FEATURE:
Before the Lights Come Up
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse on Princelet Street, Brick Lane in East London, 2003 for the Frank album cover shoot/PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Moriarty
Amy Winehouse at Forty: The Lead-Up to Frank
_________
ON 20th October, 2003…
PHOTO: Curlers At The Ritz NYC/PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Moriarty
Amy Winehouse released her astonishing and mesmeric debut album, Frank. I am thinking about her because, on 14th September, it would have been her fortieth birthday. We said goodbye to her in 2011. It was a massive loss to the industry. In a previous feature, I looked at her music and said what an impact Frank and 2006’s Back to Black created. When I think of Winehouse at her best and most excited, my mind sort of goes to before Frank. Maybe just before her debut came out - though perhaps even further back. This artist barely twenty who was ready to release this exciting work into the world. I know that there are various Amy Winehouse-related things speculated for the future. There is a biopic in the works. I know, on 14th September, fans around the world will remember her on her fortieth birthday. It will be bittersweet: a mixture of thanks for what she gave us, coupled with the knowledge we will not hear that once-in-a-generation voice sing something fresh and new-born. It will remind us how much she is missed; through we can look back at the incredible music she left and the peerless talent that she possessed. I might end with an interview around the time of Frank’s release. I am also compelled by the early years for a legendary artist. How they were being seen, how we view them in retrospect, and just how their career changed. In the case of Amy Winehouse, she was truly herself before Frank. Sweet, funny, real and ambitious, it was the way her career took off and the pressure the media put on her – and how they vilified her at every opportunity – that lead to her premature passing.
The way the tabloids press hounded her and made it impossible for her to live a normal and happy life! As she left us aged only twenty-seven, we will never know just where Amy Winehouse could have gone. Future albums could have seen her step in a new direction. Maybe collaborations and huge awards. Films and other projects. Sadly, we will never know. There are some books and sources I would recommend as we think about Amy Winehouse. I will come to a fascinating book, where Charles Moriarty discussed snapping Winehouse (the photos throughout this feature are all his work). He met her in June 2003. He was responsible for the iconic cover shot of Frank. Before Frank is a book I would recommend everyone who is a fan of Amy Winehouse gets! Another book I would get, to get an idea of the real Amy, is Amy Winehouse: In Her Own Words:
“Global icon. Six-time Grammy winner. Headline-maker. The most talented recording artist of her generation.
Much has been said about Amy Winehouse since her tragic death aged just 27. But who was the real Amy?
Amy Winehouse: In Her Words shines a spotlight on her incredible writing talent, her wit, her charm and lust for life. Bringing together Amy's own never-before-seen journals, handwritten lyrics and family photographs together for the first time, this intimate tribute traces her creative evolution from growing up in North London to global superstardom, and provides a rare insight into the girl who became a legend.
The Estate of Amy Winehouse will donate 100% of the advance and royalties it receives (net of agency fees charged) from the production and sale of this book to The Amy Winehouse Foundation (registered charity number 1143740). The minimum donation will be £70,000. These funds will assist the charity in continuing their vital work helping thousands of young people to feel supported in managing their emotional wellbeing and making informed life choices. Initiatives include Amy's Place, which provides addiction recovery housing for young women; resilience-building programmes in schools and music therapy programmes supporting children with special educational needs and life-limiting conditions. More information can be found at https://amywinehousefoundation.org”.
As we look ahead to Amy Winehouse’s fortieth birthday and wish she was with us. I am considering 2003 and a year where she was getting buzz and was preparing to release her debut. The first single, Stronger Than Me, came out on 6th October – two weeks before Frank arrived in the world and heralded a unique and stunning talent. Here is a great feature where Charles Moriarty discussed meeting and working with Amy Winehouse:
“The album cover for Amy Winehouse’s 2003 debut album FRANK, showing the 19-year-old artist smiling and carefree, glowing with health, leading two dogs in the streetlight has become all the more iconic with the singer’s tragic passing. The story behind the image and its associated shoots is fascinating, the result of a chance meeting with Dublin-born, London-based portrait photographer Charles Moriarty.
