Amy Winehouse

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  She has described Dido’s sound as ‘background music – the background to death’ and said of pop princess Kylie Minogue, ‘she’s not an artist… she’s a pony.’ Elsewhere in interviews she once chimed up with the following sexual confession: ‘I would fuck Sting. I don’t know about ten hours, though!’ In the meantime, she can be just as unpredictable onstage as she is during interviews. As well as the notorious ‘you monkey c**ts’ incident at the Birmingham National Indoor Arena (NIA) in 2007, she has screamed ‘Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it!’ into her microphone during a concert in Cornwall, a performance that also featured her hitting her own head with her microphone in frustration at apparently forgetting her lyrics.

  As a fan observed, ‘The gig became absolutely awful. Members of her entourage were coming on to the stage, obviously worried she couldn’t go on, and she would just shout “fuck off” at them. Everyone in the crowd just felt sorry for her.’ She has also punched a fan in the face and spat at another during a concert.

  However, even though Amy is a self-confessed tomboy – she says she thrived educationally only in classes where there were few boys present for her to muck around with – the most apt comparisons must be made with other female stars. NME deputy editor Krissi Murison attempted to place her among the pack. ‘Acts like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen have got opinions falling out everywhere, they don’t do what they’re supposed to, don’t act the way they’re supposed to. It’s what the world needed.’

  Sophie Ellis Bextor took the discussion on a stage when she said, ‘When I made my first album, pop was a dirty word. Now you have people like Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen who have helped to make it more popular.’

  Natasha Bedingfield echoes this: ‘When I started out, if you were blonde you would just do a little pole dance and mime. And I was like, “I want to sing live and write about things that mean something to me.” Now it feels like there’s a lot more people doing that, and I’m happy about that. Lily and Amy are both very talented. I’ve just heard Amy Winehouse’s album and it’s great.’

  One music writer was more concise concerning where Amy fits among the modern-day female acts: ‘She’s like Joss Stone with a bit of mud on her dress.’ It was intended as a compliment. Another celebrity fan who appreciated the stand Amy took for her sisters is Ally McBeal star Jane Krakowski. ‘She can do hip-hop, jazz and soul. She’s telling interesting stories from a woman’s perspective.’ Not that Amy considers herself a women’s libber. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist, but I don’t like girls pretending to be stupid because it’s easier.’

  As a female artist, Amy has had to contend with being judged disproportionately for the way she looks. With her fluctuating weight and the other by-products of her partying lifestyle, she has at times given the sharp claws of the tabloid press plenty to go at. Her lifestyle, too, seems to be judged disproportionately harshly because she is a woman. When she has missed concerts, or turned up on stage late and the worse for wear, she has received far more censure than, say, Pete Doherty of Babyshambles or Shane MacGowan of the Pogues would. Indeed, those artists’ wilder ways seem to have if anything increased their street cred. However, when Amy follows suit she is a ‘disgrace’ and ‘threat to our very way of life’. The miserable Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell is a regular critic of Amy, saying, ‘It used to be left to Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis to behave badly. Now women are the hooligans. How sad.’

  This relentless criticism has led to enormous pain for Amy at times. ‘I’m an insecure person,’ she says. ‘I’m very insecure about the way I look. I mean, I’m a musician, I’m not a model. The more insecure I feel, the more I’d drink.’ However, those who have a sense of style are positive about her. Karl Lagerfeld, for instance, is one of the most influential fashion designers on the planet. The slim, snowy-haired friend of the likes of Kate Moss and Kylie Minogue said, ‘She’s a style icon. She is a beautiful, gifted artist. And I very much like her hairdo. I took it as an inspiration, because, in fact, it was also Brigitte Bardot’s hairdo in the late fifties and sixties. And now Amy has made it her own style. So, when I saw her, I knew it was the right moment. Amy is the new Brigitte.’

  Victoria Beckham, too, has praised Amy’s sense of style and also revealed that she is a fan of her music. ‘Amy has a real sense of style that I just love. She’s very much a fashion icon and I adore what she wears. She’s so unique and original.’ She added, ‘I’ve never met her but I just love her music – she’s an amazing singer.’

