The 27 Club

Amy Winehouse has died. Love her or hate her, you can not deny that she was captivating.

And now sadly, she has gone on to join a macabre club morbidly referred to as the 27 Club, referring of course to the evidently ever-expanding list of young musical geniuses who die at age of 27.

What strikes me about each of them, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison, is how old they seem. Amy and Kurt I might have guessed were younger than their appearances would have suggested. But Hendrix, Joplin and Morrison?…I would have guessed were far, far older. Especially Joplin. Yikes. Girlfriend could have used a few weeks at a spa, in addition to rehab. It must have been all the life they packed into too few years of living.

There is so much to be truly saddened by with Amy Winehouse. She was young. She was beautiful (give or take the beehive) and she was enormously, shockingly gifted. Her voice and style were unique and unmatched, and certainly could have taken her to places others only dream of: wealth, fame, ability to influence the world, a name that lives on in perpetuity. This generation’s Elvis or Michael Jackson.

Pity. That surreal voice that made her rich and famous is silenced like those before her. At 27.

And though that is plenty sad in and of itself, what makes me sad for those that love her is that her tragic, unending downward spiral, unlike the other members of the club, was public in a way that the others were spared.

I don’t think there is anyone who is on the fence about whether Hendrix or Joplin enjoyed their drugs. They certainly did. It is well documented. And even though Joplin’s family denied the producers of the movie “The Rose” the rights to her story, there is not a single person living on this planet who has seen The Divine Miss M come gloriously, completely unraveled in her screen debut and who does not completely understand that disclaimer or not, “The Rose” would be more accurately entitled “The Life and Times of Janis Joplin.”

And please, who has ever uttered the name Jimi Hendrix without also mentioning LSD or some other psychedelic drug? His death, shrouded in mystery and widely speculated about, screams of drug abuse. And cover up of same, natch.

And Morrison. Puh-lease. We have movies, authorized bio-pics, that come right out and tell you he used drugs. (Even if Meg Ryan wasn’t all that convincing as his co-conspirator, Pam, who famously changed her hazy recollection of drug use by herself and Morrison on the eve of his death in the bathtub.) And hello, if that weren’t proof enough, the very name of the band was taken from the title of Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception (as in "unlocking" of "doors of perception" through psychedelic drug use). Duh.

These were huge celebrities but none of them was exactly famous for their charity work. They were extremely talented, charismatic, dynamic artists who lived chaotic lives. But in a world that had only limited access to them.

What we know of them, if we weren’t at Monterey or Woodstock personally, is from stories we hear and pictures in magazines, and ancient, grainy amateur film footage.

But Amy. She died right in front of us. On the internet that was in its infancy when Kurt Cobain took his life, and on YouTube, the far reaching, highly accessible tool designed seemingly for little more than laughing at the misfortune of others (Unless you are Justin Bieber.) We watched her rise and fall. Every day. On every media outlet.

Sadly, these images will likely turn out to be what many remember her by. She won’t be remembered like Elvis, in his movies and his military uniform. (Because no one thought to post a picture of him dead on the toilet with the crusts from his peanut butter and bacon sandwich still on his lap) She will be remembered for being booed off stage too drunk to perform. Her haunting voice overshadowed by her shocking decline.

We don’t live forever. Our legacies may. If there is one thing you tell your kids tonight at dinner, make it this: Live your life as you want it remembered. Let your legacy really and truly and honestly speak for you. You may only have 27 years to create it. Make it something extraordinary and something of which you and your family can be eternally proud.