♪ I never played
Downloaded from YTS.MX
♪ Oh what a mess we've made
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
♪ And now the final frame
♪ Love
- I'll be watching till I drop dead.
So you know, it'll be good.
- Amy Winehouse is one of the most iconic
artists of the 21st century.
Her sound, style and honesty set her apart from the rest
as truly one a kind.
- Amy's music was so different because nobody
had done it like Amy Winehouse before.
The lyrics, they tore at your heart strings.
They had depth.
You could tell that she'd experienced them.
- I'll always put a punchline in the song always.
I don't know, I just try and be different
with my lyrics, definitely.
- Thanks to her monumental album Back to Black
in 2006, she went on to be one of the most
award-winning superstars and the face of British music.
- I just wanna make an album where I'm doing everything.
I wanna be able to say that is mine, you know what I mean.
I made this, and it's mine.
- But the constant fame and attention
came at a price.
With the nonstop year in, year out war
between her and the media, Amy Winehouse found herself
caught up in life-threatening addictions,
class A substance abuse, self-harm and toxic relationships.
Inevitably ending in her tragic demise
that stunned the world.
- Police were called by the London Ambulance Service
to a house in Camden Square Northwest One
shortly before 1605 hours today.
According to reports of a woman found deceased,
and I can confirm that the deceased is Amy Winehouse.
- Well the thing about Amy Winehouse was,
there was nothing mediocre about her,
and she had bucket loads of soul.
- Witness the rise and fall of Britain's
most iconic star and the leadup to her devastating death.
♪ I want to kiss you
♪ But I would not dare
- Born on the 14th of September, 1983,
Amy Winehouse grew up in Camden Towne in London.
Raised by her parents, Mitch and Janice Winehouse,
Amy was raised listening to the soulful sounds
of Frank Sinatra and 1950s jazz.
It was this upbringing that helped shape her
into the performer she is known for today.
♪ I hope I never wake up
♪ If you are but
♪ A dream
- I don't think our house was any different
than anybody else's house.
When I was a small child, everybody was singing and dancing,
literally dancing, I used to ballroom dance,
because there was no television.
So what did people do to amuse themselves?
They sang, they danced, they got up.
They'd stand me on the table at my grandmother's house,
and they'd say, Ladies and gentlemen, Mitchell Winehouse,
and I'd come out and I'd do a bow.
And that's how people entertained themselves.
It was a different when Amy was growing up, obviously,
when she was a little kid, but we used to play
the same games, and the house was full of music
and the extended family that I had, when I was a little boy,
it was the same when Amy was a child.
There was my mum.
There was my stepfather, her husband, Amy's grandfather.
I mean, everyone was there, my grandparents
were still alive when Amy was a little girl,
so the house was always full of people.
And they did the same thing.
Ladies and gentlemen, Amy Winehouse, and she'd get up
and do a little bow and then sing a little song.
That's how it started for her.
- Amy was a natural performer.
At just the age of 14, she had already learned the guitar
and was writing her own music.
Throughout the rest of her teenage years,
she developed a love for hip-hop, specifically Salt-N-Pepa.
This genre would further influence her sound going forward.
- I was very influenced by jazz and hip-hop,
from maybe, I mean seriously, that I knew that
it would be the thing, the direction I would follow
in my life maybe when I was 13,
is when I knew that I would have to follow that music.
Because there was nothing else that spoke to me.
And today, you know, I'm reminded every day
how important music is to me.
People say, it's just music.
Or Lisa from Steps, it's just a laugh, it's just music.
And you're like, no, nothing else speaks to me
the way music does, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
- It didn't long for Amy to get
recognized by record labels.
At just the age of 20, Amy released her first album,
titled Frank, an incredibly raw-sounding album
that put her straight into the public eye
as a real musical talent.
- Amy's debut album, Frank, was astonishing.
You listened to it, and you thought, hold on.
It really hit you between the eyes, hold on,
this voice is astonishing.
Amy wasn't happy with it.
And that would really go on to flavor the rest
of her career, she was a perfectionist.
And she didn't think her record company
had done her justice.
Everyone else thinks it was wonderful, but you look
forward to Back to Black and you see perhaps it lacked
the depth of feeling and experience,
but as a debut album it was incredible.
- When I first heard Frank, when I first heard Frank,
I thought, ah, because it's a frank and honest album.
And then when I heard it a couple of times, I got it.
It's a play on words as well, because there's a lot
of Frank Sinatra in there.
She doesn't sound like Sinatra at any particular time,
but she has a certain melodic approach
and appreciation that he did.
Both Sinatra and Amy Winehouse were Caucasian of course,
but they had a deep love of blues and African American jazz
and it comes through in their music.
- It's a really versatile album, and I pushed myself
with every aspect of it.
The music stands up by itself so that you can have it on
quietly and still just get the chords
and kinda feel the chords.
And the beats stand up so much that when you blast
the music, it sounds ridiculous.
And, you know, myself vocally,
I try and do something interesting
with everything in the songs.
- This is a first album.
This is quite a statement from somebody.
This is an award-winning album, it was album of the year
in all these pop magazines and jazz magazines.
It sold incredibly well and no one had heard
of this young lady just a few months before.
And it was incredible to see, just in a few short months,
she was a household name.
And it's important, I think, to look back on Frank
and remember, in those wonderful early days of her career,
she looked healthy, she sounded wonderfully,
on target, on key, focused.
I'm not just talking about her voice being on key.
I'm talking about, her whole approach had focus
and measure and direction, and it was really great.
With Frank, she's honest, she's pure.
It's as clean as we're gonna hear Amy Winehouse,
even though she's got the suggestive lyrics
and can swear and so on and so forth.
But it's Amy Winehouse.
