After leaving Sylvia Young’s, Tyler had become a soul singer, and while Amy was singing with the NYJO, Tyler was singing in pubs, clubs and bars. He’d started working with a guy named Nick Shymansky, who was with a PR agency called Brilliant!. Tyler was Nick’s first artist, and he was soon hounding Amy for a tape of her singing that he could give to Nick. Eventually Amy gave him a tape of jazz standards she had sung with the NYJO. Tyler was blown away by it, and encouraged her to record a few more tracks before he sent the tape to Nick.
Now Tyler had been talking about Amy to Nick for months, but Nick, who was only a couple of years older than Tyler and used to hearing exaggerated talk about singers, wasn’t expecting anything life-changing. But that, of course, was what he got.
Amy sent her tape to him in a bag covered in stickers of hearts and stars. Initially Nick thought that Amy had just taped someone else’s old record because the voice didn’t sound like that of a sixteen-year-old. But as the production was so poor he soon realized that she couldn’t have done any such thing. (She had in fact recorded it with her music teacher at Sylvia Young’s.) Nick got Amy’s number from Tyler but when he called she wasn’t the slightest bit impressed. He kept calling her, and finally she agreed to meet him when she was due to rehearse in a pub just off Hanger Lane, in west London.
It was nine o’clock on a Sunday morning – Amy could get up early when she really wanted to (at this time she was working at weekends, selling fetish wear at a stall in Camden market, north London). As Nick approached the pub he could hear the sound of a ‘big band’ – not what you expect to hear floating out of a pub at that hour on a Sunday morning. He walked in and was stunned by what he saw: a band of sixty-to-seventy-year-old men and a kid of sixteen or seventeen, with an extraordinary voice. Straight away Nick struck up a rapport with Amy. She was smoking Marlboro Reds, when most kids of her age smoked Lights, which he says told him Amy always had to go one step further than anyone else.
As Nick was talking to her in the pub car park, a car reversed and Amy screamed that it had driven over her foot. Nick was concerned and sympathetic, checking that she was all right. In fact, the car hadn’t driven over Amy’s foot and she had staged the whole thing to find out how he would react. It was the choking game all over again – she never outgrew that sort of thing. I’ve no idea what in Amy’s mind the test was intended to achieve, but after that Amy and Nick really hit it off and he remained a close friend for the rest of her life.
Nick introduced Amy to his boss at Brilliant!, Nick Godwyn, who told her they wanted her to sign a contract. He invited Janis, Amy and me out for dinner, Amy wearing a bobble hat and cargos, with her hair in pigtails. She seemed to take it in her stride, but I could barely sit still.
Nick told us how talented he thought Amy was as a writer, as well as a singer. I knew how good she was as a singer, but it was great hearing an industry professional say it. I’d known she was writing songs, but I’d had no idea if she was any good because I’d never heard any of them. Afterwards, on the way back to Janis’s to drop her and Amy off, I tried to be realistic about the deal – a lot of the time these things come to nothing – and said to Amy, ‘I’d like to hear some of your songs, darling.’
I wasn’t sure she was even listening to me.
‘Okay, Dad.’
I didn’t get to hear any of them though – at least, not yet.
As Amy was only seventeen she was unable to sign a legal contract, so Janis and I agreed to. With Amy, we formed a company to represent her. Amy owned 100 per cent of it, but it was second nature to her to ask us to be involved in her career. As a family, we’d always stuck together. When I’d run my double-glazing business, my stepfather had worked for me, driving round London collecting the customer satisfaction forms we needed to see every day in head office. When he died my mum took over.
By now Amy had a day job. She was learning to write showbiz stories at WENN (World Entertainment News Network), an online media news agency. Juliette had got her the job – her father, Jonathan Ashby, was the company’s founder and one of its owners. It was at WENN that Amy met Chris Taylor, a journalist working there. They started going out and quickly became inseparable. I noticed a change in her as soon as they got together: she had a bounce in her step and was clearly very happy. But it was obvious who was the boss in the relationship – Amy. That’s probably why it didn’t work out. Amy liked strong men and Chris, while a lovely guy, didn’t fall into that category.
