Exclusive preview ‘The Twenty Seven Club’
Morning all. I figured, as it’s Sunday, you can either let your blood boil watching Sunday politics shows, or, you can indulge in a little nostalgia by diving into my new book, The Twenty Seven Club, to see if it’s your cup of tea…
So, if you want to ‘try before you buy’, here’s the prologue, setting the scene for Emma’s world in 1990s Hull. Hope you enjoy it. Lucy xx
PROLOGUE
April 8, 1994. The day the music died.
‘Kurt Cobain found dead’ screamed unapologetically from every black-inked front page landing on doormats or in front gardens around the world. Fans cried in despair, conspiracy theorists looked for someone to blame, and kids on the edge of a punk-rock love affair were at risk of returning to saccharine pop.
A tragic loss to the music world and a kick in the teeth for my jilted generation.
I’d only popped round to Dad’s for a Saturday morning cuppa. A catch up on last night’s Columbo. The dissection of a fictional murder enquiry with a few dodgy impressions thrown in.
I got far more than I bargained for when he broke the tragic news to me.
‘Emma. That rocker you’re always talking about, he’s dead.’
‘Rocker? What you on about, Dad?’
‘He’s dead. Shot himself. In the head.’
My dad, far too casually for my liking, dropped the bombshell.
To say I was gutted…
‘He was your age Emma.’ Dad continued, with his head still stuck in the Saturday paper and his hand seemingly stuck in a packet of KP nuts.
He wasn’t.
‘I’m not 27 ‘til December Dad.’
‘Aren’t you? How old are you then?’
He was never good at maths, but I think this was more a sign that he wasn’t listening. He was very good at tuning in and out. I always wondered if that was a ‘dad thing’, or a ‘my-dad thing’. I tried to clarify:
‘Obviously, if I turn 27 in December, then I must be 26. Anyway, how do you not know how old your own daughter is?’
That light bit of criticism didn’t really sink in either. He continued reading and scoffing dry-roasted peanuts – the coating of which was tainting the newspaper article about Kurt’s final moments.
I felt as though I was intruding on a dark and private time. Kurt’s final moments, full of anguish, were all over the news – and they had travelled all the way from Seattle to my little corner of Hull – marking their presence by landing in a soggy, papery mess on my dad’s muddy door mat.
‘Ses ’ere he was a heroin addict too. Same old sad story.’
It was true. There were too many stories with the same ending. Too many brilliant rock stars losing their fight with heroin or alcohol or sleeping pills. But perhaps their fight was actually with the darkness in their heads. Maybe the drugs were simply a precarious cushion that kept needing to be puffed up until one day it was too much and they hit the deck.
A heart attack in the bath.
A drowning in the pool.
A bullet in the head.
Kurt wasn’t the first, and he probably wouldn’t be the last. Janis Joplin. Jimi Hendrix. Jim Morrison. Brian Jones…all dead at 27.
‘Why do so many rock stars die aged 27?’ I pondered out loud, to nobody in particular.
‘I’ve lost many an idol over the years, Emma. It’s the price they pay for talent.’
‘But why 27? I mean, I get it. Rock stars are rarely straight-forward creatures. But why 27? It can’t be a huge coincidence surely?’
Dad just raised his eyebrows and shrugged. It seemed he had moved onto the sports pages now. He was no doubt looking to see how his beloved Tigers were doing in the league.
But I struggled with death. Whether it was someone I knew, or admired from afar, or a stranger whose final moments hit the headlines of the Hull Daily Mail, it always shook me up and reminded me just how fragile life is. I remember when comedian Tommy Cooper had a heart attack on stage when I was sixteen. Everyone in class was taking the piss, using the comedian’s famous catchphrase to turn his death into a joke:
‘Did you hear about Tommy Cooper. Dead. Just like that.’
‘One minute he was cracking jokes, the next he was having a heart attack. Just like that.’
I just couldn’t get into the joke. The idea of death set me on edge. It had the capability of engulfing me in waves of dread and darkness. It was certainly a weird contradiction, being so afraid of life’s dark side, yet listening to music that talked of little else. It’s like that saying - keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Maybe if I was on familiar terms with the whole idea of death it couldn’t do as much damage? Perhaps I would be prepared for it?
However, as I was now catapulting towards the year of ‘do or die’, with Kurt’s death reminding us that an early passing at age 27 was becoming more and more plausible, I was starting to panic.
Stupidly, I dabbled with the very things that put your health at risk, simply to stop me worrying about my health – and, importantly, the health of everyone around me. I kind of felt responsible for people. Mum had an affair, so when I was little I thought I needed to step up and look after my heartbroken Dad. That’s what my young brain decided at the time, anyway. And regardless of who really did the looking after, I always felt responsible.
I remember meeting my lovely lad Trevor for the first time at the dog shelter too. There was no way I could leave him there. I simply had to take him home. I had the power to stop his pain.
Responsibility is a heavy burden to carry. So I needed the occasional weekend blowouts – even though the aftermath reinforced my negative thinking patterns, I had to let off steam at some point or I’d simply blow.
But back to Kurt Cobain. He was like a strangely comforting bed of nails - like most punk rock artists I guess but higher on the talent barometer. You find comfort in them purely because they remind you that you’re not alone in your discomfort. There are two emotions fighting against each other like alcohol and cocaine. A sadness that wants to lie still and indulge in the comfort of the pain, and an edginess that wants to freak the fuck out.
