27 Club is a Rock’n’roll commemoration of five celebrated musicians who died at that fated age, and the ghostly presence of the founding member.
The roll call. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison. Casting his shadow over all of them is Robert Johnson, a Black blues musician who was born in Mississippi State in 1911, and who died on 16 August 1938, thereby inaugurating this exclusive club.
Incidentally this is the same date that Elvis Presley died as well.
Johnson was an itinerant Blues musician who wandered far and wide across America, who absorbed influences like a sponge from the musicians around him, and can genuinely be called a true influence of what followed as Rock’n’roll.
Crossroad Blues is playing from the sound desk as the audience builds slowly, along with others from his recordings including Me and The Devil Blues.
The legend attached to him. He sold his soul to the devil to play as well as he did. In truth he was a prodigy with a rare gift for music, as were the five other celebrated artists.
That mystique also rests with the other five artists whose music is featured tonight. The show tonight acts as a documentary of the history of these legends with plenty of anecdotes shared from the stage.
The 27 Club are an ensemble from Australia and have been presenting this show for more than ten years both in their home country and internationally to great acclaim.
Out front are guitarists Dusty Lee Stephensen (Wanderers) and Kevin Mitchell (Jebediah) and from the starting bell they are pushing out a lacerating version of Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Load up on guns, bring your friends/ It’s fun to lose and pretend.
Sets the tone immediately for the rest of the 70-minute show where the incendiary firepower is ignited immediately.
And it is Jimi Hendrix’s Fire that follows, introducing vocalist Carla Lippis (Mondo Psycho). Guitars spark briefly with some pyrotechnic molten riffs and the singer then segues into Amy Winehouse’s classic Rehab.
Lippis is a wonderfully versatile vocalist, and she has her best moment with Winehouse’s You Know I’m No Good. Lyrics are raw and close to autobiographic, and she manages the louche intensity and pain and gives it some deep Country music pathos.
The most Southern outlaw country song of the night is the super version of Mercedes Benz, Lippis bringing some genuine soul to this version.
Mitchell is the big Nirvana fan, and he states that Grunge was the sound that captivated him in high school and changed the nature of emotionally fraught Rock music. The drive of Come As You Are paired with Breed lifts the roof of the high-domed Speigeltent.
By contrast, Lithium is presented as a tortured ballad. Drums roll like thunder over the top and this one is packed full of angst.
Maybe the most overtly political of the band’s tonight were the Doors, and with a beatific image of Jim Morrison on the large back screen, there are then images of the Sixties anti-Vietnam protests as the 27 Club powers up with Break On Through.
Follow that with the heavy Chicago electric blues of Roadhouse Blues, with some of People Are Strange tacked on to finish. Of course there is the obligatory Light My Fire. All the Door’s songs feature the distinctive Manzarek keyboard tones.
Me And Bobby McGee, of course we must honour the signature Joplin song, written by Kris Kristofferson, and the engine room bass and drums give this one a powerful thrust. Milush Piochaud on bass, but I do not catch the names of the stellar keyboard and drummer.
Towards the end of the show and we hear a montage medley of all five artists, most appropriately held together by All Along the Watchtower, the famous Hendrix version.
Piece Of My Heart which Joplin made immortal with Big Brother and the Holding Company, rounds out the show in stunning fashion.
This music spans sixty years plus of the most vital and iconic Rock’n’roll and the 27 Club celebrates its undiminished power. If anything, it is now the immortal music of the Gods.
Rev. Orange Peel
27 Club presented by Auckland Arts Festival plays until 20 March 2026