{"id":1177,"date":"2024-04-17T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T19:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/?p=1177"},"modified":"2024-04-17T20:02:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T20:02:31","slug":"this-is-the-true-story-of-the-tragic-amy-winehouse-by-those-that-knew-her-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/2024\/04\/17\/this-is-the-true-story-of-the-tragic-amy-winehouse-by-those-that-knew-her-best\/","title":{"rendered":"This is the true story of the tragic Amy Winehouse \u2014 by those that knew her best"},"content":{"rendered":"\n[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_code module_class=”custom-cat” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]
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\t\tMojo<\/pee>\t<\/div>\t
\t\tFEATURE<\/pee>\t<\/div><\/div>[\/et_pb_code][et_pb_text module_class=”article-title” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_font=”||||||||” header_text_align=”center” header_text_color=”#111111″ header_font_size=”68px” custom_margin=”40px||||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]

The Real Amy Winehouse: \u201cHer intelligence astounded me\u2026\u201d<\/h1>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”intro-text” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]

The recent film biopic Back To Black has drawn criticism for its uneven portrait of troubled singer Amy Winehouse. MOJO\u2019s Tom Doyle spoke to those closest to Amy to discover the real story of the artist and grand creative dreams behind the tabloid tales and tragedy.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-main” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”||||||||” text_font_size=”16px” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Words by Tom Doyle<\/span><\/span><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2024\/04\/EWKFWJ.jpg” title_text=”Amy (also known as Amy: The Girl Behind The Name) is a 2015 British documentary film that depicts the life and death of British singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse, directed by Asif Kapadia.This photograph is for editorial use only and is the copyright” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text module_class=”text-with-dropcap” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

February 2003 and in the offices of Island Records, a new female singer-songwriter, signed to the label just two months previously, is about to give an acoustic performance for the assembled employees. The 19-year-old Amy Winehouse sits on the lip of a sofa, unfussily dressed in black top, jeans and brown high-heeled boots. Chewing gum, she starts nervously fiddling with her black wavy shoulder-length hair.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is I Heard Love Is Blind,\u201d she tentatively announces. \u201cI\u2019ll just clip my hair out the way because it gets in my mouth. I wrote this in Miami with a guy called Salaam and\u2026I\u2019m pretty proud of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Accompanying herself on a cream-coloured guitar, she starts to sing the song \u2013 a jazzy, mischievous tale of drunken infidelity, which opens with the words, \u201cI couldn\u2019t resist him\/His eyes were like yours\/His hair was exactly your shade of brown\u201d. As she carefully moves between barre chords and more tricksy inversions, her voice is a thing of wonder, an echo from another age. A smile begins to play on her lips with the lines, \u201cHe\u2019s just not as tall\/But I couldn\u2019t tell\/It was dark and I was lying down\u201d.<\/p>\n

She doesn\u2019t flinch as she offers the blunt revelation, \u201cI was thinking of you when I came\u201d. Two minutes in, she lets rip, with the skewed declaration, \u201cIt\u2019s not cheating\/You were on my mind\u201d, before closing with a deft and soulful trill as she delivers the knowing payoff line which gives the song its title. There follows enthusiastic applause from the record company onlookers, as Winehouse shakes her head almost dismissively. Then she smiles. She knows she\u2019s got them.<\/p>\n

