Amy Winehouse with Eve Lindley

This week, celebrity correspondent Eve Lindley tells Sarah about why we should all be thankful for Amy Winehouse. Note: this episode depicts struggles with eating disorders, addiction and self harm. Please listen with care. We are thankful for you, too.

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Transcript

Sarah: Amy honey, he's just a guy. Hit him with your car.

Welcome to You’re Wrong About. I'm Sarah Marshall, and this week we are talking about Amy Winehouse with Eve Linley. Eve Linley 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.

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 Chelsey 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. Chelsea 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, Chelsey's podcast, American Hysteria, and The Spirit World with music by The Little Lies.

We hope it's a new holiday tradition that we get 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 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.

*recording*

And according to contactmusic.com, Amy Winehouse's next album features songs about cooking. That's what they say. Cooking crystal meth, black tar heroin…

For best female pop vocal performance, Amy Winehouse for Rehab. Can somebody wake her up this afternoon around six and tell her? 

Amy Winehouse, you know YouTube, the thing on the computer, YouTube? 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 with the little mouse. He said 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 this is a real baby mouse. “Blake, please don’t divorce mummy. She loves you ever so.”

Sarah: Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where sometimes we try to make you feel like a little kid watching E! 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. 

Eve: Hello, Sarah Marshall.

Sarah: Hello, Eve. Ah, and from now on, all about Eve. I made that joke before, I'll make it again.

Eve: 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. 

Sarah: Yeah, 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 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 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. 

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

Eve: Yeah. And I think that actually ended up being part of her unraveling is this is a girl who grew up wanting to be a jazz musician and wanting to sing in these little, tiny, intimate jazz clubs. She had a family of musicians. Her uncles were professional jazz musicians and her grandmother, Cynthia, who she was very close to was a jazz singer who dated Ronnie Scott, who was a club owner in the 1940s. She never expected to be famous. She never expected to be world famous. And she literally is quoted as saying, “My music is not big. It's not on that level.”

This was at the time where Britney Spears was a global phenomenon and it's like these two women were doing completely different things. How can a jazz singer fill the same stage that a theatrical production like Britney Spears fill that space and that stage?

Sarah: Yeah. And Britney had so clearly been constructed and packaged by the pop music machine. And what she did was, it was very dance oriented. It was a lot of kind of engineered publicity moments.

Eve: Yeah, Britney was a product. And that's not a bad thing. I love Britney Spears. And to a certain degree, all musicians are products, right? There is Taylor Swift, the person, of course. And then there is Taylor Swift, the product and the act. They're not mutually exclusive. They're not completely different. They certainly overlap. 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 cared about it in the moments where it was fun and it was 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 ushered in her look, the liner and the hair, the knowledge bump. And I think that was always fun for Amy, but I don't think she ever really realized that it was a perfect recipe for selling herself.

There is this theory called ‘the silhouette theory’, which is that 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 if I gave you a blacked-out photo of Elvis Presley, because of the hair, because of maybe a certain outfit, you would know who it was. There are 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? As in 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. She became this huge icon and changed music and ushered in all these sort of copycat acts based on two albums, which I think is, that's crazy to me. That's insanity.

Sarah: Yeah. It makes me think of James Dean. 

Eve: Yeah, exactly. Fully a live fast, die young, change the world kind of vibe. 

Sarah: Yeah. And also leave this incredibly truncated career. Can we talk about wherever the story begins, in your opinion? And also, how did her career get started? I'm curious about it, because whenever someone wants to do something small and ends up doing something big, that's always interesting. 

Eve: So she was born September 14, 1983. This year would have been her 40th birthday. It's crazy she's been gone for 13 years. And she was born in a suburb of North London. She has an older brother named Alex. And they were just very much like a middle-class family, English family. And her dad was a taxi driver, her mother was a pharmacist. There was always, as I said before, there was always music around her as a kid, and her dad would sing Frank Sinatra to her mother. 

Her grandmother was a singer. She was very close with her grandmother, and she was just your classic, disruptive, young girl. They called her “Hurricane Amy”. And she went to all these performing arts schools, and there's a story that she got expelled from one of them. And I think the story is she got expelled for having a nose ring, like she was a bad girl. She was a larger-than-life personality and 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, Amy, 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 because I had the same access to cameras as they did, but there's something about that generation that there is so much footage of them. I think they got cameras as teenagers and so they just started filming everything.

So there's Footage of her at a random birthday party as, at 13 and 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 impressed by her because she was like, she was good at it. 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 people would know that she was smart and see that she was a good writer.

But, there was no way to make her. 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 Bolsha Band and she was a female vocalist for the National Youth Jazz Orchestra. That sounds official.

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. 

Sarah: Okay, alright, I'm starting it. 

*recording*

 It's my 14th birthday evening in.

Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you.

Sarah: That's so great. It's so the essence of being like 13 or 14. Yeah. At the start, right? It's these kids goofing off at a birthday thing. And then it's also so great because it feels to me pretty clear that you're watching Amy like showing off and showing off her beautiful voice, which she should be showing off.

Eve: It's a bunch of teenagers singing Happy Birthday. And then one of them takes the lead, I guess you could say, and all of the other ones stop and listen to her sing because she's that good. 

I think of her as somebody who is at odds with her own self and her own talent and her own body. And this is a moment before any of that. Hopefully, maybe. If you look at this, you do get the feeling that that's a girl who is confident and knows what she's got and is ready to strut her stuff. 

Sarah: Your teens are so complicated. But I do remember as a younger teenager having a certain amount of audacity. Because so much of what the world wants to teach you just hasn't had time to sink in yet, maybe. 

Eve: Yeah, and you know the girls in that video remain her friends for the rest of her life, which is also really heartwarming.  And there are some spats and issues, and Amy was an imperfect person and an imperfect friend, but they basically remain in her life until the end. Which I think is so rare. 

