Amy Winehouse
He was the best friend who stood by Amy Winehouse through good and bad, sharing her most intimate secrets. ten years after her death, tyler James, 39, opens up to new
Iheard Amy sing before I heard her speak and I was blown away by this tiny, 12-year-old girl singing like a 50-year-old who had just smoked 100 Marlboro Reds. It was 1996 at the Sylvia Young Theatre School and I couldn’t believe the talent.
We connected straight away because we had an awful lot in common – she was a kindred spirit. All throughout our teens we were close but in the summer of 2004, Amy’s career really kicked off.
Her first album, Frank, was out and we were living the dream. She was touring the album, we were young and she was doing what she loved – singing and performing.
We were best friends, getting ready in the dressing room, listening to music, travelling… We thought we were going to have the most wonderful lives in the world.
But this was before people really knew who she was – before she lost her freedom and her privacy.
descent into drugs
Amy used to describe fame as a terminal cancer and the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to perform for her fans, it’s that she hated everything that came along with being a public person.
Very quickly, after all the touring and promotion around Frank wound down, Amy started to lose it. She was 22 with all this cash and no work commitments, and she started day drinking. She would go to The
Good Mixer at 11am, near the flat we shared in London’s Camden, in her jeans and ballet pumps with no make-up, and beat harddrinking men at pool. And she’d drink all day – a black sambuca shot every 20 minutes.
Hanging out like this in the day led her to meet Blake [Fielder-civil] in The Old Blue Last pub in Shoreditch, East London, one night when I wasn’t there. He was just a guy she fancied at first, but addictive personalities can also become addicted to people and it wasn’t long before she didn’t just fancy him, she was obsessed with him.
Blake was a heroin addict. He was the first person to give Amy heroin. She told me years later that she made the decision to take it herself – to be with him and be on his level. She just decided, well, if that’s the thing that’s stopping me from being with him, then I’m going to do it.
Amy also once told me that “if it’s healthy, it’s not love” and I know that sounds strange
but really the definition of falling in love is going a bit insane. Amy threw herself into the intense feelings completely.
She always hated songs about independent women and that kind of stuff. She preferred the heartwrenching, depressing, all-consuming side of love. When Amy fell in love with Blake she went all in.
Of course, when I first met him I knew he wasn’t a lawyer or anything, but he was very charming. A lawyer wouldn’t have been Amy’s cup of tea anyway. I know that people see him as a villain but that’s hard for me because I know she loved him. She loved being in love with him and all the craziness that went with it. I’m glad she had that, but of course he was in a bad way. I’ve had the privilege of seeing Blake when he’s sober and he’s a nice guy. You can’t judge someone for what they’re like when they’re smoking crack.
falling apart
It’s the same with Amy. I hate that people think of her as being a crackhead when the truth is, all of the bad behaviour people saw was when she was in the throes of addiction. It’s an illness. The loveliest person in the world will not be that person once they get hold of a crack pipe.
I am so defensive of Amy. Those pictures of her looking her worst, they were when she was on crack. When she was clean, which was a lot of the time in those final years, she was one of the most beautiful people you’ve ever seen. Beautiful with immaculate, perfect skin. There’s obviously more to beauty than a person’s looks but it destroyed her that people had seen her falling apart.
Amy told me she drank and used drugs because she was bored, and while I think that’s partly true, I ultimately think she was trying to escape what was happening to her. She was becoming the most famous singer in the world and that’s an awful lot to take in because you don’t have time to process it. It happened so fast and she wanted to block it out.
There are plenty of artists out there who want the fanfare and the fame, but Amy wasn’t one of them. Among her struggles
‘Amy used to describe fame as a terminal cancer’
with fame, she had her own problems, like everyone else. Anxiety, depression… that sort of thing. But imagine going on a bender and waking up on a Monday morning to find out everyone across the world knows about it and you can’t leave your house. She’d say to me, “T, you don’t still want to be famous do you?” After watching what Amy went through, I never did.
