by Daphne Barak
2007 began with a bang. Amy played to rave reviews and an A-list music audience, including Jay-Z and Mos Def, at Joe’s Pub in New York. She embarked on a UK tour and was nominated in February 2007 for a BRIT Award for British Female Solo Artist, which she won, modestly thanking her parents in her speech.
Back To Black still topped the UK album charts and had sold more than half a million copies and Island had scheduled a US release for it in March of that year. But all was not well. Amy’s behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic and she was starting to miss performances.
At this point, Mitch tells me that he started to realize that something was really up with his daughter. ‘The thing that she loves to do more than anything else is to perform live. … Clearly at that stage things were going wrong.’
He describes one particular incident, ‘… She was actually walking onto the plane and she turned around and walked off … that cost her about £80,000. It was a considerable amount of money,’ adding, ‘… And there was a performance [later] in Paris that cost her maybe a £100,000 … It [was] extremely damaging.’
He continues, ‘I went to meet her after she came off the plane and I was with her manager … I sat down with her and I explained … that it was going to cost her and she didn’t care. For whatever the reason was she just didn’t want to do that performance. … It was extremely worrying and at that stage we didn’t know how successful the album was going to be. We didn’t know it was going to be the best-selling album of 2007 so we really felt that her cancelling a gig and that costing her £100,000, that could make or break her. So … I [was] thinking to myself, “Well, my daughter is going to be in a position where she isn’t going to have any money.”
‘“She is going to be this superstar with absolutely no money.” And that concerned me as well.
‘Although we don’t care about money per se … you wouldn’t want to be without it.’
I know that there are many people who consider Mitch to be capitalizing on his daughter’s fame and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle at her expense. While I do believe that Mitch really cares about Amy and would do anything to help her, I think that the money is a real issue. Mitch brings up Amy’s finances in our interviews and it does seem to be an important topic for him.
When I first met Mitch and we began this project together, he was not in full control of Amy’s money. He did, in fact, consult us at the time about whether he should take charge of Amy’s finances and it seems that while Amy was in hospital in November 2008, the step was taken to put Mitch and Janis in control. I don’t doubt that he had good intentions and, at that point, I thought it was a good idea, as it would help to stop Amy spending her money on drugs – something that Mitch has said to me just wasn’t possible while Amy was accountable for her own money.
With hindsight, it raises a lot of questions for me. Mitch is adamant that Amy is now free of drugs and has overcome her addiction but if this is the case why does Mitch still feel the need to control his daughter in this way? If Amy is healthy and clean, then it doesn’t make sense for her parents to still be in charge of her own money.
I ask Mitch if he and Amy are close.
‘VERY close,’ he answers.
So, I say, when you started to notice something was wrong, what did you put her behaviour down to.
‘I am not an expert in drug addiction,’ he replies, ‘… in how people react when they have taken drugs, but it seemed that she wasn’t her normal self … It was more of a father’s intuition that things weren’t right. It wasn’t only her behaviour; it was the things that were happening in her life. Performances were starting to be not as good as they were. Some were being missed.’
‘Did you confront her?’ I persist. ‘Did you say, “Honey, what’s going on?”’
‘No. No. I didn’t. No, I didn’t confront her. … With hindsight, perhaps I should have done.’
there is no greater love
Amy was already well on the way to becoming known as much for her appearance (beehive, heavily kohl-ringed eyes and tattooed body – her tattoos include ‘Blake’s’, positioned just above her heart, from their earlier six-month relationship, an anchor emblazoned with the words ‘Hello Sailor’ and another proclaiming her ‘Daddy’s Girl’), attitude and alleged alcohol- and drug-fuelled benders, as for her talent as a musician.
Behind the scenes, Amy’s love life was also unravelling. Her nine-month relationship with Alex came to an end in early 2007, but within weeks, about the time that Back To Black was released in North America and Amy embarked on a tour of the States and Canada, she and Blake were seeing each other again.