- I wouldn't write anything unless it was
directly personal to me, just because I wouldn't be able
to tell the story right or really fill out the song
with words because I wouldn't have done it.
So all of it is stuff that I've been through
and, you know, even though some of it is
personal in a sad way, I would never let it just be that.
It's very funny, like I'll put humor in.
I'll always put a punchline in the song always.
And I don't know, I just try and be different
with my lyrics, definitely.
♪ You should be stronger than me ♪
♪ You've been here seven years longer than me ♪
- Amy Winehouse's music is very autobiographical.
Doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure that one out.
That first single, she's looking,
metaphorically, in the lyrics, for a strong male figure
in her life, in this case a romantic male figure.
But in real life, she was looking for a strong male
figure the whole time.
♪ You should be stronger than me ♪
♪ But instead you're longer than frozen turkey ♪
♪ Why do you always put me in control ♪
And it's ironic that in one of these early videos,
you have her searching for a strong male
figure who isn't there.
You have her having trouble with her romantic fellow,
her boyfriend, and that was much of the story of her life.
And it's crazy to think, here it is foretold
in this very early video by this young lady.
I'm not saying she's clairvoyant or anything,
but it is tragic to look back at that video,
knowing what we know about Amy Winehouse now,
and think, oh my God, in three minutes,
this is the story of this young lady's life.
- During the process of promoting Frank
and attending awards ceremonies, Amy was loving
the endless praise and attention from her new fans
and the press, but stated it wasn't going
to change her as a person.
- I first met Amy in 2003 at the Brit Awards.
It was the year before Frank was released.
To be honest, nobody really knew who she was.
I was wearing a dress with lots of tassels on.
She came running up to me and said, mate, mate,
love the dress, love the dress!
I looked at her, and I kind of recognized her.
She was this chubby-faced, young,
energetic, full of life, having so much fun.
You could see that she was visibly thinking,
I'm at the Brits, this is amazing, as we all were.
- It hasn't changed.
I mean, people never used to come up to me on the street
and say, Oh my God, you're Amy Winehouse.
People never used to say that, and they do now,
but I wouldn't say that's a change.
I mean, that's an obvious change, but I'm not changing.
I'm not going, Yes, it is me, yes, it is Amy Winehouse.
I'm going, hello, you got my album, that's really nice.
Go and buy one for your mum as well.
Thank you, bye.
My idea of success is just to have an album in front of you
that is just 100% the vision in your head, on CD.
Sometimes I think a lotta people are caught up
in maybe wanting to win awards or wanting
to write songs for people, as opposed to what they like,
or, you know, caught up in wanting people to see them
all the time on the street.
Whereas, I don't even wear makeup when I'm not even working.
I think I have a different set of goals
to the record company, anyway, definitely.
- Whilst Amy was rising up the ranks
in the music industry, taking in all of the new popularity,
she met a music video production assistant at a bar.
This would be the start of one of the industry's most
stormy relationships anyone had ever seen.
That production assistant would be none
other than Blake Fielder Civil.
- Amy Winehouse and Blake Fielder Civil,
it has to be the most destructive relationship
in showbiz history.
They were complete and utter soulmates.
She adored him, he adored her,
and they almost couldn't live without each other.
But they also both really destroyed each other.
- There's no doubt that Blake Fielder Civil
was the love of Amy's life.
I think when it was great, it was wonderful.
I think she'd never experienced happiness like that.
Also fair to say that she was the one
who had the high-flying career.
He was a runner for music videos.
She loved him.
She loved the way he looked, she loved the hats he wore.
She thought that he was the male version of her.
She thought he was perfection.
- What Amy saw in Blake was perhaps somebody
who could actually understand her, and some men
are incredibly good at latching onto women with problems
to displace focus, or having to focus
on problems they themselves have.
And they come across as the knight in shining armor,
the man on a white steed.
And the woman falls for it, and she'll think, oh my God,
this man understands me, he loves me.
He really understands what I'm going through.
He's going through something similar to me.
He can connect with me, and I can connect with him
in a way that I just can't with anyone else.
And of course, she was known to carve "I love Blake"
in glass on her stomach.
- Blake Fielder Civil was infamously the one
who introduced Amy to hard drugs.
He admitted that in an East London hotel room,
he was smoking a 10-pound batch of heroin
when he let Amy have a try.
- I've said it before, and I'll say it again.
He was responsible for introducing Amy to hard drugs.
Everybody knows this, Amy's told me this.
The whole world knows it.
The only people that think it was the other way around
was Blake's parents.
Let's be honest about it.
We all know what the true situation is.
- Amy's friends and family have blamed Blake
for introducing her to hard drugs.
But, every addict is introduced by someone.
And ultimately, Amy continued to take drugs.
She seemed to have a very addictive personality.
And it seemed that they could, and they both said as much,
they couldn't be with each other,
they couldn't be without each other.
They almost loved too much.
- Blake's own mother, Georgette Fielder Civil,
even partly blames him for Amy's decline,
because of course he was a big factor
in getting her hooked on drugs.
However, can you actually blame someone
for another person's addiction?
Probably not.
But what Blake did was make drugs, hard-core drugs,
crack cocaine an everyday part of his relationship with Amy.
And that became everyday life for her, very quickly.
She had a very addictive personality.
- An addictive personality, or a person who is addicted,
is someone whose behavior is outside of their
conscious control, that it feels like an involuntary urge
just to do something, and you'll notice that addictions
get transmitted from one substance
or one behavior to another.
So, for example, people can become addicted to alcohol.
They'll move from alcohol to heroin.
Or they might then clean up when it comes
to alcohol and heroin, and then they'll be addicted to porn.
Or they'll be addicted to shopping,
or then they might be addicted to gambling.
What it is, it's an overactivity
in the reward centers of the brain,
so the brain is craving more and more of the feeling
that the drugs and the addiction gave them.