Winehouse put on her make-up, took her guitar, and at dusk the pair headed out into the East End of London. “It was about going out and having fun, really,” Moriarty explains. “I mean, we had a bottle of wine on the side of the street!” At that time in her life Winehouse was still inexperienced in front of the camera so to distract her, Moriarty borrowed two Scottish Terriers from a passer by. “I felt up until that point that we hadn’t gotten what we needed, or it wasn’t quite working. I think that the dogs were a good distraction from the camera for Amy – they allowed her to focus on them, rather than the fact that I was taking a photograph.” It worked. “That was it, that was the shot.”
It’s actually the ones that are very funny that I love. The ones where she’s got the curlers in her hair, there are moments where she reminds me of Lucille Ball and it makes me laugh.
PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Moriarty
After seeing the images, Winehouse’s manager, Nick Shymansky asked him to shoot the album inlay too. “Amy and I both agreed that we wanted to keep it personal and about her, so photographing her at home in Camden would be the best thing to do, but I was going to New York. There ended up being one night between her recordings in New Jersey and Miami where she could come and see me.” It would have to be a night shoot between her increasingly busy recording schedule. “Nick said to me, ‘I know you want to shoot in London but we can’t, so try to make it look like London at night time’. I was like ‘okay, that’s impossible!’”
Following a trip to avant-garde Sex and the City stylist Patricia Field’s shop for clothes and stopping for cocktails as they went location scouting, they ended up in a bar in downtown Manhattan drinking white wine to ride out a passing storm. “As we waited for night, this huge thunder and lightning storm happened for six hours, so basically our location died, as did we when we drank.”
Eventually, the storm subsided, and they slipped out into the New York night. “We were a little drunk, but we did actually get some great shots.” These are some of his favourite images. “It’s actually the ones that are very funny that I love. The ones where she’s got the curlers in her hair, there are moments where she reminds me of Lucille Ball and it makes me laugh.” Moriarty gifted one of his favourite images to the National Portrait Gallery. “I look at that image and it doesn’t essentially belong anywhere in the last fifty years, it could be any time. She looks like she’s about to go out in the 1960s in New York.”
PHOTO: ‘Laundrette 1’/PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Moriarty
It was at the BFI screening of Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy in 2015 that Moriarty realised he had to bring his images to light. “I remember finding it very difficult. The first hour was amazing because it felt like you were back in the room with someone that you knew – and the voice. It was strange but lovely. The second half was upsetting and painful, I felt that the person most people knew was this person who was suffering greatly towards the end of her life, someone I don’t really recognise. I really wanted people to see who I knew, the person I was friends with.”
“I suppose that has always really been the drive of the book, to create something that everyone can hold onto, that holds my own memory. I don’t have very many of them, but these ones are great.” The collection of almost 60 photographs represent a snapshot in time of an emerging artist finding her style and voice. “They really do capture a moment of change in someone’s life that is really wonderful, that moment where all of a sudden you step up to really show your metal, put your voice out there. You know, her voice was so amazing, as was she”.
PHOTO: ‘NYC Phone booth’/PHOTO CREDIT: Charles Moriarty
I want to end with an interview from the archives. Dazed & Confused spoke with Winehouse in 2003. Rather than put in a review for Frank, I will end with this interview. She recorded bits of the album in London, though Winehouse also got to work in various studios in the U.S. That is quite rare for a new artist putting together their debut. Camden’s favourite daughter got that early taste of America. She spent some time at Platinum Sound Recording in New York:
“Dazed&Confused: How did you get discovered?
Amy Winehouse: When I first had any kind of interest, it was through my friend Tyler [James]. He was 19 and I went to school with him. He was talking to his A&R guy Nicky, and Nicky was saying ‘Oh, I heard some girl on the radio today singing Jazz, there’s something about Jazz’. Tyler said ‘Well, if you want someone who sings Jazz then my girl Amy, she’s the Jazz girl’ and that was it really. I just sent him out a little demo, which was a jazz demo, I was even writing songs at that point.
D&C: What was on that demo?
Amy Winehouse: The demo was two jazz standards but they were really cheesy, really straight backing tracks. I’m surprised he rang me. I mean, I sang them alright but they were really cheesy, really funny. It was 'Night & Day' and 'Fly Me To The Moon' or something.
