Amy, My Daughter

by Mitch Winehouse

  On 11 May Amy was meant to meet Lucian Grainge at Universal to discuss progress on her recordings and how close they might be to a new album, but she was too drunk to go. By the middle of May she was back in the London Clinic. When she got there she had been vomiting all day, and Dr Glynne called me to say that he was shocked by Amy’s appearance. She claimed she had a virus and that was why she’d been vomiting, but I told her, quite simply, that I didn’t believe her and knew it was drink related. We argued.

  ‘I’ve lost patience with you,’ I told Amy. ‘When you were high on drugs I couldn’t tell you anything because you wouldn’t have heard me, you wouldn’t have listened, but you can bloody well hear me now. I am sick and tired of the same thing every day. Will you be drunk or won’t you? You need to stop lying to yourself and everyone around you. You need to listen to your doctors.’ And I left.

  Amy called me later to apologize and, as she was sober, we had a reasonable discussion about her drinking. But by now I thought that talking was a waste of time: she was beyond the point at which she could help herself, and I just didn’t know what to do next.

  Amy stayed at the London Clinic for a week. During that time she didn’t drink and she didn’t leave the hospital. But the next week, back at home, she seemed out of control again: some days she was drunk and other days she was sober. It was impossible to know which Amy I would find when I rang. Reg’s presence moderated her drinking, but when he wasn’t with her she drank a lot more. Added to which, alcoholics are crafty about their drinking, I’d learned, and if they want you to think they’re not drinking, or drinking less than they are, they’ll find a way. Amy continued to drink every day until 10 June, when she was once again admitted to the London Clinic.

  ‘Did they stamp your loyalty card?’ I asked. I was so fed up I had to make a sarcastic remark, but in truth I was angry.

  I kept thinking she’d reached rock bottom, but time and again she proved me wrong. This was different from when she’d been taking class-A drugs. Drugs were illegal, expensive and required privacy. Alcohol was freely available, and she could drink wherever and whenever she liked, mostly without public criticism. As a consequence, her lack of inhibition about drinking was yet another problem – it was moving beyond serious, and if she carried on, her illness might end up killing us both.

  For ten days after she’d left the Clinic, Amy remained dry, but I felt a lapse was probably around the corner.

  On 20 June, I played a gig at Pizza on the Park, one of London’s top jazz venues. I had the honour of being the last act ever to perform on the stage there because, sadly, after thirty years the place closed. The venue was packed for my performance. A lot of my friends and family were there that night, including Amy with Reg. Amy looked fabulous and, at the end of the night, joined me for three duets, much to the delight of the audience. It was a wonderful evening that went down a storm and, to top it off, Amy remained sober throughout.

  On 1 July, Amy, Jane, Reg and I went to see Tony Bennett perform at the Royal Albert Hall in Knightsbridge. He was absolutely fantastic. We went backstage after the show to congratulate him and all agreed that he was not only a superb performer but also a lovely guy.

  The next night Amy and I went to see Tony Bennett again, this time at the Roundhouse in Camden Town. The previous evening, I had told him that Amy and I were going to his second show and he asked us to have dinner with him afterwards. I was really looking forward to it. He was due on stage at eight forty-five so I went to pick Amy up from Bryanston Square at seven to ensure that we wouldn’t be late – I knew my daughter when it came to getting ready. Amy said she still wasn’t drinking, but after she took her medication her whole persona seemed to change: she just kept messing about and wouldn’t get ready. I was going mad at her and we ended up not leaving the flat until nine fifteen – by which time I suspect she had had a drink.

  When we arrived Tony Bennett was already onstage singing, and as we walked in everyone was turning round to look at Amy. As if that wasn’t bad enough, while we were walking to our seats, Amy started clapping and wolf-whistling. ‘Be quiet, Amy,’ I told her. It was very embarrassing.

  Finally we sat down, but Amy continued to be disruptive: she was standing up in the middle of the songs, and clapping or whistling at inappropriate moments. ‘If you don’t sit down and keep quiet, I’m going to leave,’ I told her. But she wouldn’t, so I left.

