Saving Amy (6 page)

Without a doubt Amy was beginning to catch the attention of the media, sometimes for her talent, sometimes for her comments. In an interview with
MusicOMH.com
, she made it clear that she didn’t like being lumped together with Jamie Cullum and Katie Melua, just because their records came out at the same time. While adding that she felt bad for Jamie who must feel frustrated, she said of Katie, ‘SHE must think it’s her f**king lucky day.’

Musically though, Amy was receiving critical attention from her peers and the public as well. Nominated for two BRIT Awards (British Female Solo Artist/British Urban Act), on 17 February 2004, she lost in both categories to Dido and Lemar respectively, but Amy was grabbing attention and to the media and her public she seemingly appeared more confident and more self-assured with every interview she gave.

Appearing on
The Jonathan Ross Show
in March 2004, a beautiful Amy – hair sleek and slim but curvaceous in a form-fitting short halter neck dress and high heels –
explained to Ross that
Frank
was a ‘straight jazz–hip-hop cross. There is no blues or folk ….’ She added that she just wanted to write music that was ‘emotional’, something ‘that people would want to listen to and connect with.’

In that interview, Amy comes across as a normal, bright, lovely young woman, sure of her own opinions and views. Only the occasional movement of her hands betrays possible nervousness or just her youth. When Ross asks if her management company had tried to change her – her look, her way of speaking or behaviour – she jokes to the audience that someone tried to mould her into a big triangle shape and that she said ‘No-oh!’, to much laughter from everyone around her, Ross included. She then continues more seriously, ‘No, I’ve got my own style and I wrote my own songs and, you know, if someone has so much of something already, there’s very little you can add.’

Watching Amy give a mesmerising performance of ‘I Heard Love Is Blind’ from
Frank
at the end of that interview, playing an acoustic guitar, it’s hard to equate that self-assured and alluring young woman with the one who I meet in St Lucia in 2009.

So, I have to ask myself, what happened to Amy? When did things begin to go wrong? What caused this train wreck to happen? Do the reasons lie in her past? And why could – or did – no one stop her? I think about my first meeting with Janis, when she very bluntly, almost cruelly, says ‘I cannot help Amy unless she helps herself.’ Does that have something to do with it?

‘Do you remember the first time you felt “Wow, something else is going on in her life?”’

‘Well, you know,’ Mitch replies. ‘I have to say first of all, and it is well documented, that when she was interviewed about drugs, she was anti Class A drugs.

‘Since the age of about 17,’ he continues, ‘she smoked weed or marijuana, or whatever you call it, but not to the extent that it would make her psychotic – to relax and whatever. I don’t personally agree with it, that is something she has done.’

He adds that neither he nor Janis has tried it.

‘… Were you aware [at the time] that she was trying light drugs, like marijuana?’ I ask.

‘No. I think that Janis kind of kept that from me. When the first album came out, there is a picture of her [Amy] … on the album and my friend said to me, “You know she is rolling a spliff” [joint], and I said, “What are you talking about?”… I didn’t even know what a spliff was.

‘I said [to Amy], “Are you smoking marijuana?” And she said, “Oh, Dad, don’t be silly.”

‘I said, “I am not happy about that.” She said, “I am over 18, Dad. I can do what I like.”

‘So, what can I do?’ Mitch asks me. ‘She is over 18. I can’t lock her up.’

During my time with the Winehouses I’m struck by the different approaches that Mitch and Janis take to their daughter’s problems. Although Mitch states that he can’t ‘lock her up’, he is always keeping an eye on Amy. Her
bodyguards are constantly reporting back to Mitch on Amy’s whereabouts and he seems to devote all of his time to trying to save his daughter from her addictions. As I’ve already mentioned, Janis’s attitude is completely different – her fatalistic view and her almost cold acceptance that only Amy can help herself is the opposite of Mitch’s behaviour.

Janis is right. Amy does need to recognize and face her own problems in order to start recovering but perhaps both these attitudes, however well-intended, are too extreme. For Amy to overcome her addictions she needs to get proper treatment. As I’ve discovered through my extensive interviews with other celebrities who suffer with addictions, rehab only works when the whole family is involved and opens up. But from what I’ve seen of the Winehouse family, it is clear that they are not ready to do this.