Janis tells me that she spoke to Amy about Alex and Blake at that time and that Amy was definitely upset about the break-up. But, she adds: ‘[Amy] was just excited at seeing [Blake]. It was Easter and she went over to America with Blake to New York and she’d fought with … Alex the day before she went … I finally got hold of her and I said, “Amy, how are you?” and she said, “I’m so upset, Mum. I am so hurt. I have broken up with Alex and it has really distressed me.”
‘I said, “Oh, Amy. Is that why you went with Blake to New York?” And there was no answer.’
‘She didn’t know that you knew. How did you find out?’ I query.
‘Oh, I knew, because those are things that I know. I knew she was with Blake.’
‘[Amy] knew that you disapproved?’
‘Yes.’
I have to admit that before I committed to doing the documentary, certainly well before I had begun to research Amy’s life and family, I hadn’t heard of Blake Fielder-Civil at all. Over the next months, though, I was to learn more than I could possibly have envisaged about Blake and Amy’s addictive but seemingly destructive relationship – and also about how the Winehouses and Amy herself felt about it.
After hearing Mitch and Janis’s initial impressions of Blake, which were certainly not favourable, and looking back through the transcripts of our discussions, I have to question how much Mitch and Janis, as parents, are complicit in what happened to Amy after she got back together with Blake.
It is certainly clear that Janis had a strong dislike of Blake from the outset. She approved of Amy’s previous boyfriend, Alex, but Blake is a different story. Janis loves her daughter and in her mind, Blake is the reason that Amy moved onto hard drugs.
While Blake’s influence on Amy is obvious and he has even admitted that he did introduce Amy to hard drugs, I think it is more complicated than that – their relationship is a co-dependency of two addicted people. But for Janis, it is quite simple: Blake is to blame for Amy’s addiction – and she hates him for it.
And, one has to question why did neither Mitch nor Janis step in at an earlier stage when they saw the warning signs after meeting Blake? Why didn’t they individually or together call Amy to account about her behaviour? Why did they seemingly sit by and let their daughter flounder on alone, getting ever more deeply embroiled in her addictions?
When I broach the subject of Blake with Mitch, he says: ‘I heard about him about the middle of 2006.’ He has already commented on seeing Blake and Amy together in a London pub, but now he adds, ‘Amy and Blake were having a kind of on/off relationship and Blake was seeing another girl, who he obviously preferred to Amy and he didn’t feel he could leave this other girl … When Amy started to become successful and when she started to do well, he joined Amy. He started going [out] with Amy in 2007 … and I met him. She was doing a show in Bayswater [West London] ….’
‘When was that?’ I ask.
‘Around about March 2007. … My first impression was that he was a nice guy. Very friendly. He shook my hand. He was very polite and he seemed … very pleasant ….’
‘What did he say?’ I am intrigued. ‘… Did he say – “I love your daughter?”’
‘No!’ Mitch exclaims. ‘Nothing like that. He didn’t give a big speech or anything. He said, “I am Blake” and “It’s nice to meet you … I am looking forward to the show tonigh
t.”’
‘Did you know who he was?’ I question.
‘I knew of him …. I knew at that point, [Amy] was seeing him. And she kind of sort of made moves to get us together .… At that point I had no good reason not to get together with him. None whatsoever. I am very welcoming as far as Amy’s boyfriends are concerned.’
‘So, when was the next time …?’
‘The next time … was when we went to New York to do the Letterman Show. David Letterman. We flew together and I was with him for five to six days. … He went out to join her. She was already there doing a mini tour … and she wanted him to be there.’
‘So, she paid for the ticket?’ I say quizzically.
‘Of course,’ Mitch replies.
I find his quiet acceptance that this is OK interesting and tell him so, adding: ‘Well, I’m very successful and I don’t pay for my boyfriend.’
‘Well, you might do if he didn’t have any visible means of income …,’ Mitch responds sarcastically.
