Amy Winehouse

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  Amy shrugs off her brushes with the law. ‘Life’s short,’ she says, ‘and I’ve made a lot of mistakes. I was quite self-destructive. I was just doing one destructive thing after the other. I always say I don’t regret things and I don’t say sorry, but I do really. I believe everything happens for a reason.’

  A source close to her said, ‘This tour started pretty much as the last one ended. Berlin was a difficult time for everyone and we thought it was going to turn into another tour full of drunken and missed shows. But she’s now said that she will not drink before her gigs for the rest of the tour. She stuck to it in Amsterdam, amazingly, and gave her best show of the tour yet. Everyone just hopes she keeps it up.’

  Amy told the organiser of her Amsterdam concert about her new pre-gig booze ban. Jan Willem Luyken said, ‘She wasn’t drunk when she came in and she did not drink backstage. I don’t think she was stoned, either. People were joking about her sober performance. They said, “Has the wine bar been closed today?” But, no, she was sober till after her performance. She said she won’t drink before shows any more – only afterwards.’

  So much for the European leg of her tour. Any hopes Amy had of remaining sober once she returned home took a hit when she learned that Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding had bought a new pad in Camden Town. Harding has long been a mainstay in the tabloid press’s ‘caner leagues’. She says, ‘I have a bit of a binge but I think everyone does, get smashed, they get pie-eyed. I don’t go out as often as most girls my age, but when I do I get persecuted for it.’

  Not that she was about to deny that she liked a good bender. ‘I can drink with the best of them and I like to be able to hold my own. But I regret it the next day when my head’s down the bog.’ Revealing that her home was near the Hawley Arms pub, Harding quipped, ‘I’m in walking distance of the Hawley, which is a bit scary!’

  Called ‘the home of the “Camden caners”’, the Hawley Arms has long been a regular haunt for Amy. For years the Hawley had been something of a nonentity, certainly when compared with other Camden bars such as the Dublin Castle and the Good Mixer. The former was where Madness launched their career and the latter was the scene of numerous battles among the Britpop crowd during the 1990s.

  The Hawley now has the chance to become just as legendary thanks to Amy’s patronage of it. As the Independent reported,

  Winehouse, 23, is such a regular she could be made its honorary life president. Her deputy could be Kelly Osbourne, a favoured drinking partner, or Peaches Geldof, another customer. The celebrity endorsements keep coming, though the punters hate comparisons made with the Met Bar, the hotel lounge where celebrities used to fall over themselves to get seen. They think there is a bit more grit to the Hawley.

  You don’t have to be in skinny-tight jeans and a washed-out T-shirt to drink here, but it helps. Indie haircuts are welcome, too – though customers will tell you that Winehouse’s matty beehive and extravagant tattoos are to marvel at, not imitate.

  Among regulars who have drunk alongside Amy are Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and his wife Nicole Appleton, television comedian Noel Fielding, Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell and his movie star girlfriend Kirsten Dunst.

  The Evening Standard rated it London’s best pub for star spotting:

  This ‘proper boozer’ last week saw Kate Moss, Primal Scream frontman Bobby Gillespie, Sadie Frost, Amy Winehouse and Kelly Osbourne spend an evening there – together. Osbourne, for one, is a regular player on the pub’s ‘awesome’ jukebox and the likes of Razorlight’s Johnny Borrell and (of course) Pete Doherty have also been spotted.

  Amy was at one point banned from the pub. ‘The manager and his staff are at their wits’ end with Amy and her pals. They hate them coming in and have just been waiting for an excuse to throw them out. Amy’s hangers-on were throwing stuff out of the window and being a nuisance. Eventually the manager ordered them all out and Amy was told to sort it out or she wouldn’t ever be allowed back.’

  However, within no time at all, Amy seemed to have charmed the bar management enough not just to let her drink there but to serve behind the bar too! ‘Amy treated the pub like her own home, pouring herself vodka Red Bull drinks and choosing the music on the pub iPod,’ an onlooker reported. ‘She poured shots and, pointing to a black sambuca, told punters, “This is on the house!”’

