Amy 27 - new book by Howard Sounes

Amy Winehouse Anything Amy
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Yes, it’s that tired old trope of Amy and the 27 Club rearing its ugly head again. However, I did read a biography of Charles Bukowski by the same author - Howard Sounes - years ago, and quite enjoyed it at the time.

"The most detailed and insightful portrait of the life and death of Amy Winehouse, in the context of the infamous 27 Club.
The death of Amy Winehouse at the age of 27 was a tragedy.

She was one of the brightest music stars in years -a brilliant, original song writer with a mighty voice and great personal charm.

Amy was loveable, but troubled. She was as notorious for her messy personal life, drug addiction and alcoholism, as she was celebrated for her songs, and her death in 2011, while shocking, was not unexpected.

Amy was also the latest in a series of iconic music stars who died at the same young age; starting with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones whose death in 1969 was followed by Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin in 1970, Jim Morrison in 1971, and Kurt Cobain in 1994. All were gifted. All were dissipated. All were 27.

The 27 Club was first used as a collective term for these lost souls after a comment by Kurt Cobain’s mother. ‘He’s gone and joined that stupid club,’ she said after Kurt shot himself. ‘I told him not to …’

In this ground-breaking book, Howard Sounes delivers a detailed and insightful study of Amy Winehouse’s life, and sets that life in the context of the 27 Club.

That six big music stars died at 27 – along with 44 less well-known names – is on one level a coincidence. But behind this coincidence Sounes reveals is a disturbing common narrative that explains how these artists met their fate, and casts new light on Amy’s death in particular."

Other details

ISBN: 9781444758481 Publication date: 18 Jul 2013 Page count: 368

Biographical Notes

Howard Sounes is known for writing detailed and revelatory biographies of a wide range of extraordinary personalities, including the murderers Fred and Rosemary West (Fred & Rose), the American author Charles Bukowski (Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life), and the musicians Bob Dylan (Down the Highway) and Paul McCartney (Fab). Each book is based on extensive original research. For more information visit www.howardsounes.com.

Publisher page: http://www.hodder.co.uk/books/detail.page?isbn=9781444758481

27 club book.jpg

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From a recent review…

"A besotted admirer of the hugely talented but equally self-destructive Winehouse (was ever a star more aptly named?), Sounes at first contemplated a full-scale life of his rock goddess, but realised, as he freely admits, that her all too brief blaze across the musical firmament offered thin pickings for a big biography.

He therefore decided to pad things out by writing a comparative study of Amy and five other rock stars who, like her, played their last gigs, shot up their final fixes and drained their parting bottles at the age of 27. But was this calendar coincidence of their death dates any more than that?

Sounes is not the first person to have noticed that these dark stars all flickered out at the same age. In fact, the phenomenon has acquired a collective name: the 27 Club. Sounes’ s book includes an Appendix listing around 50 other musicians and singers who departed at that age – though none, it must be said, are half as (in)famous as his six principal subjects.

As well as the age at which they died, the other elements common to all six are abuse of drink and/or drugs; dysfunctional relationships with family, lovers, friends and fellow musicians; physical and/or mental health ‘issues’; disillusion with the music industry which made their names and fortunes; and, of course, the unnatural way in which they all met their ends. By the book’s end, however erroneously, we begin to think that death by drink and drugs is the rock industry’s own way of delivering death by natural causes.

Amy Winehouse was quite typical of the 27 Club. Her parents split up when she was a child, although both continued to be in contact with her. Indeed, her London cabbie father, Mitch, tried to build a career as a cabaret star on the back of his daughter’s success, and her MS-stricken mother Janis was one of the last people to see her alive. Success came early, when a rapacious music industry in search of new, raw, earthy talent to reinvigorate a scene made etiolated and boring by a profusion of plastic, manufactured, barely musically literate ‘stars’, discovered and greedily promoted Amy before she was ready for the acclaim or the fame.

Winehouse not only had star musical quality – her sad songs a mix of blues, jazz and soul, sung in husky, deep contralto tones – she also had the backstory to go with her material. In many ways she was a throwback to the self-indulgent Sixties, which spawned four of her co-casualties in the 27 Club. Her ‘private’ life, which spilled over into her increasingly tragic and incoherent public performances, was one long story of deepening drug addiction, alcoholic binges, bouts of rehab, cancelled concerts and violent fights with various boyfriends, notably her on-off ‘husband’ and, according to Sounes, the ‘love of her life’, the hapless and hopeless Blake Fielder-Civil.

Her songs – especially her hit album Back to Black – reflected her ongoing misery, and it was clear that she would not make old bones. The end was also typical of the six: a lonely death caused by alcohol poisoning which unnoticed for hours. There were three empty Vodka bottles in her room, but, surprisingly, given her reputation, no drugs. Amy was ‘clean’ at the time of her death. Let down by her last boyfriend, she was eventually found by her live-in bodyguard."