This filmed scene appeared early in Amy, 2015\u2019s cinematic documentary by BAFTA-winning director Asif Kapadia. As a snatched camcorder reminder of Winehouse\u2019s oft-overlooked musicianly skills and headgame-playing approach to confessional songwriting, it makes for riveting viewing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a genuine jaw-dropping moment,\u201d says Winehouse\u2019s then-manager, Nick Shymansky. \u201cYou could see people at the label thinking, What the fuck is this? We\u2019d had quite a lot of rejections and finally we\u2019d signed the deal. It was a really happy time for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an early signifier of what was to come, however, it was a happiness which wasn\u2019t built to last. A year later, frustrated by the disappointing sales of her debut album, Frank, the characteristically bolshy singer gave an interview in which she derided the people at Island, calling them \u201cidiots\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they\u2019re nice idiots,\u201d she added. \u201cSo you can\u2019t be like, \u2018You\u2019re an idiot.\u2019 They know that they\u2019re idiots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt killed the buzz,\u201d laughs Shymansky today, though a touch despairingly. \u201cPeople were saying they\u2019d never work with her again, who the fuck did she think she was? You couldn\u2019t have hoped for a better vibe from a label for your artist and she just shot it out of the sky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amy Winehouse was always trouble. Hugely talented, highly charismatic, but trouble nonetheless. Born in 1983 in north London to parents, Mitch and Janis Winehouse, both of Russian Jewish origin, she was a handful, even as a child. To go along with her inherent attitude, Juliette Ashby, her lifelong friend from the age of four, remembers that as a kid Winehouse always had her nose in a book.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was so intelligent for her age,\u201d she recalls. \u201cShe was reading all the time\u2026not children\u2019s books, adult books. Always had her head down reading. Her intelligence astounded me as kids.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]

\u201cEverything about Amy was like one big diary.\u201d<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Nick Shymansky, manager<\/h3>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

At the same time, she was compelled by music. As precocious 10-year-olds, Winehouse and Ashby styled themselves as a Salt-N-Pepa-inspired hip hop duo, Sweet \u2018N\u2019 Sour (with Amy casting herself as the latter). Winehouse\u2019s first studio experience came when, impressed, Ashby\u2019s stepfather Alan Glass, a US producer and composer who\u2019d written for Aretha Franklin and Al Green, offered to record the pair\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, for two north London 10-year-old girls we had some serious skills,\u201d says Ashby. \u201cThe American accent down and clever lyrics. We were just two hyperactive kids. We couldn\u2019t wait to get on the mic. It was such a special time for us\u2026definitely something that shaped us as kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

After hip hop, Winehouse was turned onto jazz by her part-time pub crooner father. \u201cMy dad liked Sarah Vaughan, a lot of Sinatra, Tony Bennett,\u201d she told this writer in 2007. \u201cThen when I was about 13 or 14 my brother [Alex, three years older] was listening to a lot of jazz. I guess I learnt to sing with soloists. Sax solos and stuff like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally rebellious, she didn\u2019t fare well at Ashmole secondary school in Southgate, leading to a fateful argument with the deputy head teacher. \u201cI was just trying to wind him up,\u201d Amy remembered. \u201cI went [cartoon sneer], \u2018I\u2019m gonna go to stage school.\u2019 And he goes, \u2018Amy, stage school is a fantasy\u2026it\u2019s not what people really do.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

But in her case, her talent already radiating, Winehouse managed to secure a scholarship to attend the Sylvia Young Theatre School from the age of 13. Although confrontationally mouthy, in truth Amy was always self-doubting. \u201cWhat I learnt at Sylvia Young\u2019s,\u201d she confessed, \u201cwas how to put yourself forward for things and think, Yeah, I am good and I can do this.\u201d<\/p>\n