  It says much about the wildly differing perceptions there are of Amy that, in the week that Lagerfeld and Beckham spoke out in praise of her style, an American poll voted her the ‘dirtiest female celebrity’. She grabbed 47 per cent of the vote. Then, in a survey of 323 men aged sixteen to forty-four by the lads’ magazine Nuts, she came top of the poll with 48 per cent of the vote as the female celebrity readers would least like to kiss under the mistletoe. Coming second was her new-found admirer Victoria Beckham with 24 per cent of the votes. Then, bizarrely, Amy came third in a poll asking British poker players whom they would least like to come up against during a game of poker.

  However, in the really significant poll of that week, Amy was triumphant. Apple’s iTunes online music store revealed that Back to Black was its bestselling download of 2007. The album Version by Mark Ronson – including her rendition of ‘Valerie’ – came third. Soon after this, Back to Black landed the top spot in Maxim magazine’s end-of-year readers’ album poll, beating Radiohead’s In Rainbows and Kanye West’s Graduation.

  Even those who have thrown insults at Amy, though, are wasting their breath, for she is harder on herself than anyone could be towards her. ‘I’ve also had offers to do modelling and stuff. But I’m, like, “Are they mad?” I’m not exactly an oil painting, am I?’ she once said. Again, here are contradictions, for Amy has also said of her appearance, ‘I wish my boobies were bigger sometimes, but I like the way I look. I’m both cripplingly stupid and hideous to look at.’ She told us once more that she was trouble when she said, ‘I’m a bastard, I’m not a nice girl and I’m not an investment.’

  Which brings us to Amy’s well-documented hedonism. She has admitted to using and becoming addicted to heroin and cocaine. She was once admitted to hospital following an overdose of a spectacular cocktail of drugs. The beautiful musical talent Amy has is all too often cruelly overlooked by those who prefer to concentrate on her wild ways, but her at times destructive lifestyle cannot be ignored, nor that of her husband Blake. Together the pair are fast becoming as notorious as past rock couples such as Michael Hutchence and Paula Yates, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, and Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen.

  Her parents worry themselves sick as they read the latest headlines about Amy’s drug and drink problems. After a particularly lurid story in the papers, her mother sent Amy a text message that read, ‘What planet are you on? Call me.’ Her father Mitchell worries, too and is tireless in his efforts to protect his daughter. Singer Terra Naomi is a label mate of Amy and was herself once a drug user who had to be taken to rehab by her father. She recalls watching a live performance by Amy, sitting near her family: ‘Amy’s whole family was there. Amy did put on a good show, but she looked like she was having problems, and seeing her dad have to watch that… It was just sad, really sad.’

  Amy, however, remains honest about her lifestyle. She shrugs off the notion that working in the music industry means ‘there’s just so much opportunity to go out every night and get smashed’. Once asked to describe the mission statement behind her songwriting, she said she wrote, ‘Songs that you can sing into a bottle of whisky.’

  For every moralistic tabloid critic that Amy’s attitude throws up, it also attracts her new fans. Celebrated columnist Julie Burchill says, ‘I like Amy Winehouse – she’s my new favourite. She’s a tough old bird and she’s not a cry-baby. And she’s absolutely beautiful. Amy Winehouse is like a pocket Venus.’ As we’ll see, Winehouse’s and Burchill’s paths once crossed in a somewhat
surreal fashion.

  Burchill’s admiration of Winehouse proves that not everyone has been grasped by this bizarre wish to see musical artists become puritanical, milk-guzzling, jogging, health freaks. Somewhere in recent times many people changed from wanting our pop and rock idols to be the wild children who lived the lifestyle we all dream of to wanting them to become ‘a good example’ (copyright Daily Mail). Just as Burchill sees through this nonsense, so does producer Mark Ronson: ‘Amy is bringing a rebellious rock’n’roll spirit back to popular music,’ he says. ‘Those girls from the sixties like the Shangri-Las had that kind of attitude: young girls from Queens in motorcycle jackets.’

