Amy Winehouse

by Chas Newkey-Burden

  It was Perez Hilton that Amy turned to when she wished to dispute reports that Blake had beaten her up during their infamous stay at the Sanderson Hotel. She sent a series of text messages to Hilton, asking him to put the truth up on his website. ‘Blake is the best man in the world,’ read one such text. ‘We would never ever harm each other… I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn’t good enough for him. I lost it and he saved my life.’

  Amy then said that, far from hurting her, Blake had actually been responsible for saving her life. She wrote,

  He did not and never has hurt me. He has such a hard time and he is so supportive… He is an amazing man who saved my life again and got cut badly for his troubles. All he gets is horrible stories printed about him and he just keeps quiet, but this is too much. I’ll be alright. I need to fight my man’s corner for him though.

  It is hardly surprising that there was so much concern for Amy’s wellbeing, particularly given that the episode happened while they stayed in a hotel. Time after time, Amy and Blake’s relationship has been compared to that of Sex Pistols member Sid Vicious and his girlfriend Nancy Spungen. ‘Sid and Nancy’ – as they are always referred to – also had a high-profile and notorious relationship. They seemed stuck in a cycle of self-destruction, drug abuse and violence. In October 1978, the couple checked into room 100 of the Hotel Chelsea in New York City. One morning, Vicious awoke from a drug-induced stupor to discover his girlfriend dead on the bathroom floor. She had a single stab wound to her lower abdomen. The bed was also stained with blood. Vicious was later charged with murder, received bail and then died from a heroin overdose.

  Following all the drama that Amy and Blake had been through, there was major disappointment but very little surprise when Amy decided to postpone her impending tour of the USA and Canada. It was not an easy decision to make but Amy, ever the perfectionist, decided that she would rather wait until she was ready to do herself and her fans justice, rather than turn up and give a half-hearted performance. Her camp said, ‘Due to the rigours involved in touring, Amy Winehouse has been advised to postpone her upcoming September US and Canadian tour dates… Plans are being made to reschedule her US tour for early 2008. Until then, Amy has been ordered to rest and is working with medical professionals to address her health.’

  The venue for that rest could hardly have been more tranquil and beautiful. High on Morne Chastanet, overlooking St Lucia and the Caribbean, the Jade Mountain resort is utterly luxurious and mesmerising. The spacious, grand rooms each have their own private swimming pool and breathtaking views. Amy hoped their break at the £700-a-night resort would prove to be a therapeutic one. At last, she hoped, they could put their problems behind them and move onwards and upwards to a greater future. However, according to some accounts, their stay proved far from healthy.

  Reports soon surfaced that Amy had not merely vomited over her room, but had vomited blood. A hotel worker said, ‘There was blood and vomit all over the bathroom; it was just terrible. It looked like she’d been sick many times. There was blood mixed up in the vomit. It was sickening. They were horrified by the state of the room, which looked like a bomb had hit it.’ The hotel’s manager offered to send for a doctor but Amy declined. ‘She said she’d be fine,’ said the worker. ‘Everyone was concerned because she looked so frail.’

  Amy was also sick over a sofa while drinking in the restaurant at the resort. This time, the smell of her vomit was said to be so overpowering that the restaurant had to be completely closed while it was cleaned. Once it reopened, Amy caused a few concerns by reappearing with Blake. She ate a Caesar salad and Blake wolfed down a steak. They returned soon after and Amy tucked into a burger and a salad. Luckily, she managed to hold her food down. Summing up their stay, the hotel source told the Daily Mirror, ‘They’re not like our typical guests. They stand out because they’re both covered in cuts and have tattoos all over their bodies. They both behave very strangely.’

  Admittedly, the newspaper headlines that screamed, AMY AND BLAKE’S BLOODBATH CONTINUES and AMY SECONDS FROM DEATH were somewhat over the top, but Amy was by this time handing new scandals to the press on a plate. It seems certain that some of the coverage was exaggerated or fabricated, but a lot of it was accurate. For the press – who had grown tired of Pete Doherty since he split with Kate Moss, and with David Beckham, who was LA-bound – Amy was proving to be the new tabloid obsession. Once the tabloids have their claws into someone, it rarely ends in anything but tears for their victim. The press have without doubt made up a lot of the coverage they have awarded Amy and Blake’s relationship, especially about their hedonism and alleged weight issues.