At 16, she enrolled on the musical theatre course at The BRIT School in Croydon, but quickly grew disenchanted. \u201cI walked out,\u201d she said. \u201cI just thought, Fuck this. I admittedly did the wrong course. I should have done music.\u201d Instead, she began attending Saturday morning National Youth Jazz Orchestra sessions at The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone, where she was given the chance to sing with a big band.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was this moody, chubby, Jewish-looking teenager,\u201d says Annabel Williams, her singing coach with the NYJO. \u201cShe seemed fairly quiet and uninterested. Amy first stood out to me when she was in the centre of all the musicians and started singing. I was just like, Woah, she\u2019s amazing. She absolutely nailed it and I was so impressed.\u201d
From here, Winehouse began performing backroom pub sets, facing a crowd with just her voice and acoustic guitar. At the same time, she began guesting with a loose north London collective called The Bolsha Band, through which she met her long-term live keyboard-player Sam Beste.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said to me, \u2018Do you like Thelonius Monk?\u2019\u201d Beste recalls. \u201cPeople like Dinah Washington and Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway, she really connected with those musicians on a very deep, emotional, raw level. There was a strange awkwardness about Amy. Even in those early days when we were playing the small clubs, she wasn\u2019t really engaging with an audience in the way that an entertainer would. She was a bit in her own world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through a singer friend, Tyler James, 16-year-old Amy came to the attention of Nick Shymansky, then a teenage scout at Simon Fuller\u2019s 19 management company, who had designs on matching James with a female singer to create a Marvin Gaye\/Tammi Terrell-styled soul duo. Shymansky chased and chased a reluctant Winehouse and finally managed to pin her down. \u201cShe wasn\u2019t very nice on the phone,\u201d he remembers, though warmly. \u201cShe was kinda like, \u2018Who the fuck are you? Why would I wanna meet up with you?\u2019 I think her initial reaction was fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

In time, Amy sent Shymansky a jiffy bag adorned with \u201cprobably five hundred childish stickers of hearts\u201d and containing a cassette, which the aspiring manager first played while driving. \u201cIt was a cover of Night And Day,\u201d he says. \u201cI had to pull over. I remember just thinking, Holy shit. I knew I\u2019d found something really special.\u201d<\/p>\n

Winehouse was coy about her own songwriting, but showed Shymansky some poems she\u2019d penned, which yielded still-unheard early compositions such as Estrogenius and the impishly-titled Monkey Not A Boy. Still, Amy seemed deeply unsure when it came to her gifts.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was very complex,\u201d Shymansky reasons. \u201cA lot of the things that the average person would think were brilliant about her were second nature and therefore unimpressive to her. She didn\u2019t rate herself. Her songs were really dark, really sad, really self-critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early 2002, the 18-year-old Amy Winehouse, accompanied by Nick Shymansky, flew to the States for the first time, landing in Miami. Though it had proved tough for the manager to stir up record company interest in the singer, EMI Music Publishing had funded this trip to Florida for Winehouse to write and record with Fugees\/Nas producer Salaam Remi. It was a thrilling time for the pair: riding around in a rented convertible, staying at the art deco Raleigh Hotel on the city\u2019s South Beach.<\/p>\n

\u201cSalaam just got it from the off,\u201d says Shymansky. \u201cHe and Amy were jazz and hip hop nuts. One minute they\u2019d jump on the keys, next minute guitar, next minute double bass. Salaam was always a much better player than Amy but he\u2019s not a player and Amy wasn\u2019t a player. It dropped Amy\u2019s insecurity that you have to be the most accomplished musician to be respected by other musicians.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]

\u201cWhen she wrote, there was no editing. It came out, like, this is the truth and this is how it\u2019s gonna stay.\u201d<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Mark Ronson<\/h3>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Moreover, without attempting to lighten the darkness in Winehouse\u2019s songs, Remi encouraged the young singer to enhance the twisted humour in her writing. \u201cWhat I allowed her to do was really just put wit into her songs,\u201d he says in Amy.<\/p>\n

In this environment, Winehouse flourished as an unflinchingly candid and luridly caustic songwriter. \u201cEverything about Amy was like one big diary,\u201d says Shymansky. \u201cShe would be spilling out her views. Sometimes her views were really raw and emotional and sometimes they\u2019d be really funny and piss-taking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from humour or personal confession, Winehouse pointed the finger at others in the songs which would feature on Frank. On Stronger Than Me, she taunted her then-boyfriend Chris Taylor, seven years her senior, for what she perceived as his lack of emotional strength (\u201cAre you gay?\u201d she baitingly wondered). In What Is It About Men, she publicly opened a can of worms, by addressing her parents\u2019 separation when she was nine; Mitch leaving Janis after a long-term affair with a work colleague.<\/p>\n

