Amy Winehouse with Eve Lindley

Amy, honey, he's just a guy.

Hit him with your car.

Welcome to Your Wrong About.

I'm Sarah Marshall, and this week we are talking about Amy Winehouse with Eve Lindley.

Eve Lindley is a friend of the show.

She is a star of stage and screen.

And she is telling us today the story of Amy Winehouse, who I know many of you have heard of but if you really have no idea the basics are that Amy Winehouse was an amazing powerhouse singer who became famous very young struggled publicly with addiction issues and also died far too young at the age of 27.

So like the story of any woman in the spotlight This is as much a story about her as it is a story about media of the time, the 2000s, during which she became famous.

We have, as you might imagine, multiple trigger warnings for this episode.

We talk about eating disorders, we talk about self-harm, we talk about addiction, and we talk about someone who ultimately didn't make it very far through those struggles.

And so, this may or may not be the right episode for you in this moment, and whether or not it is,

we love you.

And we hope you find something great to listen to today.

This episode was originally meant to be a two-parter.

We ended up just going for it and doing it in one session.

So, this is a long one.

I hope you're listening to this while doing something fun or that it helps you get through something tedious.

We've got some fun bonus content for you if you're on Apple Plus subscriptions, or if you are our friend on Patreon, you can listen to a bunch of bonus episodes we've done.

The most recent is a bonus with Kelsey Weber Smith on Urban Legends and also the movie Urban Legend from 1998.

It was a really fun one.

I hope you enjoy it if you listen.

Kelsey and I are also doing a holiday show down at the Aladdin in Portland.

It is unfortunately already sold out, but we are excited to bring you a massive seance, a co-production of You're Wrong About, Kelsey's podcast, American Hysteria, and the Spirit World with music by The Little Lies.

We hope it's a new holiday tradition that we got to enjoy with you.

In her notes for this intro, Carolyn has written for me to say happy November or something, and that's the best I can say about November.

It's a month that we're all just trying to kind of get through, most of us, unless November is the best month for weather where you live.

But happy November or something, we're getting through it.

And now, here's the episode.

And according to contactmusic.com, Amy Winehouse's next album, Future Song, is about cooking, about cooking.

That's what they say.

Cooking, crystal meth, black talk.

For best female pop vocal performance, Amy Winehouse for rehab.

Can somebody wake her up this afternoon around six and tell her?

Amy Winehouse, what is, you know, YouTube, the thing on the computer, YouTube, yep.

Well, she put some footage up there.

Now, Amy Winehouse, she's like a mad person.

She was playing with some baby mice with this guy Pete Doherty.

Now he's a mad person.

And with the little mouse,

she sent a message to her husband Blake who's in prison and a mad person.

Now this is real.

This is Amy Winehouse sending a message to her husband Blake.

This is the real baby mouse as well.

Blake,

please don't divorce Mary.

She loves you ever so.

Yeah.

Now, why would you divorce that?

Welcome to Your Rhyme About, the podcast where sometimes we try to make you feel like a little kid watching a True Hollywood story in 1999,

but hopefully a little bit less sensationalistically and we're not selling pet eggs.

And with me today is the one,

the only

Eve Lindley.

Hello, Sarah Marshall.

Hello, Eve.

Ah, and from now on, all about Eve.

I made that joke before, I'll make it it again.

Honestly, it's a joke that will follow me around my whole life.

It's a great joke.

I'm really happy.

I'm happy for that to be my joke.

Yeah, I, in elementary school, the words Sarah, plain, and tall came up, unfortunately, quite often, which is just...

So Eve.

We are talking today about Amy Winehouse, who I remember always kind of at the periphery of my consciousness because she had a couple of really big hits.

She was really big culturally, unbelievably talented as a singer, and also somebody who, in the vein of Anna Nicole Smith, a lot of people enjoyed just kind of speculating on the out-of-it-ness of and

doing so in a way that kind of never seemed to acknowledge that she was in real danger.

Or maybe it did, but in a way where it was like, ha ha ha ha.

If someone wasn't around or has no memory of this, like, can you talk about Amy Winehouse's whole vibe?

Because, like, I mean, as far as I can tell, there was absolutely nobody else in mainstream pop music who nobody at that level of fame who was doing something like what she was doing at the time.

Yeah.

And I think that that actually ended up being part of her unraveling is it's like, this is a girl who grew up wanting to be a jazz musician and wanting to sing in these little tiny, you know, intimate jazz clubs.

She had a family of musicians.

Her uncles were professional jazz musicians and her grandmother Cynthia, who she was like very, very close to, was a jazz singer who dated Ronnie Scott, who was a club owner in the 1940s.

You know, she never expected to be famous.

She never expected to be world famous.

And she literally is quoted as saying, like, my music is not big.

It's not on that level.

Like, I mean, this was at the time where like Britney Spears was like a global phenomenon.

And it's like these two women were doing completely different things, you know?

Yeah.

I mean, how can a jazz singer fill the same stage that a like theatrical production like Britney Spears kind of fill that space in that stage?

Yeah.

And Brittany was so, like, she had so clearly been sort of constructed and packaged by the pop music machine and what she did was you know it was very dance oriented it was a lot of kind of engineered publicity moments yeah britney was a product and and that's not a bad thing i love britney spears right and to a certain degree all musicians are products right like there is taylor swift the person of course and then there is taylor swift the product and the act

you know like they're not mutually exclusive they're not completely different they certainly overlap but you know one is a product, a distinct product that needs to generate sales.

And one of them is a person with feelings and relationships.

And in the case of someone like Amy, I don't think that she really ever cared about the product.

I think she likes cared about it in the moments where it was fun and it was like fun to get dressed up.

And I don't even know how much of she had this friend named Naomi Perry, who was her stylist, who really sort of like ushered in her look, you know, the liner and the hair, the knowledge bump.

And I think that that was always fun for Amy, but I don't think she ever really realized that it was like sort of a perfect recipe for selling herself, you know, like there is this theory called the silhouette theory, which is that like, if you black somebody out completely and you only see their silhouette, if you can tell who that person is, then they are an icon.

So like, if I gave you a blacked out photo of Elvis Presley,

because of the hair, because of, you know, maybe a certain outfit, you would know who it was.

There are many, many people

who are able to put that to the test.

And I think Amy is one of them, certainly.

This is the other thing about Amy that is fascinating to me is she only did two albums.

She has one that was released, and forgive me, I only ever read this word.

Is it posthumously?

yeah as far as i know as in like after death she has that one which is called lioness which is also a great album and most of it is like b-sides from her previous albums but she really only has two albums like she became this huge icon and sort of changed music and ushered in all these sort of copycat acts based on two albums which i think is ins i mean that's crazy to me that's insanity yeah it makes me think of James Dean.

Yeah, exactly.

Fully like a live fast, die young, change the world kind of vibe.

Yeah.

And also like leave this incredibly truncated career.

Yeah.

Well, can we talk about like wherever the story begins, in your opinion, and also just like you know, how did her career get started?

I'm curious about because whenever someone wants to do something small and ends up doing something big, that's always interesting.

So she was born born September 14th, 1983.

This year would have been her 40th birthday.

I mean, it's crazy.

She's been gone for 13 years.

And she was born in like a suburb of North London.

She's an older brother named Alex.

And they were just very much like a middle-class English family.

And her dad was a taxi driver.

Her mother was a pharmacist.

There was always, as I said before, there was like always music around her as a kid.

And her dad would sing Frank Sinatra to her.

Her mother, her grandmother was a singer.

She was very close with her grandmother.

And she was just sort of like your classic disruptive young girl, you know, like she was, they called her Hurricane Amy.

And she went to all these like performing arts schools.

And like, there's like a story that she got expelled from one of them.

And I think the story is she got expelled for like having a nose ring, you know, like like she was a bad girl.

She was like larger than life personality and like very in your face.

And there's this great documentary, which I of course watched to get ready for this called Amy.

It's filled with a lot of information.

But what's really amazing about it.

You know, Amy is, so let me see.

So she's 10 years older than me.

And I don't know what it is about that generation.

I guess it's like, cause I had the same access to cameras as they did.

But there's something about that generation that like, there is so much footage of them.

Yeah.

It's like, I think they got cameras as teenagers, and so they just started filming everything.

So there's like footage of her at like a random birthday party as, you know, at 13.

And like, like, the whole documentary is found footage and voiceover.

There's never like a sit-down interview where somebody is talking into the camera.

Like, it's all clips and footage of her.

There is so much footage of this woman.

People, teachers were always sort of impressed by her because she was like,

she was good at it.

Like she could have done it if she set her mind to it, but she just did not care for school and she was just too rebellious for it.