D&C: Have you been singing jazz for a long time?
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, I’ve been singing jazz for maybe six years.
D&C: Because that’s what your voice is best suited for?
Amy Winehouse: It was my first love, well it wasn’t my first musical love but it was always there, it was always very present. I mean, Frank Sinatra, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan. They were always there, in my house, what my parents would listen to.
D&C: Are they musicians?
Amy Winehouse: No, my mum is a pharmacist and my dad’s a cab driver, well, he will be in a couple of months, he’s doing the knowledge at the moment. I’m so proud of him; he’s been working so hard my dad. He’s messed up a couple of the appearances but he’s persevered, you know. He’s very impatient so for him to have done this and worked hard for it and then to have gone back and done things that he’s failed at, you know that’s a very admirable thing. He always had the jazz thing in the house, always, from when I was a baby and my mum liked folkier stuff like James Taylor and Carole King, and I got into them quite heavily.
D&C: So your parents had good music taste?
Amy Winehouse: Yeah and my dad was really into the Beatles, like really into the Beatles. And my dad just used to sing all the time, around the house. He still does wherever he goes, he’s wicked, and his wife’s like ‘Shut up, Mitchell!’. Everywhere he goes, everywhere – ‘Everyone knows you can sing, shut up!’ stuff like that. He is good though, but he never did anything with it but he just chose to be a double glazing sales person in London.
D&C: Where did you grow up?
Amy Winehouse: I grew up in North London, I’ve always lived in London. My dad’s from East London. My mum’s from Brooklyn but she moved to East London. This is cute actually. They lived on the same street when they were kids but they didn’t know each other. My mum knew my dad as the boy up the road who used to knick the bin lids and then they got married. So, when they were older they were like ‘I used to live on Commercial Street’ and my mum was like ‘So, did I!’ Very romantic.
D&C: So, they lived together, she went to Brooklyn and then came back?
Amy Winehouse: No my mum was born in Brooklyn but she came to England when she was really young, when she was two, really young. She’s not American at all with her manner and her speaking.
D&C: So, your parents being into jazz and folk didn’t make you want to rebel against that?
Amy Winehouse: Not really, at all, because while I had this music going on the parallel was at school I was doing very cheesy, musical theatre, very over the top. I knew I wanted to perform and the only thing I could think of to do, which was close to what I wanted to do, was I wanted to sing and I wanted to dance and I wanted to act, all at once. Musicals are the only thing you do with that kind of thing. I just realised it wasn’t for me, it took me a good two or three years of doing tap and doing ballet and singing “Where Is The Love?” and all that cheesy shit. It took me a good while to realise that I loved the songs in the musicals, the actual songs. But I preferred them when they were taken out of their context in the musical and messed around with by someone like the Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell, you know.
D&C: People that would take it somewhere else?
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, take it somewhere else and interpret it their way, you know? My idols are people that took songs and made them completely theirs. Which is why Dinah Washington is one of my favourite singers because she was doing the same songs everyone was doing, you know how people would just do all the same songs at the time because there was the same catalogue of songs going round at the time. And she would do something and after she would do it people would leave it because she’d of done it so good they would just be like ‘Shit, Dinah’s done that we better leave it now”. Like, she would just make it hers, like really make it hers.
D&C: So, were you at stage school or normal school?
Amy Winehouse: I was at stage school. I went to both because I kept getting kicked out of a few schools. I went to Sylvia Young’s but I was only there for about a year, a year and a half, because I got kicked out.
D&C: Why were you kicked out?
Amy Winehouse: It really wasn’t anything. Like, I had my nose pierced and they sent me home. It’s tragic. It’s really sad.
D&C: Did you study jazz?
Amy Winehouse: No, I’ve never studied it formally.
D&C: You seem to know quite a lot about the history of it, have you read books?
Amy Winehouse: No, I mean, No. I just listen to the actual music. You know what? You know those documentaries that came out? A guy called Ken Burns?
D&C: Yeah!
