The letter was blunt, matter-of-fact and incredibly shocking. We all knew Amy’s life was in danger, but seeing those words spelled out on paper somehow made it much more real and terrifying. I was shaking and tasted bile at the back of my throat. I felt worse than I’d ever felt. It was pointless showing the letter to Amy when she was drunk, so I didn’t bother. The next day she was still drunk and all of my hopes for her recovery from alcoholism were dashed.
And so it continued. On 22 May Andrew called me to say that Amy had got up at ten o’clock, drunk half a bottle of wine and gone back to sleep for the rest of the day.
* * *
By 24 May Amy was drinking all the time. Riva suggested that we try to persuade Amy to go to rehab at the Priory in Southgate, north London. I thought it was a waste of time, but I said I’d give it a go. Riva and I spent the whole of the next morning trying to get Amy to agree to going into rehab; we even arranged for Dr Brenner from the Priory to come and see her at Camden Square. Amy was very rude to Dr Brenner, but he was used to that and persisted. It wasn’t easy, but in the end the three of us managed to persuade her to go.
We got her to the Priory at about two o’clock but she wanted to leave immediately. I stayed with her for a couple of hours and she gradually acclimatized herself to the place and seemed a lot calmer. I knew things were looking up when she asked me to go out and get her some KFC.
Within a couple of days Amy’s stay at the Priory had made all the headlines. At first she was desperate to get out, but little by little she seemed more relaxed and agreed she was happy to stay until the end of the month. She was looking much better in herself and, once again, told me how much she wanted to stop drinking.
‘I realize that just saying it isn’t going to make it happen, though, Dad.’ She was making a great effort to see her problems clearly. ‘I didn’t think it would be this difficult. I thought that once I’d quit drugs I could beat anything, but stopping drinking is a lot, lot harder than I’d thought.’
‘You know, darling, if anyone can do it you can,’ I said. ‘You’ve done it once before and so you can do it again. You can be strong enough. You can do it.’ I meant every word.
On 31 May Amy checked out of the Priory. She looked marvellous and agreed to return as an outpatient. When I spoke to Andrew later that night he confirmed that Amy hadn’t had anything to drink. But when I saw her the next day she got really angry with me for having made her go into the clinic. I was convinced she was looking for an excuse to have a drink. We had a bit of a row before we made up and I left, but I found out later from Andrew that Amy didn’t drink that day, so my fears had been unfounded. I asked him if she had been playing her guitar much, or using the studio; he said she hadn’t been near the studio but he’d heard her playing up in her room.
I met Raye a few days later and told him that, while she was playing again, I didn’t think she was writing much. He wasn’t surprised, and said it seemed the album was still some way off. He wasn’t sure if she was well enough to tour either. Amy had told us both how much she wanted to get back to live work and she was confident that she would be well enough to perform. There was no denying that the Priory had been of great help to her: Raye and I both felt she was showing signs of beating her alcoholism. Still, we agreed to proceed slowly before finally confirming the Eastern European tour.
Amy continued not to drink for the next week, and when I saw her at Camden Square on 9 June, she was buzzing with excitement about her forthcoming gigs and there was no sign of alcohol withdrawal. We talked about Reg and Blake. She told me that she loved Reg but couldn’t help feeling sorry for Blake and wanting to help him.
‘Of course that’s your choice, Amy,’ I said. She knew I didn’t approve of her even talking to Blake, let alone helping him.
‘Yeah, but, Dad, I couldn’t not help him, could I?’
I would never have helped him, he was a bad lot. But that was Amy: she found good in everybody, even Blake.
Three days later she did a gig for friends and family at the 100 Club on Oxford Street in the West End. It was a ‘rehearsal’ gig for her Eastern European tour later that month. She still wasn’t drinking and, apart from a slight sore throat, was in fantastic form. Her band started, playing a few songs without her, then Dionne did a couple of numbers, then Amy arrived on stage. She knew everyone in the audience personally and came on to rapturous applause and cheering. I knew how nervous she had been feeling before the show and I was worried she might have a drink to calm her down, but she didn’t. And once she started singing the nerves disappeared.
