By ‘stupid club’, O’Connor meant the phenomenon of musical stars who had passed away – as had her son – at the age of twenty-seven, as though they were unable to cross that bridge into full adulthood that lies ahead of all of us in our late twenties. Other members of Wendy O’Connor’s ‘club’ included the Rolling Stones’ Brian Jones, the Doors’ Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix – like Kurt Cobain, another left-handed guitar player from America’s Pacific North-West, who also revolutionized the music scene while fronting a power-trio. Kurt Cobain was not the first male member of his family to kill himself. So matter of course was suicide on both sides of his family that, as a young teenager, Kurt would joke of having ‘suicide genes’. When the future Nirvana singer was twelve years old, Burle Cobain, his great-uncle, brother to Kurt’s grandfather Leland, took a pistol and shot himself, first in the stomach and then in the head, finally killing himself.
