Amy Winehouse

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  Asked whether they can cite any childhood influences on Amy, Mitchell points to Janis. ‘The influence comes from my ex-wife’s family… there are some excellent musicians in there. But it’s more what we listened to at home: Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington.’ As for Janis, she passes the credit back to Mitchell. ‘Like any parent with talented children I’m hugely proud of their achievements but can honestly say I’ve never pushed or cajoled them into show business. I just want them to be happy. I’m not in awe of greatness and don’t take special credit for the way their talents have risen to the surface.’

  Janis confirms, ‘It’s always been her dream to be a singer. That was all she ever wanted. She was always singing around the house.’ She would sing ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor while lying in the bath. Neighbours, too, remember the early Amy Winehouse performances – and her fledgling cheek! Paul Nesbitt lived near the Winehouse family. He said, ‘When I moved in, Amy popped her head out of her bedroom window and started singing with a microphone. She was talented. But she was a bit naughty. There was a bald copper who lived opposite and Amy would shout “slaphead” at him. She’d hold parties when her mum had gone out.’

  Her brother Alex, too, was a huge music fan and therefore a big influence on Amy’s development in the field. She says, ‘As a little kid I was too shy to sing and my brother was the one standing on a chair in his school uniform and doing his Frank Sinatra.’ His ability on the guitar inspired Amy to learn. ‘He taught himself, so I took inspiration for teaching myself from him and he showed me a couple of things,’ she has said. ‘He was into jazz music when he was eighteen and I was fourteen and I’d hear Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald; and I learnt to sing by listening,’ she says.

  Her first guitar was a Fender Stratocaster ‘It’s my favourite guitar,’ she said many years later. ‘It’s classic, it looks good and it sounds beautiful. It really lends itself to anything.’ However, she has also awarded the ‘favourite guitar’ tag to another model. ‘The Gretch White Falcon is my favourite guitar of all time. It’s beautiful. There’s this great picture of a falcon on the scratch plate.’

  Young Amy was eventually to step out of Alex’s musical shadow. ‘When I was about nine, I did it,’ she recalls. ‘“Sing!” my nana would shout. “And smile!” But I still needed to hold a fan to my face for “Eternal Flame”: “Close your eyes, give me your hand…”’

  Amy’s best friend is Juliette Ashby. As children the pair would play a game. ‘She was Pepsi and I was Shirley, the backing girls for Wham!. I think we clicked because we were both a bit off-key.’ This soon led the pair to form their own double-act called Sweet ’n’ Sour. ‘Me and my friend loved Salt-N-Pepa,’ she explains. ‘So we formed a band called Sweet ’n’ Sour. We had a tune called “Spinderella”, which was great… but it was a long time ago.’

  Salt-N-Pepa were more than mere pop stars to the young Amy. ‘My first real role models were Salt-N-Pepa,’ she says. ‘They were real women who weren’t afraid to talk about men, and they got what they wanted and talked about girls they didn’t like. That was always really cool.’

  More traditional pop girls had held little appeal for Amy. ‘I liked forward-thinking hip-hop like Mos Def, and conscious stuff like Nas,’ she said. ‘You know how there’s always one artist who makes you realise what it means to be an artist? I was into Kylie Minogue and Madonna, and then I discovered Salt-N-Pepa, and I realised there are real women making music.’ As well as ‘Spinderella’, Sweet ’n’ Sour’s other song titles included ‘Who Are the Glam Chicks (Us)?’ and ‘Boys (Who Needs Them?)’, the latter of which was a precocious sign of themes to come.

  Amy recalls, ‘There was jazz but hip-hop was running through me, too. When I was nine or ten, me and my friends all loved En Vogue.’ However it was at the age of thirteen that one of Amy’s key musical moments occurred. One day she heard ‘Leader of the Pack’, by the Shangri-Las and fell in love with the girl band’s sound. More than anything, this moment pushed her towards a career in music herself. One of America’s leading girl groups of the 1960s, the Shangri-Las performed songs that were concerned with lost love and other teenage dramas. As well as ‘Leader of the Pack’, their other well-known songs include ‘Remember (Walking in the Sand)’ (later covered by rockers Aerosmith), ‘Out in the Streets’ (covered by Blondie), and the war romance classic ‘Long Live Our Love’.