  All too often, Blake has been cast as the bad guy. ‘He’s not very good for her on a professional level,’ Sky News entertainment man Neil Sean said, ‘but she’s so hooked in deep she can’t stop the – I suppose – the love that she’s got for him.’

  However, jumping to this conclusion seems unfair on both Blake and Amy. Whatever his failings, Blake has stuck by Amy’s side and is clearly besotted with his lady. Moreover, to cast Amy as his unwitting victim insults her, casting her as a helpless little lady. All the evidence of Amy’s life suggests she is far away from this. ‘I think those close to us know the truth,’ says Blake. ‘It’s not one long drink-and-drug party for us, and, as for the weight issues, it’s just not like that – we’re actually quite a nice and normal couple at home.’

  Amy echoed Blake’s attempt to portray them as a normal couple. ‘I’m sorted out. Nothing’s wrong with me… A lot of fuss has been made about nothing,’ she shrugged.

  Mitchell hoped that these ‘all is fine’ statements were accurate, though his hope was not without qualification: ‘I don’t know what they’ve been doing for the last month or so. We’d like to think that she and Blake have stayed clean since they went to St Lucia. But the thing with drug addicts is that they rarely tell you the truth.’

  Happily, before long the tabloids were forced to write a positive story about Amy when she collected yet more laurels. At the MOBO awards, she was handed the Best Female Singer gong. At the O2 arena (formerly the Millennium Dome), she sang ‘Me and Mr Jones’ and ‘Tears Dry on Their Own’. When she took to the stage to collect her award, she kept her speech short and sweet, merely saying thank you and then returning to her table. She couldn’t be blamed for being so short: after all that had been written about her in recent months, Amy was just keen to avoid further controversy.

  On the same night, she won the Vodafone Live Award, beating off the likes of Lily Allen, K T Tunstall and Kate Nash. Amy sent the landlord of the Hawley Arms to collect her prize in her stead. ‘We’ll be putting it behind the bar,’ he quipped at the ceremony at Brompton Hall in West London.

  These successes made up for the disappointment at losing out to the Klaxons in the Mercury Prize earlier that month. She won a standing ovation for her performance at the ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel. She sang ‘Love is a Losing Game’, stripping the song back to its acoustic roots and sending a wave of emotion across the venue. Jools Holland, the compere, said after the performance: ‘Amy Winehouse… one of the most amazing voices. I’ve worked with a lot of people and I’m telling you, she’s got one of the most amazing voices of all time.’

  However, when it came to the award, it went to the three-piece Klaxons. The band’s lead singer Jamie Reynolds said he was ‘not surprised’ that Amy did not win. He said, ‘When I came off stage I was upset because I thought she gave a fantastic performance and I absolutely loved her record, but her recording is retro and ours is a forward-thinking record and that’s what the Mercury Prize stands for.’

  Polydor co-president Colin Barlow said, ‘A lot of people thought it was going to be the Amy Winehouse Mercurys, but the great thing about the awards is that they are about innovation.’ Music industry commentators added that perhaps Amy had missed out because her suitability for the prize made her a too o
bvious choice – especially given the predictable victory of Arctic Monkeys the previous year. However, Dan Cairns of the Sunday Times ‘Culture’ section, did speak up for Amy:

  You can tell Klaxons’ hearts are in the right place and they obviously love being in a band and making the music they make, but to propose that Myths… is the best album in the past 12 months is just nuts. It’s got about two songs on and then acres of sonic mush, albeit fun mush. Bat For Lashes or Amy should have won.

  Blake was more concise and direct in his support. ‘Amy was robbed,’ he spat. ‘Who knows why they didn’t give her the award. But I was so proud of her for her performance. She’s really well and she doesn’t need to go back into rehab.’