  But while she was seemingly in her element as centre-stage in a thronging London pub, Amy had long been dreaming of success on another continent – that fabled market that is considered such a difficult one to succeed in but one that promises riches of every kind to anyone who does make it there.

  Amy Winehouse had her sights set on America.

  Chapter Eight

  THE AMERICAN DREAM

  It’s the dream of all British musical artists – to crack America. The land of Hollywood, glamour, skyscrapers and enormous wealth is an irresistible prospect. No matter that most British acts have failed to make it Stateside, the dream remains as strong as ever. Amy had the advantage that her US campaign caught the attention of the American media. In May 2007, the Wall Street Journal published a major feature to coincide with her arrival on those shores. It summed up brilliantly the challenges that faced her and put into context her arrival in the land of the free. However, Christopher John Farley’s article was not without its reservations about Amy: ‘Though one could argue that given her influences, Ms Winehouse’s ascension isn’t really evidence of the rise of a new British musical empire, but more proof of the pervasive influence American music and culture have around the world.’

  He pointed out that, when he interviewed her, all the acts she name-checked were American: Frank Sinatra, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Michael Jackson. He argued that what the States were seeing, with the arrival of Amy and fellow Brits Lily Allen and Joss Stone was not a British invasion, but a British echo, in which Brits brought their own take on American music to the American audience. He praised Amy’s ‘rough, outspoken’ personality before concluding, ‘The British aren’t coming. They’re already here – and they may be staying for a while.’ Plenty for Amy to feel positive about there, then, even if he insisted on claiming Amy’s music as American, in order to offer his approval.

  Farley was not alone in seeing a wider trend at force. Writing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Mary Houlihan also placed Amy within a grouping: ‘A wave of female singer-songwriters from the British Isles are making an impression on fans at home and abroad. What they have in common is a sassy attitude grounded in an irreverent love for updating and mixing popular musical genres.’

  Ahead of Amy’s performance at the Schubas venue in Chicago, Houlihan singled her out for particular praise: ‘This rough-and-tumble performer is the latest to hit our shores. She is a tabloid fixture back home and is definitely a grittier presence than her compatriots.’

  The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette immediately stepped Amy out of the Brit pack: ‘Unlike fellow breakthrough Lily Allen, who sneaks her biting lyrics into smiley bluebeat ska tunes, Winehouse goes for the grit of vintage soul and R&B… Sweet or sour, genuine or just having a laugh, Winehouse is worth spending an hour with.’

  Heather Adler, in the Calgary Herald wrote,

  It seems impossible that such a deep, commanding voice could possibly be mustered by this skin-and-bones, white, Jewish girl, and she might look bored to be doing it at times, but her talent somehow manages to trump all of her trip-ups. Props to Lily Allen and Peter Bjorn & John, too. You kids are good, but you’re not ‘legend’ good like Wino.

  A San Francisco newspaper journalist wrote, ‘While Allen appears to be a papier-mâché star, Winehouse looks like the real thing.’

  Before long, the Wall Street Journal was back on the case:

  Singing in a smoky voice, Ms Winehouse updates a classic soul sound, complete with trilling horns and drums with a hip-hop edge; her label, Universal, is hoping for a crossover hit. Ms Winehouse’s second album has been a big seller in the UK, where it came out in October (her first wasn�
��t released in the US).

  The article quoted Universal’s international marketing vice president Hassan Choudhury as saying that Amy’s success was unsurprising. ‘The US is more receptive to UK music than ever before and I put it down to fantastic records and great A&R from the UK company, having an international view when they sign artists,’ he said.

  Once again, then, Amy was standing outside the Brit pack. However, the same newspaper was less than complimentary when it came to reviewing Back to Black. Noting the album’s ‘lyrical nods to Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway, not to mention musical rips from Nina Simone’, the reviewer sneered,

  Winehouse would clearly love to be viewed as a member of such esteemed and soulful company, but she doesn’t come close: In the end, she’s too snotty to be sultry, too obvious to be intriguing and too derivative to be of much interest behind her vaguely endearing single ‘Rehab’, a sad justification for why she doesn’t want to clean up her act. Sorry, but the first step is admitting you have a problem.

