Amy Winehouse and the 27 Club

Turning to alcohol in the wake of the success of Back to Black, Amy Winehouse was often too drunk to perform and was again booed off the stage in Belgrade in June 2011 before canceling her Europe tour. A month later she died of alcohol poisoning. The singer with the unique jazz-soul voice, who was also mercilessly targeted by the paparazzi, seemed destined to die young.

In April 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide by shooting himself. The pressures of his career, along with depression and drug addiction — excessive amounts of Valium and heroin were found in his system — got too much, despite having recently fathered a child. His death marked not only the end of the band Nirvana, but also the conclusion of a short but wild grunge music era.

Jim Morrison came to personify the hedonistic lifestyle of the late 1960s counterculture. The Doors frontman was a poet who expressed what many weren't able to put into words. And he showed them how to live a wild, unfiltered life, one that ultimately led to the breakup of his band. An alcoholic Morrison retreated to Paris, where he died of a heart attack while sitting in a bathtub in July 1971.

Rolling Stones founding guitarist Brian Jones started to became alienated from the band in the mid-1960s as he consumed large amounts of alcohol and drugs before being arrested for possession. While Mick Jagger and Keith Richards managed to maintain their wild boy image and still turn up for shows, Jones fell deeper into an abyss till he was sacked in 1969 before drowning in his own swimming pool.

Jimi Hendrix was the enigmatic icon of psychedelic rock, a guitar god who also became a mascot for the hippie and peace movement. His career was to last for only four years, with his band the Experience breaking up due to frictions caused by constant touring and drug-taking. A year later, on September 18, 1970, the world's highest paid rock star took nine sleeping pills and died of asphyxia.

Janis Joplin started it all at once — singing, heavy drinking, taking drugs and being catapulted 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 a heroin overdose in 1970.

Bright shirts, loud 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 a few understood at the time that such acts were the symptoms of psychiatric illness. In 1995, Edwards disappeared without leaving a trace. He was 27 years old.