The relationship lasted about nine months, it was her first serious relationship, and when it finished, Amy was miserable – but painful though the break-up was, her relationship with Chris had motivated her creatively, and ultimately formed the basis of the lyrics for her first album, Frank.
* * *
Excited as Amy was about her management contract, music-business reality soon intruded: only a few months later Brilliant! closed down. While usually this is a bad sign for an artist, Amy wasn’t lost in the shuffle. Simon Fuller, founder of 19 Management, who managed the Spice Girls among others, bought part of Brilliant!, including Nick Shymansky and Nick Godwyn.
Every year Amy’s birthday cards made me laugh.
As before, with Amy still under eighteen, Janis and I signed the management contract with 19 on Amy’s behalf. To my surprise, 19 were going to pay Amy £250 a week. Naturally this was recoupable against future earnings but it gave her the opportunity to concentrate on her music without having to worry about money. It was a pretty standard management contract, by which 19 would take 20 per cent of Amy’s earnings. Well, I thought, it looks like she’s going to be bringing out an album – which was great. But, I wondered, who the hell’s going to buy it? I still didn’t know what her own music sounded like. I’d nagged, but she still hadn’t played me anything she’d written. I was beginning to understand that she was reluctant to let me hear anything until it was finished, so I let it go. Amy seemed to be enjoying what she was doing and that was good enough for me.
Along with the management contract, Amy became a regular singer at the Cobden Club in west London, singing jazz standards. Word soon spread about her voice, and before long industry people were dropping in to see her. It was always boiling hot in the Cobden Club, and on one hotter than usual night in August 2002 I’d decided I couldn’t stand it any longer and was about to leave when I saw Annie Lennox walk in to listen to Amy. We started talking and she said, ‘Your daughter’s going to be great, a big star.’
It was thrilling to hear those words from someone as talented as Annie Lennox, and when Amy came down from the stage I waved her over and introduced them to each other. Amy got on very well with Annie and I saw for the first time how natural she was around a big star. It’s as if she’s already fitting in, I thought.
It wasn’t just the crowds at the Cobden Club who were impressed with Amy. After she had signed with 19, Nick Godwyn told Janis and me that there had been a lot of interest in her from publishers, who wanted to handle her song writing, and from record companies, who wanted to handle her singing career. This was standard industry practice, and Nick recommended the deals be made with separate music companies so neither had a monopoly on Amy.
Amy signed the music-publishing deal with EMI, where a very senior A&R, Guy Moot, took responsibility for her. He set her up to work with the producers Commissioner Gordon and Salaam Remi.
On the day that Amy signed her publishing deal, a meeting was arranged with Guy Moot and everyone at EMI. Amy had already missed one meeting – probably because she’d overslept again – so they’d rescheduled. Nick Shymansky called Amy and told her that she must be at the meeting, but she was in a foul mood. He went to pick her up and was furious because, as usual, she wasn’t ready, which meant they’d be late.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he told her, and they ended up having a screaming row.
Eventually he got her into the car and drove her into London’s West End. He parked and they got out. They were walking down Charing Cross Road, toward
s EMI’s offices, when Amy stopped and said, ‘I’m not going to the fucking meeting.’
Nick replied, ‘You’ve already missed one and there’s too much at stake to miss another.’
‘I don’t care about being in a room full of men in suits,’ Amy snapped. The business side of things never interested her.
‘I’m putting you in that dumpster until you say you’re going to the meeting,’ he told her.
Amy started to laugh because she thought Nick wouldn’t do it, but he picked her up, put her in the dumpster and closed the lid. ‘I’m not letting you out until you say you’re coming to the meeting.’
She was banging on the side of the dumpster and shouting her head off. But it was only after she’d agreed to go to the meeting that Nick let her out.
She immediately screamed, ‘KIDNAP! RAPE!’
