Amy Winehouse

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  On the night, Amy was unable to attend the ceremony due to visa complications. However, that was not enough to stop her winning five prizes: Record of the Year, Best New Artist, Song of the Year, Pop Vocal Album and Female Pop Vocal Performance. It was a colossally successful evening for her, as she became the first ever British female artist to win five Grammys in one night.

  She left rehab for the evening and performed two songs – ‘Rehab’ and ‘You Know I’m No Good’ – via satellite from the Riverside Studios in London. Her performances prompted a standing ovation over in Los Angeles and she said: ‘Thank you very much, it's an honour to be here. Thank you very, very much.’ She also delivered her acceptance speech via satellite, dedicating her success to ‘My mum and dad. To my Blake, my Blake incarcerated.

  ‘I am so proud of this album,’ she said in reference to Back To Black. ‘I put my heart and soul into it and it’s wicked to be recognised in this way. I feel truly honoured to be mentioned in the same breath as many of the artists present tonight and to win is even more amazing.’ She was mobbed by ecstatic band members, friends and family on the stage.

  Despite being 5,500 miles away, Amy was the talk of the town in LA. With this latest triumph, her dream of making it big in America came true as the entire nation sat up, took notice and demanded to know more about this remarkable singer who couldn’t make it to the Grammys but still won five awards. America is her oyster.

  Chapter Nine

  NO SLEEP ’TIL BRIGHTON

  In November 2007, Blake Fielder-Civil, aged twenty-six, and Michael Brown, aged thirty-nine, were due to stand trial at London’s Snaresbrook Crown Court on charges of assault causing grievous bodily harm relating to an incident in June of that year. However, days before that trial was due, Blake was also arrested and charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in relation to the assault case. He was remanded in custody to await trial and, as he was led away in handcuffs, Amy shouted to him, ‘Baby, I love you, I’ll be all right.’ Blake had time to shout back, ‘I love you too’ before he was pushed into a police car. Both Blake and Michael Brown denied the charges. He was refused bail. ‘Amy’s totally distraught. She kept saying to me, “I love him. He’s done nothing wrong,”’ said her mother-in-law Georgette Civil.’ She was really upset because she couldn’t go and visit him. Amy has told me she’ll stand by Blake whatever happens.’ Soon, there were six men facing conspiracy charges.

  Against this backdrop of pain, uncertainty and controversy, Amy hoped that the UK leg of her European tour would see at least a sense of calm return to her world. Back on home turf, she hoped, she could draw increased wellbeing from her domestic fanbase. It is worth recalling – before we turn to this ill-fated tour – how brilliant Amy can be onstage when she is on form.

  Somerset House has been described as ‘Britain’s first office block, built when Britain suddenly realised it had an Empire, but a capital city that looked like Scunthorpe’, by The Times, which added that as a concert venue it was ‘much too posh for a mosh pit’. Amy performed there in the summer of 2007 and charmed all present. Described as being ‘as meek as a kitten’ by Gigwise, she was certainly in a mellow mood. She confessed to the audience that she ‘was not the most organised of people – but I’ve been looking forward to this gig for I can’t tell you how long’.

  Introducing a blistering cover of ‘Hey Little Rich Girl’ by the Specials, Amy gave a cheeky nod to her recent no-shows at concerts, saying, ‘This is a song I’ve been doing when I’m away. That’s obviously when I show up for a gig.’ She hopped off stage a few times to kiss Blake, who was waiting in the wings. As she announced the final song, ‘Valerie’, some of the crowd booed her impending exit from the stage. ‘Boo you,’ she joked. ‘I’ve been here at least an hour and I haven’t even collapsed once.’

  Caspar Llewellyn-Smith, writing in the Observer, acknowledged Amy’s relatively punctual arrival on stage and added,

  The gig that followed showed her abilities to their very best. She was dressed to the nines and impossibly thin in her checked dress with micro-skirt, and with her massive back-combed beehive which, one often fears, will topple her over. And yes, she was slightly crazed and tired, at times, and emotional, possibly. But the real question was: who would want it any other way?

