FEATURE:
(There Is) No Greater Love
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2006/PHOTO CREDIT: Dean Chalkley
Remembering the Great Amy Winehouse
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ON 23rd July…
IN THIS PHOTO: Amy Winehouse in 2003/PHOTO CREDIT: Phil Knott
it will be fourteen years since we lost Amy Winehouse. One of the most extraordinary talents of her generation, she died at the age of twenty-seven. There are questions around how far she could have gone and what her third studio album would have sounded like. Two studio albums, 2003’s Frank and 2006’s Back to Black, are a glimpse into her exceptional gift. One of the most moving and powerful voices! Much imitated but never bettered, 23rd July will see fans share their memories of Winehouse. I wanted to include a couple of interviews with her. I have included a playlist at the end of this feature. However, people do not really highlight the interviews. An insight into her career and life at the time. I am going to start out with an interview that was originally published in Hot Press in 2006. There is a bit of a full circle moments. Amy Winehouse mentions in the interview how it would a dream to sing with Tony Bennett. They did eventually record together. Their duet, Body and Soul, was released on Bennett’s Duets II of 2011:
“Excellent. Does she remember her first kiss?
“Ever? I was about 11 or 12 and it was with a Greek boy called Chris *¡+&*£&^%©¡ who’s gay now – I’m not sure if his mum knows, so only use his Christian name! My best friend Juliette thought I was making it up, so when my Mum picked us up from his house and we got in the car, she said, ‘Let me smell your breath.’ I went ‘haaaaah’ and she goes, ‘Oh my God, boy breath, I believe you!’
“My first kiss with Alex was lovely as well. I was in my pub playing pool and noticed him from the off when he walked in. I made him go and buy me a shot ‘cause the bar staff, who are my friends, were refusing to serve me on account of the golf ball-sized lump I had on my head from the previous night’s bad behaviour! I said to him, ‘I know you don’t know me, but will you take this two quid and get me a tequila,’ and he goes, ‘No, save your money.’ A few drinks later I was sitting on his lap and went, ‘Come outside, I want to tell you something.’ He was totally clueless as to what I had in mind, but eventually I got him outside and that’s where it happened.”
Barbara Cartland – if you weren’t dead – eat your heart out! What would Amy Winehouse’s perfect romantic day comprise of?
“The boy doesn’t get up ‘til late, so I’d start by going to the gym early on my own and raising my energy levels for what’s to come later.
“What do I work out to? The Rocky theme. No, sometimes when I’m on the treadmill I think of that music in my head, but what I actually listen to is hip-hop like Missy, Nas and Mos Def. Adrenalin pumping, it’s back to the house where I cook him breakfast, we eat and read the newspapers in bed and then have a nice, soapy bath together. Next we’d go for a walk in London, pick somewhere nice in Soho for dinner and, not too drunk, head home for some lovin’. You’re making me all tingly!”
Which is a sentence I shall cherish for the rest of my life. And would the soundtrack to all that lovin’ include one of her own songs?
“Eeeeeurrrrgh, that’s wrong on so many different levels,” she grimaces. “?uestlove did a compilation called Babies Making Babies, which is the ultimate Sunday afternoon sex album. Well, anytime sex album!”
For those who aren’t in the hip-hop know – e.g. me – ?uestlove is the nom de studio of The Roots’ Afro-sporting drummer Ahmir Khalib Thompson. He’s produced two volumes of Babies Making Babies, both of which are guaranteed to have you banging like a rattlesnake. Talking of rap royalty, what’s this I hear about Amy hobnobbing in New York with Jay-Z?
“I did two shows in New York recently – Mos Def who’s one of my all-time heroes was at the first and Jay-Z was at the second. It’s always nice to be supported by people you admire. I don’t know if it’s because of the version of ‘You Know I’m No Good’ that’s come out with Ghostface Killah on it, but a lot of the hip-hop community in America seem to know who I am.”
Although Winehouse has yet to meet Ghostface – “We were on opposite sides of the Atlantic when it was being put together” – it’s made her eager to do other collaborations.
“My ultimate would be to sing with Tony Bennett. When I was making my first record, I went to his studio ‘cause the guy I was doing some of it with, Commissioner Gordon, knew his son. He wasn’t there, but just being in his gaff made me cry – it was so embarrassing!”.
The second and final interview I want to come to is from The Telegraph. Neil Mccormick recalled an interview with Amy Winehouse that turned out to be the last. These are only a couple of examples of Winehouse being interviewed. There are a lot that revolve around her struggles with alcohol and tabloid harassment. There are early interviews like this one from DAZED in 2003 that gives us insight into Amy Winehouse around the time of Frank being released. I do hope that there are lost or hidden interviews that come to light. Knowing more about this incredible person. Someone who was subjected to constant press harassment and pressure. I think back to Winehouse in 2003 and starting out. This optimism and excitement. Fame and its pressures combined. Heartbreaking to think of how different things could have been if she was left alone and give more space and support. Take time out from music. There is no use speculating and blaming. It is clear that this once-in-a-generation supernova burned bright in her short life:
“In March this year, I did what turned out to be the last interview with Amy Winehouse. We didn’t talk about drugs, or rehab, or her unhappy love life, or cancelled tours and interrupted recording sessions. It wasn’t about her well-publicised troubles at all. It was about music, about jazz and singing, the things that really motivated her, the things that made her great.
I was privileged to watch her record a duet with legendary crooner Tony Bennett in Abbey Road studios. It was a magical experience, watching these two great talents sing together, voices wrapping around each other, rising and falling, scatting and blending in jazzy cadences, as they worked up a version of the classic ’Body And Soul’, each take getting better than the last.