  It seems ludicrous, but once again it is worth reiterating: Amy Winehouse is a hugely gifted and talented musician. Put aside the controversy and just give her CDs a spin. You’ll luxuriate in the warmth and sheer emotion of her voice, the clever, open and honest lyrics. The same goes for her live performances. Of late, there have been so many headlines about her no-shows or drunken shows that, were an alien to be reading the press, he or she would be hard pushed to believe that thousands and thousands have been taken to almost religious levels of joy. It’s a joy shared by Amy, who says, ‘Basically, I live to do gigs… it’s my life.’

  Given the rich maturity of her voice, and the success she has already enjoyed, it is easy to forget how young Amy still is. She has not, at the time of writing, yet reached that dangerous rock-and-roll age of twenty-seven. It was at this age that Janis Joplin, Doors singer Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain all died, at the height of their infamy. There’s no disputing that she has issues with drugs to overcome, but the longer her true story goes on, the more clear it seems that Amy will neither burn out nor fade away but instead go on to even greater (natural) highs.

  This book might surprise those who like to see Amy as ‘out of control’ or ‘spiralling towards death’, to use two of the tabloid press’s favourite phrases when discussing her life. Getting to the truth behind the hype, it instead paints a portrait of an intensely shrewd, witty and grounded woman. She knows how to play the tortured soul for the press, because she knows that is the Amy they wish to portray. Always one to play the press at their own game, when she once knew there was a press pack waiting outside a club for her, she painted a false tear on her cheek and rubbed quite innocent white powder all over her nostrils. Some of the papers got the joke the next day, but it went right over the heads of others and they painted it not as a joke by Amy but as a real tear and real cocaine.

  So let’s ride the roller coaster that is Amy Winehouse’s life, from the hit records and prestigious awards to the overdoses and scraps with husband Blake. While riding these ups and downs, we’ll uncover the real Amy Winehouse – an act who does indeed have a glittering future, but also a fascinating past.

  Chapter One

  BORN TO BE WILD?

  It was once said of Amy Winehouse, ‘She often strikes as a personality born slightly out of time.’ She was born on 14 September 1983, in Southgate, north London. Less than ten miles from central London and within the borough of Enfield, Southgate is adjacent to the North Circular Road. Other famous – and not so famous – people to have been born in Southgate over the years include Conservative Party legend Norman Tebbit and S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens.

  Many of the families who live within the redbrick houses of Southgate are Jewish. Jewish people have lived in the Enfield area since 1750 but it was between World Wars One and Two that many Jewish families moved from east to north London. By the time of the Swinging Sixties, around 280,000 Jews were living in north London. There are now five synagogues and three Jewish cemeteries within easy reach of Southgate.

  Although there are photographs of Amy dressed up in costume for the Jewish festival of Purim, hers was not an especially religious family. ‘We didn’t grow up religious. I’m just a real family girl. I come from a big family. I think it’s important to have your family around you, to be close to your family. I’m very lucky I have a mum and dad.’

  Zeddy Lawrence, editor of Jewish News, says, ‘She’s been happy to talk about her Jewish identity. I don’t know that she’s milked her Jewishness that much, to be honest. She’s not ashamed of mentioning that she’s Jewish or talking about that, but there are very few interviews where the Jewish thing has come out.

  ‘As far as the Jewish community goes, I think we were very excited when she first came on the scene. We wondered who this Jewish pop star was. There are very few of them about apart from Rachel Stevens, who didn’t have much credibility because she was in S Club 7. Stevens was just good-looking with a nice pair of breasts, if you’ll excuse me for saying that. She has talent, I suppose, but she was very much a pop princess.

  ‘But in terms of a Jewish artist, I think it had been a long time since there was anyone like that. I can’t remember the last credible Jewish artist in England. Amy came across as a credible artist, so there was a lot of excitement in the community because of that. I think since then she’s fallen out of favour a lot because of her behaviour.’

  Amy says she didn’t enjoy going to cheder classes – the traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language. ‘Every week I’d say “I don’t want to go, Dad, please don’t make me go,” she says. ‘He was so soppy he often let me off. I never learnt anything about being Jewish when I went anyway.’ However, she does attend synagogue on Yom Kippur and observes the Passover festival. ‘Being Jewish to me is about being together as a real family,’ she concludes. ‘It’s not about lighting candles and saying a brocha.