But if they stop one addiction,
they need to move on to another.
So it has a very sad physiological
as well as a psychological basis,
which is why addicts will transfer their addiction
from one substance to another quite easily
or one behavior pattern to another quite easily.
And after a while, of course, like anything else,
we are creatures of habit.
And those habits can be hardwired.
In the same way as a species we're hardwired for pleasure.
So we're hardwired to want to activate
the reward centers in our brain.
But all that happens with say the opioids like heroin,
all that happens, we overstimulate the reward centers,
and then we need more and more and more of that stimulation
as the brain produces less and less dopamine.
We need more and more drugs to give ourselves
the feeling that we've lost.
- After a few years focusing on her relationship
with Blake, Amy took to the studio
to work on her second album.
Alongside this, Amy started looking at changing her image
to something that was much more classical
but also helped her stand out
compared to everyone else in the industry.
- There's no question that the Ronettes in particular
but many of the girl groups influenced Amy Winehouse's
music and look.
Just picking up the tabloids and looking at pictures of her,
I was struck at how much she resembled Ronnie Spector.
A lot of the women back in those days had that haircut,
the beehive haircut which is also known
as the B-52, hence the name of the group.
I think when you adapt that kind of a haircut
that was at the time, and really now so wildly
out of fashion, that you're making a statement
and you're making a reference.
There's no question a cultural reference is being made,
and when you listen to her music you can hear it.
But the strength of it isn't that she just did it,
it's why she did it.
It's because she's looking for something and she's not gonna
stop looking till she finds it.
And it takes the strength of a certain kind of an artist
to go, I'll go with something that's not the most
fashionable thing right now.
1960s girl groups from the Brill Building in New York City,
and I'll adapt that to my own personal style.
It wasn't something that was currently in fashion.
The point of Amy Winehouse is, she's such a strong artist
she made it a fashion, and I think that's the whole point
of her look and her sound with that kind of Chiffons,
Shirelles, Ronettes thing.
That's the whole point, she made it her own.
She didn't just take from them and imitate them.
She made it her own.
- In May 2006, Winehouse's demo tracks,
such as You Know I'm No Good and Rehab,
appeared on Mark Ronson's New York East Village radio show.
Ronson would later go on to co-produce Amy's upcoming album.
- He really liked Amy.
The moment they met, he thought, here's a girl
who's not gonna take any nonsense,
she knows what she wants.
And he loved her, he said, because when she didn't think
he was being great, when his results weren't
fantastic, she told him.
And it worked for them.
That honesty brought them together and created
absolute dynamite, electricity.
He polished her songs for Back to Black, perfected them.
And even the harshest critics have said
they drew on so many influences
while still being completely original.
And that's impossible to do, they did it.
- In October 2006, Amy Winehouse releases
her most successful album ever,
and one of the biggest-selling albums of the 21st century.
Back to Black.
- Back to Black is a modern masterpiece.
Absolutely no doubts about it, it will go down
as one of the albums of our time, absolutely.
But of course the inspiration behind this album
was Blake Fielder Civil.
And the passion that she put into that album
was about her passion for Blake, and of course much of it
was about their first breakup, which was very
traumatic to her.
She hated the fact that for a period
he had another girlfriend.
And you can just tell by the emotions in those songs
how much Amy passionately cared for him.
- I don't know where she got the crazy idea to do it,
but I suspect it goes back to something
we mentioned earlier.
In her family, they played a lot of these records,
and she appreciated the girl groups of the early 1960s,
and thought, I could do something like this.
I think it does kinda go back to her family, and it also
goes back to a certain inner strength that she had
to wanna change styles and do something like that.
And credit to her, Back to Black does even better
than the first album, and it really is going down
as one of those all-time classic albums.
- What made Amy Winehouse's music so amazing
wasn't just the fact, yeah, she mixed jazz with soul,
with R&B, but she put so much soul into her music.
She wrote her songs herself.
I mean, she wrote her song, it was like putting
her blood and guts on the table.
And that's what made her so special.
That this is not like some kind of manufactured pop.
This is somebody who writes from the heart,
who sings from the heart, who performs for the heart.
- Every song she writes is like dragged out of her soul.
It's like cutting her leg off or something like that.
It's very, very hard for her, and very emotional.
But that's what makes her music so great.
- Winehouse's tempestuous relationship
with Blake was the catalyst
for much of her destructive behavior.
During one breakup, Winehouse admitted to drowning
her sorrows in alcohol, but she used the heartbreak
as impetus in writing music.
Her drug and alcohol intake increasingly affected
her live performances, as she turned up to several club
or TV performances too drunk to complete her set.
Her management company suggested she enter rehab,
but rather than take their advice,
she dumped the management company and turned
the experience into the catchiest song of her career.
♪ I ain't got the time
♪ And if my daddy thinks I'm fine ♪
♪ They tried to make me go to rehab ♪
♪ I won't go go go
- Could you tell me, how long did it take
you to write Rehab and what was
the inspiration for the song?
- I wrote Rehab in about 20 minutes,
and it was just, I wrote it about something
that happened to me.
It wrote itself, it was just a novelty song,
but it's true, it's something that happened to me.
And I guess it pretty much wrote itself.
- Rehab is sadly, and understandably,
one of Amy Winehouse's signature songs now.
It's one of the songs she's most remembered for.
I might be in a party of one, but I can hardly stand
to hear it, and I can hardly stand to watch the video.
The irony of this young lady singing about I don't wanna
go to rehab, when at the end of the day, we now know
that if there is anyone that ever should have gone
to rehab, it's Amy Winehouse.
It's easy to have perfect vision with hindsight,
but there's a theory I've got that goes roughly like this.
Everybody under 30 thinks they're badass.
Everyone under 30 wants to be badass.