  The Sun said ‘she deserves a champagne reception’. During ‘Rehab’, Amy had been joined onstage by friend Kelly Osbourne. Amy had indeed been looking forward to these open-air concerts. ‘I’m really looking forward to it, because I never went to any festivals when I was younger,’ she says of her hefty summer touring schedule. I used to go camping but by the time I was old enough to go to them I wasn’t interested any more.’

  So, all was well at Somerset House. However, the opening night of the winter 2007 tour at the Birmingham NIA was far from a calm affair, and the press coverage in the ensuing days only added to the sense of controversy and danger that surrounded her. ‘It was one of the saddest nights of my life,’ wrote the Birmingham Mail’s music critic Andy Coleman in his review of the concert. ‘I saw a supremely talented artist reduced to tears, stumbling around the stage and, unforgivably, swearing at the audience,’ he wrote. He even refused to give the concert the paper’s customary star rating, since ‘this was a show by a troubled individual that should never have gone ahead’. Harsh words, and yet these were among the kinder conclusions drawn from perhaps Amy’s most controversial concert to date.

  The drama kicked off when Amy reportedly locked herself in a backstage toilet, prior to her appearance. ‘I can’t go on without Blake,’ she screamed from inside the cubicle. ‘How can I live without him? I need him. I need my baby.’ According to an eyewitness, ‘Her aides and our staff went into panic mode as Amy refused to leave the loo. We could hear her sobbing from outside. She was saying she couldn’t go on without Blake. It made everyone worry she would do something stupid to herself. Eventually, aides convinced her to come out and that everything would be OK, but it was touch and go for a while.’

  Then Amy finally took to the stage, wearing a see-through black top and a miniskirt. She was more than half an hour late and some in the audience had already grown restless and frustrated while waiting for her. A slow handclap had started up minutes before she took to the stage. Some started booing her. Introducing ‘Wake Up Alone’, she told the audience, ‘This is for my husband.’ As the song ended, she said, ‘Nothing’s going to bring my husband back.’ As the performance became increasingly shambolic, more members of the audience turned on her, with heckles and boos being thrown. Shocked, she said, ‘Let me tell you something. First of all, if you’re booing you’re a mug for buying a ticket. Second, to all those booing, just wait till my husband gets out of incarceration. And I mean that.’ She then added that the audience were ‘monkey c**ts’.

  Also during the set, she dropped her microphone and stumbled into the guitar stand. Finally, she seemed to shed tears prior to singing ‘Valerie’ and then walked out before the song had finished. By this time, it is reported, hundreds of fans had already walked out of the venue in disgust. Some of them were demanding refunds. The tabloid press had descended like vultures to the venue, many of their number openly wishing for some tragedy and drama in the evening. There was plenty of that on stage and some of it off. A tattooed, cross-dressing stalker turned up to the venue, promising to follow Amy everywhere on tour to ‘take care of her’. He was evicted, yelling, ‘I can take care of her now that Blake isn’t around. I love her.’

  Many of the more normal fans were quoted in the press during the following days. One said, ‘She came on stage half an hour late. She managed four songs but was slurring her words and swaying all over the place. It was atrocious. The song dedicated to her husband was so bad it was like swinging a cat round your head.’

  Another moaned, ‘Her singing was awful, out of tune and slurred. She sang for around fifty minutes – drinking throughout. I have never seen so many people leave a show. “Valerie” was my favourite song
– she massacred it!’

  Kinder sentiments were forthcoming, though. One fan, Zoe Giorgio, said, ‘When she did sing she sounded phenomenal but she was not ready to be up on that stage. She was so weak, so vulnerable.’ Another fan said, ‘If my husband was in prison I wouldn’t have the bottle to stand up on stage and do that, so I think fair play to her I really do. Her fans should support her.’

  They should indeed. It must be asked what these disgruntled fans expected when they bought their tickets to the show. As Helen Brown wrote in the Daily Telegraph,

  The 24-year-old’s troubles have been fodder for months now. She has been photographed drunk and bloody. She cancelled shows due to ‘health issues’ and confessed to chemical addictions, bulimia and bipolar disorder. Then this week her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, was arrested.