‘I am not so sure,’ I argue.
‘Well, she did.’
I have to pursue this further. ‘It didn’t bother you at that point?’
‘At that point,’ he says, ‘it wasn’t a problem. In fact maybe she didn’t even pay [at all] because I think the record company sends us out, or something like that. I can’t even remember.’
I am surprised that this situation doesn’t concern Mitch more. A new relationship – one moreover that he’s suspicious about – and he doesn’t seem concerned that his daughter or her record label might be footing the bill for this new man’s expenses. He even seems to think it’s reasonable.
So, I repeat the question again: ‘It didn’t bother you at that point?’
‘No,’ he repeats. ‘It didn’t bother me at that point. Not at all.’
OK.
‘You flew together. It’s a long flight. It takes seven hours to get to New York,’ I state.
‘We weren’t sitting together …,’ Mitch says. ‘I went First Executive, or something like that, and they stuck him back in [economy class] …. I said to him I really need to have a sleep, so I had a sleep … I woke up and I went back and I spoke to him for about half an hour to an hour and he seemed like a decent guy.’
‘Maybe you should have spent seven hours with him?’ I say, thinking maybe then he wouldn’t have seemed such a ‘decent guy’.
‘Maybe I should have. But I didn’t,’ he says.
It strikes me that Mitch is in denial about Amy – maybe this is because he loves her and he really wants to grab onto any glimmer of hope that Amy is okay – but, in my mind, he is in constant denial.
Amy is doing what she is doing and there are many reasons for her behaviour, but Mitch doesn’t push his daughter to find out what possesses her to act as she often does – or, indeed, to try to find out what demons drive her. Mitch’s refusal to accept the reality of the situation forms part of that addiction.
News of Amy’s relationship with Blake filtered back to England, and even though they had broken up, Alex didn’t take the news at all well. He made his feelings known to anyone who would listen, as seen, in particular, when he sold alleged intimate details of his sex life with Amy to the press, an action that helped to strengthen Amy’s ‘bad girl’, ‘rock chick’ image.
Amy seemed happy with Blake, however, and Blake joined her on a trip to Canada, where she was performing, about a month after the New York trip. It was then that Mitch first began to worry about Blake’s influence on his daughter.
He says, ‘… [We] went to Canada and he was already there with Amy. … We are talking about April 2007. Amy did maybe three or four shows … but they did not move out of the room. They were in the room the whole time. And when she went to do the shows … he was in the room, just all the time.’
‘Did that bother you?’ I ask.
Mitch concurs this time. ‘That did concern me. Because at the time, being naive, I am thinking, “What is he doing in the room for all the time? Sleeping? He can’t be sleeping all day.” He was in the room 23 hours.’
‘What did you do?’ I say to him.
‘Again we went about our business and I said to Amy, “Where’s Blake? I haven’t seen him. …”
‘… When did you actually think, “Oh my God! My daughter is dating a drug addict? A hard drug addict?”’ I say.
‘… He was in the room and he never emerged. I don’t know what he was doing in the room. I can only surmise what he was doing, but he never came out of the room. But Amy’s situation, she never seemed to me at that point to be out of control. I saw two of her performances, which were absolutely superb, so she was able to perform and put on a good show. … The problems started much later.’
‘So when you reflect back that was probably the time?’ I persist.
‘Yeah, I would say so. With the benefit of hindsight I look back – yeah maybe, that’s right.’
In April 2007, Amy and Blake became engaged. The British tabloid the Sun was one of several newspapers to break the story, commenting that ‘Caner Of the Year contender Amy’ had decided that Blake was ‘the one’ and had recently been seen flashing her Tiffany ring around to friends. Amy publicly referred to Blake as her ‘boy’ and also her ‘best friend’ – much in the same way that she’d referred to Alex Claire when they were together just a few months earlier.