  Meanwhile, Girls Aloud’s Cheryl Cole also spoke up for Amy. ‘I was glad to see Amy Winehouse looking better at the Mercury awards,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear her singing but she looked amazing in the pictures. She’s got deep issues to deal with but seems to have a strong support network in her family. Her dad seems a decent guy.’

  Janice Turner was less kind in The Times, writing that Amy ‘resembled a Barbie doll attacked by an additive-high, felt-tip-wielding toddler’. Her feelings were echoed more sensitively by the US singer Rihanna, who said, ‘I’m worried about Amy. I want her to get better, as I love her. There’s no a doubt in my mind she can still be successful in America even though she’s been linked to drugs. It’d be awesome to go on tour with her in the States. I’d love her to join me.’

  In the wake of her appearance, a BBC journalist commented, ‘She’s become such a worshipped and tortured enigma that her appearances now seem like visitations from some sort of mythical figure.’ Even Rabbi Aryeh Sufrin, founder of Drugsline, stuck his oar in and offered his help to Amy. The rabbi warned readers, ‘This just shows that the Jewish community is not immune to addiction.’ Jewish News editor Zeddy Lawrence said that Sufrin told him that he was more than happy to help Amy and Blake. ‘If they reach out then my door is open to them,’ he told Lawrence.

  As for record executives at Amy’s label, they were insistent that they were doing all they could to support her. There had been chatter in some quarters insinuating that perhaps they were secretly turning a blind eye to her addiction, or even quietly encouraging it because they felt it made her a more newsworthy proposition. Promoter Raye Cosbert brushes all this away. ‘We’ve been doing everything we can to help with Amy’s personal problems over the past few weeks,’ he insisted. ‘We’ve advised her to take complete rest during this difficult period and have put all her promotional commitments on hold. How can it be in Island’s interests to have Amy dead when the company’s hoping for five more platinum albums?’

  As for Amy’s and Blake’s parents, they were understandably terrified by what they were hearing about their loved ones’ antics. Blake’s stepfather Giles Civil said, ‘You couldn’t tell Sid Vicious what to do, could you? But I’d like Blake and Amy to think about those two. It might shake them up. I doubt it, but maybe. I think they both need to get medical help, before one of them, if not both of them, eventually die. We’re concerned that if one of them dies, the other will die. They are a very close couple, and if one dies through substance abuse, the other may commit suicide.

  ‘They’re living in a world where access to drugs is easy. They have plenty of money available and what they need, what they want, they can have without question. They’re going through abject denial at the moment. They don’t see themselves as having a problem and are quite aggressive in defence of themselves. They believe they’re recreational users of drugs but it seems to us this is not the case and clearly they are addicts.’

  He then proposed a novel step to help shake some sense back into them. ‘We urge Amy’s fans to send a message to her that her addiction is not acceptable. I would not want any harm to come to Amy and Blake but perhaps it’s time to stop buying her records. We should not be condoning her addiction by awarding her either record sales or industry awards.’

  Mitch added that he had spoken to Amy and she ‘sounded fine. We’re not talking about people who are in imminent danger of death. Physically, she’s not fantastic, but while she was away I think the eating disorder was worked on, and she put on a stone. In the space of eight days, that’s pretty good. It’s no good blaming anyone and saying in the last four months, Blake’s got worse because of Amy and she’s got worse because of Blake. In the last four months, they have got worse. They are a married couple, they love each other, although there are issues if they feel they’ve got to cut themselves to show it. If it means they get cured together, I hope they get cured together.

  ‘If it means that they get cured by being separated, then so be it. But nobody can physically separate them. Blake’s parents can’t take him back to Nottingham if he doesn’t want to go and I can’t force Amy to do anything. I’ve tried. It doesn’t work. The doctors said, “You’ve tried the screaming and shouting, it doesn’t work. We’ve got to try gentle persuasion, let them feel they’re making the decisions.” Guess what: that hasn’t worked either.’