\u201cI tend to write songs about things that I can\u2019t quite get past,\u201d Amy told me. \u201cI wasn\u2019t messed up about it. But it was something I was trying to make sense of. He\u2019s been asked about it and he\u2019s a bit like, \u2018Well Amy\u2019s Amy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI met my current wife and that was it,\u201d Mitch Winehouse stressed when I asked him about the song in 2007. \u201cI didn\u2019t have a harem or anything. A lot of my friends find it difficult because we came from the moon in June and isn\u2019t love lovely type of songs. She\u2019s someone who sees it slightly differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Amy wasn\u2019t entirely satisfied with Frank. She moaned about how Island had forced her to include one song she hated, the Erykah Badu-lite of Amy Amy Amy, and claimed the label had \u201cfake strings\u201d overdubbed against her will on the downtempo soul reverie of Take The Box.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe felt that spoiled the aesthetic of the record,\u201d says then A&R manager, now president of Island, Darcus Beese. \u201cNo one should be happy with their first album. I always say, \u2018How can you be happy with your first album when you\u2019re still learning your trade?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was an element of tough love that had to happen to make the record,\u201d Nick Shymansky points out. \u201cI\u2019m sure she would\u2019ve made a record, \u2018cause she was brilliant. But there was no structure. It may have taken 10 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Winehouse maintained absolute control was on stage. Dale Davis played bass live with Amy from her second professional gig to her last and remembers being taken aback by their third together in Powis Square at the Notting Hill Carnival in August 2003. \u201cCarnival crowds are never the easiest,\u201d he states. \u201cBut her performance was so powerful. She didn\u2019t need a band onstage, all she needed was herself and the guitar. Her singing was devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davis remembers that Winehouse, truly soulful as a performer, never sang a song exactly the same twice, teasing fresh nuances from the material night after night. \u201cAfter four or five shows of doing one song, she\u2019d changed the song completely,\u201d he says. \u201cYou could hear her working the changes every night. I think ultimately that cost her, because she gave so much in performance and in her personal life that she just left herself short. You get a lot of artists who sing the same every night and they preserve themselves as a result. But with someone like Amy, who gave her all every single night, that leads to a bit of burnout.\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]

“She was really struggling. Physically and mentally…”<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Sam Beste, keyboardist<\/h3>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Touring for Frank completed, in January 2005, Amy moved to Camden, at the time a post-Libertines hive of indie hedonism. Seemingly utterly uninterested in writing songs for her second album, she dossed around, smoked weed, got drunk and played pool for hours each day.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019d been busy for five years,\u201d says Nick Shymansky, \u201cAll of a sudden she wasn\u2019t busy. Expectations hadn\u2019t been met. Money was tight because we took a loss on the touring. And she\u2019d upset a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI started playing pool all day because I could,\u201d Amy remembered with a shrug. \u201cThe record company would come and see me playing pool in the pub and they\u2019d be like, \u2018Do you still want to make a record?\u2019 I\u2019m like, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s coming, I\u2019m just gonna play pool for three months, yeah?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

On the Camden scene, in the summer of 2005, Winehouse first encountered the controversial figure of Blake Fielder-Civil, whose name she impulsively had tattooed onto her left breast. When Fielder-Civil ended their affair to return to his girlfriend at the end of that summer, Amy fell apart, drinking Jack Daniels from the moment she woke up, slumped in a sobbing heap on her kitchen floor. Though in a worrying state, the breakup was the grit which began to produce the songwriting pearls for Back To Black.<\/p>\n

Winehouse\u2019s friend and then-flatmate Juliette Ashby is in no doubt as to why that album was such a creative success. \u201cPain,\u201d she says. \u201cPain can make you write like you\u2019ve never written before. Being happy is wonderful but doesn\u2019t get you the music that hits you in the stomach when you hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

