4
Camden Town drew Amy home like a magnet. Back in the spring of 2010 she had bought a three-storey house at 30 Camden Square, NW1, a handsome property built for the Victorian gentry in 1848, 42 years before Amy’s Russian ancestors arrived in London. Camden Square was never particularly fashionable in the nineteenth century, however, and the area degenerated subsequently, with part of the square destroyed by enemy bombing in the Second World War. Many surviving properties were sub-divided into flats in the 1950s and 1960s, creating the low-rent Camden depicted in Withnail & I. Then the middle classes started to move back, renovating the old houses, which were fashionable and expensive by 2010 when Amy paid £1.8 million ($2.8 million) for hers.
As a result of this social history, Amy’s neighbours in Camden Square were an eclectic mixture of people, including long-term residents, many of whom were working-class Irish, flat tenants, and wealthy single homeowners, several of whom were notable in public life. Amy’s next-door neighbour on one side was the painter Tess Jaray, one of several artists living in and around Camden Square, and on the other the geneticist Professor Steve Jones and his filmmaker wife Norma Percy. The sculptor Antony Gormley lived around the corner.
Amy moved into her new house in February 2011, after lengthy refurbishment. She loved the house, delighting in showing it off to friends, as Kurt Cobain had shown off his Seattle mansion. ‘She seemed happiest at home,’ says Troy Miller. ‘I’d go round there [and] she’d always cook this meatball dish. That was her favourite. Very domestic. She was always making tea for people. Very welcoming … very friendly.’ Amy told her father she couldn’t see herself ever leaving Camden Square. She didn’t.
There were renewed concerns within the family that in returning to Camden Town Amy might be tempted into bad habits. It was always easy to score drugs in Camden and Amy could walk to the Hawley Arms or the Good Mixer from her house. But she seemed to have lost interest in drugs, and sympathetic landlords chose to stop serving her alcohol, in agreement with friends, like Amy’s stylist Naomi Parry, who sometimes stayed with Amy at Camden Square. ‘Naomi was in tears a lot, saying, “My friend’s drinking herself to death. If she comes [in], just don’t serve her booze,”’ says Doug Charles-Ridler, landlord of the Hawley Arms.
Amy didn’t stop drinking, though. ‘It was very rare I’d see her sober,’ says John Hurley, who helped his wife run the Good Mixer. As a reformed drinker, John saw the damage Amy had done to herself during the years she’d frequented their pub. ‘She went from rosy cheeks – she looked great – to gaunt … Although she went the way that she did via drugs, and the alcohol and that, it didn’t change her personality. She was always still, right up until the end, a real sweet woman … She was like a lot of us: she got lost with all the drinking.’
Amy was accompanied by minders everywhere she went – huge men, like Andrew Morris, who kept the paparazzi and drug-dealers at bay, and just as importantly kept Amy from going to dealers during her drug period. ‘Part of the agreement was that [if the minders saw] her enter any premises which was known to sell drugs [they] would go back to the record company, and they would give her a big fine,’ says John Hurley, but he notes that the heavies didn’t stop Amy drinking if she was in the mood. Sometimes all they could do was help her home. One evening a couple of months before she died local people saw Amy in just such a state. ‘You could see she was drunk,’ says Rozh, a Kurdish worker in the dry-cleaner’s on Murray Street at the bottom of Camden Square. He watched Amy being helped past the shop by two of her minders, on their way back to the house. ‘They carried her home.’
When she was on the wagon Amy would impose rules on herself, including no booze in the house, but she broke her rules. ‘There was never booze in the ’ouse, unless she wanted to have a drink,’ explains Reg, ‘and then she would nip out and get it.’ As with many hardened alcoholics, Amy now favoured vodka, which she drank neat, and it wasn’t always clear whether she was telling the truth about her drinking. Alcoholics drink vodka in preference to other spirits because it is colourless and virtually odourless and therefore easy to conceal. There is evidence that she lied on occasion about her drinking, such as when she told her father she hadn’t had a drink in Brazil. Reg says that Amy would typically get up before him, when he stayed over, and go downstairs to make breakfast. It is possible that she used this opportunity to have a furtive nip of vodka to settle her stomach. It is what alcoholics do.