We all leave that as we grow into adults and mature.
Everybody under 30 thinks they're
indestructible, invincible.
Now we've all had friends that have died in a horrible way,
maybe cancer too soon or maybe
the tragedy of a drug overdose or alcoholism.
It's in so many families, too many families,
and yet it can't happen to me.
And when I look at Rehab, I see a young lady singing
a catchy pop tune about the perfectly,
most incredibly wrong subject she could ever sing about,
coming from where she stands.
And I just can't look at Rehab and Amy Winehouse
in that video, I can't listen to it anymore.
As much as I like her as an artist and enjoy her music,
I can't stand it anymore.
It's the irony and the tragedy,
they're just piled on top of each other
and it makes me wanna weep, so I shut it off.
- As her fame grow, so did speculation
in the press about her lifestyle.
Her relationship with Blake was under constant turmoil.
And because of it, she continued to drink and take drugs.
The pressure of constantly being in the public eye
also caused Amy to distance herself
from her friends and loved ones, most notably Mark Ronson.
- Along the way, Mark Ronson really tried
to help Amy Winehouse.
It wasn't just that they worked together.
He viewed her as a personal friend, they got on very well.
Actually, everyone, fans, critics,
were really excited when Mark Ronson announced
he was getting into the studio to record
the lead song for Quantum of Solace, the Bond film.
She'd be perfect at it, the big booming
Shirley Bassey-esque voice but done in Amy Winehouse style.
But when she turned up, the drink, the drugs
affected her performance, she couldn't perform.
He was heartbroken.
If there was a way of piecing it together, he would have.
He took to Twitter to talk about it, just explain,
didn't say anything nasty.
Amy took real offense at this, and gave him a concise,
nasty tweet back saying, look, you produced one album,
mine, that I wrote, how dare you piggyback on my fame?
You're not gonna make your career outta me, Bruv, she said.
He was devastated, because it was like he was
being cut off from one of the best people
he'd worked with, but a great friend.
He had to think, though, well, the girl's ill.
And I don't think that it actually affected
the way he thought of her in the end, because when Amy died
he said, I've lost my little sister.
- If you look at the way that Amy dealt with Mark Ronson,
I mean, that's typical really
of any addict, because, you know, there's the famous song,
You Always Hurt the Ones You Love.
And with an addict, they always hurt,
they hurt themselves far more than they hurt anybody else,
but they always hurt the ones they love,
because most addicts are covered with guilt
or shame or they feel, they judge themselves very harshly
but then they resent others for judging them.
They withdraw from social contact.
They feel sometimes incredibly hostile towards people
who are simply trying to help them.
And that's just part of what it is to be an addict.
There is no doubt that Amy and Mark Ronson
had a great connection, and sometimes when you're dealing
with any statement made by an addict,
you've first of all gotta separate the drug from the person.
Because, behind all the drugs, there is a person,
and you've gotta understand who's speaking.
Is it the drug speaking, or is it the person speaking?
And I believe that Mark Ronson was not only
obviously great for Amy Winehouse, and they had
a very close bond, but I also believe that when she
attacked Mark Ronson, deep down, she loved him
and she felt very connected to him.
And that's the drugs speaking.
On the deluxe version I think it is of Back to Black,
she does an additional version of Love Is a Losing Game.
And again, she sings that with so much heart
and so much soul, and then when the song's finished,
she turns around at the end, there's a pause
and you hear her say, Is that all right?
And, you can see in that both her brilliance
and her insecurity.
She's just done something totally incredible,
totally magical, she's done a rendition of this song
that could move a stone statue to tears.
She's really delivered this,
and then she goes, Is that all right?
Because she needed the approval of others.
She was incredibly, and when she was performing onstage,
she was sometimes looking for reassurance from the band.
Sometimes people who are brilliant sometimes don't
realize quite how brilliant they are,
and Amy was one of those, and perhaps it was her brilliance
in some ways, in coping with that brilliance and the effect
of that brilliance that drove her to addiction.
♪ Love is a losing game
- Is that all right?
♪ I never played
♪ Oh what a mess we made
♪ And now the final frame
♪ Love
- Some musicians, I'm the kind of person
that I like pressure, I work best under pressure
and there's a bunch of people like that,
but it must be a bit nerve-wracking like,
I won the Mercury, I have to be consistent.
But you can't think about that, I'm sure.
- In 2007, Amy and Blake set out to Miami
to have a relaxing, romantic getaway
from the endless media attention.
It was here where the two got secretly married,
once again shocking journalists,
Amy's friends and her family.
- There is no doubt that the relationship
between Amy Winehouse and Blake
was a codependent relationship.
And what that means in practical terms
was that each one of them needed the other one
to continue their dependency
on a very destructive behavior pattern.
That's essentially what it means.
Rather than the two of them connecting to build
a better life together or to start a family
or two envisage your future together,
what they're doing is they're taking the harsher edges
and the more addictive edges of each other's personality
and they're fixing on those.
And each one of them needs the other
to sustain their destructive behavior pattern.
- They say the best things are born
of kind of destructive relationships.
Now you're a happily married woman,
what can we expect from you song writing wise?
Happy songs?
- Yeah yeah, happy songs, Care Bears, theme change.
- Your dad said he was unhappy
he didn't walk you down the aisle.
Are you gonna have another do here in England?
- Definitely will, definitely do something proper.
Definitely.
- Was he angry with you, was he okay?
- No, he's fine, he's fine.
What's he gonna do?
After returning from their Miami trip,
Amy went back to performing onstage and attending
regular award shows looking fresh-faced and revitalized.
- Are there some people you've picked out
that you wanna go and shat to later?
- I'd love to go and meet Quincy Jones.
I've got to find Mick Jones.
I was really chucked to see him here.