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nigel-jones/2013/06/amy-winehouse-and-the-27-club-by-howard-sounes-review/

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Interesting. Even with tiny groups that I played in, those were the partying years. The music biz is lethal. Say you do an album and millions are sold. So you go on tour and there’s nowhere to go after the gig. Just enter drugs and booze. So you do drugs to deal with it all. Nobody will say shit.
The tour ends and when you get home your partner wants a divorce. So you go to your go to your people and they tell you their manager disappeared with the money.
Then the founder of the band wants to meet, to fire you.
Sounds terrible but I’m sure it happens everyday.
Y’all know this stuff.

All heck, read Miley Cyrus’ book.

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yuckk

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Lol I wish she would have lived for 2 months longer (underestimation) so we wouldn’t have to hear about this shitty club.

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Maybe that’s a bit dark. But even legendary groups like the Allman Bros were ripped off, Leonard Cohen. I think that’s why he’s still working…money.

Boston’s singer(yeah they suck) anyway, he committed suicide and left a note saying he was lonely.

Dipshit from Aerosmith said he spent $5M on cocaine. Cocaine..Gods way of telling you that you have too much money.
Am I even on topic here?

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Probably not. But that’s ok, cause we’re all on edge here.

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I read an interesting article a while back regarding the whole “27 club” thing that took a more scientific approach. They analyzed a bunch of different well-known people who died AROUND that age, (probably 26-30 if I remember correctly) and took a more medical approach as to why it seems to occur.

Basically the article stated that once you go over the mid 20’s hill, your body starts to age a bit more rapidly internally, and the damage your organs could once recover from easily starts to become more and more difficult to recuperate from. Although you still FEEL like the spring chicken you once were, your internal organs feel differently and can no longer handle the abuse it once could. It kind of went on to say that there was nothing “mystical” about the whole 27 club thing, but there was a very viable potential explanation for it. When you’re in your late teens-early twenties, you can go all night and get right back up again; but when you’re in that later portion, your body can’t take it as it once could, the damage is setting in and making you more vulnerable than you once were. You think you can take it, you feel like you can take it, but in actuality you can’t.

I found the article really refreshing; it took away the whole conspiracy/mysticism surrounding the whole thing and replaced it with a potential physiological explanation. It made it less annoying, still painfully cliche, but less annoying :stuck_out_tongue:

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That just makes me more annoyed because what does that say about 27? Nothing. It’s bull and we don’t need anyone trying to make it out like it isn’t. Yeah there’s truth to all of that, but people just got it stuck in their head because a few musicians died at 27 in a short period of time. It’s irrelevant, but humans love to make something out of nothing.

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This article is far fetched, but it also talks about the 27 Club. http://vigilantcitizen.com/musicbusiness/amy-winehouse-and-27-club/

I believe it’s pure conisedence that these talented people died at that age, but anything is possible.

Admitedly, the first thought the came to my head after being devistated Amy died was “the 27 club”.

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That’s what I like about it, I think…it makes it nothing. It takes away all the “Ooooooooh 27 club!” mysticism, and turns it into something as explainable as a cold, or dying of old age. When you put a rational explanation to it, it’s not fun to speculate anymore, and when it’s no longer fun to speculate…why talk about it?

I have no idea if that made any sense. haha!

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Gotcha, I think recently there was a study done that found that musicians were not more likely to die at 27 than any other age…but now I may have to go read this book to see what he says… oh please someone else read it for me.

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‘Amy said she always knew she’d join the 27 club’: The truth about Winehouse’s death wish and why 27 really is an unlucky number for rock stars

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/event/article-2360326/Amy-Winehouse-said-knew-shed-join-27-club.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

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Barf, thanks for posting though haha

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“Later she began self harming, cutting herself to get attention”

How do they know she wanted attention? Maybe she was truly hurt inside and just couldn’t stand it. I don’t think she was going around saying “look at my cuts, look at my scars” for attention.

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Because she was Amy, and Amy was all about attention from an early age :hopelessness:

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^oh…

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Well. it’s quite an interesting article even if I don’t agree with it all (especially the author’s 27 Club obsession)

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‘Let me tell you, Mitch wasn’t around until his daughter became famous. . . but she loved him,’ says Amy’s primary school friend Lauren Franklin.

Damn, Lauren.
The book sounds interesting imo. About the self harm, no one really know the reasons why she did it but I don’t think they meant attention as in looking hard or whatever, just asking for help and there’s nothing wrong with that. Or atleast I hope that’s what they meant. If she took antidepressants she must have been diagnosed with something, that’s why I don’t really understand that ‘she might have been bipolar’ thing.

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Antidepressants can trigger mania for someone with bipolar disorder. Her doctor and Janis should know that.