The rapid rise and tragic fall of Amy Winehouse, the deeply flawed soul prodigy

A death foretold: The rapid rise and tragic fall of Amy Winehouse, the deeply flawed soul prodigy

By Paul Bentley

Last updated at 7:54 AM on 24th July 2011



In just 27 years, Amy Winehouse has managed to leave behind her a soul legacy, with a band of modern British female soul singers - Adele, Duffy, Jessie J - celebrating success across the world borne almost entirely in her wake.

Sadly, however, the immeasurably gifted singer is unlikely to be remembered for her talents, which were so often starved; drowned by drink and tranquillised by drug abuse.

Amy Winehouse's death was one foretold by gruesome pictures of bloody plimsolls and near death experiences from drugs publicly retold by her lovers. It almost seems unsurprising that, in death, Winehouse joins many of her heroes - Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison - all of whom died aged just 27.

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Fresh faced: Amy Winehouse looks healthy in her early years

Frail: Amy looking thin and far older than her years

Scared: Amy in Camden little over a week ago

Amy Winehouse was born in 1983, a second child to cab driver Mitch and his wife Janis, a pharmacist, from North London.

Her parents split when she was nine years old and she and older brother Alex moved to live with their mother in Southgate, North London - just minutes away from The Priory, the rehab clinic favoured by celebrities, which she would revisit just months before her death. 
'She was always very self-willed,' her father Mitch told Rolling Stone in 2007. 'Not badly behaved but...different.'

Innocent: Winehouse before the career, the drugs, the drink and the scandal. Aged just two (left) and eight

The balance between her precocious musical talents and a seeming inclination to self-destruct were clear from a young age. At just 12, Winehouse enrolled at the Sylvia Young Theatre School but was expelled not long after for getting her nose pierced.

She had previously - aged 10 -formed a rap group, Sweet 'n' Sour - Winehouse was Sour - that she later described as 'the little white Jewish Salt 'n' Pepa.'

She joined the Brit School and by 16 her otherworldly soul voice - deep, full and knowing but light and fresh and fragile at the same time - had won her a contract with Simon Fuller's management company, which led to her being signed by Island Records.

Keeping things simple: A fresh-faced Amy performs wearing just a white T-shirt and jeans back in 2004 and at the Q Awards the same year

In 2003, she would release her first album - to much critical acclaim - while also meeting the man with whom she would share possibly the most destructive celebrity relationship of the decade.

The jazz-influenced debut, titled 'Frank', was critically praised for its gems - the anthemic Stronger Than Me, about a weak, feminine boyfriend and F**k Me Pumps, in which she ridiculed tired female gold-diggers, and earned Winehouse an Ivor Novello songwriting award, two Brit nominations and a spot on the shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize.

But Winehouse soon expressed dissatisfaction with the disc, saying she was 'only 80 per cent behind' the album.

A tattoo appears: Winehous still looking fresh faced in 2005, and sporting her new tattoo the next year

That same year, she met Blake Fielder-Civil at a bar and swiftly had his name tattooed above her heart.

The relationship was on-off and infamously tempestuous, involving drug and drink binges. In one picture from 2007, she was seen with bruises on her face and blood seeping from her pink ballet shoes.

She grips Blake, as he displays a face full of scratches after a particularly viscious late night bust-up.

Losing weight: The singer has acquired more tattos at the 2007 Brit Awards, left, and looks gaunt at the MTV music video awards in Losa Angeles in the same year

By 2006, after three years with Blake, rapid weight loss, an ever-expanding beehive hairdo and documented drug and drink problems, Winehouse released Back to Black, her breakthrough album, which made her a huge star across the world.

Working with producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi and soul-funk group the Dap-Kings, Winehouse fused soul, jazz, doo-wop and, above all, a love of the girl-groups of the early 1960s with lyrical tales of romantic obsession and emotional excess.

Back to Black was released in the United States in March 2007 and went on to win five Grammy awards, including song and record of the year for Rehab.

The voice: Amy Winehouse's talent was such that it has opened doors for many other young female soul singers who have earned huge success since her breakthrough. She is pictured performing in 2008

'I did [go to rehab], for just 15 minutes,' she told The Sun at the time. 'I went in and said, "Hello" and explained that I drink because I'm in love and have f****d up the relationship. Then I walked out.'