I love Mick Jones, he's a legend.
Oh yes.
So yeah, I'm sure there's lots of people
I don't even know are here.
- But unfortunately, it was around this time
where her relationship with the press
became increasingly heated.
With new stories about her releasing almost every day,
Amy's changing personality was really starting to show
during her interviews.
- Amy's relationship with the press really changed
from a cheerful girl who was very open and loving,
because she had nothing to hide.
This was all new to her.
This was an amazing experience.
It's what she always wanted.
- I've worked really hard, and I've been recognized
for that with the nomination.
That's such an amazing thing.
I feel real proud of myself for that,
and lucky.
- She became more closed when she had more to hide,
when her management said to her, Do not talk to press.
She was out of it.
So she could have told any journalist a fantastic story,
and increasingly she would have more and more people
around her when she was out and about,
trying to stop her from giving people what they wanted.
- You know, you're standing on this young lady's foot?
Have you noticed that?
- She's not young, and I wasn't.
- Amy, so many songs come out of bad times--
- Can you hear him, rude, you were.
- Amy, so many songs come out of bad times
in life, the creative processs is often motivated
from the bad times.
Now you're a happily married woman,
are you worried about it impacting your career?
- No, not really.
- People generally are appreciative of her,
and they love her, and she likes to be with people.
But what can it be for a young woman
who really can't leave her house
without the fear of being hounded?
It's very, very difficult.
It's very, very difficult, and I can't imagine
what it's like for her.
- She's almost a prisoner in her own home.
- Well I would say she is a prisoner in her own home,
for want of a better phrase.
Although she can go out, she's not restricted in any way.
If she wants to go out, she can go out,
but it's difficult and she would think twice about going out
now without bodyguards, and what's that all about?
With all the success, you know,
there isn't a peace of mind and there isn't
any kind of relaxation, and I'm not talking about Amy,
but you can understand why people in that position
do turn to alternative means of relaxation unfortunately.
- That following year, whilst in Bergen, Norway,
Amy, Blake and a friend were all arrested
at their hotel for marijuana possession.
They were found with seven grams and were fined 715 dollars.
Soon after this event, Blake was sentenced to 27 months
in jail for his part in an assault on a bar owner
and a subsequent attempt to cover up
the crime with a bribe.
- He's made a good effort in prison.
It's been hard for him.
He's made an effort, and he's been mainly successful,
but I don't think he's clean now,
and when he comes out, he needs and will go
straight into rehab.
He has promised me that he's gonna make that right,
and I'm gonna give him a chance to make it right.
But you know, we're gonna give him the benefit of the doubt.
The first thing he's gotta do is he's gotta get himself
clean, because if he goes back into the relationship
with Amy not clean, it's gonna be
a complete recipe for disaster.
He knows what he's got to do.
He loves Amy dearly.
She loves him dearly.
And, as a family, we wanna do what's best for Amy.
I think that they can have a happy ending.
- Going into 2008 saw Amy
at the lowest point in her whole career.
In January, a video surfaced of Amy smoking crack.
- I think one of Amy's all-time career lows was when
a newspaper in the UK actually filmed and then broadcast
video of Amy taking crack cocaine, and everyone knew
just how bad things had got.
Ironically, as well, Blake, who was meant to be the love
of her life and who was in many ways,
sold his story many times on Amy.
He was so desperate for money he'd make a couple
of thousand pounds here and there
for spilling the most intimate details of her life.
Now in most normal relationships that would be the end
of it, but Amy always ran back to Blake
no matter what he did.
- Weeks later, she checks into rehab.
But even though her drug addiction is finally being treated,
another troubling problem becomes clear.
- The photos we would get in of Amy on a weekly basis
during the real depths of her drug addiction relationship
with Blake were just traumatic, and I think nothing
was more traumatic than the photo of Amy's ballet
pump shoes covered in blood.
Most people believe that that was because she had actually
been injecting heroin between her toes.
It was grim, it was awful, and here was this icon
of our times, reduced to that.
- Amy had also been self-harming.
A number of cuts appeared prominent on both of her arms.
Addressing the tender subject, Amy stated that self-harm
to her started as a morbid curiosity
but became a way for her to deal with her stress.
Her self-destructive tendencies only amplified
when she became intoxicated.
- Self-harm is a complex phenomenon.
It's estimated that one in 15 teenage girls,
sometimes more, actually self-harm to some degree or other.
Now, if you imagine sometimes, when we get something wrong,
we sometimes beat ourselves up, we sometimes say, Oh God,
if only I'd done better, if only I'd done this,
if only I'd done that.
Well self-harming begins from a position very often
of low self-esteem, of some trauma, some pain,
and rather than try and deal with the trauma or manage
the pain, because maybe the support network isn't there,
because the emotional maturity isn't there,
because the emotional tools aren't there,
people go into a cycle of self-harm.
Because by self-harming, they're doing two things really.
On the one hand, they're exerting some control
over the problem, because at least if they're self-harming
it's something they are doing to themselves.
It gives them some control over a problem
that they feel they have no control over.
And the other aspect of self-harm, of course, is it
does numb the pain that actually drove them
to start self-harming in the first place.
So for example, some people who have been sexually abused
will self-harm, or some people who've gone through some
trauma as children, they'll begin to self-harm.
It's just another strategy to ease the pain, and that too
can become a compulsive behavior pattern,
just like any other addiction.
- When Amy was self-harming, and that happened
when she was in her relationship with Blake,
and at times they even appeared to do it together.
That was, for me, one of the most unsavory parts
of her decline, because you just knew
something was really, really wrong to be doing that.
I mean, she was just married, she was with the guy,
she had all the success she wanted in the world,
so why was she self-harming?
It just, it made no sense.
In the end, the record company just gave up
on Amy in a lot of ways.
