Words: Savannah Meriwether (She/her)
A dead rock star can’t betray you. They won’t make mistakes or grow old. They hover in angelicism and kaleidoscopic imagery.
‘Oh, great creator of being grant us one more hour/ To perform our art and perfect our lives/ Moths and atheists are doubly divine and dying/ We live, we die, and death not ends it’
– Jim Morrsion
When I think of Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain, the first thing I think about is how alive they all are. Their voices stream in waves of sonic tenderness all around the world – blasting in cars, CD players of my childhood bedroom, cafés, and bars in every city — existing in the spaces they shaped and the songs that raised all your favorite artists. All of them are members of the “27 Club’”: an invented membership of rockstars and actors who died suddenly at the age of 27. Although artists have died at all ages, the superstition arose in the early 1970s after a string of 27 year-old musicians’ deaths occurred in quick succession, and since then a running list has lived on.
When we’re all bound for death anyway, why does it matter that these people died when they did? Why do people care more about the circumstances and superstitions surrounding their deaths than they care about the art they created while alive? It’s a slight generalisation to claim ‘people’ didn’t care about the music – because they did (and still do) – but the fetishisation of musicians’ deaths is deeply rooted. Since the dawn of the rock star, fans have pushed boundaries and developed intense parasocial relationships with the angelic, erotic, and idealistic existences of their idols. It’s one thing to worship the words of a favourite musician, but respect and admiration quickly turns to entitlement when it comes to fans in the scene.
After Kurt Cobain died, a vigil of thousands was held in Seattle, Washington, on April 10th 1994. Many members of the crowd were there because they were ‘angry at being abandoned by one of their heroes’. To grieve the loss of such a singular poetic voice is natural, but for so many to feel personally betrayed after the suicide of someone none of them actually knew reveals how bound up in the public eye the lives of musicians become. In dying when he did, fans quickly tied his story to those of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, and the other “members” of the club. Instead of recognising these musicians’ lives as interwoven for their musical prowess and innovation, they’re reduced to the gruesome and invasive mythology surrounding their deaths. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how, where, or when they died: what matters is their voices on the radio waves. Everything is impermanent and temperamental, but some things have a habit of sticking around. After their bandmates’ passing, the rest of Nirvana shared: ‘Let’s keep the music with us. We’ll always have it– forever.’
With Regent Sound Studios – where the Rolling Stones recorded their debut, and Hendrix played demos — set to reopen in London in 2025 after decades of closure, an opportunity presents itself to re-examine the ways we choose to remember our heroes. There’s a chance to exist in the physical spaces they sang in, feel the energy of their long-past footsteps, and witness the future of music being formed somewhere with such a deep history. These kinds of spaces are incredibly powerful. Hendrix commissioned Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village, NYC, and only used it for 10 weeks before he passed, but it remains a sacred artistic space for musicians of all kinds. In Just Kids, Patti Smith writes about a chance encounter with Hendrix after the opening of the studios, about his dream of musicians finding a ‘common language […] of peace’, and this language having a platform in his studio. Access to a space like that in London keeps these artists’ histories grounded in their work; it threads people together and continues the stitching of an everlasting tapestry of music. For the artists who have passed, it becomes a place that appreciates the legacy rather than the legend.
In the dream about Jim Morrison that inspired Break it up, Patti Smith described a vision of Morrison as a butterfly ‘winged like an angel’; chained within a statue, finally breaking free and flying away. There is something deeply valuable in this image of freedom – Morrison, untethered from the body. In his own words: ‘death not ends it’. People still sing for him, write for him, make art for him. I think of how many people have picked up a guitar and learned to play because they heard Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile, or started to sing because of the power of Joplin’s voice on Pearl – any of those people might record their own music in Regent Sound Studio’s some day.
It isn’t surprising that people latch on to the images of their idols at death. A dead rock star can’t betray you. They won’t make mistakes or grow old. They hover in angelicism and kaleidoscopic imagery. In death, Morrison stays desirable – a pretty young thing – and Cobain stays trapped in speculation. All of them were reeling from scrutiny, walking the line and pushing the boundaries of music and of life itself. It’s time to let go of the fabricated images of these people we’ve idealised for so long, and rethread the narrative back to their art. Who cares that they’re dead! Put on their records, hit play, get inspired, and go make some music.
