Just five days ago, we learned the news of the tragic motorcycle accident that claimed the life of actor Chance Perdomo, whom we have seen in the ‘After’ saga and the ‘Gen V’ series, among other works. He was 27 years old. And this coming April 5 marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Kurt Donald Cobain, leader of the group Nirvana. The reader should not pay attention to the repetition of number five, a purely random circumstance, and look at this other one: on March 30 and completely involuntarily, Perdomo joined forces with Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Cecilia and many others to the fateful ’27 Club’, the only one in which no artist would want to be: all its members died at the same age, pursued by a curse that, it is estimated, began in 1938, when the guitarist bluesman Robert Johnson made a pact with the Devil.
Although most of the relevant names mentioned above died before the leader of Nirvana, it was his death that gave the seal of legend to a sinister club about which rumors were already spreading. This is stated by Charles R. Cross, biographer of Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain himself, also quoting the words of the rocker’s grieving mother to the Associated Press agency: “he left and joined that stupid club. “I told him not to join that stupid club.” But it happened. The biography Heavier than Heaven (Random House, 2005) adds the testimony of his sister: Cobain talked about joining the club when he was little more than a child. Thus, Cobain ended his life on April 5, 1994 by shooting himself in the head when he was at the peak of fame.
Cobain left a note before he died dedicated to Boddah, an imaginary friend who accompanied him since childhood. The term empathy is repeated many times – sometimes without completely fitting semantically – and indicates why it decided to cease to exist. Life itself became too big for him. And Cobain suffered intensely, making the pain of others his own, including animals. So much so that he considered opening a zoo to give them careful attention.
There are two dates to date the beginning of the 27 Club curse. The most commonly accepted is 1938, when guitarist Robert Johnson signed a satanic pact. Two years before, his career was over and his family was in the cemetery. According to what is said, he resorted to an authority as high as the Devil himself, to whom he offered his soul in exchange for success. Maybe it’s a coincidence but in those two years he recorded 29 pieces that reached the top; In fact, Eric Clapton has stated that Johnson is the most important musician the blues has ever produced. Johnson died of poisoning without the exact explanation of how.
The second is proposed by the journalist specialized in music history Howard Sounes, biographer of Bob Dylan and Lou Reed and author of A brief story of the 27 Club, which advances the curse 130 years before Robert Johnson with the death of the Brazilian Alexandre Levy .
The first notable case of entry into the Club involved Brian Jones, founder of the Rolling Stones, who drowned in his pool in 1969. The unfortunate people who followed him shared drug and alcohol abuse and depressive symptoms in many cases. Janis Joplin died in 1970 from a heroin overdose; Jendrix choked on her own vomit that same year, unable to wake up from a heavy drunk, while Jim Morrison was found dead in the bathtub a year later due to cardiac arrest. His girlfriend, Pamela Courson, also died at 27. The macabre list that tomorrow commemorates Kurt Cobain would be joined by Amy Winehouse, the K-pop artist Kim Jong-hyun, the grandson of Elvis Presley and musician Benjamin Keough, the rappers Fredo Santana, Murda Killa, Walkie, Yung Trappa, MohBad and five days ago, actor Chance Perdomo.