And like people would know that she was smart and see that she was a good writer, but you know, there was no way to make her, I guess, really apply herself.

So she dropped out when she was 16

and she just started singing and performing around London, like bands.

She was in this band called the Bolshevik, and she was a female vocalist for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra.

Wow, that sounds official.

I mean, her voice is so unique and so emotive.

And one of my favorite clips that sort of illustrates this, I'm sending to you right now.

I'm very excited.

And I would love for you to watch it and describe it and talk about what you pick up on.

Okay.

All right.

I'm starting it.

It's my 14th birthday evening in Florida.

Happy birthday to Leborg.

Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday to Laura.

Happy birthday

to

you.

That's so great.

It's like so the essence of being like 13 or 14.

Yeah.

At the start, right?

It's like these kids goofing off at a birthday thing.

And then it's like, and it's also so great because it feels to me pretty clear that like you're watching Amy like showing off and showing off her beautiful voice, which she should be showing off.

It's a bunch of teenagers singing happy birthday, and then one of them sort of takes the lead, I guess you could say, and all of the other ones sort of stop and like listen to her sing because she's that good.

Yeah.

You know, I think of her as somebody who's sort of at odds with her own self and her own talent and her own body.

And this is like a moment before any of that.

Yeah.

You know, hopefully, maybe if you look at this, you do sort of get the feeling that like, that's a girl who is like confident and like knows what she's got and is like ready to strut her stuff.

Like your teens are so complicated, but like I do remember as a younger teenager having like a certain amount of like audacity.

Yeah.

Because so much of what the world wants to teach you just hasn't had time to sink in yet, maybe.

Yeah.

And you know, the girls in that video kind of remain her friends for the rest of her life, which is also really heartwarming.

Yeah.

And there are some spats and issues.

And, you know, Amy was,

you know, an imperfect person and an imperfect friend, but they basically remain in her life until the end, which I think is so rare.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, so this clip, the reason why I say that it appears to be a time before Amy is at odds with herself.

There are so many clips that we've seen well into her career where she will give a performance and she'll just be really hard on herself for it.

And sometimes, you know, she might have been under the influence during the performance.

And sometimes you watch the performance, like there's a clip of her performing with Tony Bennett, who's like one of her idols.

And she just keeps stopping and being like, I'm so sorry.

I don't want to waste your time.

I'm so sorry.

Like, that was shit.

That was horrible.

Let me do it again.

You can't really be that talented and that good at one thing without it kind of creating a complex, I think.

And, you know, trigger warning.

When Amy was 15,

she started binging and purging.

And her mother has says that one day Amy came up to her and said, I have this amazing diet, mom.

I can eat whatever I want and then I just bring it all back up.

And her mother did not know.

what to do

and seemingly nobody in her life knew what to do and a lot of people thought she would grow out of it.

Her brother has a quote after she died that was basically like,

you know, all the little girls in Amy's grade were throwing up their meals, but they all grew out of it.

And Amy just never grew out of it.

And I don't want to like vilify her brother here, but when I read that quote, I was like, what are you talking about?

All little girls are throwing up their food.

I have, there's this crazy thing that you see with parents sometimes where it's like, oh, they're just doing this for attention.

Yeah.

And I'm like, okay, that's fine.

Give them the attention.

Like I, the line, they're just doing this for attention is so crazy to me because it's like, yeah, probably.

So now you give them the attention

and you like sort through the problem.

You know what I mean?

As opposed to just being like, they're doing this for attention and I'm not going to give it to them.

And it's like, why shouldn't they get attention?

Don't they need that?

It seems like they need it.

Like, it seems like they want it and they deserve it.

You know, they're deserving of it, you know.

Right.

I know.

This idea that like teenagers are at war with adults, I think, I think adults are at war with teenagers and teenagers are just trying to have an okay life, really.

What happened to her is no one's fault and also everyone's fault.

You know what I mean?

And that includes her.

There's no one moment where you're like, and this is the moment that, you know, her fate was sealed or whatever.

Although we try to do that in biopics.

Oh,

well, exactly.

Of course.

Yeah.

To make sense of things, you know, when you lose someone young to an accident or an overdose or whatever, it's like you do sort of have to create a story in your head where you can kind of come to terms with it and understand it or something.

But like we talked about this in the Vicki Morgan episode.

It's like sometimes there is no poetic license.

Sometimes there is no way of smoothing it all over and shaping it into a sculpture that is nice to look at.

Yeah, sometimes you just end up with a house full of stuff and there's not a linear narrative to make out of it necessarily.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So anyhow, she's dropped out of school.

She's sort of around London singing and like

having the time of her life, really.

So she finally gets signed to Simon and Fuller, which is a management company, and they manage the Spice Girls and Annie Lennox.

And a friend of hers, who's still a working musician, his name is Tyler James, and he was actually on The Voice.

He introduces Amy to a manager there named Nicholas Shymansky.

I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.

You're doing your best, and that's what's important.

Thank you.

So she signs, and she's given studio time to make a demo, and she's making 250 pounds a week.

And she's like, I am living my life.

Like, I am loving this.

And Simon and Fuller is like developing her act and like, you know, honing her skills.

She's only 19.

She's obviously very good, but, you know, she needs some guidance here and there and finding her sound.

And while they're doing this, they like are trying to keep her a secret.

And I think it's because they know that she's going to

really take London by storm.

Nobody is thinking of like global fame, but everyone is thinking like city famous, you know, like the Beatles in Liverpool in 1962.

It's a nice situation.

Yeah, yeah.

And like, for someone like Amy who wants to sing jazz, that's the best case scenario, you know?

They're keeping her a secret, or so they think, because she is, of course, a rebel by nature, and she's going out at night to jazz clubs and she's singing standards

and then there's this guy named darkest bees

no

yes which is such a good name there's really such a thing as being too british i know right darkest bees

I know, incredible.

Somebody shows him a video of like another musician.

Like they're like, look at this like guitar player or whatever.

And Amy is singing with that musician.

And he's like, well, wait a minute.

Who the fuck is that?

And he like apparently like can't get a straight answer because she's like, you know, being kept a secret or whatever.

And he will not let it go.

And so eventually he finds out who she is.

And he's from Island Records.

And so he wants to sign her.

And then there's also interest from Virgin Records and EMI Records.

And these are all just like big record companies.

You know, I don't know know like the ins and outs of the music industry.

It's not my wheelhouse.

But basically there's like a bidding war for this 19-year-old girl and everybody wants to sign her.

How does she react to that?

Do we know?

I mean, I don't know.

I don't have a quote, but from what I've gathered about her.

She was just excited to have her own apartment.

Like she was making 250 pounds a week and she was like, she does have a quote that she's like, I just wanted to sit in my own flat to write songs all day and play loud music and smoke weed because you can't do that in your mom's house.

Like, I think she is just like,

I'm chilling.

I'm 19 years old.

I want to like smoke weed and hang out with my friends and like do that 19-year-old shit.

When I was 19, I think my dream was also to have my own apartment, but to be able to go sit in a bar and drink red wine and write

for like hours and hours.

And that was like my idea of heaven.

And lately, I've been thinking, like, why don't I do that?

That's all I wanted.

And I never do that now.

Yeah.

I mean, you literally have the power to live the life that you dreamed at 19, you know?

Yeah.

Think about that, you guys.

And that's, oh my God, that's the scariest thing because then I'm like, well, I'm not living that life.

So what does that say about me?

Did I ever really want it?

You know?

Yeah.

And I guess, and I think that I like, I really did want it, but then it's like life gets so crowded.

Right.

And often, like, your idea of what adulthood with the freedom it will give you is like pretty small when you're a teenager.

And maybe more of us should go back to that.

Yeah.

I kind of knew who I was as a kid and as an early teen.

And then, like, somewhere in my late teens, things got crowded.

My early 20s, they got even more crowded.

And like

the last like

three

years has just been a process of trying to get back to the things I knew about myself when I was 11 and 13.

You know what I mean?

And 15.

I'm eagerly trying to be that girl again.

She just knew what was going on.

Like she wasn't concerned with like the shit that me at 25 was like trying to be, you know,

thin or trying to be palatable or trying to be, you know, the bullshit that you try to be.

Anyhow, so there's this bidding war.

Amy signs a publishing deal with EMI and a record record deal with Island Records.

And so this guy, Darkest Bees, who sort of, I think his interest in her kind of drummed it all up.

And so he says that the real excitement he felt over her was that she was, and he called her a pop star already.

He said she was an atypical pop star for the time.

