Saving Amy (11 page)

I ask Mitch and Janis straight out if they believe Blake loves their daughter.

‘No,’ Janis says, ‘it’s his love for opportunity.’

‘Very well put,’ Mitch agrees. ‘I don’t think he loves her and I’ll tell you why I don’t think he loves her because if he loved her … he wouldn’t say things like he did in the paper “I can’t wait to see Amy because [I’m] going to pull her knickers down.”’

Mitch says, ‘That is not how I was brought up to talk. I was brought up to love and cherish my wife, both of them and I wouldn’t talk like that in public about someone that I loved. He doesn’t love her because if he did he wouldn’t talk like that.’

‘Does Amy find it disrespectful?’ I ask him.

‘She will excuse him,’ Mitch replies. ‘She would say that he didn’t say it. That they made it up, but two newspapers independently said the same thing. It was in inverted commas, which means it is a quote and we all know he said it.’

‘But [maybe],’ I say, playing devil’s advocate, ‘… in his terminology it’s the way to say, “I love you.”’

‘Mmm …’, Mitch considers. ‘How’s this saying “I love you”? He called her a “crack whore”. Is that a different way of saying I love you? It’s the speak of somebody who’s got no self-respect and no respect for his wife – somebody you should love and cherish. We’ve all done things to our wives we shouldn’t have done – Janis and I are an example of that – but at no point have I shown her that disrespect and disregard. We all use different terminology, but this [shows] no respect for her; no respect for himself …

‘No, he doesn’t love her.’

‘Does Amy want to live?’, I ask Mitch.

‘To live? I think so,’ he says. ‘Nobody I have spoken to regarding her situation tells me that she is suicidal. She is always planning for the future.’

So what is she doing then? I ask Mitch about this.

‘There are people that take drugs that are not suicidal,’ he replies. ‘… There have been people who have taken drugs for 40 years – people who you and I wouldn’t realize are taking drugs.’

‘Does she realize what she is doing?’ I say.

‘I don’t think she does.’

‘It must be the most frustrating position to be in your shoes,’ I comment. ‘You do realize what she is doing. You have a beautiful talented girl who is killing herself – [was] probably from the time we … started this interview. She is killing herself at this moment and it must be so frustrating for you.’

After the Sanderson incident, all eyes were focussed on Amy, whose life was seemingly being played out in the public eye like a very tragic drama. Everyone had an opinion on Amy – her music; her marriage; her addictions; her behaviour. Friends and family urged Amy to go back into rehab. In late August 2007, however, several papers reported that Amy had claimed that Blake would commit suicide if she left him alone to return there.

Amy’s mother, Janis, gave an interview to
First
magazine, in which she talked about Amy’s problems. She said, ‘I knew she was smoking marijuana but not that she was doing class A drugs until she collapsed. She won’t stop until she sees the point of stopping … when I saw her afterwards, I did not tell her to clean up. There was no point.’

This attitude fits in with what Janis repeatedly tells me in our various discussions – it’s ‘tough love’ – ‘I cannot help you unless you help yourself’. But without a doubt, someone needs to help save Amy. And if it is not her mother, then who else is there?

‘Looking back … is there a moment when you think that either you or Mitch could have done something different?’ I ask Janis.

‘No!’ she says coldly. ‘… I am a believer … that we live the life that has been dealt to us. … because that is what makes us,
us.
… Amy’s experience of fame is like … “Wow!
Could it be possible? Could
I
really, really be like that.” And, [I think] … scared her.’

Dealing with success can be very scary, I comment, especially if you’re constantly questioning if it will continue.

Janis agrees, ‘I think it is all about maturity.’ She adds that Amy is childish.

‘Her songs are very mature, but she is very childish, like “I don’t want to be a woman. …”’, I respond, adding, ‘I understand that she doesn’t even have periods? Like many anorexics.’

‘Yes,’ Janis agrees, ‘but she has said that she has [had periods] recently. It is hard to know where Amy is coming from, because what she says is, “Mum, don’t worry. I have got this in hand and I have got that in hand”. [But] Alex will say, “Mum, she is not telling the truth.”’

‘But do you
know
she is not telling the truth?’ I say.

‘… Yes. She doesn’t want me to be troubled by it because I have got enough troubles. With Amy it is a case of we are living in “Amyland”. … It is very surreal. I certainly feel that way with her life. … [W]hen people say “Wow! Are you Amy’s Mum” and I say “Yeah, [but] she is just a regular person”.
And she is.
Family and friends will say, “That is Amy.” There is no surprise … she has always been that way. It is a case of “… what’s the fuss?” … They know Amy.’

‘It is one thing to be childish,’ I comment, ‘but hard drugs are something else.’

‘I think that is par for the course,’ Janis replies. ‘It is almost as if I am living her past experience. Yes, she is on the hard drugs. She is a Jazz Queen. She just does it all. … She would be upset if she thought I was upset.’