  As well as the sounds of jazz music filling the house, visitors were always coming and going and it was a happy household for Amy initially. Her schooldays were filled with fun, and it was at the age of four that Amy first met her friend Juliette Ashby at Osidge Primary School. The school’s website nowadays has a mini-manifesto on its homepage. Among its policies are ‘We recognise that children are individuals and have different needs.’ Well, Amy and Juliette were definitely individuals from the start. They would egg each other on to do naughty things. ‘We were a bit nutty,’ recalls Ashby, ‘and we were always in trouble.’ They would therefore often find themselves at the school reception desk, where pupils were sent if they had misbehaved. One day, as they stood at the desk, they told a male pupil that if he didn’t pull his pants down that they would no longer remain friends with him. The schoolboy duly obliged and Ashby recalls that incident as the one that made them truly bond. The friendship remains strong to this day but there were difficult moments back in the school days. Ashby claims she once made Amy a friendship brooch but that her friend ungratefully threw it in a sandpit.

  ‘She’s an idiot – I never did that,’ counters Amy. ‘She was the one with the upper hand. Juliette always had strawberry shoelaces in her bag, and you knew you were flavour of the day if she offered you one.’ Ashby admits that their friendship has at times been tested. ‘Like when she acts like a dickhead and I have to pick her up, which is more or less all the time.’

  Even so, Ashby utterly trusts her friend. ‘We both know that we’d rescue each other from a burning building if we had to. We’ve got that understanding. You can rely on your friends to be there when your family have totally washed their hands of you.’

  One of their favourite tricks involved one of the pair running from the classroom in floods of tears, whereupon the other would say that they’d have to go out and comfort her. ‘And then we’d just sit in a room somewhere, laughing for the rest of the lesson,’ says Ashby. Little surprise, then, that teachers would try to split the pair up. Indeed, once they progressed to secondary school, even the girls’ mothers pleaded with the school to not let their girls sit together. Consequently, they hardly saw each other between the ages of thirteen and fifteen. ‘I was a proper little shit,’ admits Amy. ‘I used to bunk off school and get my boyfriend round. My mum used to come home from work at lunchtime and we’d be lying around in dressing gowns!

  ‘I was cute up to the age of about five but then I got naughty. I was very naughty. Very, very, very naughty. When everyone else went out for first play we went through all their lunchboxes and ate all their crisps. And, when they came in from play, half of their lunches would be missing. I grew out of it by the time I was about nine, though.’

  When Janis wrote an open letter to her daughter through the pages of the News of the World in 2007, she spoke of Amy’s childhood:

  Even when you were only a rosy-cheeked five-year-old singing into a hairbrush in front of the mirror, you had a will as stubborn as a mule. Do you remember? We couldn’t ever get you to see things from any angle other than your own. You could swear day was night and Heaven help anyone who tried to disagree.

  You were never a wayward daughter but you always had a strong will and a mind of your own – qualities your father and I were so proud of. You were well brought up, you had a keen sense of right from wrong and you understood the values we always impressed on you as a family. But you would never be pressurised or influenced into doing something if your heart wasn’t in it.

  Do you remember those Decembers long ago when I used to swadd
le you in a thick winter coat? I used to wrap you up and give you a kiss on the nose before you went out to play in the cold. ‘Don’t worry about me Ma, I’ll be fine!’ you used to laugh. But, like any mother, of course I worried.

  Amy’s naughtiness came from boredom at school. She felt smothered and frustrated by the regimen of education. ‘I didn’t like being told what to do,’ she shrugs, the scowl returning to her face. ‘I was on report all the time. It gets to you after a while, having to sign a piece of paper after every lesson. So I left.’

  By this time, Amy had endured the painful experience of watching her parents split up. ‘We never argued,’ Janis remembers of the circumstances leading to the split. ‘We’d had a very agreeable marriage but he was never there. He was… away a lot, but for a long time there was also another woman, Jane, who became his second wife. I think Mitchell would have liked to have both of us but I wasn’t happy to do that.’