And that the interest around her was in direct sort of opposition to all of the reality TV music shows at the time, because on those shows, you would find someone who was, you know, say from like North London and like a little sloppy and like a little rough around the edges.

And the whole process of the show would be to polish them up.

And

what Darkis and others really admired about Amy was she didn't need to be polished.

Like she was polish remover.

So she signs this deal and she gets to work on Frank.

And she's like listening to all her favorite jazz musicians.

You know, like she loved Nina Simone, she loved Tony Bennett.

There's a lot of that on Frank.

There's a lot of that soul and like RB.

And this was at a time where like the top albums were all coming out of America and they were stuff for women.

They were stuff like In the Zone by Brittany and like Dangerously in Love by Beyonce.

Like they were extremely polished and extremely not auto-tuned.

Well, they probably were auto-tuned, but they were like clearly made in a computer.

You know what I mean

and amy puts out frank

and hates that there's one song called i think put it in the box

and it's got strings on it that are not real like they're you know synthetic they're from a computer and she is like out of her mind upset about it and like

that's very tom weights of her you know i don't want to say that like Amy's a real artist and anyone who used, you know, fake strings is not a real artist because I don't feel that way.

You know, I love those two albums I mentioned, Beyonce and Brittany, are great albums.

I loved them.

I was listening to them at the time.

But there is something so

just darling to me about this girl.

Yeah.

We used fake strings.

Like, that's.

That's ruining the whole album.

Yeah, like, that's my whole vibe is off.

Like, when the album comes out, it does really well.

People like it, and she's praised for her originality, and she's an amazing songwriter and obviously she has this gifted voice.

And immediately people are like, she reminds me of these girl groups of the 60s.

And she wasn't like, I don't think that it was like in Back to Black where she was really kind of putting that forth in a direct way.

There is something about the way she writes that is so honest and it kind of reminds me.

of those groups because it's like it's talking about love and it's talking about sort of like the desire to be loved back

the hopelessness and the disappointment when you feel like you're not loved back and that there's obviously so much music that deals with that but i think at that time we were really in like whatever wave of feminism we were in and so the music was like it was about being a hot slot in the city and being like whatever you know like men i don't need them and then amy was there being like

you know, my heart is crumbling because you won't look at me.

I am like literally like a moth to the flame, you know, like it's that honesty of those parts of yourself that you don't really want

to recognize, I guess.

Because it's embarrassing to need someone.

It's embarrassing to want someone.

We all want to be the hot bitch in the city who's like,

I don't need you.

Yeah, I'm happy you say that because I feel like from the beginning, like embarrassed to have crushes, embarrassed about crushes, embarrassed about like

wanting to actively pursue not being alone.

Because despite basically everyone seeking out relationships and agreeing that it's normal and that it's abnormal to not do that, it still feels like embarrassing to admit that you need or want more than you have to me.

I'm going to get a little personal here.

You know, there's so many like people who are in open relationships right now.

And

for some reason, a lot of people who are in open relationships seem to wander into my life and like want to be around me and like want to have me as one of their partners or, you know, hook up whatever.

And I really kind of thought for a while, I was like, well, I should be so lucky.

Like, this guy is great.

And like, I like being around him.

And so I must settle for being like one of his conquests.

And like,

recently I was like, I don't want that.

Like, I want to be in love.

I want to like, what does Carrie say?

She's like, I want head over heels.

I am someone who is looking for love.

I mean, like, really, I mean, I want that.

You know, I want to be

crazy in love as a certain Beyoncé Giselle Knowles would say.

You don't want to be in a three-way relationship with a lighting installation.

Exactly.

And I just, I just feel like Amy was saying that,

you know, she was singing about that.

And almost in a way that could be borderline unhealthy.

You know, like we all kind of have to check ourselves and be like, okay, well,

yes, I want to be in love, but you need to have other things going on in your life, of course.

That's what I want actually as a, like an over-the-top like 90s power ballad love song about like being so in love, but also having hobbies and like friends and stuff right right

you know she was still local at this time like this album wasn't even released in the u.s until 2007 you know but she became you know the pride of the uk people loved her this this album won she was she won best female solo artist best british urban act at the brit awards she was shortlisted for the mercury music prize she won an ivor novello award you know like she became the charming, funny, heartfelt girl from London and everybody loved her.

And she, and this was sort of the beginning of her life as a famous person and the beginning of the British tabloid show, you know, her life,

not just her music as entertainment, but her life as entertainment.

And she was called Hurricane Amy as a kid and she was Hurricane Amy as an adult.

She was 19 years old.

She never really, I mean, this is sort of the age where you come to terms with and figure out what your relationship will be like to alcohol and to all of those things, whatever it is you're doing.

And I think at this point, she was just drinking alcohol and smoking weed.

So Amy is...

in Camden.

Camden is known for its vintage stores and flea markets, and there's a lot of musical history there.

It's like the bohemian mecca.

And this is sort of a huge influence on her like artistic identity and certainly her style, which I could talk about her style for hours.

Give us at least a few minutes now.

This does feel so important.

Okay, well, this is also when she meets Naomi Perry.

And the story is that they're both out at a nightclub and they're both in the mirror backcombing their hair in the bathroom, doing like a little buffant.

Perfect.

So when she meets Naomi Perry, She eventually hires her as a stylist.

And I mean, stylistically at the time, she is peerless.

Nobody is doing

like, what even is it?

It's like punk, but, and rockabilly, and indie sleaze and twee and ska.

And like, it's a smattering of genres of style and music, all kind of coming together.

Wow.

She obviously like loved the 50s and like loved sort of vintage style, loved vintage music.

And push it to the envelope.

Certainly, if you're a musician, pushing it bigger and bigger.

And, you know, the skirts should be shorter and the tits should be bigger you know and the winged liner should get bigger and the hair you know like really really like see how far you can go and that was sort of you know the fashion world clearly took notice of Amy and even today we see her as a style inspiration in fashion shows and and that kind of goes back to the um silhouette theory is it's like, if you see me with a bit of a buffant and a winged liner, you're probably going to be like, oh, like, were you listening to Amy Winehouse today?

You know, like

she just owned this look that I love so much.

I mean, I wish that I could wear it every day, you know.

What do you like about it personally?

She's painting in primary colors, and in one way, I mean, literally, she's wearing like yellow and red, you know, like she's literally wearing the primary colors.

It's the boldness

of the silhouettes, and for somebody who sang so much about wanting and needing men,

this look is not appealing to men.

You know what I mean?

There is something about what Amy is doing.

It's just sort of like not interested in being hot.

Even when it's hot, it's not interested in being hot.

Because when I look at her, it's like she has, and I say this as somebody who grew up looking not that different from her, like big nose, big features, big face, big presence.

And it feels like the look that she chose like emphasized all of that and made her bigger, right?

And made her eyes bigger, and her hair is huge.

And it's just like such a loud, taking up space thing that feels almost like a reaction against the memo that you get as an adolescent girl that like

you really need to be constantly making yourself smaller for male consumption.

This is another kind of interesting dichotomy about her is it's like, we know that she had an eating disorder.

We know that she had addiction issues.

I don't mean to say that like it's at odds with her eating disorder, but like.

Well, but I, I don't know.

I see what you're saying.

Like, I feel like it's like the ways that we inflict on our bodies what we feel about ourselves are like, I feel like often contradict each other.

or complicate each other.

And maybe this, this could be that or, you know, who knows?

Because we don't, it's all speculation but yeah it does feel like within the same body you find ways of both minimizing yourself and taking up more space yeah

I think also something about what Amy did that was probably the most

divisive you know

was that it was all sloppy

again it wasn't polished and i think that was what was divisive about it from a fashion standpoint

and from even like a consumer standpoint is it's like it's not perfectly done the ends of her hair are like a little fried you know like and i love that like i think that that is what is uniquely her and the fact that people were so divided also makes it

you know more powerful to me because when everyone likes something it's it's boring

so her style is emerging you know she's being introduced to higher-end brands and emerging designers And this is also where she meets Blake Fielder Seville.

Yes, who is a huge player in this story.

They meet at a pub, of course.

They are both seeing someone else at the time, which is not to say that they did anything wrong, but just context.

And they just sort of are drawn to each other in a way that I think was super powerful for her.

I mean, from what I've researched, it's like every relationship she had ever had was very powerful for her.

Like, she's somebody who threw herself into these relationships.

But this was maybe the first time that she was like flush with money and living on her own and had an album under her belt and like was really feeling herself.

You know, she could throw herself into a relationship and also throw some money at the relationship, and like it could really go somewhere.

And her and Blake sort sort of

add to the paparazzi frenzy because they are

a little turbulent.

They're on and off.