They didn't wanna put any pressure on her to release
a third album or to record a third album,
because they knew how emotionally vulnerable
and fragile she was, so actually, because I think
they felt the stakes were so high, Back to Black
was such a brilliant record, they weren't gonna release
something until they knew it was spot on.
- It was also clear that Amy was becoming
worryingly skinny and frail.
She was suffering from a tragic eating disorder, bulimia.
This, combined with her dangerous binge-drinking habits
and drug use, meant that Amy's body
was being pushed to its absolute limits.
Late 2008, Amy made public
she had an early stage of emphysema.
- It's quite shocking that Amy was diagnosed
with emphysema in her mid-20s, really young.
And her friends said that she could drink vodka all day.
That combined with medication or drugs,
and it could just have been a lethal cocktail.
For a 27-year-old girl, she looks great
when she was able to doll herself up,
put on the makeup,
but you could tell sometimes she was very thin.
I think the real tragedy is that there were glimmers
of hope, that sometimes she did look okay,
she was trying to write songs,
she was able to perform now and then.
And that's the real tragedy,
that we thought she might just get there.
- But what's interesting and what's little understood
really, and Amy Winehouse made a point about this,
she said alcohol was worse than heroin.
She said alcohol is a real poison, she said.
And if you look at the effect both on themselves
and on others, alcohol is by far and away
one of the most dangerous and socially destructive drugs.
It just happens to be legal, it's an accident of history
or whatever, it just happens to be legal.
So, just because a drug's legal doesn't mean
it's safe, it doesn't mean it can't ravage you
as much as the most, supposedly, the most
blacklisted of illegal drugs.
- I met Mitch twice and interviewed him
extensively both times.
The first was the first time he'd actually publicly been
interviewed, and it was when Amy was really quite ill.
And I said to him, it must be heartbreaking for you
to know that people have almost penned her obituary,
because they're waiting, and he said, you know, Martel,
it's something I've done myself, mentally.
I've penned her obituary many times.
What's tragic is that that came to pass.
When I interviewed Mitch the second time,
and he was more buoyant.
He was talking about Amy's boob job.
He was talking about her inspiration.
Part of it came from him, he used to sing Frank Sinatra
songs to her, and his concern was still there, obviously.
His daughter was troubled, still addicted.
But he seemed more hopeful than he had been
six, seven years ago.
- How's Amy doing at the moment?
- She's doing pretty good.
I think she's made a very good recovery.
And clearly there's a long way to go
in a lotta senses, but she's doing fine.
- You see her on a daily basis.
People pick up the papers and they see what they see.
Tell us about the girl you know, the girl you see
and the person behind the tabloid headline.
- Well, I mean, she's my daughter, obviously,
and as my daughter, I love her very much.
And she's a great, she's a member of our family
and we're a very strong family unit.
But clearly she's in a vulnerable condition at the moment.
She needs to perhaps
be more aware of the consequences of her actions right now.
- By mid-2008, the world was moved
by the tragic downfall of Amy and her ongoing battle
against addiction and substance abuse.
She once again went back into rehab and this time looked
to be trying to change her ways
and to the help of family and friends.
- She recognized that she had a problem,
perhaps six months ago.
She felt that whatever she was involved with,
the drug addiction, she could handle it
and she could stop it whenever she chose.
I mean, clearly, she was deluded.
That isn't the case, she can't do that and she needs help.
And we are guided, as I've said many times before,
we are guided by the most fantastic team of physicians.
My first reaction would be to pick her up,
put her somewhere safe, lock her away until she gets better.
She has freedom of choice to do whatever she chooses.
But clearly, the impetus is moving forward
and she's in a much better position
than she was six months ago.
- Unfortunately, because of Amy's rehab visits,
the press were mounting pressure on the star.
Daily articles criticized the star and the lack
of responsibility of her family.
- Well I can't imagine that even the tabloids
are willing her not to recover.
Of course, there isn't a story there if she does recover.
I mean, clearly, there's not much of a story
if she gets better.
And I've tried several times to impart some good news
to the tabloids, and sometimes
they haven't really been interested.
But clearly, the way things are at the moment,
Amy's vulnerable, she's a target.
And people understand, they know how the tabloids work.
And it's not as if they have put a bounty on her head
and said, if you get into an altercation with Amy
it could be worth five or 10,000 pounds,
but it's kind of an unspoken,
implicit agreement between the tabloids and the population.
That is, if you can rough up a star, or better still,
if you can get thumped by a star,
you're on a winner, you're on a winner.
And that's basically the problem.
- In January 2009, Amy Winehouse escapes
the spotlight in a two-month getaway
on the small Caribbean island of St. Lucia.
When she returns to the UK, she's looking happier
and healthier than ever.
There was hope that her life was finally turning around.
But despite getting help for her drug addiction,
she continued drinking heavily.
To make things worse, after numerous fights and arrests,
her relationship with Blake ends in a fiery divorce.
- I've been away for two months.
What the fuck is going on?
- The point about addiction and the point about addicts
is that we can't separate normal people from addicts.
Normal people fall in love.
Normal people have all the rush of dopamine,
all the pleasure chemicals in the brain being released
when they fall in love.
And that's there for good evolutionary reasons.
That's why we reproduce, that's why we build families,
that's why we get married.
It's why we find our soulmates.
But sometimes, sometimes, that process
kind of gets overwhelming for people.
And in the case of Blake and Amy, their addiction to drugs
was a mirror of their addiction to each other.
And there's only one way in which their personal
relationship to drugs and their personal relationship
with each other could end, and that was in destruction.
It had to end that way,
because they were fueling each other's dependency,
not only on drugs but also on each other.
- On top of all that, in late 2009,
going into 2010, Amy struggled with several legal disputes,
arrests and intoxicated misdemeanors.