She was great. She was laughing and joking with the audience, talking to individuals, and poking a bit of fun at me and others in the family. There was a lot of back and forth with the band. At one point Amy looked at the set list, then turned to Dale. ‘Oh, we’re not doing that now, are we? I don’t want to do that one now, I want to do it later. What shall we do instead?’
Dale laughed and said, ‘Let’s do “Valerie”,’ and Amy hopped over to him and said, so that we could all hear, ‘No, I’m not doing “Valerie” tonight, what else?’
The whole band laughed. She seemed really relaxed. Her throat was hurting, though, and she asked if anybody happened to have any honey with them. Five minutes later a bottle of honey arrived on the stage. Because she was with friends and family, she said, ‘I’m just going into my dressing room to take some honey quickly. In the meantime, my dad’ll sing a few songs for you.’
I nearly fainted. I love singing and I’ll do it at the drop of a hat, but I really wasn’t prepared – this was Amy’s big moment and I’d been totally absorbed in it. But I got onto the stage and told the audience to talk among themselves while I spoke to Amy’s pianist to see what songs from my repertoire he could play without music. We quickly sorted some out and, by the time I was halfway through the first song, Amy was standing in the audience cheering and whistling. I assumed that I would finish the song and she would come back onstage. But she shouted, ‘You carry on, Dad,’ and I sang a few more.
After that, Amy was back and, to everyone’s delight, said to Dale, ‘Right, let’s start with “Valerie”,’ and she carried on where she’d left off, mixing laughter with her brilliant music. When she performed ‘Rehab’, she singled me out from the audience as she sang right at me, ‘My daddy says I’m fine.’ I cracked up, along with everybody else. We all had a wonderful time, watching and listening to her that night. It felt more like a party than a gig, and Amy was definitely back to her best.
Later, in her dressing room, her caring side showed once again. ‘How’s your glandular fever?’ she said to my friend Paul’s daughter.
She hadn’t seen Katie for about a year – I couldn’t believe she’d remembered. I’d seen Katie many times, but had totally forgotten she’d been ill.
* * *
Amy stayed dry for another five days, and I was feeling very positive about her Eastern European tour. But on 17 June, the day before she was due to fly to Serbia, I knew something was wrong the minute I arrived in Camden Square. ‘I don’t want to do the tour, Dad,’ she said, after a short time.
I was surprised. It had been planned since the start of 2011 and it was definitely something that Amy had wanted to do. Raye and I had had our reservations about it but had kept faith with Amy’s desire to play to her fans in Eastern Europe.
She had been saying for ages how bored she was and my response had been, ‘Get out there and do what you do best – make music. Do a tour or go back into the studio.’
And for the last few months, when Amy hadn’t been drinking, she had got very involved with the arrangements. She always played an integral part in establishing the look of her live gigs, getting heavily involved with her band’s clothes, the production, the lights, just about everything. Right from Back to Black she had had a very clear idea of how she wanted her three backing singers to look onstage. Because she was so into fifties/sixties style she’d once made Raye go into the costume department at the BBC to hire three baby blue
dinner suits for them. She named the trio the Nights Before and, at her final gigs, decided she wanted them to wear peach-coloured suits.
But now she was saying she wanted to cancel the tour. I couldn’t understand what had changed and she couldn’t explain it to me. All I could get out of her was that she didn’t want to do it – and whether it was to do with stage fright, or the fear that she’d return to drinking, I never could get out of her.
By the next day Amy had changed her mind again and wanted to do the tour. I was still apprehensive that she might back out or start drinking, but I spoke to her before she got on the plane and she sounded fine. Raye agreed to give me a running commentary, so over the next forty-eight hours I got constant calls and texts: ‘She’s in the hotel room’, ‘She’s in the car’, ‘She’s at the venue’, ‘She’s on the stage…’
Then, at two forty-five a.m. on 19 June, Raye phoned to say that the gig had been a complete shambles.