They're found like fighting in the streets sometimes.

Like, you know, they really, from the beginning, it seems like the relationship was just a little

up and down.

And she also has a great quote that said, that she says, when I fell in love with Blake, there was a lot of 60s music all around us, which will, of course, come back to to us when we talk about Back to Black, which we are

about to enter the Back to Black era.

Oh my God.

There are, I think, three or four years between Frank and Back to Black.

So she is just sort of like putzing around London, being a hot bitch in the city.

And the years are a little tumultuous.

And, you know, these are the years that inspire Back to Black.

And one of one of the main things that happens is that her grandmother, Cynthia, dies,

who was a jazz singer.

Amy felt very, very close to her.

And that sort of plunges Amy into a bit of a depression.

And she's, you know, drinking a lot.

Her eating disorder is a little out of control.

And Blake also gets back together with his ex-girlfriend that he was dating when they met.

And that, of course, pushes her over the edge.

She like goes a little reclusive and her friends show up at her apartment and it's sort of in squalor.

And this is sort of like a key moment where her

manager at the time, Nick Shymansky, sits her down and says, like, hey, like this album that you've been working on could be really big.

And like what you're doing is not working.

And she admits to having a problem.

She says that she's lost and she agrees to go to rehab.

Her friends, the ones that we saw in those video, in that video, the happy birthday video, are all very supportive and excited.

Then they tell her father, Mitch, that she's going to go to rehab and he he knows that she's got this album that she's sort of been working on, you know, already.

But he basically says like

she doesn't need to go to rehab.

She just needs to focus on her new album.

In the documentary, Amy,

this is sort of considered like the crucial moment.

You know, this was before she was globally famous.

She had a little bit of like,

you know, press in London, but it was, it was basically manageable.

But like, Blake was out of her life.

She could have, you know, gone to rehab.

She could have gotten clean.

And then like the flip side of that is like, we maybe never would have gotten back to black.

I think back to black is a perfect album.

It's probably one of my top five favorite albums of all time.

I guess like, what was the cost?

And like, and I guess what was the cost of it happening at that moment, you know, because I feel like right, could she have made this perfect album five years later?

You know, could she have, you know, like, I think, yeah, I don't think that you have to create from pain.

Pain is part of the human experience, and there's insight and information there.

But in terms of like creating while in a state of pain, I don't think pain helps unless you're like driven to distract yourself from your condition.

But yeah, yeah.

And I think that the difference is: are you swimming upstream upstream or downstream?

Like, you will get to land no matter what.

And in this case, like land is like the piece that you're working on.

And like, it might be like slightly different land.

You know, it might have different flowers on one island than the other, but it's like, if you're swimming upstream against the tide, it's just going to be so much harder to get there.

Yeah.

That quote, that line of like, if we had saved her, we maybe never would have gotten back to black has always been haunting to me because I don't know.

Yeah, I don't know that it's true.

And I don't know, I don't know what the people in her life had to tell themselves to

justify what happened, you know.

Yeah, and how clearly were they able to see it at the time?

Right.

She has a quote from this time where she says she was waking up, drinking and crying, listening to the Shangri-Laws, going to sleep, waking up, drinking, crying, and listening to the Shangri-Laws.

And she wanted to turn all of that into her own songs.

And that was how she got through it.

And for people who don't know, like, the Shangri-Laws are a very important girl group who I feel like their best-known song is probably Leader of the Pack.

Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

Which contains the iconic line,

They told me he was bad, but I knew he was sad.

Right.

And that's just everything.

As we'll see,

you know, Amy's relationship with Blake, you know, who she eventually gets a tattoo of Blake's name over her heart.

I don't know what her attraction to him was,

but I think it had something to do with like thinking that she understood him.

Yeah.

And you can imagine after he left her, she's listening to this song, The Leader of the Pack, and just crying and drinking.

And like, it all sort of makes sense, you know, to her.

girl group songs are like such a special genre you know and to me that probably to most people that's like the runnettes the crystals the charelles like the stuff you hear parodied in the chorus and little shop of horrors or on the dirty dancing soundtrack and right right the supremes of course and like the these beautiful songs made by women who were for the most part in contracts that were using them and not paying them nearly as much as they deserved, where these really powerful musicians are, for the most part, singing about like complete desolation,

you know, joy or sadness, but all of it being completely dependent on what your boyfriend is doing.

Yeah.

And I'm not saying that's anti-feminist.

I'm saying that reflects reality, and it's a lot of reality to take in and experience.

There are so many videos of her and Blake walking together around London.

And there's just something so relatable about the emphasis that she places on him.

Like she is so pulled to him.

And it's not something she's saying.

It's just like in the body language where she is so like, you know, one step behind him, but they're sort of in the same stride.

And like you can just see this like magnetic pull.

And there's, you know, later on, there's like a clip of her performing.

at some award show and she like finishes performing and the you know the announcer the the host sort of comes out and is like Amy Winehouse everybody and the crowd's going wild and she doesn't even seem to notice it because she is so she's so fixated on getting off that stage and getting to Blake and kissing him well and where do you fit this in with all with the rest of her life I guess I mean

how does this relationship seem to be affecting her generally I think her friends don't like him.

There's a lot of people in her life at this point that are concerned with Amy Winehouse, the product.

And the people who are concerned with Amy Winehouse, the person,

don't seem to like him.

But we're getting ahead of ourselves because after this pseudo-intervention where her father says she doesn't need to go to rehab, Amy goes to Miami and begins to work on Back to Black.

And she actually changes managers.

So Nick Shymansky, who sort of spearheaded that mini intervention before, is no longer in her life.

He will be back, though, in a major way.

But

she changes managers.

She throws herself into this new album.

She's not with Blake at the moment.

And she is leaning into this jukebox, doo-wop, Motown sort of sound.

And she's really going for these girl group, the inspiration of the girl groups.

And all of this was in Frank.

You know, the foundations were there and people really noticed it, but she really turned it all up.

And this is where she meets Mark Ronson,

who is, you know, a hit maker.

And they have a lovely working relationship and they get to work on Back to Black.

And everybody talks about how easy it was to make this album.

Certainly.

comparatively to Frank, where like, you know, Amy was upset about the fake strings and, you know, like she was really kind of precious about everything.

This album like poured out of her, which is incredible to me.

It reminds me of everyone says that Dolly Parton wrote Jolene and I Will Always Love You on the same day.

And apparently in five days, she wrote Rehab, Back to Black, You Know I'm No Good, Love is a Losing Game.

God.

Like all of the hits, you know.

And it was a fun experience, too.

I don't know if she was.

I don't think she was sober, you know, I mean, I think she did have like a, enough of a work ethic that she was focusing on making the album.

And basically, they would work from midday until dinner time, and Amy would cook for everyone.

She was like a great cook.

Isn't that sweet?

I had no idea.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She would make like meatballs and pastas, and like everybody loved working on it.

And Mark Ronson, they did six tracks together.

They did Rehab, Back to Black, You Know I'm No Good.

Love is a Losing Game.

Wake Up Alone and He Can Only Hold Her.

And he says it was like magic in a way that he never experienced

since.

And the story of rehab that he tells is literally they were just hanging out, walking around the city.

She she worked with him in New York City.

They're walking around the city, and they're just talking about life.

And she's like, Yeah, well, you know, they tried to make me go to rehab.

And I was like, No, no, no.

And

Mark goes, Wait a minute,

say that again.

And then, and he was literally just like, that would be such a fun little gimmick and like a cool lyric.

And that became the song, you know, and there's also the line, if my daddy thinks I'm fine.

And that is interesting.

And Nick Shymanski, you know, when that song hits the radios, he does sort of talk about being very conflicted because he's like, wow, she's sort of making.

a joke out of this very real thing in her life and in my life.

Like we wanted her to go to rehab.

Yeah, my God.

This is like when I heard of Amy Winehouse.

You know, like I was probably

in middle school.

This song hit the airwaves and like rehab was sort of a hot button topic because like Lindsay Lohan was going to rehab and Britney Spears was going to rehab and like rehab was so hot in the early 2000s.

It was like a giant cultural meme, I almost feel like it.

You know, like I was a kid, so I didn't really like get the seriousness of what was happening.

Not to take any blame off of me, I'm sure I added to the kind of weird culture around her and this song, but it is

very fascinating to see that like as this song permeates and as people start to learn more about her and things start to happen to her in the press, like the joke of Amy Winehouse and rehab.

Yeah.

It's like it started immediately.

You know, it's like she set herself up for these cruel jokes.

Yeah.

You know, rehab makes her a commercial star.

This is when she goes to, she becomes a household name.

She's notably very uncomfortable with this.