Maybe they don’t understand that this is what’s needed? Or maybe they dread having to go down this route? Either way, anything less than full rehab treatment is only a quick fix for Amy.

Mitch emphasizes the fact that at that time Amy declared publicly in several interviews that she was opposed to Class A drugs. ‘She said that “Anybody who takes Class A drugs is a ‘mug’.” Now a “mug” in English terminology is someone who is stupid – and, of course, she didn’t take Class A drugs.’

‘Were you convinced?’ I
have
to ask him.

‘It wasn’t a question of being convinced,’ he replies. ‘That was the truth. …’

‘At that point you didn’t think something was wrong?’ I persist.

‘There wasn’t anything wrong, apart from her smoking marijuana. It wasn’t only me saying that. People who know her. Her friends. They confirmed that she was a complete opponent of Class A drugs. She would not take Class A drugs. She regarded anyone who took [them] as a fool. She didn’t want to be in their company. Then, unfortunately she did meet somebody who did take Class A drugs.

‘And the rest, as they say, is history.’

By the end of 2004, Amy should have been riding on a high. She’d seen her debut album go platinum and received critical success with nominations for the BRITs and the Ivor Novello awards, the latter of which she’d won. She’d performed at Glastonbury Festival in June on the Jazz World Stage and at V in August. September had seen her sing at the prestigious Mercury Music Prize awards in London for which she had herself received a nomination, along with other rising stars such as Franz Ferdinand, The Streets, Belle and Sebastian and Snow Patrol. It was good company to be amongst, even though she lost to Franz Ferdinand.

Amy had also gone on two UK tours and she was now showing the world that she was an artist – and a woman – to be reckoned with. But now Island Records was asking: what next?

Amy had begun to think about her second album, but what could she write about? What would inspire her? She wrote about the world as she experienced it after all? Her life, her friends, her loves, her disappointments. What would be next?

She apparently found her answer at her local pub in Camden, the Hawley Arms, where she often played pool and listened to a lot of ’50s and ’60s music on the jukebox. There, in early 2005, she met a man who, quite literally, would change her life, Blake Fielder-Civil.

Blake was Amy’s ideal type – ‘at least five nine, with dark hair, dark eyes and loads of tattoos.’

Their relationship was turbulent from the offset and continued to be so for the intense six months that it lasted until Blake went back to his girlfriend. Amy later commented that she shouldn’t have got involved with him in the first place as Blake was involved with someone else ‘too close to home.’

Mitch and Janis both talk to me about Amy’s relationship with Blake when they first met.

‘Well, she wasn’t dating him. They didn’t date,’ Janis denies.

‘No,’ Mitch comments. ‘He was seeing somebody else. What happened was that he [Blake] started to see Amy for the first time on a casual basis just after
Frank
came out. But, of course, after six months, the interest [in the album] started waning a little bit, so it seemed that Blake’s interest in Amy started to wane a bit … He was
seeing another girl … And, I saw him with Amy. We went out for a walk and he was in a pub across the road … I saw him in there and they were kissing and cuddling … there were hundreds of people in there.

‘I said, “Amy, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t show affection, but he’s somebody else’s boyfriend anyway and you really don’t want to be doing that in a room ….” I was quite sensitive about things like that. And she said, “Dad, you’re right.” So, we left and you know, that was really the first time that I saw him and he didn’t turn up again until
Back To Black
was No. 1.”’

‘She wrote a lot of those songs [about] him,’ Janis comments.

‘The second album?’ I ask.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ she confirms.

‘That’s why,’ Mitch interjects, ‘I don’t like to listen to it ….’

Under pressure from her record company to get into a studio and record her second album, and heartbroken over Blake, Amy began to spiral out of control. Summing up that time, she said, ‘My ex went back to his girlfriend and I went back to drinking and dark times.’

Island Records suggested that she needed to cut down on her drinking and Amy’s friends and family began to worry about her boozing and also the amount of weight she was losing.