Profile Amy Winehouse:The story of Amy Winehouse and her descent into tabloid fodder is beginning to sound like a familiar morality tale, with her lifestyle eclipsing her tremendous voice, writes Brian Boyd.
Walking down a street in New York three years ago, Amy Winehouse was talking to her record producer about the pressure she was under from her management team to go into rehab. She said that when she was pressed on the issue, she replied "No, no, no". That same evening, back at her hotel, she wrote what has become her biggest hit to date, Rehab, of which the first line is "They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said 'No, no, no'." Shortly afterwards, though, she did enter rehab. She stayed for 15 minutes.
She tried again this summer, this time in the company of her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. The pair stayed for five days. Immediately after this stint, she was arrested in Norway for possession of drugs.
The singer will make a third attempt at rehab next week. She has just cancelled a string of UK and Irish shows - "in the interests of her health and well-being" according to her management. The lady will not be singing the blues at the RDS tonight. The cancellation comes as no surprise. In a rather insensitive manner, the bookmakers William Hill were offering odds on Winehouse not turning up to do her live shows in 2007.
It may be equally insensitive to note that it is a very good thing Winehouse is not singing at the RDS tonight. The woman is quite clearly not in good shape these days - not least because her husband is currently on remand on charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The charge arose from an incident earlier this year when Fielder-Civil was charged with assault.
At her last few shows, Winehouse has been behaving erratically - frequently breaking off from songs to talk about her husband's plight, and falling over guitar stands. "The song she dedicated to her husband was so bad it sounded like swinging a cat around your head," noted one fan. She has been booed by certain sections of her audience.
To many, the Winehouse story just seems like a rewrite of the showbiz morality tale. The script is similar to the one from which Britney Spears is currently reading: a bright young female talent achieves huge success, gets enmeshed in a drink/drugs lifestyle and has "relationship" and "rehab" issues. And all the picaresque drama is played out in full public view.
SUCH A CONFLATION, though, would do a huge disservice to the Winehouse story.
Unlike Spears, Winehouse is one of the most gifted vocalists of her generation. While Spears was cut from the same mould as any number of identikit teen popsters, Winehouse has elicited comparisons (however hyperbolic) to legends such as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.
The real question is what role the music industry, the media and, indeed, Winehouse herself have had in her vertiginous rise and fall.
Still only 24, Winehouse is from a Jewish family in the London suburbs who all had jazz music leanings. When she first began singing as a young teenager it was through the medium of rap, but she soon found that a more soul and r 'n' b approach suited her vocal delivery. She has still released only two albums, Frank (2003) and Back To Black (2006). A big early supporter of her work was Jools Holland, who afforded her valuable radio and TV coverage.
For the first few years of her career, Winehouse was regarded as an intriguing act who had yet to break out of the "cult" category. During that time she could frequently be seen around the bars of Camden, London. She was a young talent on the rise whose bawdy humour and irreverent attitude were all great fun - until she started talking loudly about her eating disorders, her bouts of self-harm and then falling over tables.
She certainly seemed to relish her role as the newly appointed "female Pete Doherty", with some observers noticing that she seemed determined to give the press an all-purpose cliché. She certainly made no secret of her frequent drug use.
The Back To Black album took her out of the showbiz gossip pages and into the mainstream. A stunning collection of songs showed her songwriting had tightened up and she revealed herself to be a superb "torch singer".
Seasoned music critics were startled by how the then 22-year-old from a prosaic suburban background could imbue her songs with such worldly and raddled tones. She could even do pop - she took a little-known song by The Zutons, Valerie, to the top of the charts.
IN A SORT of reverse Yoko Ono situation, those close to her trace her descent into "My Drugs Hell" to the moment she met her husband.
Pills and powder are one thing, but heroin is quite another. In October of this year, Winehouse collapsed after a self-admitted binge on heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and ketamine (all washed down with lashings of whiskey and vodka). She was together enough, though, to tell the News Of The World that "It just happened. It shocked me. I'm sorry - I just don't know what got into me. I've scared myself this time. I was all over the place. I know things have got to change. I have to sort myself out. I'm fine. I'll be back at work on Monday. I'm fine, honest."
A few days later, by her own telling of the story, her husband found her in a hotel room with a call-girl and a big bag of drugs. Later that evening, following some form of "altercation", the two were photographed walking along a street in bloodstained clothes, looking badly scratched and bruised.
This incident led to a bizarre type of "intervention therapy" by Winehouse's and Fielder-Civil's parents. Fielder-Civil's father rang up those well-known addiction and relationship counsellors at BBC Radio Five Live to speak about his daughter-in-law. Saying he was concerned that the singer and his son would die without medical help, he called for the public to boycott Winehouse's records, saying: "Perhaps it's time to stop buying them - it might send her a message."
Winehouse's father also rang the radio station to say that the pictures of his daughter and his son-in-law showed "two people out of control". He added that a boycott of his daughter's records wouldn't help and that her recent behaviour had left people at her record company "in tears".
The actions of both fathers bring to mind a well-known Philip Larkin couplet.
THE LATEST INSTALMENT in the Winehouse saga is the resignation of her long-time manager, Thom Stone, last week. It has been reported in the music press that Stone quit after a routine medical check-up showed that he had traces of heroin in his system. Allegedly through passive heroin smoke.
What is quite clear from all this is that the press will feed off Winehouse as long as she keeps coming up with the salacious goods.
With music's previous "bad boy", Pete Doherty, becoming a predictable bore, Winehouse does seem to relish her Number One Troubled Artist chart placing.
The music industry has learned little over the years about how to handle the Troubled Artist - drink and drug casualties are seen as being as much a part of the job as chart fixing. It facilitates behaviour such as Winehouse's. This is an industry where, allegedly, last year a certain singer was ordered off to rehab, not because of any pressing abuse problem, but because the band's image needed "toughening up".
Press coverage ensued.
The latest new female star on the block, Leona Lewis, (a mainstream r 'n' b artist) is by all accounts a diligent, hard-working, engaging and charismatic talent. You worry for her, though, in a music/media world where the talent seems secondary to tales of excess, and tawdry "lifestyle" reportage. This is a place where the ridiculous creature that is Lindsay Lohan enjoys a profile far out of proportion to her ability, due to her "personal life": party girl/drugs/car crashes etc.
So it's yes, yes, yes again to rehab for Amy Winehouse next week. She'll come across the word "anonymous" during her treatment. It's there for a reason.
Today's Irish Times Magazine went to press before Amy Winehouse cancelled tonight's concert in Dublin
TheWinehouseFile
Who is she?Amy-Jade Winehouse or "Troubled Amy" for short. "Amy Winelake" or "Amy Wino" are optional extras.
Why is she in the news?After a series of very messy live performances - taking to the stage one hour late, being incoherent, crying about her imprisoned husband, falling around - she has decided to abandon all professional duties for the short-term future.
A Good Thing For:Any music fan who wants to see this remarkable talent rise again.
A Bad Thing For:Entertainment journalists who will have to start harassing Pete Doherty to be pictured with a crack pipe for that day's "Drugs Hell" story.
Lessons To Be Learned: Trying to sing like Billie Holiday is admirable. Trying to live like her is not.