Last week marked 27 years since Michael Hutchence died. He was 37. The 22nd of November holds its place for me as the day when things changed. When someone who seemed bigger than life, almost super human, lost his. It was tragic and destabilising. It was unbelievable. We retold his story over and over, always hoping for a different ending. But no matter how many times we told it, it ended the same. He was gone. And we missed the clues, that perhaps things weren’t shiny and bright. We missed the pain.
He was the uncle of my daughters, a beloved, funny, sweet, shy, quietly charismatic man. It was a privilege to know the gentle human behind the enigma who had built a massive public career. The price of fame. It’s a surrender of the self. A kind of loneliness that only those who connect with hundreds of thousands of people ever know. To be so known, but to be so deeply unknowable. To be so alone. And for many passionate, beautiful creatives who share their shadow selves with the world, it can come at a cost. Them.
It made me think about the musicians I love. The ones I didn’t know. The ones we lost too early. There’s so so many. And they’re not just OK musicians. They’re the best of their generation.
Beautiful, heart-wrenching Billie Holliday, who was just 44. An openly bisexual, political, powerful activist, who lived with a lifetime of abuse and struggle. She was pursued by the government for two decades because she was black, wealthy, and dared to sing ‘Strange Fruit’. Her self-medication, her addiction, took her in the end. It was 1959, and she died of heart failure and cirrhosis of the liver.
Bon Scott was 33. High voltage rock legend, heavy drinker, and insanely awesome AC/DC frontman. With the best short shorts, and thongs and mullet combo. He was the OG. It was 1980 when he was found dead in his car after a night of heavy drinking, having choked on his own vomit. A sad, lonely and undignified death for the man who belted out ‘Highway to Hell’.
Amy Winehouse was 27. Able to transmute the entire human condition into a lyric. Her songs still cut to the bone. We know her tragic story, her addiction, her controlling father, her abusive husband, and her big, beautiful heart. Adored but alone. A starving girl found face down on her bed, in her own vomit after drinking massive amounts of vodka while watching YouTube videos of her own performances. Alone.
Janis Joplin, another music juggernaut who also died at 27 during the recording of Pearl – one of the greatest albums of all time, but one released after Janis had left. She died from a heroin overdose in a LA hotel. Alone.
Jim Morrison. Also 27. Dead from heart failure. His music anthemic, and unforgettable. Kurt Cobain also 27. Death by suicide. His music with Nirvana on high rotation on my 16-year-old daughter’s Spotify. Loved by people who weren’t even born when he died.
They call it the 27 Club. The many exceptional artists who died coincidentally at 27 but left a legacy that lives beyond lifetimes. It’s all we have of them. These brilliant, flawed, wildly unconventional, and on reflection deeply lonely souls. Is it their pain that we are drawn to?
And Jimi Hendrix. Also 27. The greatest, and probably the most influential guitarist of all time. Asphyxiating on his own vomit after a barbiturate overdose. Jimi would have been 83 this year. It’s weird to think of these young cool creatives as old. They are immortalised forever. Young. Beautiful. Deep. Edgy. When you make music on the edge, sometimes you fall.
This Friday, there’s a special opportunity to enjoy the music of Hendrix, when Zee Gachette of Z Star Trinity is joined by Geoff Wright on lead guitar for Electric Ladyland at Mullum Ex-Services Club.
Go check it out. As homage to all the fucking brilliant people who have given everything they have so we have a playlist for our trip to the gym.
It’s the least we can do.
The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
