Members of the 27 Club

In April 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide by shooting himself. The pressures of his career, drugs and a sick stomach were obviously stronger than support from his family. His death marked not only the end of the band Nirvana, but also the end of a short, but wild music era. Grunge was a form of protest against the bourgeoisie and the happy, colorful world of techno of the 1990s.

Amy Winehouse was believed to have been "clean" for a long time. Until today, nobody knows for sure why she got so incredibly drunk on that fatal day in July 2011, when she died of alcohol poisoning. The singer with the gorgeous soul voice was a regular victim of paparazzi. They photographed her mercilessly whenever she nearly fell down on stage completely drunk - instead of trying to assist her.

Jim Morrison came to personify the lifestyle of an entire era - the late 1960s. The leader of The Doors expressed what many weren't able to put into words. And he showed them how to live in a wild and almost obscene way without any consideration for his band which, finally, he was forced to leave. Morrison retreated to Paris, where he died of a heart attack while sitting in a bathtub in July 1971.

Brian Jones was a founding member of the Rolling Stones. Whereas the other members of the band managed to maintain their image as wild rogues without celebrating too many parties, James consumed all kinds of drugs. The Stones couldn't tolerate such behavior any longer, and they threw him out of their band. Jones drowned in his own swimming pool in 1969.

Jimi Hendrix was a misunderstood icon of both rock music and the drug generation - a symbol of the hippie movement and a god of guitarists. His career was to last for only four years when things went wrong between him and his musicians. Completely frustrated, he withdrew into drugs. One morning in September 1970, he took nine sleeping pills, vomited in his sleep and suffocated.

Janis Joplin started it all at once - singing, heavy drinking, taking drugs and catapulting into her music career. The bands she worked with took full advantage of her legendary blues voice, while she herself saw to it that drugs were always available at parties. Joplin once said: "On the stage, I have sex with 25,000 people - and then I go home alone." She died of an overdose of heroin in 1970.

Bright shirts, make-up and nasty texts: The Manic Street Preachers were a late response to 1970s punk. When someone expressed doubts about their credibility, singer Richey Edwards cut into his own skin with knives. Only few understood at the time that such acts were the symptoms of psychiatric illness. In 1995, Edwards disappeared without leaving a trace - until today. He was 27 years old.

Officially speaking, German singer Alexandra is not a member of the 27 Club - maybe because she was "only" a representative of popular German "Schlager" (hit songs), or maybe because she didn't die of a typical "rock 'n' roll disease." But, the fact remains that she was 27 years old when she died in a car accident in July 1969 in which she was at fault.