Her drinking had only gotten worse, and as a result,
her career was beginning to suffer.
Family and friends once again reached out for help,
with big stars like Tony Bennett
wishing her a speedy recovery.
- I wish her the best.
I hope that she straightens out with that,
and it would help so many of her fans,
so that she was able to do it.
- Do you think the people around her need to be
stepping up really and taking a little bit
more control in helping her?
- It's really up to her.
She's gonna have to be the one to just say wait a minute,
because one thing about drugs, it finally gets to you.
You don't get to it, it gets to you.
- May 2011, Amy Winehouse announces
to the world that she will return to rehab
to battle her crippling alcohol addiction.
Just six days later, Amy checks herself out
of the rehab facility, declaring that she has finished
an assessment and is raring to go on her European tour.
The tour was to be Amy's comeback to rebuild her reputation,
but it would prove to do just the opposite.
Whilst in Belgrade, Serbia,
Amy's comeback tour turns into a nightmare.
Amy struggles to stand up, slurs her words
and doesn't even get through a single song.
She's too drunk to perform.
The angered crowd boo the 27-year-old off the stage.
And the comeback tour is canceled.
Amy Winehouse would never perform onstage again.
- This show was a complete and utter shambles.
It was the worst yet, and believe me,
there'd been some pretty bad Amy Winehouse performances.
However, she was booed offstage, she threw the microphone
into the crowd, she didn't remember her words,
and of course in this modern day of YouTube,
it all ended up on the internet within a few hours.
And at that point, there was huge pressure on her management
because so many questions were being asked.
Why was she on tour in the first place?
So as a result of that criticism, they actually canceled
the rest of her European tour and she came home,
and they said they were going to focus on her health.
Now again, is there an argument to say, actually,
maybe she was safer when she was on the road and performing
because at least she had her support network around her,
at least she was doing something?
But the fact of the matter is, when I saw her onstage
during that shambolic performance in Belgrade,
I just thought, this is not right.
This is not a woman who should be onstage,
she should not be performing, something has to be done here.
- As Amy returns to her home in Camden,
the media focuses on her tour's failure,
endlessly criticizing her addiction
and lack of self-control once again.
After reflecting on her poor performance during the tour,
Amy seems to be preparing to change
her life for the better.
She makes a number of phone calls to her friends
and fellow musicians,
promising a better and brighter future.
She discusses plans, hopes and her goals.
She had a purpose again.
But unfortunately, Amy's life was soon to be over.
- As a dad, what would your greatest
wish be for Amy's future?
- Well, for her to be well.
For her to have a loving relationship,
with whoever she chooses to have that loving relationship
with, could be Blake.
To carry on her fantastic relationship
with the family that we have,
and to do whatever it is that makes her happy.
She wants to have a family.
Maybe that'll be her drug of choice, family, children.
She'd love to have children, but of course,
again, not as far as Amy's concerned, but generally,
people who are addicted to drugs, it's unwise
for people to have children
because their children could be born as addicts.
She understands all of these things,
and all of these things are helping her
to begin to make the right choices.
- And as a dad, I'll ask another question.
What would be your biggest fear?
- Well my biggest fear is that she would die.
- On the 23rd of July, 2011,
Amy Winehouse was found dead
by her bodyguard, Andrew Morris.
The cause of death was proclaimed
to be due to alcohol poisoning.
- Police were called by the London Ambulance Service
to a house in Camden Square, Northwest One,
shortly before 1605 hours today.
Upon arrival, officers found the body of a 27-year-old
female, who was pronounced dead at the scene.
Next of kin have been informed,
and I can confirm that the deceased is Amy Winehouse.
- I picked up the phone, and Andrew [sighs],
Andrew was crying.
And he said, you gotta come home.
I said, is she dead?
He said, yeah, Amy's dead.
Immediately, in my mind, it was like my mind had emptied.
- There's no doubt Amy was still in love
with Blake at the end of her life.
She really couldn't accept that he was with another girl,
that he had a child.
What's really heartbreaking is that Amy Winehouse said,
I love singing, but I was put on this Earth
to be a wife and to be a mother.
And she was a wife to Blake, but she never got to be
the mother that she so craved to be,
and she had to watch the love of her life
have this child with somebody else.
Indeed, Blake's partner came forward to say that he's
absolutely devastated about her death
and that she kinda knows that she's always going
to be second best to Amy.
She saw them together, Amy and Blake,
and said they were soulmates.
Which is quite hard for a woman to accept,
that you're never going to match up
to the love of your partner's life.
- The cycle from being a young woman
with such extraordinary raw talent to being dead
at the age of 27, was a tragic cycle,
and it's one we've seen many times before.
That's something called the Club 27.
This is of all the great rock-and-roll artists who've died,
and it began with Robert Thompson in 1938,
when he died at 27.
And look at the names, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin,
Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain.
These are all people, Brian Jones of the Stones,
these are all people who died at 27.
And sometimes people get on a certain trajectory,
and come hell or high water, you can't stop them
and they can't stop themselves.
- Amy's funeral was on the 26th of July.
The ceremony was attended by all of her family,
as well as some of her industry friends
such as Mark Ronson and Kelly Osbourne.
It was a loving final goodbye to the young,
sadly troubled star.
Not long after Amy's funeral, the media went into looking
for who was to blame for Amy's death
and turned their attention to her ex-husband,
Blake Fielder Civil.
- Blake got some bad press, and sometimes it was deserved.
What is wrong is to blame anybody
for somebody else's death.
Amy was an addict.
Every addict is introduced by someone,
and ultimately they have to take responsibility.
Georgette, who's Blake's mother, said that they were
soulmates, Amy and Blake, but they were both
as bad as each other.