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, I’ve got them on video. What was that like 2 or 3 years ago? When that came out that cemented a lot of different things for me because them videos were so good. They weren’t only the history of jazz; it was jazz relevant to social history and you got to see how the different types of jazz evolved.
D&C: I remember the one about Ella Fitzgerald’s life as a homeless teenager on the streets.
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, there were a lot of people like that. Billie Holiday’s another one, she was a prostitute at like what? 12 or 13. She was only singing, like scatting to make money.
People always think all jazz musicians were from poverty-ridden backgrounds because of stuff like that. But you’ve got the other side, like there was some people who were so affluent like Miles Davis. His dad was a really prominent doctor where they lived and they had a fucking fat guesthouse or something where they lived, you know. And that was the thing about Miles, he always tried to be really street. That was his thing, he was always trying to look really street but he came from this really rich background or rich rural of that time, in the settings of the town.
D&C: It spans across all walks of life. Have you recorded in America?
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, we did the last three quarters of the album there. Yeah, some wicked songs. I’d done so much here, a year or maybe two and a half years of work here but it wasn’t until I went to America when it all came together. I realised I had to work, I had to go and travel to make it happen, you know. Yeah, it just really came together in this last year that I’ve been back and fourth out of America.
D&C: Where were you?
Amy Winehouse: I was in Miami with a guy called Salaam Remi. I’ve done half of the album with him. It’s wicked; he’s a really cool guy.
D&C: Does he share your interest in jazz?
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, he’s very knowledgeable about it. I know it sounds a bit wanky but I can’t even work with someone unless they know more about music than me. I have to learn from them or it’s pointless. I’m at a point where I just don’t want to do anything except take in as much as I can do. Salaam’s the kind of guy who just knows. He’ll play me a song that he’ll just know that I love, before I’ve heard it. He’s one of those guys who’s just a music man
D&C: Did you record at the Hit Factory?
Amy Winehouse: No it was at his own place, which is in Biscayne Bay in Miami.
D&C: Had you been out there before? Like when you were a kid with your Mum?
Amy Winehouse: Yeah, because my Mum was from Brooklyn we all went on family holidays to Florida. We were there all the time. I mean, it’s like any bunch of Jews go on holiday there. It’s like a Jewish holiday spot, isn’t it?
D&C: It’s gradually turning into the home of hip hop as well.
Amy Winehouse: Yeah. That was wicked at Salaam’s, like you’d come out of his studio and the icons would be right across the road and you can hear the heavy beats coming out of there all day.
D&C: I was in the studio there interviewing Pharrell Williams recently and then P Diddy walks in.
Amy Winehouse: Oh my god!
D&C: And then Missy Elliot was there too.
Amy Winehouse: Oh my god! I would have been tip toeing around like listening at all the doors. ‘Sorry, Hello Missy’.
D&C: So where did you record the rest of it?
Amy Winehouse: The rest of it was done, some with Salaam and some of it was done in New York with this guy called Commissioner Gordon (Williams), who did most of the Lauryn Hill album and I’ve been working with those same musicians that did the Lauryn Hill album. Not out of anything like me going ‘I have to work with the people that..’ you know it wasn’t like that. It just literally came together like that before anyone had even realised.
D&C: It must have been amazing.
Amy Winehouse: It was amazing! That vibe I was in New York that was the best studio I’ve ever worked in with the musicians there, because I’m a musician and I’m not someone who can just go in, hear a backing track and write a backing track. No way, I can’t do that. That’s the hardest thing for me to do as a songwriter is just to get a backing track and just write to it, I can’t do that. I have to have the guitarist who did the backing track there so he can go ‘So it’s kind of like that, it’s this change from that and you go wow’ you know, you need to have that there, you need to have the bass player there. As much of the live sound that you can possibly can in the studio and that’s the best vibe for me”.
I want to leave it there. Born in Southgate, North London, but someone who made Camden their home and spiritual bedrock, on 14th September, the world remembers Amy Winehouse on her fortieth birthday. An artist who inspired so many and made such a huge impact whilst she was with us, we will never see anyone like her again! Reading early interviews, seeing those great and candid photos and hearing that debut album music makes me realise…
HOW much she is truly missed.