I’d grown up on a diet of rock music. Mum and Dad were always going to gigs in spit ‘n’ sawdust pubs. Usually some local band I’d never heard of. But they also introduced me to Janis, Jimi and co at an early age and, whilst most kids thought their parents were the epitome of cringe, I was always fascinated by mine. Until Mum decided to have her affair when I was just a young kid. That monumental act laid the foundations for seriously tortured teenager. And here I am today, an adult with a full time job, my own home, a pet whippet and a slightly out of control recreational coke habit.
Oh to be a kid again.
Back in the day, when I was a mere tot, I’d get to pick my favourite babysitter and Mum and Dad would go off into the night to drink whiskey and listen to bands. Meanwhile, I would spend the night making ice-cream sodas and watching horror films that I was blatantly far too young to watch.
I still can’t get rid of the vision of that guy in the woods ripping off all his skin and muscles and turning into a werewolf. I never dared tell my parents where the source of my primary school night terrors lay (it lay squarely at the feet of my favourite babysitter whose sugar-laden drinks kept me awake and buzzing long enough to soak up all the scary shit I wasn’t supposed to see).
If I didn’t get my favourite babysitter, I’d offer to go up to bed early because it was better reading my Wonder Woman annual for the hundredth time than sitting with Maureen all night while she watched Dallas.
So with horror movies and punk rock I was kind of always drawn to pain and darkness. But you have to wonder which came first – the punk or the pain. The two always seemed to go hand in hand. And I’m guessing all those safety pins in the 70s didn’t do much to relieve it. So all this heroin and death, well, it must have been a form of pain relief.
There was something warming about punk rock despite the pins and the pain. In a weird sort of way. Like the ache in your chest when you’re about to sob your heart out and it feels oddly comforting. I think it’s to do with normalising your anguish. You know, like, look, you’re not on your own with feeling distressed about the fact your Dr Martens won’t wear in or the fact you lost your brand-new Black Cherry lipstick. Because Kurt Cobain is pretty pissed off about being famous. He’s pretty pissed off by all the pain. You’re both pissed off. You’re on a level.
You are not alone.
In almost every other situation, however, I definitely did feel alone.
So it’s probably no surprise that by the time I got to my late teens and early twenties, I was all about The Pixies and Babes in Toyland, Nirvana and The Senseless Things. I felt kind of angry about shit. I still don’t know what shit I was angry about, but I was definitely angry. And they were kind of angry about shit too. It felt, to me, like a natural progression from what my parents introduced me to.
Which is why I could never understand why Dad didn’t like my music. I argued that it was today’s version of Janis Joplin. Of the Stones. But he wasn’t convinced.
‘Screaming like you’ve swallowed a box of nails and speaking in tongues is just not poetic, Emma.’
It was a dark April day when the news about Kurt Cobain’s suicide hit. The rain was heaving down on Dad’s budding California Lilac - the only plant left thriving in his little backyard. I often sat by the window, drinking a strong cup of tea whilst looking at the plant’s transformation as the days and weeks ticked by. The buds slowly turned from a warm dusky pink to a cooler purple before they burst open as tiny blue petals. Like floral pom-poms erupting from dark green stems and reminding us that the tired looking evergreen had passion in it yet.
As I marvelled at the buds beginning to make their annual breakthrough, I spied Trevor lifting his skinny little leg and aiming a powerful, steaming jet of yellow liquid at the delicate little flowers.
‘That bloody dog’s pissing on your mum’s California Lilac again, Emma.’
Although Mum had moved on years ago, Dad still insisted it was her plant. He wasn’t much of a gardener generally, but that plant was mulched and fed and pruned to within an inch of its life. Weird how ‘Mum’s’ plant stood out in all its beauty against the backdrop of a flailing buddleia and a yellowing holly, when my memory serves up images of her in a very different light.
Dad seemed to be in denial about the way my mum had behaved.
I opened the back door and called Trevor in. His ears pricked up and he looked over at me – I swear that dog can smile. He came galloping towards me with his tongue hanging out. Of course, given the weather, he continued to cause chaos by running straight into the kitchen dripping wet and muddy. Dad shook his head and grabbed the nearest tea-towel to scrub the dirty carpet tiles with. It made it worse.
‘Bloody dog’ he muttered. I don’t think he wanted Trevor to hear his insults. He loved him really. I know this because I could often hear Dad talking to Trev as if he were another offspring. It just appeared to be a bit of a Marmite relationship between the two of them.
Kind of like punk rock.
‘Some say they’d signed a deal with the devil to give themselves genius talent.’ Dad said of our missing rock stars, suddenly jumping back into the subject. I guessed the football news couldn’t have been good.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad. That’s a load of old shite that.’
This is the problem, you see, with the media. It becomes all about conspiracy theories and Satanists when there’s obviously a real and raw reason why 27 is the age that some of us expire. There were no deals with the devil. But there had to be a reason.
‘There was this one guy’, Dad said as he wiped the sticky dry roasted peanut dust off his fingers and onto a clean tea-towel, ‘who, legend has it, couldn’t play guitar at all one minute, and the next was like some kind of Eric Clapton. A genius of the strings. A finger-picking prodigy. It had to be the work of the devil.’
And so talent, he suggested, carried a high price, because no sooner had the miracle guitarist showcased his tremendous plucking talent to the world…
‘...he was dead.’ Dad finished.
Fancy reading more? Want to find out how Emma dealt with the death of a music hero? Feel like accompanying her on a journey of self-discovery, Senseless Things gigs and nights in the Angel with her best mate Dave? And what have Right Said Fred got to do with all this?