  If the ‘appalled fans’ had bought their £20 tickets to see a slick, wholesome pop show, they’d have had cause for complaint. But they can’t pretend that was the case. Whatever else Winehouse might be accused of, the self-proclaimed ‘ugly drunk’ can’t be charged with mis-selling herself. She lives a life of high drama. And she has used that troubled experience to create an excellent album’s worth of highly dramatic songs about desperate love, alcohol addiction and drug smoking. Her ‘appalled fans’must have heard them or they wouldn’t have paid for tickets.

  This author, too, supported Amy, writing on the Guardian website,

  She’s for some time been well known to miss concerts, or arrive late and inebriated. So when fans flocked to her shows in the hope of some in-the-flesh experience of her drunken and shambolic lifestyle it seemed extraordinarily hypocritical of them to complain when – gasp! – her shows turned out to be drunken and shambolic. Some of them asked for refunds, too. I wonder how they argued their case? They couldn’t cite the Trade Descriptions Act, surely, because as she veered between genius and disaster, Winehouse kept her end of the bargain impeccably every night.

  This contradiction of concertgoers’ expectations seems peculiar to her. Pete Doherty has long been a less than reliable live prospect but manages to get off far more lightly. And when Shane MacGowan was routinely late and drunken onstage he seemed if anything to gain extra kudos among most of his fans. After all, as much as they’d gone to sing along to ‘Dirty Old Town’, they’d also pitched up in the hope of seeing a train wreck.

  In any case, since when did we want our artists to be so predictable, tame and clean-living? I’m far more worried about the stars who don’t stagger down the road at 5 a.m. dressed in their bra. Winehouse will be back next year. To those who booed her, I suggest that if they want a Leona Lewis, they go and see Leona Lewis.

  Andrew Lloyd Webber was, somewhat surprisingly, a member of the audience and the music impresario was impressed with her performance, which he said ‘showed flashes of genius with an Ella Fitzgerald quality’. To him, the reports of a disastrous performance were strange. ‘I thought there were moments when she was absolutely magnificent,’ he explained. ‘I didn’t notice her doing anything peculiar. I thought her voice was toned and she was handling material you would not expect a girl of her age to cope with.’

  He did, though, notice the negative response of some audience members. ‘It was strange what happened. Suddenly, way into the show, the audience suddenly turned on her and she wasn’t equipped to handle it. I was with Sir David Frost and he has seen it all. Neither of us could work out why the crowd turned on her – it just happened in one moment.’

  Rounding off his rallying support for Amy, he said, ‘She is a big star and the awful thing about it is she’s going to be crushed like a butterfly and it’s not right. That girl needs to be nurtured and helped through all of these problems because she is a major, major talent. I’d say there’s an Edith Piaf quality to her, which is very rare. She lives those lyrics.’

  There were also words of support from the band Girls Aloud. Nadine Coyle said, ‘Amy Winehouse is just such a talent. Her voice has brought something back that hasn’t been around for decades.’ Sarah Harding chimed in with, ‘Isn’t it weird that the really talented people always seem to crumble under that kind of artistic pressure?’ Cheryl Cole added, ‘She’s absolutely amazing, but it’s a shame that her personal life overshadows the talent.’

  Amy’s old teacher, Sylvia Young, wrote an open letter about Amy at this point. It read,

  I have followed Amy’s career closely from the time she left the school and continue to do so. I am delighted that she has become a singing sensation and, even at such a tender age, has achieved so much.

  I love her 2003 debut album, Frank, made when she was just 20, and her debut single, ‘Stronger Than Me’, won an Ivor Novello award for songwriting.

  Equally I enjoyed her Back to Black album, released in 2006. At first I was sanguine about her erratic behaviour. I thought she was just a wild child enjoying life to the full, I had no idea it would escalate so much.

  It appears that Amy wants to be free to do whatever she chooses. I have only ever felt as concerned about one other ex-pupil, Danniella Westbrook, at the height of her troubles.

  She starred in EastEnders but became a cocaine addict with terrible results. Yet she has fought her way to a complete recovery and I am truly proud of her. She is the most courageous girl I know.

