Membership

Club 27. It’s exclusive. If you’re famous enough to join, you only need pay one onetime fee and you’re in the door. The fee? You have to die when you’re 27.

So yeah, the entrance fee is extreme, but so is the life. George Harrison sang, “you got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues.” I’m not sure the 27 club is what George had in mind; he lived too long anyway. He didn’t get in the club.

For that, his guitar gently weeps.

Amy Winehouse made the club. She died last week. Causes are still unknown, but one thing is known: She joined the pantheon of musicians who died at 27, making her a member of club 27. The member list is impressive. Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Jimmy Hendrix top the roster. Depending on your musical preference, Brian Jones, Robert Johnson, and Jacob Miller are noted members as well.

I know, I know. You have questions.

I have answers. That’s my job. I’m not famous. I keep time while the famous pass, and jot unread footnotes in their postscripts. They have their race. I have mine. I’m 43.

I like my race.

So, back to your questions. They probably have to do with pantheon. What is one and who gets in? Pantheon is a Greek word derived from the words Panth and eon, or age of the panth.

Whath’s a panth? It’s what I wear to keep my legs warm.

Yeah, sorry. And that’s why I won’t be famous. Let’s try again.

A pantheon is the Greek temple of all the gods or all the gods themselves. It’s a building where famous dead people buried.

“I see Fred Savage.”

Sorry, Fred isn’t dead, only his acting career lies six feet under. His wonder years are over and he didn’t get in the door either.

Haley Joel Osment could get in the door. He’s only 23, but he’ll need to become a much better musician. He’s got four years. It could happen. Jim Morrison came from nowhere in six years. The Doors started in 1965 before Morrison died in 1971.

That seems to be something Jim, Amy, and fellow panthe-ites have in common. They exploded from no-names to superstars in fast hot blasts. Amy released her first CD in 2003. She never released a third.

Another thing they share is blame. They never blamed themselves for their fame or for their death. They blamed their friends, their fams, and their fans.

“I did it my way.”

Yeah. Frank Sinatra sang that. He lived to be old and bought a pantheon all his own, built over a burial ground of early era Club 27ers and maybe even Jimmy Hoffa. We call it Palm Springs.

Club 27 ers didn’t do it their way. Oh, they had egos, but they’ll assure you that if they could do it their way, it wouldn’t be this way. The road Robert Frost took was the best road. Club 27 road is well lit by A&R men heaping platitudes like lei nooses around young travelers necks.

“You’re the greatest!”

And that brings another question: who is the greatest? Who deserves to belong to club 27 and who deserves to be forgotton?

When Kurt Cobain died, my first words where, “I thought he was already dead.”

To which my doom herald replied, “No, that was just an attempted suicide. This time he got it right.”

“Oh.”

I have to admit. I liked Kurt, but I never thought he was that great. Yeah, I can feel you hitting the back browser button now. It’s OK. I get it. It’s just that he had more to prove before winning me over, and he failed. Sure, he had potential, but he ran his race short and fast. He never completed the distance.

In that, the club 27 members are equal. They take a pantheon in our mind. Your Zeus is my Odin, but they reside in our heads because they all represent a world where we could have lived.

Was Amy Winehouse this generations Vesta? Maybe not, but we’ll never know. And that’s the tragedy. The same way that we’ll never know that freckly kid who lived down the block until he stepped on a mine in Iraq. He’s in my pantheon as well. He should be in yours, but you never knew him.

It doesn’t matter whom we consider greater. In death we’re all equal. What matters is that we remember the loss of those who could have been and share that with the lives that can still be. Whether they belong to club 27, 34, 49, or 86, it matters that we remember the lives lived and hold them in our pantheon, otherwise we’re empty temples housing nothing for nobody.