Winehouse's rise was helped by her distinctive look - black beehive of hair, thickly lined cat eyes, girly tattoos - and her tart tongue.

She was famously blunt in her assessment of her peers, once describing Dido's sound as 'background music - the background to death' and saying of pop princess Kylie Minogue, 'she's not an artist ... she's a pony.'

The songs on Black to Black detailed her relationship with Blake with a similar frankness.

Baring all: Winehouse leaves her flat in Camden with no shoes on

To the pub: Winehouse heads to her local, the Hawley Arms

Struggling: Winehouse at a McDonald's after a court hearing

Big night: Amy climbs into a car at the end of an evening out drinking at Balans in Soho

'I listen to a lot of '60s music, but society is different now,' Winehouse said in 2007. 'I'm a young woman and I'm going to write about what I know.'

Even then, Winehouse's performances were sometimes shambolic, and she admitted to being 'a terrible drunk.'

Increasingly, her personal life began to overshadow her career.

She acknowledged struggling with eating disorders and told a newspaper that she had been diagnosed as manic depressive but refused to take medication. Soon accounts of her erratic behavior, canceled concerts and drink and drug-fueled nights began to multiply.

Photographs caught her unsteady on her feet or vacant-eyed, and she appeared unhealthily thin, with scabs on her face and marks on her arms.

There were embarrassing videos released to the world on the Internet. One showed an addled Winehouse and Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty playing with newborn mice. Another, for which Winehouse apologised, showed her singing a racist ditty to the tune of a children's song.

Winehouse's managers went to increasingly desperate lengths to keep the wayward star on the straight and narrow.

Though she was often reported to be working on new material, fans got tired of waiting for the much-promised follow up to Back to Black.

Wrecked: Amy is bruised, smudged and has blood on her feet, while Blake's face has been scratched

Damaged: A close-up of the shot of Winehouse's blood-soaked pink ballet pumps

Occasional bits of recording were released. Her rendition of The Zutons' Valerie was a hit for producer Mark Ronson but other recording projects with Ronson, one of the architects of the success of Back to Black, came to nothing.

She also had run-ins with the law. In April 2008, Winehouse was cautioned by police for assault after she slapped a man during a raucous night out.

The same year she was investigated by police, although not charged, after a tabloid newspaper published a video that appeared to show her smoking crack cocaine.

'I'm a musician; I'm not a model,' she said on her 2007 concert DVD, I Told You I Was Trouble. 'The more insecure I felt, the more I'd drink. The more insecure I feel, the bigger my hair has to be.'

That year, after breaking up with Blake, going out with chef Alex Claire, and getting back together with her former lover, they married in Miami.

'I know I'm talented, but I wasn't put here to sing,' she told Rolling Stone. 'I was put here to be a wife and a mum and look after my family.'

The renewed relationship with Blake led to cancelled tours and hospital visits after overdosing on drugs.

A day after being told she had received three MTV Video Music Award nods, the singer was rushed to the University College London Hospital after an overdose, which was initially dismissed as 'exhaustion'.

'I really thought I was on the way out,' she said. 'My husband Blake saved me.'

Later that year the pictures were taken of her blood-addled pumps. In emails to blogger Perez Hilton, she insisted Blake did not hit her. 'I was cutting myself after he found me in our room about to do drugs with a call girl and rightly said I wasn't good enough for him. I lost it.'

Happier times: Amy is seen here looking healthier with her father Mitch

Triumphs: Amy Winehouse hugs her mother Janis Winehouse after accepting a Grammy Award in London on February 10, 2008

Later that week, on BBC's Radio 5 Live, Fielder-Civil's mother, Georgette, said: 'I think they both need to get medical help before one of them, if not both of them, eventually will die.'

That November, Fielder-Civil was arrested for an attack on a pub manager the year before. Fielder-Civil later pleaded guilty to assaulting barman James King and then offering him £200,000 to keep quiet about it.

Winehouse stood by 'my Blake' throughout his trial, often blowing kisses at him from the court's public gallery and wearing a heart-shaped pin labelled 'Blake' in her hair at concerts. But British newspapers reported extramarital affairs while Fielder-Civil was behind bars. They divorced in 2009.

After the split, Fielder-Civil described how he thought Winehouse had died in his arms following a three-day drugs binge.

Amy went into a seizure at a party at her home in Camden, North London, and had stopped breathing.