After 18 months of troubled downtime, according to Salaam Remi, Island were considering dropping Winehouse. \u201cThe label were considering letting her go,\u201d the producer claims in Amy. \u201cShe ends up coming back to Miami. Guy Moot [EMI Music Publishing] calls me up. \u2018Hey, you sure you wanna do this?\u2019 I was like, \u2018Listen, even if you dropped her, I will pay her to come to my house and sing, \u2018cause this shit fucking moves me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone takes three years to write a follow-up,\u201d says Darcus Beese from the perspective of the record company, \u201cthings are gonna be said and people are gonna have opinions. But I can\u2019t ever remembering someone sitting me down and saying, \u2018We\u2019re gonna drop your act.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cShe totally didn\u2019t drink the whole time she was here,\u201d Remi says of the Miami sessions for Back To Black. \u201cShe sat out in my back garden for four days. She\u2019d take a little notebook and just keep writing.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Island also hooked Winehouse up with Mark Ronson in Manhattan. He remembers being warned by people in the industry that the collaboration would likely turn out to be an unproductive nightmare. \u201cThey were just like, [sarcastically] \u2018Oh good luck\u2019,\u201d he says today. \u201c\u2018I heard she\u2019s been working on that record for three years.\u2019\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pull-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#111111″ header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]

\u201cI thought I had my doctorate in jazz, but no, she taught me a lot,\u201d<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”pullquote-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_font_size=”46px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” header_3_text_align=”center” header_3_text_color=”#111111″ header_3_font_size=”38px” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Questlove<\/b><\/h3>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]

But, in Miami and New York, Amy was suddenly energised and, working quickly and intensively, bottled lightning. \u201cI was really inspired,\u201d says Ronson, remembering their first day together in the studio. \u201cBoth by her and the kind of music she was talking about wanting to make, playing The Shangri-Las and stuff. When she left that night I wrote the music for [the song] Back To Black and played it for her the next morning. She was like, \u2018That\u2019s what I want my album to sound like.\u2019 So she wrote Back To Black in, like, three hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Rehab, set to become her comeback single, was written after a conversation with Ronson about her recent problems. It was transformed overnight by the producer from what he describes as \u201ca sort of Johnny Cash Folsom Prison Blues kind of thing. She showed me the chords and went home. So I sped it up and did that \u201860s picking, strumming thing. She came back in the next day and said, \u2018Yeah it\u2019s cool, it sounds like The Libertines.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Ronson still marvels at the memory of watching Winehouse in the moments when she lost herself in songwriting. \u201cThe thunderbolt strikes the head, the pen scribbles furiously and that\u2019s the song,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen she wrote, there was no editing. It came out, like, this is the truth and this is how it\u2019s gonna stay. She never second-guessed that and that\u2019s why those lyrics are from another place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Talking to Amy four months after the release of Back To Black, it was clear she knew the album was a triumph. \u201cI made an album of 11 songs that I\u2019m so proud of,\u201d she beamed. \u201cI was listening to a very narrow spectrum of music, so all of the stuff kind of sounds the same. Whereas the first album was a bit of a melting pot, really. When I gave it to the record company, I said, \u2018Do whatever you want\u2026first single, second single, third single.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, Winehouse was unprepared and ill-equipped for the almost inevitable success of Back To Black, which by the end of 2007 had gone six times platinum in the UK alone. With the return of Blake Fielder-Civil, and their marriage in May 2007, Amy\u2019s life for the next year-and-a-half became a drug-disorientated, paparazzi-trolled horror show.<\/p>\n