  For any child of nine, to watch their parents split up would be almost unbearably difficult. For Amy, the experience was typically painful and her mother believes that this has influenced Amy’s music. ‘People talk a lot about the anger in Amy’s songs,’ said Janis. ‘I think a lot of it was that her father wasn’t there. Now he’s trying to make up for that and he’s spending more time with her, but what he’s doing now is what he should have been doing then.’

  Interestingly, a live performance at Shepherds Bush Empire once saw Amy spend a lot of time during the show gazing up at Blake, who was in the circle to the right of the stage. As she sang lines about his infidelities, she fixed her focus on him. However, she also spun round and sang a few of the lines at her father Mitch, who was in the circle to the left of the stage. Nowadays, Amy sniffs, ‘My dad was shady. He moved house every two years – I’ve no idea what he was running from.’

  An old ‘friend’ of Amy’s spoke about this period of her life in an interview with a celebrity magazine. ‘After Amy’s dad Mitch moved out when she was nine, she felt that she could do anything she wanted,’ reveals the old pal. ‘She started wearing short skirts and makeup. Her mum Janis struggled to control her. Amy lost her virginity at fifteen… and told her mum, who made her go on the Pill. She was treated badly by the boy and I don’t think her head was in a good space about it. It traumatised her and she speaks about it even now.’

  Recently, Amy returned to her first school and the visit turned out to be suitably chaotic. ‘My old teacher was there – this cold-blooded bitch, she bleeds ice. She’s had the same haircut since 1840,’ chuckles Amy. ‘I was there with my friend and after the shoot we were like, “Miss, hello, miss, can we have a look round the school?” She was like, grudgingly, “OK”, and we went to the art room and my friend wandered off. Next thing, he shouted, “Run! I’ve smashed the fire alarm!” and the whole school was evacuated. It was the highlight of my life. I was saying, “I do hope it’s just a drill, miss” – and her face was a picture.’

  As a child Amy was comforted not only by her love of music: she was also a huge fan of American wrestling. An unnamed friend recalls that she was addicted to shows such as SmackDown and Raw. She even got to meet one of her heroes, Chris Jericho, who was one of the biggest names in the sport. ‘Amy was so excited about meeting him, she wouldn’t stop talking about it. She was much more excited to meet a wrestler than any musician.’ She was also a fan of Rob Van Dam and would, reportedly, ‘go crazy’ whenever he was on TV.

  At the age of twelve, Amy took the first step towards fame herself.

  Chapter Two

  DRAMA QUEEN

  The Sylvia Young Theatre School was originally established in 1981 on Drury Lane. It moved to Marylebone in 1983. Such has been the success of the school that Young herself was given an OBE in 2005. However, it has also been the subject of controversy, with actress Billie Piper claiming in her autobiography that students were encouraged to become ‘lighter, smaller and thinner’ and that eating disorders among the students were often ignored by teachers.

  Fellow Sylvia Young graduate Denise Van Outen was outraged by Piper’s comments. She stormed, ‘I was a big Billie Piper fan, but in her book she was very negative about Sylvia and the school and I think that’s wrong and unfair. If it wasn’t for Sylvia, she wouldn’t be where she is. And she really wouldn’t be where she is because she got all her breaks during her schooling years.’ Young herself was more to the point, describing Piper’s remarks as ‘poisonous’.

  Sylvia Young remembers Amy very well. ‘It is hard to overstate just how much she struck me as unique, both as a composer and performer, from the moment she first came through the doors at the age of thirteen, sporting the same distinctive hairstyle that she has now,’ she says, adding that she believes Amy could well have become like Judy Garland or Ella Fitzgerald. ‘But the emphasis is on that word “could”. Sadly, there is a danger that Amy will be better known for her personal life than for her God-given musical gifts.’

  Young remembers her first encounter with Amy. ‘She was one of a crowd of enthusiastic new pupils milling around the old-fashioned corridors of our school. I auditioned her myself. She did some acting, and showed great potential. She danced for us and proved she was a good mover. When she sang, however, we were blown away. It was not quite such a deep voice as she has now, of course. But her delivery of “On the Sunny Side of the Street” was rich and wonderful all the same.’ Amy was offered a scholarship and Young says that she very quickly realised she had not just a huge talent on her hands, but also a ‘real character’ who was in her own world and insisted on doing things her own way. Like all applicants, Amy was asked to write a short essay, explaining why she wanted to come to the school.