Amy had been in a funny mood in the car on the way there. She wasn’t drunk, but she had been agitated in her hotel room and wanted a drink; so Raye had allowed her one glass of wine to calm her down. Amy would often ask people to give her drinks once she was on stage. But that didn’t happen in Belgrade: she was drunk before she got onstage. Neither Raye nor Tyler, who were both with her that day, have any idea how she’d got drunk but she must have smuggled some alcohol into the gig, or got someone to do it for her.
So, that night in Belgrade Amy went onstage drunk, and it showed. Her performance was disastrous and much of the audience were booing. She couldn’t remember what city she was in, or the lyrics of her songs, or even the names of her band members. Throughout, Raye was trying to pull her off the stage, but she wouldn’t leave. She stayed for ninety minutes. Her gigs normally lasted seventy-five. It was the worst ever.
They left the gig and went straight to the airport. All the way, Amy was demanding a drink in the car, but Raye wouldn’t let her have one. On the plane she asked Raye if it was the worst gig she had ever done.
‘Yep,’ Raye replied. ‘It’s right up there with Birmingham.’ He told her off for letting everybody down. But Amy didn’t like what she was hearing, and argued back, then went off and sulked at the back of the plane.
The next gig was in Istanbul, and when they arrived Amy apologized to everyone.
‘This stops here,’ Raye said. ‘You can’t go out and work like this. It’s ridiculous. If you don’t want to do these gigs, then we don’t do them. But these are a nice run of shows. We’re going to places that we haven’t been to before, playing in front of people that haven’t seen you before, people that really want to see you. You went onstage and done that. Why? What was the problem?’
Amy gave him the Amy shrug. She said she didn’t know the answer.
Raye cancelled all the remaining gigs.
I wondered why she couldn’t say anything to anyone, including me, about this. Did she feel she was letting everyone down if she told me that quitting drinking was harder than she’d thought, even after everything we’d been through together? Did she still want to try and deal with everything on her own? Did she not know that whatever she needed from me I’d have given her?
Amy knew she didn’t have to do those gigs if she didn’t want to: Raye had told her so over and over again. But Amy loved being with her band and she had really wanted to do that tour. And Raye had thought that going ahead with it might help get her creative juices flowing again. Amy often said that she was bored singing the same old songs. ‘Write some new ones, then,’ we’d replied.
I’m not sure that it was actually boredom, though. I think it was only the Back to Black songs that she didn’t want to sing. ‘Wake Up Alone’, ‘Unholy War’ and ‘Back to Black’ seemed to be the hardest for her. They reminded her of Blake, and a time in her life that, understandably, she wanted to forget. Raye thought singing those songs triggered memories of the drug spiral she had been in and that that was one reason why she would drink so much before she performed.
I don’t know if that was the case or not, but Raye had worked closely with Amy’s musical director, Dale Davis, to make sure the Back to Black songs were interspersed with covers and songs from Frank. They didn’t want to have a build-up of songs that reminded Amy of that hellish time. Dale would present the set list to her and, as she trusted him implicitly, she never queried it. This seemed to be working, so we know the songs weren’t to blame for Amy’s behaviour that night in Belgrade.
Everything was fine with Reg, so we know it wasn’t that. And Blake was a thing of the past. So, what had caused this lapse? We only found out later that Amy had suffered from the worst case of stage fright she had ever had.
At the time I despaired, thinking Amy was going back to drinking regularly. We had no understanding of what was going on. ‘My daughter needs help and we are all helpless,’ I wrote that night.
But I was absolutely wrong. Amy didn’t drink again until a couple of days before she passed away.
20
‘GIVE ME A CUDDLE, DAD’
Over the next few days I had a lot of tweets blaming me for Amy’s performance in Belgrade. ‘How could you let her go on like that?’ her fans asked. ‘You should have known this would happen.’
No one knew what Amy had been through during the preceding months. No one knew she hadn’t touched a drop for weeks before the Belgrade gig. Neither did they know how much her music was helping her at this time. A lot of people blamed me, and a lot of people blamed Amy’s management, but I knew that Raye wasn’t to blame. Amy had definitely wanted to do the tour and the comments were incredibly hurtful.