  I am hoping that Amy’s superintelligence will give her the confidence to draw back, too. It is her choice which path to follow but I want her to choose the right one and move on soon. I want her to become a legend – but in her lifetime, not after.

  If I met her today I would give her a big hug and say: ‘My dear Amy, you were never expelled. Instead you were admired and loved, as you are today. Please try to harness these feelings to help you get back on track.

  I know how hard you can be on yourself. I also remember that you don’t like being told what to do. But think back to the time when you wrote that what you really care about is people hearing your voice.

  All of us who care about you want you to fulfil your unique destiny.

  Also, in Amy’s defence, it must be remembered what stresses she was under at this point. She had spent the afternoon visiting Blake in prison – and had her beehive searched on the way in! – and was utterly distraught by the experience. A friend of hers insists that Amy ‘wasn’t drinking before or after the gig and stuck to Lucozade all night’. Frankly, even if she was drinking before the gig, only the coldest heart could blame her for doing so after she’d gone through the horrific experience of visiting her husband in jail and having to leave him there and perform at a concert in front of thousands of expectant fans.

  Lloyd Webber’s words were balanced, considered and fair, which is more than could be said of the media storm that descended upon Amy in the wake of the Birmingham concert. Scenting blood, the press reported that her tour manager had quit. Thom Stone found traces of heroin in his system from, he claimed, passively inhaling the fumes when Amy and Blake took drugs. He showed Amy a doctor’s note warning her that the pressures of being her tour manager had been ruining his health. ‘He was constantly bailing her out,’ said a source. ‘He was watching them get off their head on drugs and wondering whether Amy was even going to get up on stage. It was a nightmare job.’

  In the heady atmosphere of the week, this was reported as a major setback for Amy. However, as someone close to her revealed, she was far from disappointed at her tour manager’s resignation. ‘When he produced this note, Blake and Amy thought it was a joke. They didn’t get on with Thom and were taking the piss when he tried to pull that excuse to leave. They wanted rid of him anyway.’

  By this stage, though, the media were relentless in their suggestion that Amy was on the brink of suicide. The London Paper’s front-page headline was typical: AMY ON THE BRINK OF MELTDOWN. The paper’s story reported that ‘a bedraggled Amy Winehouse left her north London home early this morning amid fears she was on the brink of a meltdown.’ Not that journalists were the only people feeling concern towards Amy. Fans on th
e forum of her official website discussed a rumour that she had died from a drug overdose.

  There were also profound fears for Amy much closer to her home during the same week. In the early hours of the morning, Amy’s parents called an ambulance to her house, amid fears that she might be on the brink of suicide. A source said, ‘Amy’s family are petrified she’ll do something stupid. They know she’s very low at the moment and misses Blake terribly. They were trying to reach her on the phone yesterday evening and they were also trying the flat in Hackney where she’s been staying but they couldn’t get in touch with her. They immediately feared the worst and called an ambulance and police to go and check on her. But, thankfully, Amy showed up and was fine.’

  Indeed she was fine, as her brother Alex confirmed during an interview with GMTV, in which he attempted to bring some sanity to the increasing madness of the media’s coverage of Amy. ‘I spoke to her last night. She told me to give her cats a kiss. She sounded fine, definitely,’ he said. He said that he had tried to get her to mend her partying ways but said that he hadn’t been able to get her to listen. ‘When I’ve tried to say, “What are you doing?” it just ends up in an argument. However, I know that she has a voice in her head saying, “Calm down”,’ he said. Alex concluded, ‘She wanted me to say that she loves Blake, because he’s watching.’

  Meanwhile Janis spoke out, too, saying, ‘My heart goes out to her. She’s under immense stress over Blake’s imprisonment. I wouldn’t hesitate to tell her to pull out if I feared she was in danger. I don’t want Amy destroying herself. But I think she will get by and come through what is a terribly lonely time for her right now.’ She also blamed Blake for Amy’s woes, saying, ‘Everyone else can see it, but Amy chooses not to. I think he introduced her to them [drugs] and now she thinks, “Oh, this is good, this is OK.” I think she’s still a child. Personally, I think it’s overtaken her a bit.