Amy Winehouse (14 page)

Asked about these latest reports, Mitchell revealed, ‘I wrote a eulogy for Amy myself last month. When she had her seizure and was taken to hospital, I really thought that could be it. The doctors told us even a whiff of another drug could kill her.’

By this time, tabloid fascination in Amy was huge. Even her buying some McDonald’s food while out on tour in Germany was deemed worthy of a story in the newspapers. Earlier in the month, a visit to McDonald’s by Amy and Blake in London had also hit the newspapers. On that occasion she had been travelling to a photoshoot in Hoxton and was laden with boxes of Betsey Johnson shoes. Then she was spotted eating in a Soho restaurant. ‘Amy came in really good spirits and ordered an extra-large portion of brown stew chicken, which she polished off in minutes,’ said a fellow diner. ‘She was looking really healthy and it’s clear she’s putting on weight again.’

She was also spotted pounding away on a running machine
shortly before her Berlin concert. Her health kick also involved one-on-one tuition with yoga guru David Sye, who is based in her hometown of Camden and has previously trained the likes of the fashion designer and actress Sadie Frost.

‘Amy has been having regular one-on-one sessions with David for five weeks now,’ said a source. ‘It’s been a big step for Amy and one that could play a huge role in her eventually beating her demons. She pops into his studio for sessions but has also been calling him regularly on the phone for spiritual advice. Her health has improved over the last few weeks and she has been looking a lot more glowing and healthy. She has started to worry about her health, so she’s lucky to have found something that works for her right on her doorstep.’

Her European tour hit a snag when Amy arrived in Norway. She and Blake were relaxing with a friend in the SAS Hotel, in Bergen, in southwestern Norway, when police knocked on the door. The police claim they found seven grams of cannabis in the room and arrested the trio. According to one person present, ‘When the police entered the hotel corridor, they quickly noticed a heavy marijuana odour. They knocked on the hotel room door and were met by a very wobbly pop star.’

Another eyewitness described the scene as ‘like something from the action movie
Lethal Weapon
, as most of the city’s police force turned out – with an ambulance’. The source added that Amy ‘had problems remaining on her feet when she opened the door and saw the uniformed police. Making matters even worse, [she] was so intoxicated she experienced
great difficulties communicating with the police officers.’ Indeed, it is believed that police were forced to wait until 11 p.m. before interviewing her, such was her state.

They were kept in police custody overnight and then fined and released. Amy and Blake were ordered to pay £350 between them, while the other arrested man was fined £240. Prosecutor Lars Morten Lothe explained how the police came to be knocking on Amy’s door and what happened next: ‘We had a tip from a good source, which led to police checking up on the tip. She spent a few hours in custody from Thursday evening to early Friday; she got a fine and then she was released. They signed a ticket, a fine, at the police station some hours ago. It is a closed case.’

When Amy left police custody she was reportedly in a confused state and asked for a cab to take her back to her hotel. Instead, she was given directions for the short walk back to the hotel.

Mitchell had flown to Bergen to offer his support but the trio had already been freed by the time he arrived. Despite the prosecutor’s valiant attempts to prevent the matter being blown out of all proportion, the press naturally went to town on the story. A
MY
W
INEHOUSE GOES TO POT
, yelled
E! Online
. W
INEHOUSE ARRESTED OVER DRUGS
, screamed the
Daily Star
in a story that included yet more predictions that she is ‘heading for an early grave’. Even the hotel trade media got in on the act, with a journalist for the online
Hotel Chatter
saying, ‘What is shocking is that it was just weed. Doesn’t Amy do like harder Class-A type of drugs? And we also learned that Amy doesn’t
mind shacking up in Radissons but perhaps in the future Amy should check into more drug-friendly hotels.’

Immediately there were fears that the arrest might lead Amy to cancel the following evening’s appearance at the Bergen Live rock festival. However, as we’ve seen often, she genuinely adores performing live and sees it as the best part of her job. Frank Nes, head promoter of Bergen Live, said she had been quick to reassure him that her performance would go ahead. ‘We spoke to her management this morning and there isn’t anything that would indicate she won’t sing tonight. It’s not that dramatic, but it’s not a pleasant situation for anyone involved.’

It also emerged that Amy was used by police as an example to a rookie officer of how people look when they are under the influence of drugs. ‘They are very strict about drug taking in Norway,’ said a police source.

With her past record they thought there was more than just a couple of spliffs. When she opened the hotel room door it was obvious she was wasted. She was mumbling and no one could understand her. Amy and Blake were put in separate cells but Amy couldn’t be interviewed straightaway because she was totally incoherent. She was cooperative and even let an officer in training look in her eyes so he could recognise how a person high on drugs looks.’

She returned to the hotel and quickly recovered from the ordeal – she ordered champagne in the hotel spa. Mitchell reflected, ‘Well, you know, I try to speak to her every other day but, you know, every day I’m in contact with the tour. I went
to Norway last week because there was a problem out there. Again, it was in all the newspapers that they found cannabis. It didn’t belong to her: it belonged to someone else on the tour. They arrested Blake, Amy and the person who was responsible. And they only released them after they signed a form, which they were told was a release form – it was in Norwegian. It was actually a confession, so this is being dealt with now by the Norwegian authorities and the British Consulate because the ramifications of that is that she now can’t get into the States and she was meant to go next week.’

Amy was far from being the first pop star to get on the wrong side of Scandinavian law in recent times. Rapper Snoop Dogg was arrested in March for suspected drug use, and Pete Doherty was arrested and fined in Sweden the previous year. In Doherty’s case, he was fined £1,000 after police found traces of cocaine in his blood, following a performance by his rock band at the Hultsfred music festival. Police detained the twenty-seven-year-old Babyshambles frontman after the concert because ‘he showed signs of being under the influence of narcotics’, Ulf Karlsson, a police spokesman in the city of Kalmar on Sweden’s southeastern coast, said.

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,

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:

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.

I
t’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,

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:

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,

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,

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 much 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’.

The
Village Voice
hailed her as a ‘dazzling soul saviour’ and
Spin
magazine referred to her ‘seductive croon and impressive vocal acrobatics’ that ‘transformed the venue into a
mid-century
jazz club’. Universal UK’s international marketing director, Chris Dwyer, said the shows ‘really got the ball rolling. They were both sold out, had fantastic online and print reviews and everybody was talking about Amy Winehouse in New York when she left.’