Like she has always said she did not want to be huge.

This was not what she expected.

She wanted to be a jazz singer.

Suddenly.

With rehab being so big, guess who is back in her life?

Oh, God, Blake.

Knock, knock, knock.

It's Blake.

Knock, knock, knocking on Amy's door.

They are almost immediately engaged.

She's done this whole American press tour with rehab and you know I'm no good.

And like, you know, it really kind of hit America in this major way.

And he accompanied her on the press tour.

That was when they kind of got back together.

And then they returned to Camden together.

And it is widely assumed that this is the moment that she tries crack and heroin for the first time.

Oh, how come?

Well, Blake, I think it was a part of his life.

And it's sort of assumed, and I think he has confirmed that he got her into it, you know?

And I think that they always, as a couple, exhibited like addictive behavior and, you know, they were very volatile and, you know, all of that.

But this is sort of another key moment where it's it's like they latch on to each other and they just sort of start spinning out of control i'm not blaming him alone i do sort of always get the feeling that everyone in this girl's life who was supposed to take care of her with very few exceptions did not take care of her

but like i don't know these people i don't know you know what they were dealing with and like i'm sure we've all been you know made bad decisions with somebody who needed our help like i you know we can't blame any one person, right?

Yeah.

But so she's back in Camden.

She's performing.

This is when she starts like performing under the influence.

And there's so much heartbreaking footage of this time

because she's like performing rehab while clearly drunk or high.

And it's like this weird battle cry of like,

ha ha, like, I'm not going, you know, like, even now, even as you're watching me sort of fumble, I will not go.

And then

people start really seeing a difference in her, in her physically, in her emotionally, and she overdoses and has a seizure.

And doctors basically say that she's very small.

There's been a lot of damage done to her body, you know, damage from her eating disorder and damage from her drinking.

And if she has another seizure, she will die.

Oh, God.

So there's another intervention that's done.

And this time, Mitch is sort of on board with it.

For some reason, somehow photos of the intervention make it into the press.

Do with that what you will.

And remember that Mitch suddenly was

very supportive of the intervention.

And then photos of the intervention got into the papers.

I don't know what that means.

I know what I think it means.

Yeah, what do you think it means?

I think that Mitch told the press where it was happening.

I mean this man brought you know television cameras to a family vacation because he was filming a documentary called My Daughter Amy and she she was so upset.

There's always someone in the inner circle who is leaking shit.

It doesn't just happen.

Right.

And like British tabloids are even worse than American ones.

And like if the media is invasive enough and if the financial incentives are there, it just seems like someone in an inner circle is going to crack.

Right.

Right.

If not multiple people.

I can't necessarily relate to having a member of my family become world famous, seemingly overnight.

But like.

I'm sure it brings out parts of you that you're not necessarily proud of.

Like if I, you know, if I really wanted to get tickets to like a basketball game and my sister was world famous, then yeah, I probably would be like, well, I'm actually the sister of, you know, whoever, you know, like, I think it does create

a bit of a monster in, you know, in anyone who is close to you,

close to the famous person, you know?

Yeah.

So anyway, Amy is supposed to start a U.S.

tour, but with the seizure and everything, it is decided that she will go to rehab.

And you can imagine the jokes that came out of that from good old Jay Leno.

Here's where stuff is very interesting.

It's decided that Amy will go to rehab with Blake.

That the two of them will go to the same rehab together.

Many, many people would advise against this.

Many doctors would advise against it.

Many just random people on the street would advise against it.

I would advise against it.

Like you do not go to rehab with the person who

got you into the stuff that you're rehabbing from.

You know, like you need that space.

It's great that they both go, but they got to go to separate places is what I would assume.

Yeah.

Guess how long they stay in rehab?

45 minutes.

I mean, I think it was like three days or something.

Wow.

Better than what I said, but not great.

Yeah, still not great.

Still Still not great.

And I think there is actually another time though in her life where she did like walk.

She's photographed walking into a rehab clinic and then like an hour later walking out as if she just like came in to get like a lowdown of like, what would happen in rehab?

And then she was like, okay, I'm good.

But yeah, they stay for three days and they are, of course, photographed back in Camden.

And there are some really like distressing photos of them like bloody and disheveled and like bandaged and like walking on the street.

Amy like wore these ballet flats all the time.

These like,

like, I think they were fully like actually ballerina shoes.

And there's like an image of them just covered in blood that is like, when I was a kid, I was like, that's so glamorous.

But like, now it's like very distressing and blood is not actually a fun thing to look at.

I think it's like a, as a younger teenager, you're like, wouldn't it be so glamorous to just have my life be falling apart?

And then when it is, you're like, oh no, it's not.

Why would i think that this actually sucks this actually feels so shitty yeah but it's like but i don't know like when when you're too young to like feel like you have a life it's just exciting to think of having something

long enough for it to get destroyed yeah

i guess that's what it is huh i don't know it's something because When you're a teenager, you're not responsible for your own life and you have to do what everyone tells you.

But the appeal of being responsible for for your whole life and then letting it fall apart just so that you can have that control.

I can do whatever I want with this.

It's sort of the same principle as when you cut your Barbie's hair and color all over her face.

It's like, I'm responsible.

This is my thing that I can do whatever I want with.

And because I have like zero impulse control, I'm going to ruin it, you know?

Yeah.

But at least I have the power to ruin it, which is like not much much to cling to, but you know, sometimes you do that.

There's a moment that they talk about in the documentary where like Blake he like cut himself by accident, I think.

And then Amy cut herself in the same spot

on purpose and said to him, I'll do anything that you do.

Amy, honey, he's just a guy.

Hit him with your car.

Yeah.

On November 8th, 2007,

her home is raided in Camden,

and Blake is arrested for assault and obstruction of justice.

Apparently, he beat up a pub manager in 2006 and then paid him $400,000 to keep quiet about it.

And this is unsubstantiated, but I would assume that that $400,000 came out of Amy's pocketbook because how did he have that kind of money?

I mean, really.

So Blake is arrested and put in jail and he goes to prison.

And of course, Amy spirals.

We've seen this before.

Every time he sort of is taken out of her life, she spirals.

But this is also around the time that the Grammy nominations are announced.

And interestingly enough, One of the people announcing Grammy nominations that year is Taylor Swift, which I think is so crazy.

I feel like she exists in a different cultural moment.

And then, okay, so she has six nominations, which is huge.

Best New Artist, Album of the Year for Back to Black, Best Pop Vocal Album, Record of the Year for Rehab, Song of the Year for Rehab, and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for Rehab.

George Lopez announces her best female pop performance.

Wow.

That's a name I've not heard.

And let me tell you, he is on my shit list.

He announces her best female pop vocal performance nomination with a joke.

He says something to the effect of like, will somebody go wake up Amy Winehouse, wherever she is?

And then he, under his breath, says, drunk ass.

What?

Yeah.

At her Grammy nomination.

Could you imagine?

No.

Ah!

She was like this cartoon character.

And I think maybe because she was British, nobody, I mean, we were doing it to Britney, but I feel like there was just this weird thing where it was like, Amy Winehouse is over there, so we can make fun of her and feel okay about it.

I think Americans fundamentally don't think British people are real.

Exactly, exactly.

And it trickles down.

So like when George Lopez makes this joke and Jay Leno makes that joke, suddenly you have kids in school, in middle school, just sort of being like, oh, like Amy Winehouse is going to die.

Like, I mean, this is a woman who literally has, like, in her hit songs, in the the song Back to Black, the music video is a funeral procession.

And the lyrics are basically her being like, my odds are stacked.

I mean, like, the messaging is like, it is destiny that I'm going to die.

Yeah.

And it's like, well, yeah, eventually, Amy.

But it's like, but it's so weird when we have this sort of cultural complicity and like,

wow, she really was destined to burn bright and flame out early.

And it's like, no, she wasn't.

This is our fault.

I mean, I just can't, it's, it's so fucked up, Sarah.

It's just like, yeah, it's so sad.

And it's so like, it's so bizarre to look at.

She's obviously singing about Blake and how he went back to his ex and she's going back to black.

And, you know, in that case, black, to me, black is like her depression and her, you know, her negative traits, her, her self-destructive traits.

Like, I really relate to that.

Like when something is over, when a friend or a lover is done sort of playing with me and puts me back on the shelf, like I can revert back to parts of myself that I'm not super proud of.

And it's like, this person is an addict.

This person is not

trying to be clever.

This person is perhaps asking you for help, you know?

Yeah, and I don't know that you can see somebody kind of experience using this imagery and

having this sort of romance with death.

And you can just be like, listen, this is not going anywhere good.