Amy’s drinking made her prone to seizures. She had a seizure in front of her doctor in January 2011 and was admitted to the London Clinic as a result. She went back to the bottle almost as soon as she got home. In February she went to Dubai to perform and this time she stayed sober. But the show was bad. Amy looked bored. Her performance was flat, and the crowd became restive. She responded to catcalls by yawning and studying her nails during a lacklustre ‘Rehab’, which concluded with boos from those members of the audience who hadn’t already left. ‘Amy Winehouse was a disgrace!’ wrote one patron online. Amy glowered at her audience, as if she wanted to curse them, but she held her tongue. In Dubai, swearing in public is a criminal offence.
Amy stayed on in Dubai with Reg Traviss for a week after the show. They spent most of their time in their hotel suite. They watched the revolutions in Egypt and Libya on television, and discussed their future. Reg told Amy that he had enjoyed her show, but Amy knew better and was despondent. ‘She wasn’t ’appy with it.’ She talked about how uncomfortable she had felt singing the old songs. ‘She had a real deep artistic integrity. And whilst you can get some people, pop stars and various other people, [who] can sing the same old songs for thirty years, some of them, sometimes with a similar amount of passion, Amy couldn’t. Or at least she was going through a phase of her life where she was questioning that. Now, if everything that had happened in July [2011] didn’t happen, who knows? Maybe in thirty years’ time she could still be singing those songs. She was certainly going through a period where she was saying, you know, not that she didn’t believe in those songs anymore, but she’s expressed herself with those songs, and really now if she’s going to carry on singing she needs to be singing new material. But that new material doesn’t just come … She had to feel moved by something, essentially, to write this material.’
Reg encouraged Amy to look ahead, beyond her music, to what else she might do with her life. ‘I said, “Look, you’re [27]. You can do anything. You’re a young gel. You can do anything you like.”’ Outside music, Amy had been offered opportunities to design clothing for the Fred Perry company, and to appear in the TV show Mad Men. Reg says a part had been written for her, which would seem to have been an ideal fit, though her lack of a US visa might have ruled the project out. He gave her a pep talk that sounds remarkably similar to the advice given to Kurt Cobain shortly before his death. ‘I said, “Take a step back, have a look around and then maybe come up with something you haven’t even thought about and do it … Even if you just do it for a year, six months, two weeks, whatever. The point is you can do anything. You haven’t gotta just think, I’ve gotta go out and sing these songs all the time.” And she could. The world was her oyster, and she was very talented in a lot of other things that I don’t think she gets credit for. I spent time discussing all that with her, and reminding her – not that she ever forgot, I don’t think – just sort of reminding her that there was so many possibilities in life, particularly for someone so young who’s in the fortunate position that [they] haven’t got to go out and work every day.’
Amy had money in the bank, though less than if she had been more productive during the past five years. Every time she cancelled a show she was liable to reimburse promoters, and she insisted on paying her band even when they didn’t play. As a result her touring company reported assets of just £8,000 ($12,720) that spring, while two of her other companies, Lioness Records and Goal Music Productions, recorded a loss. Meanwhile, she had frittered money on drugs and vacations, and had splurged £2 million on her new hous
e. Still, she was far from broke. There was £2 million in her main company, Cherry Westfield, at the end of 2010, but that figure was diminishing fast and there was growing pressure on Amy to make her third album and return to touring on a business-like basis.
The relationship with Reg was also a cause of angst. ‘She had issues with men, and every time there was a man in her life there was drama,’ says Troy Miller. Amy wanted Reg to move into Camden Square, eager to develop their relationship, but he insisted on keeping his flat in Marylebone. ‘She [first asked] me when she was living in Bryanston Square, but when she moved to Camden Square she asked a few times – “Look, you can move in,”’ he says. ‘But obviously the thing was that, quite honestly, as a bloke, I wouldn’t have been comfortable living in such a grand place and not being able to say, “There’s half of it.” … So I always felt that I should keep my own flat on until a time come that either we got married, or I had enough money to put something towards it. Otherwise, it would have always just felt wrong.’ Mitch Winehouse writes in his book that this conflict, together with Reg’s commitment to work, caused the couple to stop seeing each other for a time after Dubai, and there were press reports of them splitting up. Reg says this is untrue.