  ‘You’re just trying to spoil my fun,’ Amy shouted after me, drawing yet more attention to herself.

  After the show Amy went backstage again and Tony Bennett asked her where I was. She told him the truth: we’d had an argument and I had left. I’m not sure she told him what it was about, though. I was so angry with Amy that night: I knew it was the drink that made her behave that way, but while it wouldn’t have mattered as much in a loud club, it had been neither appropriate nor acceptable that evening.

  About a week later Amy called me with a lovely surprise. She’d had a session with her band at a rehearsal room, the first for some time. ‘Listen to this, Dad. I’ve written some songs and we bashed something out today.’

  She played bits of a couple of songs down the phone to me on the MP3 player she’d used to record them. I couldn’t make much out, apart from an upbeat reggae sound. I told her they sounded great, as I knew how much my approval meant to her at that time. It wasn’t clear to me why my opinion mattered so much then, when it didn’t at other times, I just tried to fulfil her need. She went on to tell me she had had a few drinks the previous night but had not got drunk and had had no alcohol at all that day.

  ‘You’re doing great, Amy. Well done.’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, thanks, Dad,’ she replied.

  * * *

  At the beginning of August, Amy’s drinking was still a big problem but I needed a break. With Reg on the scene, and Amy channelling her obsessive nature into their relationship, I felt I could now devote some time to my lovely wife and to looking after myself a bit. Jane and I went on holiday to Spain.

  While I was away I heard lots of stories about Amy’s drunken behaviour; the press were having a field day. On 3 August a journalist contacted Raye to say he’d seen Amy drunk in Soho at ten in the morning. The next day I got a call to say Amy had run away from a cab drunk and not paid her fare. Two days later there was a report in the Sun that Amy had insulted the King of the Zulus, with photos of her falling asleep in Reg’s lap in the middle of a speech he had made to open a Zulu restaurant.

  While Jane and I were in Spain I became very ill. When we arrived back I was taken straight to hospital. I had developed Septicaemia and felt terrible. I had an MRI scan, which revealed I needed to have my gall bladder removed; the scan also showed that I had Mirizzi syndrome, a rare complication that meant it couldn’t be dealt with using keyhole surgery and that I would have to have a full-blown operation, but this couldn’t happen until the Septicaemia had been dealt with. Throughout my nine days in hospital, Amy and Alex came to see me every day; they were there from first thing in the morning to late in the evening. I don’t know if it was my being ill, or Reg’s talk with her after her behaviour at the Zulu restaurant, but Amy had been sober for nearly two weeks, which cheered me up immensely.

  The following week, she was drinking again. Alex and his girlfriend Riva had recently got engaged and were having a party at the end of August to celebrate; I hoped I’d be well enough to attend, and put off my operation until after the event, but I was worried how Amy might be at the party. I spoke to her about it and she promised me that she would stop drinking four days beforehand and not drink at the party. She really wanted to be there. I told her I didn’t believe she could do it.

  On the day of the engagement party, Amy agreed to meet me so I could assess the state of her sobriety. She knew that if I detected she had been drinking, I wouldn’t let her go. I saw her in the afternoon and she hadn’t had a drink, so I told her she could be there.

  When she arrived, she was a little tipsy; she wasn’t drunk,
but she’d definitely had something to drink. She told me she’d had to have a drink to stave off alcohol withdrawal, but she wouldn’t have anything at the party. She was as good as her word, but when she got up to sing, she wasn’t very good, and I heard people muttering that she was drunk. I was too weak from my time in hospital to respond as I normally would, but I was disappointed with her behaviour.

  Not long afterwards I went back into the London Clinic to prepare for my operation the following day. I was very nervous, but I was reassured by the doctors that I had nothing to worry about. In the end, they were right and the operation was a success. I was in hospital for eleven days and, once again, Amy came to see me every day while I was there. Never once did I think she had been drinking, even when the tabloids tried to stir it up again by printing stories about Reg two-timing her. The mistake the papers made was to suggest he had done this on a date when, in fact, he and Amy had been at home together. She dealt with it in a way that gave me real optimism about her recovery. She was still drinking, but I thought she was staying dry for longer periods every time.