I think it’s important for people to know that amazing as Amy was, she was still just a person. It’s not normal to be idolised by everyone. We couldn’t even have windows in the houses we lived in, and if we did, they had to be treated so you couldn’t see in. You become a prisoner.
tragic accident
In the last three years of Amy’s life she was getting better and her intention was to be sober, happy and healthy, but she was a human and she made mistakes. Unfortunately, when you f**k up as an addict, it’s a biblical f**k-up and you end up in hospital. She’d spend three weeks doing really well and then spend a weekend in hospital.
During the period of less than a year that we lived in Camden Square, Amy relapsed maybe seven or eight times. She would drink bottles of vodka and pass out on the sofa. When someone reaches this level of alcoholism they turn into somebody else, like they’re possessed by an actual demon.
She’d have me up all night. She’d come down the stairs and kick my bedroom door open. It could be three in the morning, I’d be asleep and she’d be screaming my name. I know lots of people saw Amy’s death as inevitable, because of everything in the press, but the simplest truth is that it was an accident. When you’re an addict, it can happen at any stage.
The day before she died, she called me at lunchtime. I could tell she’d only had a couple of drinks. I walked to the field at the end of the road and we talked. She promised she’d stop drinking the following day and I believed her.
I was away from home and she rang me again that night, maybe 11pm, very drunk, chatting nonsense. I fell asleep afterwards on my mum’s sofa. Around 2.30am she rang again and I didn’t answer. It was pointless – she wouldn’t even remember it – so I went back to sleep.
I wasn’t worried when I reached our home at Camden Square on Saturday,
23 July, 2011, and saw one of our security boys, Andrew, in the hall – not even when
the ambulance arrived right after me. But then a second ambulance arrived.
I ran up the stairs to find Andrew was already blocking the doorway to Amy’s bedroom. I was still trying to break through when the paramedic walked out from behind him and said, “I’m sorry, mate, but she’s long gone. She isn’t even warm any more.”
I ran outside and collapsed on the steps outside the front door. I was sobbing, I was lost.
never forgotten
I believe she was almost there – just about to crack it. She didn’t want to die. She was looking to the future, even if she hadn’t quite figured out what it was going to look like yet, or whether or not it involved being an artist.
I think if she was still here, she’d still be a genius – a ridiculous instrumentalist, vocalist and songwriter, but perhaps they would just be things she did for herself. If she was alive, she’d use music as a creative outlet but I don’t think she’d want to be famous, if that was even possible. Perhaps she’d never have been able to come back from that level.
The world is much more aware now about people’s mental health and how important it is. And while I think Amy could have done with less pressure on her, I don’t blame the music industry or management for what happened to her. I blame addiction. I could only do what I did. I supported her in every way I could.
I know from the public’s perspective, the greatest tragedy is that she didn’t get to write another album, but for me, the biggest tragedy is that she didn’t get to be a mother.
Amy’s idea of motherhood was to be like a mum to the krays boys. She was very motherly, she loved doing your tie up for you and she loved cooking for me and the boys – our security team. She would have been an amazing mother. I think it was her traditional upbringing, and her Jewish upbringing, that made her want a family. We used to talk about having kids and she wanted twin boys called Marlon and Brandon.
On the first anniversary of her death I went to Amy’s house and lit candles. I used to think about going to Camden Square and visiting the last house we lived in, but I know I’d find it too hard. Camden is a strange place for me now. I’ve heard it’s like a shrine to Amy – with murals and statues – which is amazing for everyone else, but weird for me. I understand that for so many people she’s an icon but to me, she’s just my friend. It was our stomping ground so I’d find it too strange and upsetting to go back there.
It’s hard to accept that it’s been 10 years because it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long at all. I try not to pay too much attention to the anniversary because I think about her every single day. I’ll spend the day on my own. I probably won’t want to talk to people. That’s how I handle it.
I get signs from Amy all the time. I know that she’s with me every day. I was working in a random little town in west Ireland a couple of weeks ago and opposite the studio was a shop called the Wine House. I was working with a producer on the computer, because of coronavirus, and guess where he was? Camden Square. Stuff like that happens all the time. I try to live my life for her as much as for myself because I recognise how lucky I am that I am here. I carry her in my heart every day.
‘If she was still here, she’d still be a genius’