Do you include Dangerous Lifestyle in your personal criteria for the 27 Club?

Cafe Society
1

People are referring to the 27 Club in discussion of the death of actor Anton Yelchin.
He’s even included in Wikipedia’s official list.

I don’t think he really counts. The Wikipedia list includes other people who died in simple accidents. That doesn’t match my understanding of what it means to be in the 27 Club. I’ve always considered there to be some kind of “Killed By Fame” aspect to the untimely death.

Mostly I think of it as the indulgence in the excesses of Fame: Brian Jones, drowned while on drugs; Jimi Hendrix, asphyxiation while intoxicated; Janis Joplin, drug overdose.

Pete Ham’s suicide came out of despondency as artistic endeavors became stifled by the business side of things. Kurt Cobain’s depression and mental illness were most definitely aggravated by fame. Amy Winehouse brings back old-fashioned alcohol poisoning but having watched the recent documentary about her I kinda feel like she was slowly killing herself due to being an extremely unhappy person who was uncomfortable with the expectations that fame put on her.

And of course there’s Robert Johnson who straight up made a deal with the devil.

Anton Yelchin died from a ridiculously mundane unfortunate accident. If you were making a dramatized biography film about him, there’d be absolutely no natural way to foreshadow his death. His death is not attached to fame in any way. This does not at all fit into my idea of what the term “27 Club” means.

Thoughts?

2

What albums had Yelchin put out? And no, “once played in a now-disbanded punk band” doesn’t make him a musician.

3

Well, yeah, that’s another reason to disqualify him but based upon the argument laid out in the OP- supposed it was a famous 27 year old musician who died in the exact same way that Yelchin died. Would you put that musician in the 27 Club or not?

4

Naah.

5

Maybe Yelchin was drunk when he didn’t make his car properly safe. We don’t really know that. But looking at the list, a whole bunch of them were in car wrecks or plane crashes, though you can’t tell of the celeb was a drunk driver or drunk pilot.

I vote if they’re dead at 27 and a celeb, they’re on the list. Odds are they did something stupid related to their you and inexperience that contributed to their death.

6

Being 27, well-known, dead (and having some connection to music!) is good enough for me.

7

Not for me. You have to have done it to yourself through lifestyle choices, and bad ones. Drugs, preferably.

With apologies to janis Ian:

At 28

I learned the truth at twenty eight
That fame was set by dying young
If you choke on your own puke
Or hang yourself in your garage
The fame that I will never have
Despite 5 double platinum hits
Will go to those already dead
At 28 I learned the truth

A lizard king with leather pants
Who up and died in gay Paree
A druggie chick, a Rolling Stone
What they all got, I deserve

Blow your brains out in the hall
Drink til you fall off a wall
Will guarantee a well known name and a place in the R&R Hall of Fame

Remember those who’re still alive
With major hits at 25
Have just 2 years to make a mark
Before they’re just another star
Just another failed legend who
Didn’t make the special list
Of those who died young…before 28

(it’s not that good a parody, but it is hard to make stuff fit the meter)

8

I agree it’s a drug or partying thing. You can die from other causes, but it needs to be precipitated by drug use. And you need to be wild.

That’s the whole point–that the fame causes you to die young.

9

He doesn’t belong on the list. There’s some irony in a sci-fi actor being killed by his robot, but that list wouldn’t have an age basis.

10

I voted yes, but I don’t hold the 27 club as being worth a cup of warm spit conceptually, as the Wiki entry’s opening statement makes clear.

11

Grant Imahara has probably passed into the safety zone by now, but he was well primed to unlock this achievement.

(Obviously, I’m glad that he has not been killed by any of his inventions. The above is a joke.)

12

Bobby Sands, IRA hunger striker, died at 27.

13

Transportation accidents count too, in my book, so if he were a musician he’d be in.

14

Why do we have to group them on age and popularize it? More musicians throughout history have died at any age other than 27, so I find it kind of stupid to dedicate a club to that age and group it like that just because a few famous ones kicked it at that age. Otherwise you might as well take all the dead musicians and see how many fit into a particular age, which is still stupid.

Dying at any age below 90 goes against my goal of outliving everyone I know cause I’m pretty confident that if I can make it to 90, i’ll outlive them just long enough to drop a swirly on their grave.

15

If you could write this it is disqualifying even if you went at 27.