I ask Janis if she was surprised by her daughter’s engagement. Janis comments that when Amy introduced her to Blake, she ‘took one look and said – “He is not somebody that she [Amy] should be with. He has nothing to offer!” … I was polite and when I heard the story that he’d asked her to marry him, well, I thought … she won’t. She won’t, because … I had been at her home and she said, “Mum, I don’t think I am the marrying sort. I don’t think it’s for me … I’m not the sort to think of somebody else so I don’t think I could work marriage.”’
While on tour in the States though, Amy and Blake did get married in Miami; neither Mitch nor Janis were present.
‘Did they elope?’ I ask Janis.
‘They didn’t so much elope,’ she says. ‘… I think it’s just a weird story. They got married at … Miami-Dade County [Marriage License Bureau in Florida on 18 May] …And when I spoke to her I … heard that she had spoken to Mitch before that and he had said, “Don’t get married Amy. Promise me you won’t get married. Mum will be so upset.”’
‘Did she promise you?’ I ask Mitch, intrigued by his answer.
Mitch responds: ‘I knew she was going to get married [but] I didn’t say “Don’t get married.” I said, “Don’t get married without your Mother being there” because, Janis won’t mind me telling you, when Janis and I got married her mother wasn’t there. And it was devastating. …’
I turn to Janis. ‘Were you devastated when your mother wasn’t [at your wedding to Mitch]?’
Janis grimaces, ‘No! I was quite happy actually …’
Mitch interjects, ‘… Because Janis didn’t get on with her Mum. I think I was more devastated for Janis … being so close to my Mum …’.
‘When did you know about the wedding?’ I ask Mitch.
‘… About half an hour after it happened,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t a shock as I knew they were going to get married but I specifically asked Amy … to make sure her Mum was there. … But they chose to get married quickly and I was very upset. I told Amy I was upset.’
I comment that it was very generous of Mitch to worry so much about how Janis would feel when he’s not married to her anymore. Most men wouldn’t, they would just move forward.
‘It is not a question of generosity …’ Mitch replies to me, ‘As I explained, Janis and I, we … remain very close. And I remember the anguish that Janis had when we got married and her Mum wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to go through that again. It was horrible for her. …
‘[Amy] phoned me about an hour and half after it happened. … she was very excited. Of course I wasn’t …. I knew that I real
ly wanted her Mum to be there. And I wanted to be there. I wanted our family to be there … But [Amy] didn’t want the same things; she felt it was sufficient for them to be on their own.’
I ask Mitch what he said to her after she announced that she and Blake were married.
‘I told her that her Mum was very upset and she said, “We will have a big party when we come home, Dad.”
‘We kind of got into that mind set that we would have a party when they got home [but] that is when the problems really started. From that date.’
Blake and Amy spent a few days in Florida after their marriage. Mitch caught up with them both again after they returned to London. He tells me that he thinks this is the point at which things quickly began to deteriorate for Amy and his own relationship with his daughter began to change.
Before Amy’s marriage to Blake Mitch was seeing his daughter three to four times a week but this now fell to about once a week. This was obviously difficult for Mitch to deal with.
Mitch said that he had to see Amy as there were certain things he had to discuss with her ‘… her business affairs. My signatures are on [her] account. I run the business on a day-to-day basis …. There are accountants and I have to discuss things with her [but] I couldn’t get to see her. She was asleep … She was wrapped up with her husband – which is fair enough.
‘I understand that when a young lady gets married she hasn’t got as much time for her Dad as she used to have. It is understandable. I [didn’t] expect to see her three or four times a week.’
On 9 August 2007, several newspapers ran the story that Amy had been rushed to a London hospital, where she had had her stomach pumped after a massive drugs overdose, something that Amy subsequently denied, but Blake Fielder-Civil confirmed in 2009, after his divorce from Amy.
Amy had, according to newspapers at that time, allegedly taken ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine (horse tranquillizers) during a London pub crawl, and washed it all down, at various points in the evening, with vodka and Jack Daniels.