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AMY
MY DAUGHTER
MITCH WINEHOUSE
All author proceeds from this book will be donated to the Amy Winehouse Foundation.
The Amy Winehouse Foundation has been set up in Amy’s memory to support charitable activities in both the UK and abroad that provide help, support or care for young people, especially those who are in need by reason of ill health, disability, financial disadvantage or addiction.
www.amywinehousefoundation.org
This book is dedicated to my father Alec, my mother Cynthia and my daughter Amy. They showed me that love is the most powerful force in the universe.
Love transcends even death.
They will live in my heart forever.
Contents
Dedication
BEFORE WE START
THANKS, AND A NOTE
PROLOGUE
1 - ALONG CAME AMY
2 - TAKING TO THE STAGE
3 - ‘WENN’ SHE FELL IN LOVE
4 - FRANK – GIVING A DAMN
5 - A PAIN IN SPAIN
6 - FADE TO BLACK
7 - ‘RONNIE SPECTOR MEETS THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN’
8 - ATTACK AND THE ‘PAPS’
9 - HOOKED
10 - A BROKEN RECORD
11 - BIRMINGHAM 2007
12 - ‘AGAIN, SHE’S FINE, THANKS FOR ASKING’
13 - PRESS, LIES, AND A VIDEOTAPE
14 - DRUGS – THE ROCKY ROAD TO RECOVERY
15 - CLASS-A MUG STILL TAKING DRUGS
16 - ‘IT AIN’T BLOODY FUNNY’
17 - BEACHED
18 - ‘I’LL CRY IF I WANT TO’
19 - ‘BODY AND SOUL’
20 - ‘GIVE ME A CUDDLE, DAD’
21 - FAREWELL, CAMDEN TOWN
EPILOGUE
A NOTE ON THE AMY WINEHOUSE FOUNDATION
Photographic Insert
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
You’ll understand if I tell you this is not the book I wanted to write. I had been working on one about my family’s history with my friend Paul Sassienie and his writing partner Howard Ricklow. It was due to be published this year.
I needed to write this book instead. I needed to tell you the real story of Amy’s life. I’m a plain-talking guy and I’ll be telling it like it was. Amy’s too-short life was a roller-coaster ride; I’m going to tell you about all of it. Apart from being her father, I was also her friend, confidant and adviser – not that she always took my advice, but she always heard me out. For Amy, I was the port in the storm; for me, she – along with her brother Alex – was the light of my life.
I hope, through reading this book, that you will gain a better understanding of and a new perspective on my darling daughter Amy.
A huge thank-you to my wife Jane, for being my rock during the most difficult time of my life and for her continuing dedication and support; Alex, my son, for his love and understanding; Janis, for being a fantastic mother to our children; my sister Melody and all my wonderful family and friends, for always being there; my manager Trenton; my PA Megan; Raye and everyone at Metropolis; my agents Maggie Hanbury and Robin Straus, and the lovely people at HarperCollins on both sides of the Atlantic. And special thanks to Paul Sassienie, Howard Ricklow and Humphrey Price for helping me write this book.
I am donating all of my proceeds as author from this book to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which we, Amy’s family, established to help children and young adults facing difficulty and adversity in their lives. I intend to spend the rest of my life raising money for the Foundation.
I believe that through her music, the Foundation’s work and this book, Amy will be with us for ever.
I’d like to say that the first time I cuddled my new-born baby daughter, on 14 September 1983, was a moment that will live with me always, but it wasn’t nearly as straightforward as that.
Some days time drags, and others the hours just fly. That day was one of those, when everything seemed to happen at once. Unlike our son Alex, who’d been born four years earlier, our daughter came into the world quickly, popping out in something of a rush, like a cork from a bottle. She arrived in typical Amy fashion – kicking and screaming. I swear she had the loudest cry of any baby I’ve ever heard. I’d like to tell you that it was tuneful but it wasn’t – just loud. Amy was four days late, and nothing ever changed: for the whole of her life she was always late.
Amy was born at the Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield, north London, not far from where we lived in Southgate. And because the moment itself was quickly over, her family – grandparents, great-aunts, uncles and cousins – soon crowded in, much as they did for almost every event in our family, good or bad, filling the spaces around Janis’s bed to greet the new arrival.
I’m a very emotional guy, especially when it comes to my family, and, holding Amy in my arms, I thought, I’m the luckiest man in the world. I was so pleased to have a daughter: after Alex was born, we’d hoped our next child might be a girl, so he could have a sister. Janis and I had already decided what to call her. Following a Jewish tradition, we gave our children names that began with the same initial as a deceased relative, so Alex was named after my father, Alec, who’d died when I was sixteen. I’d thought that if we had another boy he’d be called Ames. A jazzy kind of name. ‘Amy,’ I said, thinking that didn’t sound quite as jazzy. How wrong I was. So Amy Jade Winehouse – Jade after my stepfather Larry’s father Jack – she became.
Amy was beautiful, and the spitting image of her older brother. Looking at pictures of the two of them at that age, I find it difficult to tell them apart. The day after she was born I took Alex to see his new little sister, and we took some lovely pictures of the two of them, Alex cuddling Amy.
I hadn’t seen those photographs for almost twenty-eight years, until one day in July 2011, the day before I was due to go to New York, I got a call from Amy. I could tell right away that she was very excited.
‘Dad, Dad, you’ve got to come round,’ she said.
‘I