Trust me.

You know, you don't have to trust that this is the right relationship for them.

So

the Grammy announcements happen.

And when Blake is in jail and the Grammy announcements are announced, Amy agrees to go to rehab for real on her own.

And she is clean by the Grammy Awards.

She performs at the Grammys remotely in London via satellite because she had visa problems.

She sings You Know I'm No Good and Rehab.

And I think I mentioned that one of her idols, like all-time idols, was Toni Bennett, who she eventually we know will perform with.

And I just sent you a video.

And this is one of my favorite videos of her.

And I would like for you to watch it.

Okay.

Three, two, one, go.

And the Grammy goes to Amy Weinhaus.

Thank you to everyone at Island Records,

everyone at EMI Music Publishing,

to Ray Ray and Joe,

10 years this year, Ray Ray and Joe.

To Mark Wronson and Salaam Remy, to my mum and dad,

for my Blake,

my Blake incarcerated.

And for London, this is for London, because Captain Town and Burning Down.

You know, Tony Bennett has been an idol of hers her whole life.

And then he gave her this Grammy.

He announced this Grammy.

And she's there in London with her whole family.

She's sober, and she just is like

shocked.

Yeah.

I mean, in a way that makes you wonder if she felt maybe undeserving or something, but like, this is similarly like the payoff of years and years of hard work and passion.

And that wasn't the only thing she won that night.

Also, she like won.

So that one was record of the year.

She won best new artist.

She won best pop vocal album.

She won record of the year.

This one, and then song of the year, and then best female pop vocal performance.

So she won five Grammys that night.

God.

And you like are watching what is like theoretically the greatest moment of someone's life.

And yet Amy is sort of like numb for a few seconds and then she turns around and goes to hug her band.

Yeah.

Which also speaks to like, I don't know, the teamwork that goes into making the product of Amy Winehouse.

And like maybe she understands that it's not

just her, you know?

Yeah,

which I love.

The girl who wanted to perform jazz songs in CD nightclubs is now world famous.

And that is obviously a lot of pressure.

It's a lot of pressure for an addict.

It's a lot of pressure for a young woman.

So three days after this Grammy win, she relapses.

Oh, God.

Wow.

Yeah.

And I don't want to make like this whole episode about like she relapsed and then she went to rehab over and over.

Like, I think her story could be that.

And I'm sure I'm already like making it that and buying into it.

And, you know, like that, it's really hard to talk about somebody who is an addict.

But this particular relapse is like interesting to me because, like, I'm someone who's very familiar with addiction.

And, like, it makes sense to make bad decisions when you're low and you're in a depression and you don't have a lot going on.

And I think the impulse to return to your bad behavior when things are really good and you're at the top of your game is like also very interesting to me.

She didn't really bask in her win, you know, like, she just sort of was like, I gotta stop feeling.

Yeah.

And I think maybe like she misses Blake.

Like, one of the first people she mentions in her acceptance speech is Blake.

Oh.

And perhaps using these drugs made her feel closer to him.

Or, you know, to even be like considered like the most talented person who does what you do, who can live up to that?

You know, like, it's, it's a lot.

It's a lot to deal with.

So by mid-2008, she's using pretty regularly.

It was like she got sober just enough for this moment, just long enough to win the Grammys.

And then she was sort of back to where she was.

And she's making huge money.

Like her fees have gone way, way up due to winning these awards.

And she's on a financial trajectory that nobody wants to halt.

Nobody who is

responsible for Amy Winehouse, the product, would dare halt that financial trajectory.

Yeah.

And this is when a lot of her friends start to withdraw from her because she's using and she's just not fun to be around and they don't want to be a part of it.

They don't want to like, you know, this was maybe the straw that broke the camel's back and they don't want to enable her.

She is doing all these festivals.

There's like a Glastonbury festival where she's like.

Naomi Perry talks about it.

Like she was, she seemed fine.

And then like literally 20 minutes before she was meant to go on, suddenly she was like falling on the floor.

And she had this like creative idea at Glastonbury to put little cocktail umbrellas in her hair.

And it's sort of delightful looking.

And I mean, it's a fine performance, but the thing that everyone talks about is like she goes into the crowd and a fan.

pulls at her.

And so she turns around and punches the fan in the face.

And that's sort of what everyone talks about, which is very interesting because nowadays there's a big conversation about like

being a fan in a crowd and like what is respectful and like you shouldn't be throwing teddy bears at the performer.

You shouldn't be throwing things at the performer touching them, you know.

But at the time we believed that you should pull strangers' hair pretty much.

Yeah.

And I think that also like this was maybe pre-social media like to be in the presence of someone that you admired that much, like maybe you wouldn't really know what to do.

You know, like you wouldn't have control of your faculties or something.

There's also this recording of her singing rehab through like gritted teeth.

And like, I think I said it already, but it's like rehab became this like battle cry where she was like, fuck everyone.

I am not going to rehab.

She assaults a photographer, kind of very similar to Britney Spears.

And then like there are jokes about her appearance because she's using, she's an active user.

So like when you use stuff like heroin or crack, like, you know, you pick at your skin, you are.

dozing off in public and like the jokes just sort of i mean i feel like for someone like jay Leno, it's like the jokes are writing themselves, you know.

Yeah, and you have to have like a hundred jokes every night.

A lot of this happens because people like Amy Winehouse create good, easy copy.

The jokes are easy to make.

There are a lot of writers trying to come up with stuff for Jay Leno to say, and Billy needs new shoes.

Yeah.

You know, but then the problem is like,

when and why did we decide that these were the jokes we had to make?

Yeah.

And why can't we undecide that?

maybe it's just because i've dealt with addiction

and to see these videos of like paparazzi taunting her on the street yeah i mean it's just it's just so anathema to me like i just can't fathom well it's like lions preying on a wounded antelope or something yeah yeah

I think also this is a time where it's like she's won the Grammys, she's gone on the tours, she's done the festivals, like the back to black album promotion is over and her husband's in jail and she's left to her own devices and like this is sort of when she fell out of being a musical act and really just was a

you know a tabloid fixture and the images of her are you know just so bad I mean to publish the worst image of someone to me is like I you know I take group photos and I like,

you know, try and find the one where everybody looks good.

you know what I mean?

And I get like approval from everyone, and you know, like,

but it's like this was a time where people were trying to find the worst photo ever, you know, yeah, because you know, that's the business we decided we're gonna have, yeah.

So, things are bad, things keep going, and then I don't know how this happens, but I guess she had been to St.

Lucia before, but she eventually goes to St.

Lucia with a bunch of friends and family, and like

St.

Lucia is like her happy place.

So like she manages to stay off of drugs.

She's still drinking, but she's like off of drugs.

There's a lot of footage from this trip because this is when Mitch shows up with a camera crew to make a documentary called My Daughter Amy.

And there's a lot of footage of it in the Amy documentary.

And it's sort of like,

you know, she has her extensions out.

She's got this curly mop of hair and she's sort of just like doing cartwheels on the beach and like she seems to really be like at ease.

And she has like a sort of fight with her father, Mitch, about the camera crew.

But like, this is sort of like the beginning of a good thing, I think.

She divorces Blake while he's in jail

in July.

Yeah.

What do we know about her reaching that place emotionally?

I couldn't find too much.

Like, I mean, it sort of seems like everybody is saying, like, she just came to her senses.

I don't know that that statement ever really means what people think it means.

What I imagine, because in St.

Lucia, there's footage and photos of her with a new man on the beach, and certainly not trying to vilify her, but like, this is a woman that we know throws herself into every relationship.

So I kind of imagine that she met somebody and like,

you know, the drama, the attraction

of Blake just wasn't doing it anymore.

And you know, according to medieval lit, the best way to fall out of love is to, or to cure sort of the heartache of lost love is to fall in love with someone else.

Yeah.

And, uh, I mean, I think that's often true.

So, yeah, she divorces him while he's in jail.

She had a new boyfriend.

She was less dependable on alcohol.

She launched her own record label called Lioness Records.

Oh, my God.

And she signs her 13-year-old goddaughter, Dion Bromfeld, who is still making music today.

She does a Fred Perry collab, which I think I've told you about because I have an item from it.

What is it?

Fred Perry did, he did like a lot of the polos that Amy used to wear.

And so then she did like just a celebrity collab with him.

And they made like little sweater dresses and like Argyle sweaters and like polos and like so many cute things, little like shirt dresses.

I have like a little sweater dress that I love.

That's perfect.

She like goes from having like a full knowledge bump to having sort of like a fall that like is sort of like more of a buffant.

And it's like slightly, I don't know, it's just like slightly more mature, a little less caricature-y to me.