  As for Amy, she was insistent that she had no intention whatsoever of breaking up with Blake. Indeed, she argued that, far from being the source of her problems, he was the greatest hope she had of overcoming them. ‘I can’t beat drugs without him. He’s my rock and as a married couple we need to go through everything together. Blake says he isn’t going back to rehab – but I can if I want. But I’m not going without him. I know I need help, but Blake’s the only one who can help me. I don’t want to lose him. I won’t lose him. I want to make him happy – like what he does to me. I feel disgusting and Blake’s the only one who stops me feeling like this. I can’t believe he even wants to be with me. I don’t understand why. All I know is I’m the luckiest girl alive to have someone as caring as Blake,’ she added.

  However, some of this was falling on deaf ears, as was shown in December 2007 when her mother Janis wrote Amy an open letter via the pages of the News of the World. This is what she said:

  Blake, your husband, might not be my favourite person – you know that, Amy – but he’s your choice and I would never say anything about him to hurt you. When I was quoted recently as saying ‘Thank God Blake’s inside’ what I meant was that putting him in jail might help him to clean up HIS act and change HIS life.

  It wasn’t said out of viciousness or to upset you. If your relationship is meant to be, it will survive. I’m a great believer that everything in life happens for a reason, a purpose. And if you two are destined to be together forever, then so be it. But I want you to love Blake for who he is, Amy. Not because you feel sorry for him, or because he can get you doped up. Not for any other reason than that you have respect for him.

  Janis was referring to an interview Mitchell had given to Fern Britton. Britton asked, ‘So she is still drinking?’

  Mitch replied, ‘She’s not drinking as heavily now as she was then actually but there are other problems. The other problem is the bulimia, which is still apparent, although she’s put on about a stone in weight but it’s still affecting her health; and there are problems with substance abuse as well. But, again, not as bad as has been reported.

  ‘It’s apparent in her music that she’s smoked dope for quite a while, probably from the age of sixteen or seventeen, perhaps even earlier. She was a complete opponent of hard drugs – in fact, she got up and said she couldn’t understand why people in the music industry took hard drugs – and that changed about six months ago when she got married to Blake. And I’m not saying its Blake’s fault. What I’m saying is Amy’s responsible for her own actions. However, it’s a fact that the hard drugs coincided with their marriage. Well, I knew that they were going to get married, we weren’t completely in the dark but we were kind of hoping that Amy’s mum could have been there at least. So we were a little disappointed, yeah.’

  He continued, ‘I don’t read the papers myself. A friend of mine, a guy called Ginger Norman, he reads them for me. Because I can’t b
ring myself to read the papers every day and he kind of vets the news for me every day because I just can’t face it. He asked me to have a look at this particular piece, which I did do. I phoned the newspaper in question, spoke to the newsdesk. I told them what had happened. They said they had no interest in what I have to say on this subject.’

  Soon after the interview, speaking about Blake, Mitchell also told the Star,

  ‘He doesn’t get Brownie points off me for that, he’s normally smashed off his face too, and the only reason he wasn’t passed out on the floor was because either his drugs hadn’t kicked in yet or he’d run out of them. The way I see it is if he hadn’t been there, she probably wouldn’t have put all that junk inside her in the first place.

  ‘If Blake were to go to jail for GBH it would probably be the best thing that could happen for Amy… She’d be mortified if he did go to jail but it would be a chance for her to get on the straight and narrow.

  ‘The trouble is Blake seems to want them to go to rehab together and to be in control – and they’ve been told that isn’t a good idea and the likelihood of recovery is small. If he were in jail for a few months I think Amy would have a better chance of recovering. She needs to get herself sorted before she worries about him.’

  Better news came in the shape of Amy’s settlement with songwriter and producer P*Nut over a claim for copyright infringement. P*Nut, whose real name is John Harrison, said he and Amy co-wrote the song ‘He Can Only Hold Her’ in his studio in 2006. P*Nut’s solicitor, Bob Page, of Jayes and Page, said, ‘This represents a very satisfactory outcome for P*Nut, who considered his contribution to the song to be perfectly obvious. He was therefore extremely disappointed not to receive the credit he deserved on Amy’s album and furthermore at the extent of the resistance he encountered in securing his fair share of the copyright. Whilst Amy and her publishers took the matter to the brink, P*Nut is pleased that common sense has prevailed and he is now looking forward to seeing his contribution properly recognised on future exploitation of this song.’