Blake told The Sun: 'She started having a fit on the bed. She slid down on to the floor before I could stop her. She started quivering again and it suddenly grew into what seemed like a full-blown epileptic fit.

'I was panicking. I didn't know know how to help her. I was out of it on drugs as well - and was sobbing and crying out, "Amy!"'

Trial: Amy is photographed as she is led to court for an appearance

Stern: Winehouse was accused of attacking a theatre manager in Milton Keynes

Fielder-Civil put Winehouse into the recovery position and pulled her tongue out of her mouth to stop her biting it.

'I knelt over her as she kept on fitting. But then suddenly she just passed out and stopped breathing. It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen. I felt sure I was watching her die right in front of me. I didn't know what to do or how to save her. I held her to me - and I thought she was dying in my arms. But somehow I managed to open her mouth and breathe air down her throat,' he added.

'At first nothing happened. So I did it again. I was feeling for her pulse because I thought her heart might have stopped.

'Then she spluttered - and I saw her chest rise. I was still sobbing and panicking but I just felt this huge relief that she was alive.'

In June 2008 and again in April 2010, Winehouse was taken to hospital and treated for injuries after fainting and falling at home.

Her father said she had developed the lung disease emphysema from smoking cigarettes and crack, although her spokeswoman later said Winehouse only had 'early signs of what could lead to emphysema.'

Memorable: The singer is unlikely to be forgotten for a long time - for her music as much as for her troubles

Tragic: Amy Winehouse at the peak of her powers, wowing crowds with her incredible voice and haunting lyrics

She left the hospital to perform at Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday concert in Hyde Park in June 2008, and at the Glastonbury festival the next day, where she received a rousing reception but scuffled with a member of the crowd.

She also, in 2010, pleaded guilty to assaulting a theatre manager who asked her to leave a family Christmas show because she'd had too much to drink.

She was given a fine and a warning to stay out of trouble by a judge who praised her for trying to clean up her act.

In a bid to save her ailing health and desperate addiction problems, Winehouse most recently booked herself into rehab in May.

A month previously she had pulled out of her European tour after she was jeered while appearing drunk on stage at her comeback gig in Serbia.

She left the stage frequently, with her band having to improvise in her absence, and was said to have mumbled through parts of her songs.

After the disastrous gigs, the stint at The Priory in May was hoped to have been a means finally to refocus the young singer.

Winehouse, however, checked herself out after just one week.

Amy Winehouse dead at 27 - is she another member of the 'Stupid Club'?

ANALYSIS by PAUL CONNOLLY


When Kurt Cobain, then 27, killed himself in 1994, his mother Wendy said that, 'Now he's gone and joined that Stupid Club.'

She was referring to the long list of rock stars who have died by their own hand at the age of 27: Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Brian Jones to name only a few.

Now, very sadly, Amy Winehouse has died at 27. At the time of writing it's unclear what the cause of death was, so to speculate would be grossly unfair. Like Cobain, Winehouse has left us with a frustratingly meagre canon of work. A voice and a talent like hers should have a much more substantial legacy than just two albums, 2003's promising Frank and 2006's Back To Black, which was a masterpiece of soul.

There's been little new material since Back To Black apart from her cover of The Zutons' Valerie with Mark Ronson and another cover last year, this time Lesley Gore's kitsch classic, It's My Party for a Quincy Jones tribute album.

Clearly, since Back To Black made her a star, she's become more renowned for her lurid lifestyle and, although she's been working on new material, no release date had been scheduled. I sincerely hope she's not remembered more for her drug use than her music but I'm not optimistic. Adele, at least, has much to thank Amy for - Back To Black's success in America made it easier for her to make the huge inroads she's enjoyed across the pond.

I met Amy once, way back prior to the release of Frank, and I found her witty, intelligent and sparky company. She certainly had a mischievous glint in her eye but I did not have her marked down as a potential member of the 'stupid club.' She seemed too perky, alive and confident.

The demons that have been clamped to her back in recent years were nowhere to be seen. Where did they come from? Did the pressure of fame conjure them up? Is that why she was so often drunk on stage? Did she, like Cobain, not enjoy fame? Like Cobain why did she not simply walk away? Perhaps that's why progress on her third album was so slow. Maybe she didn't want the attention focused back on her again.

Again, why didn't she just walk away?

It's desperately sad when someone who brought so much joy to so many dies unnaturally young. It really, really stings. But let's please remember just how talented she was. R.I.P. Amy.

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