In the background was Amy’s desire to have children. She went out of her way to talk to children wherever she went – friends’ children, children she met on holiday, children on the streets of Camden. Because she was such a recognisable character, children would approach her and she would happily pose for photographs with them, while she might tell an adult to fuck off. She craved a family of her own. ‘There was a moment when she said to me, “I think I might be pregnant,”’ says Reg. ‘I just said, “Fine. Great. Fine.” We spoke about ’aving kids a lot, and there were periods when Amy talked about having kids and how she wanted to have kids a lot … She had mentioned it to my mum and things like that. And it had all been freely talked about. Anyway, she wasn’t pregnant.’ Maybe she was testing her boyfriend to see how serious he was about the relationship. Some friends wonder whether she was unable to have children, and if that gnawed at her.
Although Amy was no longer seeing Blake, her ex was still capable of upsetting her. Blake was back on heroin, stealing to support his habit. In February 2011 he and another man were in a car that was stopped by police, who recovered stolen goods from a house burglary, during which personal items, including a child’s ring, were taken. The police also found an imitation firearm in the vehicle. Blake was charged with burglary and possession of an imitation firearm, and remanded in custody. If convicted he faced another long prison sentence. Blake was about to turn 29, about to be a father, but far from establishing a stable, law-abiding life. Amy responded to the news by going on a binge of drinking and self-harming. Her brother’s fiancée was so alarmed that she raised the old issue of whether Amy should be sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Mitch didn’t think this viable or necessary.
It was days after this drama that Amy took part in her last significant recording session, singing ‘Body and Soul’ with Tony Bennett at Abbey Road Studios for his second album of duets. Although nervy, Amy gave a riveting performance of a classic song that is the outstanding track on Duets II, singing in a voice that has the ruined-life quality of Billie Holiday, making her sound more like a contemporary of Bennett rather than a girl of 27. It is noteworthy that, at the end, all of the principal 27s seemed much older than their years. ‘It actually made me cry,’ says Gordon Williams, noting how different Amy sounded from the girl with whom he had worked on Frank. ‘I heard how tired she was. Like everything was in her voice. Oh, man, the honesty … It sounds like she was reaching out for help, even though that’s not what she’s singing [about]. Her voice sounds like that. It’s like, damn, man, how did you go from the voice I heard to that voice in such a short time?’
Amy suffered a relapse after the Tony Bennett session, culminating in an alcoholic binge at Camden Square that makes for one of the most shocking passages in Amy, My Daughter. Mitch describes how she got up at four a.m. on 15 April 2011 to drink a bottle of wine before going back to bed. She got up and drank a second bottle of wine at eight. When Mitch arrived at ten thirty he found Amy ‘totally out of it’. When she had sobered up, they had a row. The following morning, Mitch returned to the house to find his daughter drunk on the kitchen floor. He bundled her upstairs to bed as she screamed abuse at him.
Over the next few weeks Amy alternated between drunkenness and periods of abstinence. She complained to her GP about stage fright, for which she was prescribed a small amount of diazepam. Her weight was down and Dr Romete suspected that she was bulimic. Amy denied it initially but then, on 16 May, confessed to her doctor that she ‘made herself sick following food binges’. Amy then went on an all-night bender at Camden Square that put her in a coma. Her minders couldn’t wake her. She was taken to the London Clinic. When she came round she left the clinic against medical advice. Dr Romete was informed that Amy had discharged herself ‘and gone to the pub’. The woman was impossible.