  When I saw her at the end of September she looked marvellous. And for once she was concerned about me and all of the weight I’d lost during my illness.

  ‘I’ve beaten booze, Dad,’ she told me proudly. But it wasn’t that simple. We’d been there before with the drugs. I knew she had to take it one day at a time and try not to put herself in situations that might trigger her drinking. I told her I’d met someone at an AA meeting when I was looking into ways of helping her, and he’d introduced himself as an alcoholic but hadn’t touched a drop in thirty years. ‘It’s something you’re going to have to watch for ever, Amy.’

  ‘You worry too much, Dad,’ she told me. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  In early October I had another gig at a club in the City. Amy said she’d liked to come and watch me rehearse. I arranged to pick her up, but when I got to her flat that afternoon, she was drunk and hadn’t slept. She insisted she wanted to accompany me anyway and I reluctantly let her do so. However, that meant we were a bit late, so Amy stayed for the gig as my rehearsal overran. When I started my first number, Amy jumped up on to the stage and stood right next to me the whole time I sang. I did my five songs, then let her do two, which were very good. I told her afterwards that she shouldn’t have got up onstage with me, but she couldn’t understand why: she’d thought she was supporting me. I’d found it a bit unnerving, to have her just standing there. I told her she wouldn’t have done it, had she been sober; it had looked unprofessional. We had to agree to disagree.

  The following month I was out of London for a few days doing some gigs. While I was away Amy didn’t drink, and each time I spoke to her, I felt more positive about her recovery. I knew she would drink again, but it was beginning to seem that she had a real desire to beat her alcoholism, which she now openly acknowledged. I had learned that was a hugely important step on the road to recovery. I was proud of her. I knew it was tough, but we were making progress, even if it was slow.

  After I returned, Amy went to Barbados to work with Salaam Remi for the next week. She had good and bad days with her drinking. According to her security, she was drinking, but she wasn’t getting roaring drunk and upsetting people. Unfortunately little recording got done.

  When she’d finished in Barbados, she flew to St Lucia where she drank much more. When she called me on 4 December to wish me a happy birthday she sounded sober, so I asked about her drinking.

  ‘I’m doing my best, Dad,’ she said. ‘Some days it’s just so hard…’

  There was a long silence. I knew if I let her go on down that road we’d both end up crying, so I changed the subject. We talked about the work being done on the Camden Square house, her new recordings, my gigs, her mosquito bites, my operation scar, Alex and Riva, Reg, Jane and a million other things. We were on the phone for more than two hours, which was a lovely birthday present. Only once more during the call did she come close to breaking down, but she pulled herself back from the brink.

  About a week later, she came home and continued to drink. I didn’t let her attend my sixtieth birthday party as she had been drunk during the day. Finally she and I had a terrible row when I went to see her at Bryanston Square. It was ten in the morning and she was already drunk. I reminded her that she was due to go to Russia for some gigs the next day and that she wouldn’t be capable of flying if she didn’t resolve to stop drinking, at least until then. I went back to Bryanston Square later and Amy was so drunk that she couldn’t speak. I called Dr Romete, who examined her and suggested I take her to the London Clinic, which I did. She wasn’t admitted, and after about three hours I took her home. By that time Amy was sober and determined to go to Russia.

  Shockingly she made it to Russia, and two days later, Raye called me to say the gig had been fantastic and that Amy had been ‘absolutely brilliant’. She’d also managed to keep her drinking in check, even though, it being Russia, everybody had tried to give her vodka shots. When I spoke to her she was physically very tired but still mentally exhilarated from the trip.

  When they returned, Raye and I had a chat. We were both encouraged that she had managed not to drink before going onstage – that had been her usual method of dealing with stage fright. Performing live was always going to be an important part of her career, so Raye and I were thrilled that she’d found a way to cope without a drink.