  This is what she wrote:

  All my life I have been loud, to the point of being told to shut up. The only reason I have had to be this loud is because you have to scream to be heard in my family.

  My family? Yes, you read it right. My Mum’s side is perfectly fine, my Dad’s family are the singing, dancing, all-nutty musical extravaganza.

  I’ve been told I was gifted with a lovely voice and I guess my Dad’s to blame for that.

  Although unlike my Dad, and his background and ancestors, I want to do something with the talents I’ve been ‘blessed’ with.

  My Dad is content to sing loudly in his office and sell windows. My mother, however, is a chemist. She is quiet, reserved.

  I would say that my school life and school reports are filled with ‘could do betters’ and ‘does not work to her full potential’.

  I want to go somewhere where I am stretched right to my limits and perhaps even beyond.

  To sing in lessons without being told to shut up (provided they are singing lessons).

  But mostly I have this dream to be very famous. To work on stage. It’s a lifelong ambition.

  I want people to hear my voice and just… forget their troubles for five minutes.

  I want to be remembered for being an actress, a singer, for sellout concerts and sellout West End and Broadway shows.

  For being just… me.

  The first half of Amy’s first week at the school was spent doing standard academic studies, and then in the second half she studied dance. ‘She was completely focused on her music, showing dedication and high standards,’ Sylvia Young remembers. ‘But nothing else interested her and, when she wasn’t singing, she was naughty. The misdemeanours were never serious, but they were persistent.’

  The misdemeanours included not wearing her school uniform in the correct manner, chewing gum during class and wearing a silver nose ring. Young asked Amy to remove it which she did – only to replace it an hour later. ‘We found a way of coexisting,’ Amy’s teacher remembers. ‘She would break the rules; I would tell her off; and she would acknowledge it. She could be disruptive in class, too, but this was largely because she didn’t concentrate.’

  Amy was also not overfriendly with her fellow pupils. ‘I wasn’t gregarious,’ she shrugs. There were lots of totally insufferable kids
there who’d come into class and announce, “My mummy’s coming to pick me up for an audition at three o’clock.” I was a little weirdo, I suppose, in that young, random way, but I wasn’t a loner. Friends would go, “Come and be weird with us!”’

  Amy was, however, in Young’s own words ‘wonderfully clever’. She particularly enjoyed English lessons. She was, accordingly, moved one year ahead of her age group. ‘In class she would write extraordinary notes to her friends. These were not mere jottings. Amy was prolific. Every millimetre of the page was crammed with her writing, which seemed to flow off the paper with her energy.’ These notes would frequently include swearwords and sometimes lyrics, too.

  Amy says now, ‘I was at stage school for a year and a half but all I did was sing songs with other people. You can’t be taught how to sing. After I left school I wanted to earn a living and I got lucky when a friend of a friend came to see me at a jazz gig and helped me get a break.’

  One of her fellow pupils was Matt Willis, who went on to find fame with the pop band Busted and then as the king of the jungle on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!. ‘We all loved Matt at school and, yeah, I fancied him. I still do, he’s a lovely boy.’ Busted’s label mates and friends McFly are led by singer/songwriter Tom Fletcher, who remembers Amy from Sylvia Young, too. ‘I think she was asked to leave, which is the polite way of saying she was expelled,’ he says. ‘She was always in trouble, as far as I remember. I didn’t really know her but I saw her at school every day. She liked to speak her mind. I don’t remember ever hearing her sing.’

  As we’ll see, the expulsion rumour was a misunderstanding.

  Gem Allen, a fellow pupil, says there were few signs of Amy’s future wild ways back at Sylvia Young Theatre School. ‘I wouldn’t have predicted she would go as wild as this. Some pictures of her now are heartbreaking. I just think, “She’s my old schoolfriend, I hope she’s OK.” I hope Amy’s sorting herself out but it is shocking to see things such as when she pulled out of the MTV awards. I couldn’t believe it because that had always been her dream.