I mean, I think she like looked really, really good.

She also finds out that she has a very weak heart

due to all of her drinking and her bulimia.

So she stops stops drinking.

She gets healthy.

She likes visibly healthy.

We start seeing photos of her.

I remember seeing photos of her during this time.

This is probably like, you know, 2010, 2011, where she just looked great.

And she was like wearing a little bowling shirt and walking down the street.

And things were seemingly coming together for her.

This is when she records the duet with Tony Bennett.

Body and Soul is the song.

And you can see her perfectionism just sort of like is still there, you know.

So people seem to think she's doing great.

The people in her, in her, on her team and stuff,

I think, are very proud of her.

I don't know if they had ever come around to giving her a break or if the break just happened, but basically she's in good shape and they're saying, let's go on tour.

So she goes on tour with her old material.

because she hasn't made a new album.

She has these amazing dresses made that i love that all like a lot of them i mean we'll see that a lot of them never get worn and i have a book called amy winehouse beyond black that has like detailed photos of all of the dresses and they're all so cute they're like these little vintage looking like halter dresses and they're super super cute and she's in rehearsals with the band it's her old band things are seemingly good but she's just like not connecting to the material like this is all the back to black it's all written about Blake, and it just like doesn't speak to her.

Her life is sort of good, and like she has to go out there and sing back to black about her ex-husband.

And she's, you know, she's clearly a sensitive person, and like

it's just like opening these old wounds, I guess.

So, you know, she starts drinking again.

And then I believe it's like one of her first shows is at Belgrade.

And this video made its rounds just a couple of months before she passed in 2011.

And it is her in one of these beautiful dresses and a yellow one.

I'm sure you've seen it.

I don't know.

I'm not going to send it to you because it's really

shitty.

Yeah.

But she enters the stage and she's giddy, but she's clearly like very, very drunk.

And I actually went to a

in like 2012, I would say, because I had graduated high school.

I went to an art show in Brooklyn where there was a

room

that had this video projected on every wall and the sound was turned all the way up.

And it was like, you could only really be in the room for like 30 seconds because it's just,

you know, first she's giddy and she's like, playing with her backup dancers and they're trying to get her to perform and the band is playing and she's not singing and then it turns really negative and people start booing her and she starts getting upset and she's crying and I mean it's if the Grammy win was like watching the greatest moment of her whole life like this video is perhaps one of the worst moments of her whole life

It's really sad.

And so, you know, the story is that Amy Winehouse blows her comeback.

The tour is canceled.

And Amy calls up her friend and says, the bad news is I really fucked up.

And the tour is canceled.

But the good news is I can go to Nick's wedding.

And Nick is her old manager, Nick Szymansky,

who's getting married.

So she, you know, once again, sort of gets herself together, gets sober, sober-ish.

She's back on good terms with her childhood friends who all pulled away from her.

She's back on good terms with Nick Szymansky.

One of the girls in the happy birthday video she calls her on like july 22nd

and she just sort of calls her and is like hey like it's been a long time i'll see you at the wedding and like i'm i'm so sorry i know we lost touch and she like cries and the friend is just like it's so great to hear from you like it's like i'm really talking to you you know

so and she's like i'll see you tomorrow i'll see you at the wedding later that night naomi perry goes to her house and drops off some clothes for the wedding.

She's still her stylist.

She, like, you know, sets up some outfits.

And I think Amy is like,

I think she's there, or maybe she's not there, but they don't really talk.

They like Naomi just drops off the clothes.

And then Amy's bodyguard is at the house and he walks in on her and she's watching a video of herself performing.

And he's like,

hey, and she's like, I was really good.

She's like, I can really fucking sing.

I have a great voice.

And he's like, yeah, you do.

And she's like, you know, she's just sort of watching herself.

And then

she says something to the effect of, you know, I would give it all back if I could just walk down the street and not be, you know, accosted by paparazzi or people or fans.

Oh, and then a couple of days before that, on July 20th, Dion Bromfield, her goddaughter, who she signed,

is performing at London's Roadhouse.

And Amy is not like scheduled to be there, but she does show up and she's backstage and Dion has her come on stage and they sing that song that's like, mama said there'd be days like this.

There'd be days like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So they sing that and that is on tape.

And that is her last live performance

because the day after, the day that she's scheduled to go to the wedding, after Naomi dropped off the clothes, after she talked to her childhood friend, her bodyguard walks in on her and she's found dead.

Her alcohol level is four to five times the legal driving limit.

And she's 27 years old.

And all of her friends.

who are excited to see her are sort of already at the wedding venue or destination.

And they're all getting the news and they're all together, which I can imagine would be extremely shocking

to then have to sort of go through

with your nuptials.

Yeah.

Some of the first things I saw about her death were more jokes

about overdosing and rehab and

you know, her public persona sort of, I don't know, like being somehow the cause of this.

And ultimately, her brother, Alex Winehouse, says that what really killed her was actually her bulimia.

It left her body weaker and more susceptible.

And if she hadn't had an eating disorder for all those years and she had had these drinks that night, she would have been physically stronger and perhaps would have been able to make it to that wedding.

Yeah.

When she died, it reminds me of when Anna Nicole Smith died, when it felt like

this sense of, like, oh, wow, we finally kicked the ball over the fence.

Yeah.

You know, like we did the thing we've been kind of trying, but not really trying, but kind of trying to do this whole time.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, you know, perhaps people didn't realize that they were sort of actively contributing to this.

I think also, like, certainly with that Belgrade video, which was, I think, like a month or something before her eventual death, it was sort of like once again, this moment, this like final moment of like, please help me, you know, like, and to their credit, the people in her life did cancel that tour.

Like, they did maybe listen to the cry for help.

Yeah, and I guess just, I don't know, how do you wish things had been different?

What do you think?

Because it feels like impossible to look back and say what would have made a difference because everything is so entangled with everything else.

But I mean, I don't know.

Do you have thoughts about that?

I mean, I think that any one thing, like it wasn't any one thing, you know, and I wish that she could have known like some sort of peace in her time on Earth.

I do think that there is a version of her in some alternate universe, in some everything, everywhere, all-at-once universe, where she kind of stopped at 19,

you know, when she was signed to Simon Fuller, like before Darkest Bees, and she was making her 250 pounds a month, and she was performing in the clubs, and she had her own flat, and she was smoking weed and having her friends over, and they were doing each other's makeup, and having a ball, and she was having like relationships.

It's like, I wish that that moment could have lasted

forever for her, you know, or been like

what her life ended up being.

Certainly everything post-Frank,

it was just like too much pressure for her.

And it like made her,

it put her at odds with herself again and at odds with her body.

And yeah, like I always imagine that she saw herself on these talk shows and maybe got self-conscious and it, you know, triggered her eating disorder to come back or something.

And

it's like, if she could have been exposed less to herself or something.

Who do we need, you know, to have the power to make things better?

It's like you can't expect that of individual parents necessarily, or individual friends, or people you work with, but it's like somewhere

out there, society needs to be organized in a way that supports people rather than allowing weakness to be exploited, which I think is what we believe in now.

Yeah, and ultimately, like

it was the kind of exploitation of her that was her downfall, whether it was being exploited by the media or Blake or her father.

I just think of her as somebody who was always at odds with herself.

She was at odds with her talent.

She didn't want to be as big as she was.

She didn't want to, you know, be as famous as she was.

I mean, it's really interesting.

Because it's like this thing that happened to her that she truly did not want or ask for.

But it was like a perfect storm.

Yeah.

And then suddenly I'm sure it became something that the people around her wanted once it was, you know, available and everything that came with it.

Yeah.

They erected a statue of her in Camden,

which I think is very sweet because I do think that she found herself in Camden.

Like she really came into her own and loved it there.

And there is the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which was set up by her family.

And it was launched on what would have been her 28th birthday.

And it's meant to help vulnerable or disadvantaged young people.

And it works with other charitable organizations to provide frontline support to addicts and young people.

And there's offices in New York and London.

So I don't think that there's anything that could have happened that would have justified this loss, but I hope that it is doing good work.

And I hope.

You know, I just, I think that she will be remembered no matter what.

And I think that she will certainly be remembered as a true talent and as somebody who,

you know, expressed herself so beautifully.

But unfortunately, I think that there's no way to really remember her without remembering her demons and her addictions.

And I think that

nobody wants to be remembered for those things.

