From beyond the grave, Winehouse’s devastating attack on her father
FEBRUARY 2008, and Amy Winehouse is sweeping the board at the Grammy awards in Los Angeles. While she watches from a hotel room in London — visa and legal issues having kept her out of America — she is announced as the winner of record of the year, best new artist, best female pop vocal performance for her hit single rehab, and best pop vocal album for back To black.
undoubtedly, i t’s an astonishing haul of awards for any artist, and especially for one who is just 24 years old. but observers note she looks sad as well as stunned over the satellite link, paying tribute to ‘ my blake incarcerated’ — her husband blake Fielder-Civil, then in jail for his part in a pub brawl.
According to a major documentary film, Amy, which premieres in Cannes today, that sense of deflation carried on after the cameras stopped rolling.
Her friend Juliette tells the film- makers: Afterwards she said to me, “This is so boring without drugs.”
‘It should have been one of the greatest moments of her life. I thought, “Oh Amy.” It made me cry.’
The film is an, at times, unsparing portrait of the singer Amy Jade Winehouse, who died aged 27 in 2011 after a drinking binge.
In her brief period of fame she had been counted as one of the great vocal talents of her generation — Hollywood crooner Tony bennett believes that she rivalled legends Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holliday. but her hectic and chaotic life left her spectacular career in ruins by the time she died.
A desperate love affair with blake had led to addictions to heroin and crack cocaine. He wasn’t faithful to her, and they divorced.
by the time of her death she had been clean of drugs, according to her family, for three years. She was also said to be engaged to film director reg Traviss — although this new romance was on and off as she struggled with her drink problem.
On a bad day she would wake up, drink a bottle of wine, and go back to bed again. On worse days she would binge on vodka.
In July 2011 she was found dead in bed at her home i n Camden, North London, by a bodyguard who had been hired to keep an eye on her. An inquest found she died of alcohol poisoning, with two empty vodka bottles beside her bed.
blame for Amy’s troubles is laid far and wide by the film. blake Fielder- Civil’s role in her downfall is discussed at some length. Amy’s father Mitch, though, says that in the end it was down to her, and that the family did all they could.
And this is what has caused an immense and unedifying row, ahead of the film’s premiere at noon. For the Amy on screen leaves viewers in no doubt that Mitch was not a great father.
He is seen visiting her in St Lucia with a film crew in tow — seeking his own slice of fame via another documentary — and in footage chosen for the new film she looks clearly appalled.
AMY is seen saying: ‘ Why have you done this to me? You have to come out with a camera crew! Are you only interested in me for what you can get out of me?’ And at the time Mitch’s resulting documentary was aired, she wrote on Twitter: ‘WHY don’t my dad WRITE a SONG when something bothers him instead of going on national TV?’
One sound engineer from the recordings she did at that time goes f urther, describing Mitch as a ‘ gold digger’, an all egation vehemently denied by Mitch.
Not surprisingly, Mitch’s assertion that Amy quickly got over the trauma of his leaving her, mother Janis and brother Alex to start a new life with second wife Jane is treated sceptically by the film-makers.
blake, who has been interviewed for the film, says that Amy told him that her father walking out was the reason why she was so promiscuous in her early 20s. And there is footage of her as a teenager, bulimic and tattooed, admitting she is on anti-depressants aged 15.
One person who has seen the film commented on its portrayal of Mitch: ‘He comes across as utterly exploitative and wanting to get what he can out of having a famous daughter. While he is in St Lucia they have a row because he tells her off for being rude to some fans who wanted a picture.
‘That might sound entirely reasonable — but his manner gives the impression that he cares more about their sensibilities than hers.’
Another person who has seen the film comments:
‘There is no doubt that Mitch doesn’t come out of it well at all. He loved her, but in his own way.’
As you might expect, Mitch — a bluff former cab driver — has plenty to say about all of this. This week he is in Boca Raton, Florida, looking at a scheme to teach disadvantaged children music after school.
He works full-time for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, the charity set up in her name, which educates youngsters about alcohol and drugs, among other i nitiatives connected to music.