They were still arguing as they walked into the meeting.
‘Sorry we’re late,’ Nick said.
Then Amy jumped in: ‘Yeah, that’s cos Nick just tried to rape me.’
4
FRANK – GIVING A DAMN
In the autumn of 2002, EMI flew Amy out to Miami Beach to start working with the producer Salaam Remi. By coincidence, or maybe it was intentional, Tyler James was also in Miami, working on another project; Nick Shymansky made up the trio. They were put up at the fantastic art-deco Raleigh Hotel, where they had a ball for about six weeks. The Raleigh featured in the film The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, which Amy loved. Although she and Tyler were in the studio all day, they also spent a lot of time sitting on the beach, Amy doing crosswords, and danced the night away at hip-hop clubs.
Because she had gone to the US to record the album, I wasn’t all that involved in Amy’s rehearsals and studio work, but I know she adored Salaam Remi, who co-produced Frank with the equally brilliant Commissioner Gordon. Salaam was already big, having produced a number of tracks for the Fugees, and Amy loved his stuff. His hip-hop and reggae influences can be clearly heard on the album. They soon became good friends and wrote a number of songs together.
In Miami Amy met Ryan Toby, who had starred in Sister Act 2 when he was still a kid and was now in the R&B/hip-hop trio City High. He’d heard of Amy and Tyler through a friend at EMI in Miami and wanted to work with them. He had a beautiful house in the city where Amy and Tyler became regular guests. As well as working on her own songs, Amy was collaborating with Tyler. One night in Ryan’s garden, they wrote the fabulous ‘Best For Me’. The track appears on Tyler’s first album, The Unlikely Lad, where you can hear him and Amy together on vocals. Amy also wrote ‘Long Day’ and ‘Procrastination’ for him and allowed him to change them for his recording.
Amy sent me this Valentine’s Day card from Miami, while recording tracks for Frank in 2003.
By the time Amy had returned from Miami Frank was almost in the can but, oddly, though she’d signed with EMI for publishing nearly a year earlier, she still hadn’t signed with a record label. I kept asking anyone who’d listen to let me hear Amy’s songs, and eventually 19 gave me a sampler of six tracks from Frank.
I put the CD on, not knowing what to expect. Was it going to be jazz? Rap? Or hip-hop? The drum beat started, then Amy’s voice – as if she was in the room with me. To be honest, the first few times I played that CD I couldn’t have told you anything about the music. All I heard was my daughter’s voice, strong and clear and powerful.
I turned to Jane. ‘This is really good – but isn’t it too adult? The kids aren’t going to buy it.’
Jane disagreed.
I rang Amy, and told her how much we we’d loved the sampler. ‘Your voice just blew me away,’ I said.
‘Ah, thanks, Dad,’ Amy replied.
Apart from the sampler, though, I still hadn’t heard the songs that were on the short-list for Frank and Amy seemed a bit reticent about letting me listen to them. Maybe she thought lyrics like ‘the only time I hold your hand is to get the angle right’ might shock me or that I’d embarrass her. I teased her after I’d finally heard the song.
‘I want to ask you a question,’ I said. ‘That song “In My Bed” when you sing—’
‘Dad! I don’t want to talk about it!’
Amy came over to Jane’s and my house when she was sorting out the tracks for Frank. She had a load of recordings on CDs and I was flicking through them when she snatched one away from me. ‘You don’t want to listen to that one, Dad,’ she said. ‘It’s about you.’
You’d have thought she’d know better. It was a red rag to a bull and I insisted she played ‘What Is It About Men’. When I heard her sing I immediately understood why she’d thought I wouldn’t want to listen to it:
Understand, once he was a family man
So surely I would never, ever go through it first hand
Emulate all the shit my mother hates
I can’t help but demonstrate my Freudian fate.