Yeah, well, and maybe it's like the, a different way to approach it is remembering her for, you know, the, the pain that she experienced not just sort of so that we can gawk at that but so we can understand what she was creating through you know yeah I don't know a lot more people now than 10 years ago are

seem capable of admitting that they're messy and they make bad choices and that they also would say no, no, no,

you know, and that she could admit, you know, what people needed to hear in order to feel like somebody else knew what it was like but that they couldn't say themselves yeah yeah i think i think that's that's exactly it i mean two albums this girl gave us two albums yeah

and left that much of a um of a mark and i just i you know the death of any young person any artist is a bad thing but to think that this girl could have

i mean she didn't owe us anything but to think of the other things that she could have given us if she wanted to.

Yeah.

Or aside from us, like, you know, as an artist, don't you feel like

part of the gift of being alive is like continuing to grow in the work that we do and, you know, to feel our, I don't know, like with every project I do, if I'm like growing through each one, then like with each one, I feel more,

like I understand more deeply who I am in a way.

And I don't think there's any glamour to dying young.

You know, there's not, there aren't glamorous deaths or less glamorous death.

Like, it's all just death, you guys.

Death is death.

You know, the pipes all go to the same place.

It doesn't matter if you do it in a Porsche spider.

And Ronnie Specter, who I'm sure you know,

you know, the lead singer of the Ronettes.

And, you know, so many artists, Adele, Lady Gaga, they all sort of cite Amy as an inspiration.

But Ronnie was a big inspiration to Amy.

In fact, her hairdo kind of came

straight from Ronnie.

And she was compared to Ronnie a lot because the thing about the Ronettes were they were the girl group, but they were like the bad girls from Queens.

You know what I mean?

Like they were sort of like tough and like chewing gum and smoking cigarettes.

And so that was very, that was so clearly in the DNA of Amy.

But here's a quote from Ronnie Specter.

I first heard Amy at a time in my life when I needed inspiration.

All artists have a lull at some point.

My son brought the Back to Black album home, and the first track I heard was Rehab.

That just killed me.

To me, it was a combination of ingredients that made Amy a once-in-a-lifetime artist.

The voice, the lyrics, style, and that attitude.

Was she jazz, soul, blues?

No, she's just Amy, unlike anyone else.

Although I was from the 60s, I saw myself in her, and she inspired me to continue.

As I say at every show I've performed since she left us, Amy Winehouse gave me a wonderful gift.

She made me feel that what I did mattered.

And I think that's so beautiful.

Something I didn't really understand until the last few years and I'm kind of shocked by, but is very true, which is that some of the people you admire most, like there may come a day when they are inspired by your work.

And that reveals not just what you are capable of, what we all are, but like

the fact that everybody you know, everybody you admire, everybody whose work helped you figure out who you are, that you grew up looking at as a clue to the world you wanted to be a part of, like.

They're all people who seek inspiration and aren't sure where their work is going and what it's doing.

And just that we're we're all kind of, and I don't know, and that makes me feel like this is never going to not be a tragic story, but the sort of communication that's always open between people who put some aspect of themselves into what they put out into the world, it's like there's something really, really encouraging about the fact that you can't know

when you put something in the world in any way, like you can't know where it's going or what it's going to do.

And

in such positive ways, there's a layer to anything you make that is like, this was for me.

You know, like I needed to deal with

the loss of my father or, you know, this thing that happened to me or, you know,

I got divorced or whatever it is.

Then there's the other layer of like what someone gets out of it and like what it means to them.

And it might be completely at odds with what you thought you were doing and what you thought you were putting out there.

But

if it helps someone in an unintentional way, then like, isn't that just beautiful?

Yeah.

That cycle is so beautiful and so powerful and encouraging.

And then it's tragic that the cycle could not continue.

Yeah.

Cause she would get boring.

She would like move to Malibu and like, you know, there would be like stupid articles and people about like, Amy Winehouse opens up about her home gym.

Yeah.

It would be so nice to watch her become boring.

Oh my God, that would have been so cool.

I know.

I mean, it does sort of bring up the feeling of like, you know, we started by talking about the Forever 27 club.

And like, obviously there's like that whole element of it where it's like, that's your Saturn return.

And like, you know, the shit is going to hit the fan and blah, blah, blah.

And, you know, I like I got sober at 27.

So like, in some ways, the shit did hit the fan for me.

All of those people in that club, like, there's an element of it that's like, you know, their legacy could have changed, you know, maybe for the worst.

Or, you know, like, I, I don't want to be morbid here or whatever, you know, like shit on anyone's legacy, but it's like, who knows?

Like, maybe Kurt Copain would have become like a has-been, you know, like, like, yeah, which is the dream, really, to survive long enough to be a has-been.

Yeah, like, like, would he have been a guest star on Glee or something?

You know, like, like, it could have been, you know, like, like, there is an alternative.

Jim Morrison would have gotten really into like spa music in the 80s and just made like ambient music for 14 years.

Yes, like their legacies are sealed.

Right.

And like, it feels like glamorous celebrity death.

Like, it's not glamorous for the celebrity.

They're dead.

Right.

They don't appreciate it.

It's only glamorous if you're looking at it, you know?

And I guess I would love to see, like, imagine you're on Instagram and then you're like, oh my God, another ad for Jim Morrison Essential Oil.

Yeah.

Or like, oh God, Kurt Cobain posted this, like, his breakfast or something, you know, like

I was never particularly cool.

And I lately, I have been noticing, like, oh, yeah, I am simply not young anymore.

And I never will be again.

And there's, there's also like a freedom and like being out of the young years, you know, where it's just like, you kind of get to just wear more comfortable shoes for a start.

I mean, there was a time in my life where I thought I would die at 27 because everyone who I loved did.

And I thought,

you know, like, I'm not long for this earth or whatever.

And like,

how wonderful to be 30 and to not be cool and to not be,

you know, drinking and to not be,

you know, to live this stupid, boring little life, you know, I love it.

Yeah,

I think I, this is like advice that's like secondhand from secondhand something, but I think of it a lot of somebody kind of describing their younger years and how like they needed every night to be a 10 and how part of growing up and also sobriety is like being like, tonight's gonna be a five.

Yeah, and a five is a good night.

Oh my god, yeah.

I would I love a five.

You get a big potato, a big potato.

I think a 10 is

you get 10 tens in your whole life.

If that

you know, that's that's a high number, to be honest.

Yeah, you can't force a 10.

Yeah, because you know, there is also a story.

It's like when she won her Grammy, her friend was there and was like, oh my God, aren't you so happy?

This is so exciting.

And she looked at her friend and she said, this is so boring without drugs.

And it's like, that night should have been the 10.

Yeah.

It's like she, I heard this analogy once or metaphor where it's like addiction is like a little kid running after a balloon that sort of slipped through their hands and they keep running and running and they like sort of run into a tree and they like, you know, run over a stick and fall and get back up and they keep running and they just can't and the balloon like will slip out of your hands and move into the sky and you'll never be able to get it.

And like the longer you run after it, the more danger you're in.

I don't know.

I guess.

She wanted to stop running, but also she kind of didn't.

Maybe she didn't know how to stop running.

Yeah.

And it's so hard to want what's good for you, too.

We've talked about this in, you know, probably many other episodes of the show, but how we have this idea of like, well, why couldn't she just make good choices?

And it's like, do you have any idea how unattractive and, in fact, scary good choices can feel?

Like, they do not look good when you're

compared to the balloon.

Right.

And to be 27, I mean, she was, that was not a long life.

Like, she was barely an adult, you know?

Like, it's just like, how can we expect good choices here?

These are, these are children in adult bodies, you know.

And what do we set up in lieu of forcing people to make good choices individually?

Right.

So, yeah, so that was the story of Amy.

And I think,

like any good artist, it will live on and she will live on.

Eve, you are so magical to me and I love

just talking to you about the world and the work that you do.

And if people want to experience more of you, where can they go?

Oh, gosh.

Well, I'm on strike right now, so there's not a lot to experience that I am.

You just have to come to your house.

Yeah, come on over.

We'll listen to Back to Black and then we'll listen to Frank.

No, I'm on Instagram as Eve C.

Lindley and I'm on Twitter or X or whatever, but I'm not really.

I am, but I'm not.

But it's Eve Lindley there.

And

so I guess send good vibes.

Send good vibes, be my friend, and I probably will listen to both of her albums now.

Back to back.

I'm going to get on the car and do the same thing.

I think I'm going to be walking soulfully around Costco later today.

Yeah.

Can't go wrong.

She's great for Costco.

And that was our episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

Thank you for coming with me and Eve Lindley on this drive down Sunset Boulevard in a stolen convertible.

Thank you to Eve Lindley for guesting.

Thank you to Miranda Zickler for editing.

Thank you to Carolyn Kendrick for editing and producing.

We'll see you in two weeks.