Amy Winehouse and the 27 Club, by Howard Sounes – review

As an early dedicated fan of the Doors, who ran away from boarding school just so that I could catch my idols playing the massive Isle of Wight festival (a gathering of the Hippie tribes that in retrospect marked the end of the peace ‘n love era) I approached this book with more than casual interest.

I saw and heard two of its subjects – Jimi Hendrix and my hero Jim Morrison – give what turned out to be their swansongs that sweaty August night on the island. Both were dead within the year. Both were aged 27, as were rock biographer Howard Sounes’s other subjects: Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones in 1969; Janis Joplin in 1970; Kurt Cobain in 1994, and most recently Amy Winehouse in 2011.

A besotted admirer of the hugely talented but equally self-destructive Winehouse (was ever a star more aptly named?), Sounes at first contemplated a full-scale life of his rock goddess, but realised, as he freely admits, that her all too brief blaze across the musical firmament offered thin pickings for a big biography.