By Adrian Thrills
Last updated at 1:54 PM on 29th July 2011
Her talent was obvious from the off. I first saw Amy Winehouse at a rock festival eight years ago. Dressed in a Fifties-style frock, her tiny frame hidden by a white Fender guitar, she showed nervous glimpses of a talent that would later wow the world.
I interviewed her twice, and the Amy I witnessed in our brief encounters was very different from the public persona.
Over the past week, thousands of words have been written about Amy and her demons. The singer, of course, led a troubled life and was far from a perfect role model.
Best years ahead: Amy Winehouse was an outstanding singer of a generation
Yet as the Mail’s Rock and Pop critic for the past 14 years, I would just like to say a few more words — in defence of Amy, and her astonishing natural talent. At 27, she was a major artist whose best years surely still lay ahead of her.
Amy was the outstanding singer of her generation. A natural vocalist rather than a schooled one, her voice could take off and weave its way magically around a tune.
But she was never really one for warbling histrionics. Hers was an un-showy, less-is-more approach.
Her rawness harked back to an era when the best singers were somehow more believable. She was a white, Jewish girl from the North London suburbs, but she had the convincing touch of a soul veteran.
In the era of manufactured idols, she was the real deal. For all her problems — and, sadly, sometimes because of them — she was a gifted performer who redefined the role of the female singer-songwriter.
Before Amy, that term conjured up images of an introspective, folky songbird. She created a new, more forceful template that provided the inspiration for the likes of Adele, Duffy, Jessie J and Lady Gaga.
Amy Winehouse was a Jewish girl from North London but had the convincing touch of a soul veteran
The first time we met was around the time of the release of her debut album, Frank, in 2003. It was lunchtime, in Soho, and at Amy’s insistence we decided to settle down in a homely Italian cafe.
At that time she was fresh out of the Brit School, but even so, she struck me as an intelligent, immensely likeable 20-year-old on the cusp of womanhood.
‘The lunches here are like my mum’s food,’ she enthused. ‘You can’t beat home cooking!’
She spoke fondly of her parents, Mitch and Janis, emphasising that it was their Carole King and Sarah Vaughan records that made her a music fan in the first place.
Family, she stressed, was important: ‘When I’ve made all my albums, I’ll take a break. I’ll stop and have six kids. I’ll have a real clan and just watch them grow up.’
While excited about the future, she was strangely uninterested in fame. ‘I just want respect from other musicians,’ she told me. ‘I don’t even see myself as a singer. I’m a musician.’
She was also gleefully irreverent. Whereas more diplomatic, media-trained singers were masters of showbiz etiquette, she sounded off with little regard to the consequences.
She dismissed her peers, including Dido, Norah Jones and Madonna — all huge at the time — with heaping helpings of withering scorn. ‘Most of the stuff that passes for music today just isn’t challenging,’ she said.
For Amy, challenging meant piercingly autobiographical, and Frank, while patchy, embodied all the passions and contradictions of late teenage life.
Amy let her music do the talking. Back to Black was rooted in emotional turmoil
One song, Take The Box, was about packing up an ex-boyfriend’s belongings; another, the smouldering Stronger Than Me, pilloried an emotionally-lightweight lover. Even the title — while a homage to her hero Sinatra — was also a sly reference to her candour.
Looking back, there were also signs of her vulnerability. Making records, she hinted, was like a form of therapy: ‘If I hadn’t written those songs, I’d have done something stupid.’
Later, before the release of second album Back To Black, I came face to face with a different Amy.
Noticeably thinner, she arrived very late for our interview (this time the venue was a coffee bar near her Camden home) but still turned heads with her long, raven black hair and Cleopatra eye-liner.
Her earlier, youthful sparkle had gone, though, and she seemed, initially at least, withdrawn and bored. Promotional interviews, I sensed, were now a chore rather than a joy.
However, aware that her tardiness had left us pushed for time, she suggested that I accompanied her in a cab to a radio station. En route, a little of the old Amy — generous of spirit, obsessed with music — resurfaced as we talked about our shared passion for The Specials.
She may have been a changed woman, but she still knew what she wanted. More aware of her own flaws than the last time I met her, she even retracted what she’d said three years earlier about her fellow females.
‘I lashed out a lot, but I won’t be saying anything negative now,’ she said. She was ready, she added, to let her music do the talking.
And Back To Black did just that. Rooted in emotional turmoil, it will go down as a classic British album. Even now, in an era where female pop rules the charts, nothing has come close to packing the same punch. A departure from her jazzy debut, it was stark, simple and stunningly direct.
Although clearly influenced by those famous demons, it was more commercial than her debut, its retro-soul feel harking back to the Sixties girl-group pop of The Supremes and The Shangri-Las.
Amy, without her trademark look, arrived on stage an hour late in Serbia, staggered about, slurred her words and was jeered by the audience during what happened to be her last concert on June 18
In selling millions and winning Brit and Grammy awards, it established its maker as the pre-eminent soul girl of her age.Nobody makes records as enduring as Back To Black without an intimate knowledge of the essential ingredients of great pop. Amy had that — plus an ability to convey a sense of hurt — in abundance.
Producer Mark Ronson, giving some insight into her writing methods, once told me about her intuitive knack of coming up with an unusual melody.
She was also an accomplished guitarist with a broad knowledge of jazz, something that helped enormously with her composing.
‘It seemed almost accidental the way her fingers would move around the fret board,’ Ronson said. ‘She sometimes seemed to be strumming around, looking for the next chord, but the songs would just come out of her so fluently.’
So, which ones will stand the test of time? For me, Rehab might have set a benchmark for pop, but it is the more lovelorn songs that people will still be playing 20 years from now — the hypnotic minor chords of Back To Black, the guilt-ridden You Know I’m No Good and the gut-wrenching Love Is A Losing Game.
With her haunting, heartbreak ballads, Amy brought something real to pop.
At its best, the music she left has a timeless quality: she may have been an alumna of the Brit School, but Amy Winehouse was also a British great.
Amy Winehouse and protege Dionne Bromfield who is her goddaughter
Along with her unforgettable music, Amy Winehouse left a living legacy. Dionne Bromfield, the singer’s goddaughter, was moulded in the shape of her mentor. Minus the drugs.
The 15-year-old schoolgirl has already brought out two Sixties soul-inspired albums on Lioness Records (set up by Amy) and her musical education was funded by her godmother. Amy taught her guitar and songwriting, and even acted as her backing singer.
Despite the age gap, the two were extremely close — a fact which led to raised eyebrows, particularly when they attended showbusiness events together, Amy often looking the worse for wear.
Away from the cameras, their lives were even more entwined. When I interviewed Dionne recently, she revealed that not only did she see Amy three times a week, she also regularly had sleepovers at her house.
‘She’ll phone and say come over,’ Dionne told me. ‘We’ll watch films, cook, do our nails, play scrabble, and then go to bed.’
This week the young singer was understandably devastated. ‘I feel like a part of my soul has departed with the beautiful songbird Amy,’ she wrote on her Twitter page on Tuesday before the singer’s funeral.
It is going to be a tough time for Dionne. Immediately after being told the news of her godmother’s death, in an act which is testament to her professionalism, she went on stage in Pontypridd, where she was supporting boyband The Wanted. Since then, though, she has cancelled all future dates.
So can Dionne succeed without Amy around? ‘She is genuinely talented and there is a good buzz about her,’ says HMV’s Gennaro Castaldo. ‘I think she can still have a good career in front of her.
She needs to draw inspiration from Amy; hopefully what has happened might make her more determined to succeed.’
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