I wasn’t upset, but it did make me think that perhaps my leaving Janis had had a more profound effect on Amy than I’d previously thought or Amy had demonstrated. I didn’t need to ask her how she felt now because she’d laid herself bare in that song. All those times I’d seen Amy scribbling in her notebooks, she’d been writing this stuff down. The lyrics were so well observed, pertinent and, frankly, bang on. Amy was one of life’s great observers. She stored her experiences and called upon them when she needed to for a lyric. The opening lines to ‘Take The Box’ –
Your neighbours were screaming,
I don’t have a key for downstairs
So I punched all the buzzers…
– refer to something that had happened when she was a little girl. We were trying to get into my mother’s block but I’d forgotten my key. A terrible row, which we could hear from the street, was going on in one of the other flats. My mother wasn’t answering her buzzer – it turned out that she wasn’t in – so I pressed all of the buzzers hoping someone would open the door.
Of course the song had nothing to do with me buzzing buzzers: it was about her and Chris breaking up. But I was amazed that she could turn something so small that had happened when she was a kid into a brilliant lyric. For all I knew, she’d written it down when it had happened and, eight or ten years later, plucked it out of her notebook. She was a genius at merging ideas that had no obvious connection.
The songs on the record were good – everyone knew it. By 2003, with the record all but done, loads of labels were desperate to sign her. Of all the companies, Nick Godwyn thought Island/Universal was the right one for Amy because they had a reputation for nurturing their artists without putting them under excessive pressure to produce albums in quick succession. Darcus Beese, in A&R at Island, had been excited about Amy for some time, and when he told Nick Gatfield, Island’s head, about her, he too wanted to sign her. They’d heard some tracks, they knew what they were getting into, and they were ready to make Amy a star.
Once the record deal had been done with Island/Universal, suddenly it all sunk in. I sat across from Amy, looking at my daughter, and trying to come to terms with the fact that this girl who’d been singing at every opportunity since she was two, was going to be releasing her own music. ‘Amy, you’re actually going to bring out an album,’ I said. ‘That’s brilliant.’
For once, she seemed genuinely excited. ‘I know, Dad! Great, isn’t it? Don’t tell Nan till Friday. I want to surprise her.’
I promised I wouldn’t, but I couldn’t keep news like this from my mum and phoned her the minute Amy left.
When I think about it now, I realize I took Amy’s talent for granted. At the time I actually thought, Good, looks like she’s going to make a few quid out of this.
Amy’s record company advance on Frank was £250,000, which seemed like a lot of money. But back then some artists were getting £1 million advances and being dropped by their label before they’d even brought out a record. So, although it was a fortune to us, it was a relatively small advance. She had also received a £250,000 advance from E
MI for the publishing deal. Amy needed to live on that money until the advances were recouped against royalties from albums sold. Only after that had happened could she be entitled to future royalties. That seemed a long way off: how many records would she need to sell to recoup £500,000? A lot, I thought. I wanted to make sure that we looked after her money so it didn’t run out too quickly.
When Amy first got the advance she was living with Janis in Whetstone, north London, with Janis’s boyfriend, his two children and Alex. But as soon as Amy’s advances came through she moved into a rented flat in East Finchley, north London, with her friend Juliette.
Amy understood very quickly that if her mum and I didn’t exert some kind of financial control she’d go through that money like there was no tomorrow. I had no problem with her being generous to her friends – for example, she wouldn’t let Juliette pay rent – but she and I knew that I needed to stop her frittering the money away. She was smart enough to understand that she needed help.
Amy and Juliette settled into the flat and enjoyed being grown-up. I would often drop by. I’d left my double-glazing business and had been driving a London black taxi for a couple of years. On my way home from work, I’d go past the end of their road and pop in to say hello, but Amy always insisted I stay, offering to cook me something.
‘Eggs on toast, Dad?’ she’d ask.
I’d always say yes, but her eggs were terrible.
And we’d sing together, Juliette joining in sometimes.
It was around this time that I first suspected Amy was smoking cannabis. I used to go round to the flat and see the remnants of joints in the ashtray. I confronted her, and she admitted it. We had a big row about it and I was very upset.
Amy, My Daughter Page 4