Winehouse was obviously nervous, exhibiting the slightly insecure demeanour of a brattish teenager, alternately blasé and sulky. She had run a gauntlet of paparazzi on arrival, and her entourage of stylists, management and record company representatives were worried about the response of their notoriously mercurial charge. Winehouse, however, dismissed concerns with a shrug and “Whatever!”
In mini-dress and patterned cardigan, she looked good, healthier than I had seen her in years, tanned and fuller-figured, big hair sculpted around her striking face. The year before, a producer I know described Winehouse as a write-off, creatively stuck and unable to function for ten minutes without resorting to drugs. The comment had offended her father, Mitch. “She’s not a write off,” he insisted. “She’s a recovering addict.”
The Amy I saw seemed well on the way back to her best, which makes our brief encounter all the more poignant.
I was there for a feature on the 85-year-old Bennett, who is recording an album of duets. The invitation to join one of her heroes in the studio was something Winehouse could not refuse. “We love you so much,” she told the white-haired, dapper Bennett.
“I’m not going to cry,” she said, when he took her hands. “I’m not going to cry.”
She apologised for being nervous, saying it was her first time in a recording studio in a while. I asked if it was good to be back. “It’s good to be in the studio with Tony,” she replied. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”
She talked about how her father raised her on Bennett and Sinatra. “I grew up listening to your records,” she told Tony. “You taught me how to sing.”
They sang together, on two adjacent microphones (not a given in this digital era, when vocals are often separately compiled from assemblages of multiple takes, then autotuned to fake perfection). They sang take after take, in search of something mysterious and almost undefinable.
“You’re just feeling it,” she told me. “You don’t think about it. If you thought about it, you wouldn’t be able to sing it at all.”
Bennett, the old pro, looked relaxed and barely seemed to consider his own performance, focusing on encouraging Winehouse, watching her closely all the time. She was fidgety and uncomfortable, chewing her sleeve, looking at her feet, the walls, the ceiling, everything but her musical partner, yet singing up a storm in her rich, ancient voice, channelling Dinah Washington and Billie Holiday. She became increasingly bold, her voice taking off in daring flights, but would suddenly call a halt, muttering “Can we sing it again? I’m terrible. I don’t want to waste your time.” No two takes were the same. “It’s getting there, innit?” she cheerfully snorted after one particularly amazing display of vocal prowess.
“I’m my own worst critic,” she told me afterwards, “and if I don’t pull off what I think I wanted to do in my head, then I won’t be a happy girl.” Her sulky demeanour she put down to nerves. “I’ve got Tony’s voice right in my ear and that’s so much for me that I can’t look up and see Tony the person as well. I sound so stupid but it’s hard.”
Winehouse’s surprising self-criticism, and her unease in the situation, was revealing. “I’m not a natural born performer. I’m a natural singer, but I’m quite shy, really.” She said she always fought nerves before a performance.
“You know what it’s like? I don’t mean to be sentimental or soppy but its a little bit like being in love, when you can’t eat, you’re restless, it’s like that. But then the minute you go on stage, everything’s OK. The minute you start singing.”
Her technique was a wonder to observe, the way she moved on and off the microphone, the way her mouth worked, all lips and tongue, shaping the sound. Bennett was clearly enjoying himself, taking a relaxed, almost conversational tone, while she added layers of depth, daring and drama.
During a break, he offered her a throat lozenge: “Have you ever tried Strepsils?”. Such an innocent question for a woman the UN described as a poster girl for drug abuse. “I like the honey ones best,” she responded sweetly.
It’s hard to believe that encounter took place in spring. Maybe Winehouse wasn’t really ready to venture back into the spotlight. She certainly wasn’t ready to return to the stage, her disastrous performance in Belgrade in June leading to the cancellation of a short European tour.
I first met her in 2003, when she was just a delight, such a precocious talent, so fully in love with music, but even then I found her frustratingly erratic live. In a review of a performance at The Jazz Cafe in 2004, I called her “the girl with everything — except stage presence.” I noted the way she seemed to want to hide behind her guitar. Maybe, after all, the stage wasn’t the place for her particular sensitivities.
At Abbey Road studios, Winehouse spoke to me about her love of jazz, how she modelled her vocal style on the instrumental playing of Thelonious Monk and Charlie Mingus, namechecking her three favourite vocalists as Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington and Minnie Ripperton. She thought she might record a “more purist” jazz album some day, citing contemporary British jazz talents Soweto Kinch, Jazz Jamaica and Tomorrow’s Warriors as people she would like to work with.
She also opened up the possibility of studying music. “I would love to study guitar or trumpet. I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well. If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play.”
This was all in the future. She may have had a hedonistic and self-destructive streak, and she was an addict battling deep problems, but at 27, I think Amy really believed in her own future. She told Bennett that, after the session, she wanted to go home and put on one of his records. “I’d rather hear you sing than listen to my own voice.”
She was relaxed and laughing by the end, a warm, loud, dirty laugh, full of pleasure. “I’m so happy to be here,” she told Bennett. “It's a story to tell my grandchildren, to tell their grandchildren, to make sure they tell their grandchildren”.
On 23rd July, we remember Amy Winehouse fourteen years after her death. Influencing artists of today – everyone from RAYE to Greentea Peng have been compared to her -, her music will amaze and captivate people for decades to come. Twenty-two years after her debut album came out, I don’t think we will ever see anyone like her again. It is clear she was a true pioneer and pure talent. Even though she is gone, her immense legacy…
WILL live forever.