Even in February 2008, when briefly clean of illegal substances, but forced to perform her live segment for the Grammys from the Riverside Theatre in Hammersmith after failing a drug test for her US visa, Winehouse seemed unable to enjoy the fact that she\u2019d astonishingly bagged five awards.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking at her, trying to get some sort of reaction,\u201d remembers Juliette Ashby of that night in Amy. \u201cShe went \u2018Jules, this is so boring without drugs.\u2019 And I felt really, really, really sad for her.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the midst of the chaos, Amy Winehouse struggled to come up with anything substantial for a third album. \u201cShe was writing in amongst all the madness that was going on,\u201d says Island\u2019s Darcus Beese. \u201cYou\u2019re in a dilemma. You\u2019re conflicted between do you get in a place where she\u2019s creative and keeping her mind busy? Or do you let her just go away and disappear? I was of the mind that you needed to keep her busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a result, during 2009, Sam Beste was charged with the task of visiting Winehouse once a fortnight at her new home near Enfield, in an effort to just play together and hopefully inspire her musically. \u201cShe was sort of perpetually in this state of distraction,\u201d Beste says of these failed sessions. \u201cOne time we did actually talk properly and she sort of broke down and started crying and saying that she knew that everything was falling apart and she wanted to sort herself out.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Winehouse\u2019s attic studio, the pair would try to work through soul songs or selections from jazz sheet music bible The Real Book. Alarmingly quickly though, Amy\u2019s mind would start to wander. \u201cWe\u2019d get three bars into a Donny Hathaway song or something,\u201d Beste recalls, \u201cand she would say, \u2018I\u2019m bored.\u2019 Then we\u2019d move onto another song and do that three or four more times and then she\u2019d leave the room. She was just really struggling. Physically and mentally really unwell. It was very hard to know what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same year, Salaam Remi was flown over to work with Amy in the attic, resulting in sketches for two new songs, Between The Cheats and Like Smoke. In October 2010, when I was interviewing her at the Q Awards, Winehouse was tipsy but bright-eyed and claimed that the album was in fact progressing, naming two new songs, Gutter and Our Souls Ain\u2019t Sold. \u201cIt\u2019s going really well, thank you,\u201d she insisted. \u201cWhat\u2019s the style like? I couldn\u2019t tell you yet…\u201d<\/p>\n

One key moment in Amy reveals where her thoughts lay when it came to stylistically imagining her next record. In a voicemail to Salaam Remi, Winehouse is heard buzzing about her recent periods of properly absorbed writing. \u201cI keep coming out with battle raps and they\u2019re just pouring out of me,\u201d she tells the producer. \u201cLike Wu-Tang stuff, but really neat, very beautifully alliterated little battle raps. I\u2019m fucked up in the head, but I keep coming out with all this stuff all the time, all these lyrics and\u2026I don\u2019t know why. But I realise it\u2019s for the next album.\u201d<\/p>\n

If nothing else, this is evidence that Winehouse\u2019s fighting spirit seemed to be returning to her. In tandem, she was also planning a jazz project with Mos Def, Raphael Saadiq and Questlove and would send the latter countless MP3s as reference points. \u201cI thought I had my doctorate in jazz, but no, she taught me a lot,\u201d Questlove stresses in Amy. \u201cShe, like, assigned homework. \u2018Study this record, study this record, study this record.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

While admitting that Winehouse\u2019s vocal power had diminished as a result of her indulgences, Dale Davis can picture another direction in which Amy might have headed. \u201cI could\u2019ve seen her moving towards \u201870s soul,\u201d he says. \u201cShe was a massive Minnie Riperton fan and I could\u2019ve seen her going down that route. But the thing with Amy, \u2018cause she had that talent, she could\u2019ve gone anywhere really.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the very end, out of character, even Amy Winehouse herself seemed to have finally recognised and accepted her rare and precious talent. On Friday July 22, 2011, the night before Winehouse\u2019s heart finally stopped beating, her bodyguard Andrew Morris remembers discovering her watching old footage of herself on YouTube. \u201cShe was showing me some clips on her laptop,\u201d he painfully remembers in the final moments of Amy. \u201cShe said, \u2018Boy, I can sing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-names” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font_size=”14px” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”]

Images: <\/strong>Alamy<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discover the real story of the artist and grand creative dreams behind the tabloid tales and tragedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1178,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mojo-presents"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"kschwarz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1187,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions\/1187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/mojo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}