‘So, she doesn’t know that you and Mitch ARE upset?’ I repeat.

‘No.’

‘She thinks that you are happy?’ I persist.

‘Yes,’ she confirms. ‘[Amy] thinks that we are okay. … She doesn’t know the pain that she is causing us. But being us, [we] don’t want her to know of the pain we are experiencing, because we don’t want to upset her. And that is parenting, God bless it.’

‘It is very tricky being a parent’, I comment.

‘I couldn’t be taught it,’ Janis agrees. ‘I am the mother that I didn’t have and would have liked,’ she adds.

This comment from Janis really strikes me as very interesting. In my experience, any parent who is asked if he or she has been a good father or a good mother, would, of course, like to respond ‘Yes’, but that person would also usually have some doubts (whether vocalized, or not) about that.

With Janis though, there is no doubt in her mind. She is a great mother. And while, in many ways, I’m sure that she is a very good mother to her children, her lack of any doubt is, I have to say, in my experience quite unusual.

As most of the media focussed on Amy’s problems, others, perhaps surprisingly, ignored them, stressing instead Amy’s edgy rock chick style. A source was reported to have told the
Daily Mirror,
for example, that American
Vogue
editor Anna Wintour had cried ‘get me Amy’ for the cover of the September 2007 issue as the musician oozed cool. When
that particular issue hit the newsstands, however, Sienna Miller graced its cover.

Despite all this, and even after further cancelled concerts, Amy’s fans and many of her music peers made it clear that they still appreciated her talent. Amy received several nominations in 2007 for key music awards. Early in September of that year, she appeared at the Mercury Music Prize awards ceremony at London’s Grosvenor House in Mayfair, giving, by all accounts, a breathtaking performance of ‘Love Is A Losing Game’, accompanied by just an acoustic guitar. Nominated for the award, along with the likes of the Arctic Monkeys, Bat For Lashes and Dizzee Rascal, Amy lost to the Klaxons. Afterwards she announced to a London evening paper that she was well after her holiday with Blake and couldn’t see what all the fuss had been about.

A few weeks later, on 19 September, she appeared at the MOBO (Music of Black Origin) Awards at the 02 Arena in London’s Greenwich. This time nominated for several awards, including Best R&B, Best Song (‘Rehab’) and Best Video (‘Back To Black’), Amy won the Best UK Female award. She also performed at the awards. Looking painfully thin, a seemingly distracted Amy sang out of time and stared into space, as she performed ‘Me and Mr Jones’ and ‘Tears Dry On Their Own’, an appearance for which she was subsequently panned in the press.

Although Amy was reported to be on a downward cycle, she was still winning awards for her talent. On 8 October 2007, she won the Best Album award at the Q Awards. Mark Ronson picked it up on her behalf, but during the
partying afterwards ended up misplacing it. The slightly bemused general manager of Bar Soho, a Central London bar, subsequently discovered it in the venue’s toilets.

In October, Ronson released a cover, with Amy on vocals, of the Zutons’ song ‘Valerie’ from his album
Version.
The single shot to No. 2 in the UK single charts. Otherwise, however, Amy wasn’t doing so well. On a tour of Europe, Amy played Germany and Denmark, before performing in Norway, where she and Blake were arrested in Bergen on 18 October. According to reports, they were released the next day, after being fined for possession of marijuana, after which Amy continued her tour.

After Amy won the MTV Artists’ Choice award in November, one of the most coveted music awards, Island released a deluxe version of
Back To Black
and a DVD called ‘I Told You I Was Trouble: Live in London’, which included interviews with Amy, Island’s Darcus Beese and Mitch Winehouse, driving around in his taxicab. It also showed a live performance at Shepherd’s Bush earlier in the year.

But while Amy was winning awards, on a personal front things were about to get much worse. Her relationship with Blake was still up and down and Blake had an assault charge hanging over his head from an alleged encounter with a barman in Hoxton, East London, in June 2006.

Mitch says of that time, ‘Amy and Blake’s relationship was very much up and down … and we knew … [that] he [Blake] had a serious criminal case pending …

‘He [had] assaulted somebody or allegedly assaulted somebody and he knew he had this hanging over his head and he knew they would have this court case [going] on for sometime. This is
all
we knew. We didn’t know
anything
about anything else, and Amy and I were talking about [it]. He felt that he might go to prison for a considerable amount of time and I would sit and talk to them about what we would do … you know, how we could resolve the problems and everything else. But basically there was not an awful lot we could do. Because we knew at some point he would have to face the consequences of his actions. And he had a date to appear in court and it was cancelled and he had another date and it was cancelled and … while all this [was] going on, there [were] problems occurring of varying degrees – Amy giving performances that weren’t great … Amy doing great performances but … you know it was inconsistent.’