  Ouch!

  Amy could afford a smile, though, on scoring the highest new entry by a British female artist in the history of the US chart when Back to Black shot in at Number 7. Back to Black was enthusiastically embraced by music fans on this side of the pond, entering the Billboard Hot 200 chart at an impressive Number 7 and making her the highest debuting British female artist in the history of the coveted US albums chart.

  That was followed by similar triumphs for Joss Stone, Lily Allen, Corinne Bailey Rae and KT Tunstall. British female talent had not known the like since Kim Wilde and Kate Bush twenty years earlier.

  While it is traditional to see America as an almost impossible nut for British artists to crack – a member of the pop band Busted claimed that statistically one has more of a chance of winning the lottery than cracking America – occasionally Brits can find they are at something of an advantage across the Pond, particularly if their sound is clearly influenced by American music. Industry commentators argue that Americans feel the need to have their own music ‘sung back at them’ by foreign acts. It reassures them of the worth of the American music scene and is a welcome occurrence whenever it happens.

  For instance, it is argued, Eric Clapton’s love of the American blues sound was so strong that it outdid any American’s devotion to the genre, thus refreshing interest in the blues Stateside. Even more stark was the case of Terence Trent D’Arby, who was presented to the US market as a hot new British act. The truth was that D’Arby was actually a New Yorker by birth, but his record company deliberately chose to market him as a British act because they felt he stood more of a chance that way.

  Amy’s politically incorrect nature was a breath of fresh air in America, where sanitised goody-goody artists have increasingly ruled the roost. A San Francisco Chronicle journalist, Mark Morford, says, ‘She should be allowed to march right onto the American Idol stage and slap each and every singer upside the head with her huge hair and her wicked sexy tattoos and her mountain of raw British talent, just because. All part of our national rehab, really.’ He concluded, ‘I think this could be our perfect American model. I think we have the potential.’

  Amy is unrepentant about the honest nature of her songs, not regretting this aspect of her songwriting for a moment. ‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘I’m glad that I could be that person. Music is the one thing in my life where I won’t ever lie or cover anything up. I could go into a therapy session with a professional, and I would not be as honest as if I had a notepad in front of me. For some reason, when I write stuff I always end up telling the truth, so much more so than in my [day-to-day] life.’

  Her friends confirm that just as she is honest and, well, frank in her lyrics, so she is in her everyday life. ‘She’s a fiery person, but we’ve never argued,’ says John the White Rapper. ‘Partly, I’m not that silly, and I know I’d get my balls cut off – if you say something that pisses her off she’ll eat you alive – but also because there’s never any tension between us. We meet up and chill. It’s perfect, really.’

  Her frankness, too, was perfect for America, giving her an edge. However, before we get carried away, we would do well to list some of the acts that have failed to make it in America. Top of this list must be Robbie Williams, who, in the words of a leading American record company executive, arrived in America by private jet, vowed to conquer the country, and was sent home by bus. Indeed, Williams has yet to come home and is still to be found on the West Coast of America, ruing his spectacular failure to make it there. And what of Oasis, who seemed to implode as a band the moment they arrived in the US? Although they have since picked up a respectable following there, when they were at the terrifying peak of their fame in the mid-1990s, they were unable to replicate their success in America to any significant degree.

  Readers who are interested in not just a graphic example of a band failing to make it in America, but also a cracking piece of television should refer to the MTV series America or Busted, which followed the pop band Busted – complete with Amy’s friend and former Sylvia Young classmate Matt Willis – as they tried to crack America. At this stage of their career the band were Britain’s biggest act and had recently been voted as such. However, in America they faced soul-destroying journeys across the country, to small regional radio stations who mostly turned their noses up at the band. When Busted went busking in Times Square in Manhattan, they were utterly ignored.

  Amy’s albums were far from ignored in America, though. Both received plentiful reviews in the US press. Many of these reviews were enthusiastic, too. Frank tended to be the more reviewed because, as mentioned, the two albums were released in a different sequence in America.