  ‘I’m not religious at all. I think faith is something that gives you strength. I believe in fate and I believe that things happen for a reason but I don’t think that there’s a high power, necessarily. I believe in karma very much, though. There are so many rude people around and they’re the people that don’t have any real friends. And relationships with people – with your mum, your nan, your dog – are what you get the most happiness in life from. Apart from shoes and bags.’

  Family girl Amy was brought up in a neat, detached home by her parents Mitchell and Janis. Mitchell Winehouse, known as Mitch, was a taxi driver and amateur singer. He was a big fan of artists such as Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra and the sounds of these men’s music filled the house as Amy grew up. ‘My dad’s great,’ says Amy. ‘He’s like the karaoke Sinatra. He has a CD in his cab of all the backing tracks. He could be a lounge act, he’s that good.’

  Mitch’s mother, too, had links with music. She had once dated the legendary musician and jazz club owner Ronnie Scott. However, the relationship hit an impenetrable Catch 22. ‘She wouldn’t have sex with him until they married, and he wanted to marry her but wouldn’t unless they had sex before ’cos he didn’t know whether he would enjoy himself. So he went off.’

  Mitchell, in defending his daughter, once said, ‘My daughter isn’t drug-crazed. Even when I was a young man I dabbled – what young person hasn’t?’ He adds, ‘What Amy writes is true to life, and sometimes it’s painful. “What Is It About Men?” was fair enough. She didn’t lie about it – she wrote, “All the shit my mother went through.” It was true. I did put her mother through a lot of shit. But I was only unfaithful to her once.’

  However, she is keen to stress that she received lots of love and affection from her father. ‘When I was little, if I walked into a room where my dad was, I’d get kissed and cuddled by him. He was the same with my mum when they were still together. Because he was so like that, she was less so.’ She has also said that she is ‘a lot like my dad. We’re both the sort of characters who believe it’s important to get stuff done and to be honest with people.’

  Mitchell remembers singing along with Amy when she was a child. He would begin singing a song – Frank Sinatra’s ‘I Only Have Eyes for You’, for instance – and then leave occasional lines out, allowing Amy to fill the gaps. ‘Mitchell and Amy were close,’ remembers her mother Janis. ‘Her father would sing Sinatra
to her and, because he always sang, she was always singing, even in school. Her teachers had to tell her to stop doing it in lessons.’ Janis, who took an Open University science degree before studying at the London School of Pharmacy, also had musical connections: her brothers were professional jazz musicians. The couple had moved from a cramped two-bedroom flat to a thirties semi to a pretty three-bedroom Victorian terrace in Southgate.

  There they had their first child, Alex, and then, four years later, Amy. ‘Amy was a beautiful child – always busy, always curious,’ remembers Janis. Scare stories about Amy’s chaotic lifestyle now regularly fill the newspapers and as a child she had two memorable brushes with disaster: as a toddler she nearly choked on Cellophane while sitting in her pram, and she once went missing in the local park. One of Amy’s early memories is having a crush on the children’s television presenter Philip Schofield. She used to urge her mother to leave her father and marry Schofield instead.

  Amy also enjoyed being with her grandmother, who introduced Amy and her brother to grooming. ‘God rest her soul, she pretty much trained me and my brother. He’d give her a pedicure and I’d do her nails and her hair,’ said Amy. On hearing this, her husband Blake joked, ‘It might be quite emasculating for a young boy of eight to be pedicuring his grandmother.’

  Her nan was clearly a big influence on Amy. When asked about her phobias, she said, ‘I don’t think I’m scared of anything. I’m not scared of snakes or spiders or anything. But I am scared of my nan. She’s little, but she’s a frightening person.’ Not that after-school television and beauty training from her nan were Amy’s only joys. ‘I really liked school, I liked learning,’ she recalls, adding, ‘but I suppose if you don’t feel like an outsider, you never do anything out of the box, do you? So I must have felt like an outsider a bit. But it’s not a sob story.’