Dr Romete sent Amy a ‘strongly worded’ letter, copied to her father and manager, explaining her medical problems, saying she would not be able to treat Amy further, and warning of the grave risk Amy was taking with her life. ‘The letter said Amy was in immediate danger of death,’ Mitch revealed in Amy, My Daughter. This came as a shock to the family, and to Reg Traviss, all of whom seemed to have been in denial about Amy and her ‘little drinks’.
Dr Romete was persuaded to continue working with Amy, but things had to change. Amy needed specialist treatment for her alcoholism and psychological problems. Dr Romete believed she might benefit from dialectical behavioural therapy (DBT), recommended to people with personality disorders, notably those who have borderline personality disorder (BPD), a category of behaviour on the cusp of mental illness. Symptoms include a history of unstable relationships, fear of abandonment, self-image issues, impulsive behaviour (including substance abuse), self-harming and suicidal behaviour. BPD sufferers can also have feelings of emptiness, rage and paranoia. Anybody who exhibits five or more of these characteristics over a period of time can be diagnosed as having BPD, and they may well have other problems, too. Amy seemed to fit the profile. The problem was that she resisted therapy, believing that she alone could sort herself out. Like many people with personality disorders, she had been like this for so long that she had got used to coping with her odd behaviour. But things were becoming desperate.
In a scene reminiscent of the final Kurt Cobain intervention, on the morning of 25 May 2011 family members, including Mitch Winehouse and Amy’s aunt Melody (Mitch’s sister), Reg Traviss and a doctor, assembled at Camden Square to confront Amy with her behaviour and tried to persuade her to go to the Priory Clinic for therapy. As with Kurt Cobain, this proved to be a difficult conversation. Amy was angry and abusive. The argument went on for hours, while a driver waited outside to take her away. Reg recalls a ‘very, very long … and very frank discussion’, which made him late for work. Finally, around lunchtime, Amy capitulated.
‘All right, fine,’ she said. ‘If you want me to go, I’ll go.’
Amy was driven to the branch of the Priory in Southgate, the part of north London she came from. It is poignant to think of her returning, as a 27-year-old alcoholic, to the suburb where she had been born and raised, her limousine passing familiar shops and houses before turning through the gates of the clinic next to the park where she had played as a child.
* Amy’s capitalisation and spelling.
Thirteen
THE GLASS IS RUN
The glasse is full, and nowe the glass is run And nowe I live, and nowe my life is donn.
Chidiock Tichborne
1
Amy discharged herself from the Priory on 31 May 2011, angry with those people who had persuaded her to go into the clinic. Neither her brief stay nor her doctor’s written warning altered her behaviour. ‘She returned home and started drinking again,’ notes her GP. Indeed, Amy
joked about Dr Cristina Romete’s warning that her drinking was putting her life in danger. ‘She said, “Oh, the doctor doesn’t think I’m going to last much longer …” You know, she won’t last to the end of the year … She would constantly joke about it. And she would laugh about it,’ says Amy’s drummer, Troy Miller. ‘[And] we would all laugh – not in a sinister way – because she was genuinely joking about it. It’s not that she knew it was going to happen, but … she was ill … She was sick.’ By which he means that Amy had psychological problems. ‘And she had a dark sense of humour.’
One might think that Amy was in no state to sing at a family bar mitzvah, let alone give a concert, yet there were plans afoot for a European tour starting in Belgrade, Serbia, on 18 June, continuing through another eleven equally out-of-the-way places, as if Amy’s management was nervous about how she would perform. As well they might be. The wisdom of Amy touring at this time is questionable. Mitch Winehouse writes that Amy herself wanted to tour, despite the misgivings of her manager, and he describes a meeting with Raye Cosbert in June during which they concluded that the show should go on. ‘Raye and I both felt she was showing signs of beating her alcoholism. Still, we agreed to proceed slowly before confirming the east-European tour,’ Mitch writes in Amy, My Daughter, making it clear that he was effectively part of his daughter’s management at this stage, while glossing over the fact that the tour had been planned for months, with thousands of tickets already sold. Proceeding slowly at this late date was not really an option.
27 Page 30