  On Christmas Day, Jane and I popped in to see Amy at Bryanston Square before we set off for Jane’s mum’s home and Christmas lunch. Amy had been invited, but she felt, as she was detoxing, the temptation to drink might be too great and decided to stay at home. She didn’t drink over the Christmas period, which she was very proud of. I was proud too. It was an amazing achievement, especially since she’d been with friends who were drinking.

  On New Year’s Eve Amy called me with more good news: she still hadn’t had a drink and she and Reg had been talking about getting married. I was delighted. It felt like a perfect end to the year. I knew we weren’t out of the woods yet, but Amy had definitely improved and things were going in the right direction. I’d never believed that she would be rid of Blake, but here she was, talking about marriage with Reg. As the year closed, it was hard not to feel that things were moving in the right direction.

  ‘I feel that overall 2010 was a better year than 2009 and a much, much better year than 2007 and 2008 had been,’ I wrote in my last diary entry. ‘There’s a lot to look forward to in 2011.’

  19

  ‘BODY AND SOUL’

  Cheered by her success in Russia, Amy spent the first days of 2011 rehearsing for her forthcoming trip to Brazil. On 4 January she called to say, ‘I’m ready for my gigs – and I’ve been sober all year, ha ha.’ I couldn’t imagine Amy getting on a plane without there being some last-minute drama, but for once there wasn’t one and she actually got to the airport in good time.

  The next day she rang to say she had arrived safely and to tell me how beautiful Brazil was. The first show was on 8 January and I spoke to Raye before the show: Amy hadn’t touched a drop since they had been in Brazil. I hoped she wouldn’t need a drink before she got onstage that night and, to my delight, Raye confirmed that she had stuck to water throughout. The show had been fantastic and Amy had performed like the star the audience had been expecting. The press reviews of Amy’s first Brazilian show, at the Summer Soul Festival in Florianópolis, were sensational.

  While Amy didn’t sing any new original songs, she did perform two new covers that she was thinking of including on her third album. As with her lyric books, she squirrelled away notes about any new song she was told about or heard and liked, and she was happy to sing a cover as long as she liked the song and could put her own spin on it. The two she chose here were Little Anthony and the Imperials numbers ‘I’m On The Outside Looking In’ and ‘Boulevard Of Broken Dreams’. The latter was the one written for the 1934 film Moulin Rouge and made popular by Tony Bennett, not the Green Day hit from 2004.


  Amy did five shows in Brazil, the last on 16 January. I spoke to her after her performance, which she said had gone very, very well. She also told me, proudly, that she still hadn’t had a drink and that it was more than two weeks since she had had any alcohol. I was extremely pleased when I heard that, and said to Jane, ‘I didn’t think she could do it, if I’m honest. I didn’t want to tell her or say anything to her before, because it’s no good her thinking I’ve still got doubts about how long she can keep it up, but I didn’t think she’d make it this far.’ Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell everyone I felt optimistic because I knew I couldn’t take any more disappointment.

  When Amy got back to the UK, we talked on the phone for more than an hour, with her telling me all about Brazil. She was completely sober and reiterated her desire to stay that way. I had been to see the Camden Square house and all of the work had been completed. It looked great and we discussed when she might move in. The next day I saw Amy and she looked great – she had even put on some weight while she was away. She told me, apologetically, that she had had one or two drinks the previous evening. I didn’t berate her: it was only to be expected. I reminded her that it was similar to when she was quitting drugs. Then she had lapsed on numerous occasions. Sadly, I knew a lot about the habits of addicts now. It was only natural to lapse in the process of getting clean.

  Frustratingly there were always risks alongside the relapses. One morning I had an early call from American Blake, who was in the US. He had been talking to Amy on Skype when she’d had a seizure. I immediately called security at the Langham hotel, where Amy was still staying, and they rushed to her room. When they got there she was fine and, like most people who have this horrible experience, had no recollection of the seizure. I told Amy I was coming over, but she tried to persuade me that it was unnecessary: she felt okay, and she was going to sleep. I drove over anyway. When I arrived Amy was asleep and I woke her up. She didn’t look very well so I took her to the London Clinic, where she was admitted for observation, though she had not been drinking.