They both dragged each other down, and it's well known
that when two addicts get together and they're in
a relationship, if one tries to get clean,
the other will often bring them back.
It's like, if two people smoke, one of them smoking,
the other will give in and say, well, I'll have one.
They were both as bad as each other,
and they loved each other so much
that it destroyed Amy.
I don't think Blake will ever get over this.
I think Blake loved Amy every bit as much
as Amy loved him, and it is unfair to paint him
as a callous character who killed her.
People do say that, and it's very unfair,
because here's a man who asked not to get a penny
in divorce and who says that he loved her so much
but couldn't be with her, couldn't be without her.
They were both exactly the same.
- I mean, Amy had been given a lot of help for a long time,
so she was seeing a doctor up until she died.
She was, ironically, an outpatient of the Priory,
the big rehab facility in the UK
at the time of her death.
So there is an argument that she was being looked after.
At the same time, I believe there will always be questions
about whether enough had been done.
I mean, why wasn't she sectioned, for example,
that's a question that I think will potentially haunt
some of the people close to her.
Did she need more people around her 24 hours a day?
She had one bodyguard, but maybe she needed
more caregivers in the house checking on her once an hour.
I mean, look, it's one of these things where it's very easy
in hindsight, you don't want to blame anyone.
But I do think some questions about whether she was being
looked after in the right way are obviously valid,
because for whatever reason, it didn't work.
She died, so there have to be some questions.
♪ Love is a losing game
♪ Five-Story fire as you came
♪ Love is a losing game
♪ One I wished I never played
♪ Oh, what a mess we made
♪ And now the final frame
♪ Love
- The terms legend and genius when it comes
to singer-songwriters are way too overused.
Amy deserves them, she absolutely does.
There's only one album that was amazing,
but my God what an album it was.
It will be played forever.
And Amy Winehouse, it's not just the songs.
There was only one Amy Winehouse.
There was only one girl with the daft hair,
and she had her look, she had her sound, and she was loved.
- I think she will, fundamentally in the end,
be remembered for her voice, which was so unique.
But I also think she should be remembered as a songwriter.
Incredible lyrics, incredible melodies,
and also she was groundbreaking because, remember,
at the time when Amy burst onto the scene,
it was all about Britney Spears and those sorts of artists,
and she paved the way for the likes of Adele.
And I don't believe we would have Adele, who's now
the biggest recording star in the world,
if we hadn't had Amy Winehouse before her.
- The one thing that has to be said, though,
that somewhere with a woman like Amy Winehouse
who had such enormous talent, such huge talent,
and lived so much on the edge and fought so valiantly
against her addiction, people kind of identify
with that kinda struggle.
People think, you know what,
there but for the grace of God go I.
And in some way, they just wanna give her a tribute.
Well, you might not have made it,
but you did your best, and that's what matters.
And Amy Winehouse once said, I don't ever wanna be mediocre.
She says, and she talked about people in the chart,
she says, they have no soul.
Well the thing about Amy Winehouse was,
there was nothing mediocre about her.
And she had bucket loads of soul.
That's why she should be remembered,
and that's why people really wanna pay tribute to her.
- Yeah, we had it in a very short time.
We had some amazing times together.
We got to make some great music, and then,
forever grateful because she kind of is the reason
I have a career really, you know.
- You know, every maybe 10, 15 years,
you get a great one that comes along, and that was her.
They don't come along very often.
She was very unique, and she started a whole new style.
Adele and all these girls couldn't be here
if it wasn't for Amy.
She started something.
She made it about the voice again, and that was amazing.
Not about looking pretty and all that stuff,
it was about pure talent, you know.
- During her life, Amy set up
the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which worked to prevent
the effects of drug and alcohol misuse on young people.
Soon after her death, her father Mitch, mother Janice
and stepmother Jane all worked to help keep the foundation
going and attending events in Amy's honor.
- As her dad, it must be difficult,
but do you have an overriding favorite memory of Amy?
- Well, you know, there are so many
it's difficult to know where to begin.
- Her humor.
- Her humor, I mean, I was just talking before
about, I think two months after Back to Black came out,
she was number one all over the world.
She was Adele and Lady GaGa rolled into one,
and she said to me, Dad, let's go for a walk in SoHo.
And we started at the top of Wardour Street,
and we're walking down, and she said, Just a sec, Dad.
She went into the Caribbean restaurant, went downstairs
and she was talking to her friend down there,
and the cook, her name's Aunty,
and she knew all about her and all about her family,
and then we came out and then we went
into Ryman's, the stationer, she knew all the girls
in there, then we went, you know,
everywhere she stopped, she knew everybody
and genuinely knew everything about them.
I remember looking at her and thinking, you know what,
there are not a lot of young women in your position
that would bother with this kinda stuff.
- Like a mum.
- My mum was exactly the same,
and that made me so proud of her.
She was just a normal, normal girl,
with obviously an extraordinary talent.
- After she went, we didn't know how we were gonna carry on.
But the foundation has given us a purpose.
It's really important, and it helps.
It's really helped all the family
to come to terms with her loss.
♪ We said goodbye
♪ I died 100 times
- Amy's legacy will forever be remembered.
Despite making the headlines everywhere for her troubled
relationships and her dependency on alcohol and drugs,
it was her music that helped her stand out
and relate to audiences all over the world.
Although she tragically died at just the age of 27,
her music will forever live on
and continue to inspire up-and-coming artists.
And it's safe to say,
everyone will always remember the name Amy Winehouse.
- It can be draining when you have written a song
about something very, very serious to you.
It can be draining, but also it gives you energy.
You can get energy from writing a song
about something personal because
you are kind of shaking it off.
And once you put it in a song, that's it, it's done.
For me, or once I have put situations in song
I'm cool about them, and I think, yeah, dusted.
I'm cool now.
It does go bath ways, yeah.