistic causality and fate.

The 27s is the first comprehensive account of the lives and legacies of the thirty-four musicians who make up (to date) rock's most notorious myth. It is also a capsule history of rock and roll, twisting and turning through decades and genres, unfurling layers of numerology, philosophy, and astrology along the way. The text is complemented by compelling and multifaceted artwork that brings a nonlinear graphic-novel edge to this major contribution to the study of rock culture.

The 27s include Rolling Stones founder Brian Jones, Delta bluesman Robert Johnson, D. Boon of the Minutemen. Mia Zapata of The Gits, crooner Jesse Belvin, Badfinger's Pete Ham, Chris Bell of Big Star, Gary Thain of Uriah Heep, Alan "Blind Owl" Wilson of Canned Heat, Freaky Tah of Lost Boyz, father of funk: Arlester Christian of Dyke and the Blazers, Pete de Freitas of Echo & The Bunnymen, Pigpen of the Grateful Dead, Kristin Pfaff of Hole, and Jeremy Ward of The Mars Volta.

[More Info]