He tells me over the phone that he and Amy were ‘great friends’ and that he saw her every day. He is not attending the premiere — having not been invited — but will send his lawyers to see it when it’s released.
It has to be said that Mitch, 50, is unnervingly cheery. He talks about the ‘emotional toll’ of the film, but in truth his prevailing feeling seems to be annoyance.
And there is a sense that he enjoyed the entree into showbiz which Amy provided. In 2010 he released a j azz album, and he continues to perform. He readily agrees that, were it not for her, nobody would want to hear him sing.
What’s more, within a week of Amy’s dying, he visited the Houses of Parliament to talk about addiction, and gave dozens of interviews in the weeks which followed.
On the anniversary of her death he brought out a book, Amy, My Daughter. Some of her fans were appalled that he included a ‘treasure trove of touching handwritten notes’ from Amy in his book.
One wrote online: ‘This man is a money-grabbing self-publicist.’
Still, any serious fire was drawn when he announced that £1 from every copy sold would go to The Amy Winehouse Foundation. Mitch tells me that the advance alone gave the charity £1.5 million.
But the uncomfortable truth is that, with his daughter gone, Mitch Winehouse has had both the charitable cause and the media platform to rise to a level of fame which he clearly rather relishes.
And his fame by association leaves some feeling rather queasy. Mitch has also been feeling uneasy — for different reasons.
He tells me: ‘I started to worry about the film when they were interviewing Amy’s friends. Some of them had walked out and said that they couldn’t speak to these people because the questions were so skewed and wrong.
‘Then I saw the first cut. I thought, “Well, if this goes out I couldn’t walk down [central London’s] Wardour Street without someone punching me in the face.” It didn’t just put me in a bad light, it put Amy in a bad light as well.’
He ADDS: ‘It was completely negative. They wanted to present the last three years of her life as lonely and unhappy, and to say that she was on her own. Nothing could be further from the truth.’
Mitch admits ‘there were some bad moments. But she was clean of drugs for three years before she died. She had a wonderful relationship with Reg and her family and her friends. She was doing so well.’
He has, he believes, fallen victim to the demands of Hollywood-style story-telling. ‘They wanted to have a hero and a villain. Amy is the hero and Blake and Raye (Cosbert, her manager) and me are lined up as the villains. And then they work up to their tragic ending. The fact that there was Reg and that happiness is ignored because it doesn’t fit in.’
Specifically, Mitch says that Amy was ‘fine’ about the camera crew he brought to St Lucia.
He adds that there were hours of footage of them getting on well together, but that the film-makers — the team behind the acclaimed documentary Senna, about the late racing driver — chose to use one argument.
They also used footage of him talking about her in 2007, sayi ng that he didn’t think she needed to go to rehab ‘at this time’ — and removed that final, key phrase.
The film-makers say: ‘We came on board with the full backing of the Winehouse family and we approached the project with total objectivity.
‘We conducted in the region of 100 interviews with people that knew Amy Winehouse; friends, family, former partners and members of the music industry that worked with her. The story that the film tells is a reflection of our findings from these interviews.’
Mitch is more positive, however, about the f i rst 45 minutes of the film, which has a lot of footage of Amy as a young girl and a teenager.
Some of it has come from the Winehouse family, who have been paid by Universal, Amy’s record label. Mitch says he has already given the money to the founda- tion, and that despite this current dispute has no intention of repaying it. ‘I’m not giving it back, that money will go in Amy’s name to help people,’ he says. ‘ I am concerned that if I am portrayed as a money-grabber it may have an effect on people t hinking of supporting the foundation.
He says he feels ‘misled’, while Amy’s mother Janis ‘is as upset as I am’. As we finish the interview, Mitch starts to muse about what he would do i f he was at today’s premiere.
‘I would make a speech on the red carpet, they wouldn’t be able to stop me. I want to tell everyone that this isn’t the truth.’
Which would also, as Mitch’s critics would surely point out, put him back in the spotlight again.
But then the one person who could establish the truth about what went wrong f or Amy Winehouse is gone — her talent snuffed out by disastrous choices.
What is certain is that, with her name once more expected to pull in the crowds at the box office, the f i nger- pointing i s unlikely to conclude any time soon.