It's the age when you realise that the first flush of youth is truly over; the age when you teeter on the cusp of real life; the age when young athletes reach their peak. Hell, it's even the age when you can no longer use your young person's railcard...27, the doorway into adulthood, is a year imbued by history with a tragic resonance, nowhere more so than in the world of rock music where a scarily high number of “legends” have died aged 27, spawning the mythical “27 club”.

It came about in 1994 when Kurt Cobain, barely 27, shot himself in the head, his body pumped full of heroin and Valium. Twenty-five years earlier, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones had all died aged 27, the first three apparently from drug overdoses and Jones from an “accidental drowning” that to this day is shrouded in mystery and rumours of murder. There were plenty more too: for example, Robert Johnson, the Delta bluesman, who was poisoned, or Ron McKernan, the alcoholic Grateful Dead bassist.

“Of course late twenties is not that old,” says Linda Blair, a clinical psychologist. “But we spend an awful lot of our twenties defining ourselves with our jobs, with our relationships. When we reach 27 we've been trying so hard to reach certain goals - fame, money, success - that we might suddenly realise for the first time that we're not that happy after all. And we are supposed to be grown-up and responsible, and we don't feel ready.” Which is perhaps why it is so sad when people die at that age. Now interest in the “27 club” has been reignited by an exhibition featuring rare and unseen photographs of the five “main members”, opening tomorrow at the Proud Camden gallery, North London.

What was it these 27-year-olds had in common? Were they all just not ready to grow up? Jeremy Simmonds, author of Number One in Heaven: The heroes who died for Rock ‘n' Roll, agrees that the tragedy of a life lived fast, lost early, will always contribute to an artist's reputation. “But you also need to be what Americans refer to as a heritage artist,” he says. “Someone who's made a real difference to rock‘n'roll. Hendrix, Joplin, The Doors, Nirvana, The Stones - these are all bands and individuals whose music was truly great. And they never got to finish. Who knows what they would have gone on to produce if they were alive today?”

Times Archive, 1970: Jimi Hendrix

In direct contrast to the violence of his music, Hendrix was a gentle, peaceful man

• Obituary: Mr Brian Jones

• Obituary: Jim Morrison

• Obituary: Janis Joplin

Related Links

• Obituary: Jim Morrison

• Obituary: Janis Joplin

KURT COBAIN
Lead singer with Nirvana, shot himself in 1994

Photographed by Steve Double:
“I took this in a park in Madrid. Kurt had no energy, no interest in anything. It was funny because Dave [Grohl] and Krist [Novoselic] were the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet, but Kurt just seemed frustrated. Courtney [Love, his wife] had come to meet him on tour and she loved being the centre of attention. It was a nightmare to take the picture. I had to wait around for hours, and the PR kept ringing up to say Kurt and Courtney were still holed up in their hotel room. I'd spent days on the road with Nirvana in the US when the first album came out in 1989. Back then Kurt had been much more engaging. None of them was doing drugs as much, I guess. He became disenchanted with the music industry, the tours, all the promotional stuff. He just wanted to be in a little punk rock band.”

BRIAN JONES
The Rolling Stones, died in 1969: a coroner recorded a verdict of misadventure

Photographed by Philip Townsend:
“The Rolling Stones were the first big band I ever photographed. This is the first time they were on television, in July 1963, when they were plugging their first record. I was 22 and had been working for Tatler taking pictures of debutantes, which I was delighted to be away from! Brian had his little gang of groupies and he's signing autographs for them here. In those days, when they were building the group, they were nice to everybody. We used to go out after gigs and I'd buy them chickens from the barbecue on the Kings Road, as there wasn't any McDonald's back then. It was only later that they really started doing drugs. I reckoned Brian only did them because he was miserable with what was going on in the group. He was the leader really, but there was so much infighting to get rid of him, particularly from Mick and Keith. Without him, though, the Stones would never have existed.”

JANIS JOPLIN
Singer, died of heroin overdose in 1970

Photographed by Elliott Landy:
“In this picture Janis is reading a comic on the plane to a gig in Detroit. She didn't always read comics though - she was very literate. She was one of the few performers I got to know personally while I was photographing in New York. I found her to be loving, considerate and lonely. She seemed to experience pain even when she was having pleasure. That she couldn't get as high in real life as she did from her performances saddened and depressed her. One night, after a big show in New York, I shared a cab with her and a few other members of the band. She directed the cab to drive to the home of a casual friend, who she hoped was there. When she got out, she shook her head and with a sad smile said: ‘Man, what a drag. Here I am a big star and I can't find anyone to be with'.”

JIMI HENDRIX
Guitarist and singer, died after an overdose of sleeping pills, 1970
Photographed by Jill Gibson at the Monterey Festival, 1967

JIM MORRISON
Singer with The Doors, died from a suspected heroin overdose, 1971

Just missed
John Keats (25); Wilfred Owen (25); Otis Redding (26); Paul Kossoff (26); Gram Parsons (26); Nick Drake (26); Tim Buckley (28) Heath Ledger (28); Hank Williams (29); Anne Brontë (29); Christopher Marlowe (29); Percy Bysshe Shelley (29)

Forever 27 opens tomorrow at Proud Camden, North London. 020-7839 4942

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