  In the Northwest Herald, Bryan Wawzenek wrote, ‘Where Back to Black is sharp, short and sweet R&B, Frank is smooth, meandering jazz-pop.’ The Philadelphia Inquirer added, ‘Without the conceptual glue of Mark Ronson’s smartly retro R&B production moves, this earlier disc – more stylistically varied and less cohesive – shows Winehouse leaning more toward jazz.’

  Said USA Today, ‘Winehouse fuses her influences with such breezy authority that the songs never sound flagrantly derivative or stale.’ The MSNBC website declared, ‘Now, just in time to capitalize on the success of the BRITs breakthrough, Back to Black, the debut is appearing stateside for the first time. While the latter disc found Winehouse cackling over lush vintage soul backdrops, Frank uses sparse instrumentation to achieve a subtler, jazzier effect.’

  The U-Wire Arizona attempted to put the album into its historical and contemporary context: ‘Back to Black plays as if it is out of the doo-wop era until a track with Ghostface Killah brings the listener back to the need today to feature rappers in music.’

  The Allentown Morning Call concluded, ‘Swinging a mixture of soul, ska and girl-group theatrics, the 23-year-old Brit sounds like she’s lived every one of her lyrics.’

  Writing in the Minnesota Daily, Becky Lang said, ‘Frank is not only good musically, it’s somewhat of an anthropological relic for a case study of the triad closest to our culture: copulation, mind-altering substances and parent-offending music. Er, sex, drugs and rock’n’roll.’ Boston Now gave the album four stars, adding, ‘Musically, the CD is laidback, with the band providing sparse, yet tasty accompaniment to Winehouse’s vocal stylings. Not without its faults… Frank is still an outstanding debut.’

  The influential tabloid the New York Daily News gave a long and considered thumbs-up. Jim Farber wrote,

  It’s understandable that Universal Records wanted to introduce the singer to this country not with this sound but with the more instantly accessible Black. Now that we’re conditioned to Winehouse’s persona, and her life, as hovering somewhere between the difficult and the troubled, we’re in the right mind to hear a quirkier take on her dazzling talent.

  The Tennessean praised Amy for taking ‘jazz and soul and [infusing] it into a sultry, classy brand of pop that kicks up adrenaline like smashing a crystal brandy snifter’. Not that there was m
uch danger of Amy’s getting carried away with all these compliments. After all, one report misspelled her surname as Weinhaus.

  As for her live performances in America, they largely went down well, too. Her opening performance in the country came at Joe’s Pub in downtown New York. Amy’s always been a fan of the city, and of the television show set there, Sex and the City. ‘I liked the way Samantha would just say anything, tell it like it is. I’m exactly like that,’ she says. ‘But I’m pretty much like that anyway. I’m not really a product of culture. I’ve always done my own thing.’

  The Village Voice voted the increasingly legendary venue the ‘Best Excuse to Let a Single Venue Dictate Your Taste’. Newsweek calls the club ‘one of the country’s best small stages’ and New York Magazine added that ‘you never know what you’ll find next at Joe’s Pub, but you can count on the fact that it will be good, very good.’ Charlie Gillett of BBC radio rated it as ‘one of the best small music venues I’ve ever been to’. Alicia Keys, who has performed there, says the artist ‘gets all the sweat and the heat from the performances’.

  There was heat galore during Amy’s performance at the venue, not least because it was a sell-out – a great way to start her American campaign. ‘To witness Winehouse is to wonder why art and self-destruction so often dance together,’ said one onlooker, adding that she began nervously: ‘She makes awkward chitchat in that cockney twang. Tugs distractedly at her trademark ratty do. Yanks nervously on the strapless shift that’s sliding dangerously south.’ However, she then ordered an amaretto sour, got a hearty laugh and cheer from the crowd for doing so, and then the performance immediately kicked up a gear. ‘They keep trying to keep me from drinking, but they forget it’s my gig,’ she joked, and then launched – appropriately – into ‘Rehab’.