On 20 June, two days after the Belgrade gig, Reg flew to Istanbul to meet Amy. Once he was there, she seemed a lot better: she was calmer and able to think rationally about the future again. She didn’t want to do any more live work until she got her stage fright under control, and she decided she’d rather spend her time working in her home studio, with her next album still some way off. I knew that Back to Black had come about when she’d felt she had a coherent whole, based on the girl-group sound she loved. I don’t think she ever found the same guiding inspiration to bring together the ideas she had for a new album.
On 22 June Amy came home. She looked much better, but I was being careful what I said to her and it was Amy who brought up the Belgrade gig. She told me how disappointed she’d been with herself once she’d sobered up. She didn’t like what alcoholism was doing to her, or to her family and Reg. She felt terrible about letting everyone down. And then she told me all about her stage fright. She hadn’t felt up to the tour, and for hours before the first gig she’d been shaking with nerves. She’d thought that a couple of drinks might help, but they didn’t, so she’d had some more.
‘All the time I was drinking, Dad, I was thinking how much I hate this,’ she said. ‘I really, really want to stop. I really don’t want to go through all this shit again. Every time something happens. You believe me, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do,’ I told her. ‘But I can’t make these things stop. You’re always going to be around alcohol, and in situations where you’re going to want to drink again. You’ve got to find the will to stop it yourself.’ All I could do was encourage her. I knew she hated what kept happening, but I had no way of knowing how long it would be before she took to drink again.
That day was a bit strange. Amy and I spent an hour or two together and, after we’d talked about Belgrade, she was very reflective. She spoke a lot about my mum, which we often did, and then, which was unusual, she wanted to watch some clips of her live performances on YouTube. ‘Do you think I’m good, Dad?’ she asked, after we’d watched a bit.
‘Of course you are,’ I said. ‘You know you are.’
Then she asked, ‘Dad, do you think I’m beautiful?’
‘I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world,’ I replied, ‘but you’re asking the wrong person. I’m your father.’
Until then, she had never, as far as I kn
ew, watched herself like that – she wasn’t very interested in looking back – and it was the first time I could remember when she’d taken time to study herself in that way. It wasn’t so much about her self-image – I knew she’d had problems with that in the past, but she seemed over those now; this time she was coolly examining her own performance, and seeing what made her special.
‘Just give me a cuddle, Dad,’ she said, and we sat together for about an hour, me holding her in my arms. It was lovely, a very special moment, but at the time I didn’t attach any importance to it. It would be easy to think that she had some sort of premonition, but I don’t really believe that. I think it was just a lovely moment.
* * *
The next day I saw Amy again. Mostly we talked about the work she needed to do for her new album. I had a sneaky scout around the house for alcohol, but there was none. I saw Amy most days over the following two weeks, and on the days I didn’t see her I spoke to her on the phone. Gradually our conversations stopped featuring the word ‘alcohol’ and I was content that, for the time being, she had stopped drinking.
On Sunday, 10 July, Jane and I had a lovely day with Amy at Camden Square. We had lunch and then just whiled away the time, talking and listening to music. Amy had done an impromptu DJ set at one of the local pubs that week and she was really into her record collection. It was a normal family Sunday.
The next day Amy called to say she was going to a local bar to play pool. I was concerned: for Amy, playing pool in a bar was synonymous with drinking. I phoned Andrew, the security guy, immediately and told him to call me the minute she had a drink. But he didn’t call. He didn’t need to. As soon as they’d arrived Amy had gone to the bar and told the owner, ‘Do not sell me alcohol under any circumstances.’ That night I wrote in my diary, ‘I’m very proud of Amy. This is very positive.’
On 14 July we spent the day together again. Amy had searched the Internet and found some dance remixes of ‘Please Be Kind’, one of the songs on my album. We listened to them together – Amy thought they were pretty good – and jokingly said, ‘I tell you what, Dad, I’ll take these down with me next time I do some DJing and before you know it you’ll be number one in the dance charts.’
Amy, My Daughter Page 25