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 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 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. 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 creating you a complex, I think. 

And, trigger warning, when Amy was 15 she started binging and purging. And her mother has said 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, “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 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. There's this crazy thing that you see with parents sometimes where it's like, oh, they're just doing this for attention. And I'm like, okay, that's fine. Give them the attention. Like the line, “they're just doing this for attention” is so crazy to me. Because it's yeah, probably. So now you give them the attention and you 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.

Sarah: And it's like, why shouldn't they get attention? Don't they need that?

Eve: It seems like they need it. It seems like they want it and they deserve it. They're deserving of it. 

Sarah: I know this idea that teenagers are at war with adults. I think adults are at war with teenagers, and teenagers are just trying to have an okay life, really.

Eve: What happened to her is no one's fault, and also everyone's fault, and that includes her. There's no one moment where you're like, and this is the moment that her fate was sealed, or whatever. 

Sarah: Although we try to do that in biopics.

Eve: Oh, 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 have to create a story in your head where you can come to terms with it and understand it or something. But 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. 

Sarah: 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. 

Eve: Yeah. Yeah. So anyhow, she's dropped out of school. She's around London singing and 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 Shemansky. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong.

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

Eve: 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. I am loving this. And Simon and Fuller is developing her act and honing her skills. She's only 19. She's obviously very good, but she needs some guidance here and there and finding her sound. 

And while they're doing this, they 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 global fame, but everyone is thinking city famous, like the Beatles in Liverpool in 1962.

Sarah: It's a nice situation.

Eve: Yeah. And for someone like Amy, who wants to sing jazz, that's the best-case scenario. They're keeping her 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 Darcus Beese.

Sarah: Yes. Which is such a good name. There's really such a thing as being too British.

Eve: I know, right? Darcus Beese.

I know. Incredible. Somebody shows him a video of another musician. They're like, look at this guitar player, or whatever, and Amy is singing with that musician, and he's, “Wait a minute, who the fuck is that?” And he apparently can't get a straight answer because she's 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 big record companies. I don't know the ins and outs of the music industry, not my wheelhouse, but basically there's a bidding war for this 19-year-old girl and everybody wants to sign her.

Sarah: How does she react to that? Do we know? 

Eve: 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 have a quote that, “I just wanted to live 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.” 

I think she is just I'm chilling. I'm 19 years old. I want to smoke weed and hang out with my friends and do that 19-year-old shit.

Sarah: 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 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.

Eve: Yeah, you literally have the power to live the life that you dreamed at 19. Think about that, you guys. And oh my god, that's the scariest thing. Because then I'm like, I'm not living that life, so what does that say about me? Did I ever really want it? 

Sarah: Yeah. And I think that I really did want it, but then life gets so crowded. And often your idea of what adulthood, the freedom it will give you, is pretty small when you're a teenager. And maybe more of us should go back to that.

Eve: Yeah. I knew who I was as a kid and as an early teen, and then somewhere in my late teens, things got crowded. My early 20s, they got even more crowded. And the last 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 and 15. I'm eagerly trying to be that girl again. She just knew what was going on. Like she wasn't concerned with the shit that me at 25 was. Like trying to be thin or trying to be palatable or trying to be the bullshit that you try to be. 

Anyhow, so there's this bidding war. Amy signs a publishing deal with EMI, and a record deal with Island Records. And so this guy, Darcus Beese, who 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 say from North London and a little sloppy and a little rough around the edges. And the whole process of the show would be to polish them up. And what Darcus and others really admired about Amy was she didn't need to be polished. She was polish remover.

So she signs this deal, and she gets to work on Frank. And she's listening to all her favorite jazz musicians. 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 R&B. And this was at a time where the top albums were all coming out of America, and they were stuff for women. They were stuff like In The Zone by Britney and Dangerously In Love by Beyonce. They were extremely polished and extremely, not auto tune, well they probably were auto tune, but they were 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, they're synthetic, they're from a computer. And she is out of her mind upset about it. 

Sarah: That's very Tom Waits of her. 

Eve: I don't want to say that Amy is a real artist and anyone who used fake strings is not a real artist, because I don't feel that way. I love those two albums I mentioned, Beyonce and Britney are great albums. I loved them. I was listening to them at the time. But there is something just darling to me about this girl. We used fake strings?

Sarah: It's ruining the whole album. 

Eve: Yeah. My whole vibe is off. 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 sixties. And she wasn't like, I don't think that it was like in Back to Black where she was really putting that forth in a direct way. There is something about the way she writes that is so honest, and it reminds me of those groups because it's like, it's talking about love and it's talking about like the desire to be loved back. The hopelessness and the disappointment when you feel like you're not loved back. 

And there's obviously so much music that deals with that. But I think at that time we were really in whatever wave of feminism we were in. And so the music was about being a hot slut in the city and being like, whatever, like men, I don't need them. And then Amy was there being like, my heart is crumbling because you won't look at me. I am literally like a moth to the flame. It’s that honesty of those parts of yourself that you don't really want to recognize. 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, I don't need you.

Sarah: Yeah, I'm happy you say that. Because I feel like, from the beginning embarrassed to have crushes, embarrassed about crushes, embarrassed about 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 embarrassing to admit that you need or want more than you have, to me.

Eve: I'm going to get a little personal here. 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 want to be around me and want to have me as one of their partners or, hook up, whatever.

And I really thought for a while, I was like I should be so lucky. This guy is great. And I like being around him. And so I must settle for being like one of his conquests. And recently I was like, I don't want that. 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 want that. I want to be crazy in love as a certain Beyonce Giselle Knowles would say. 

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

Eve: Exactly. And I just feel like Amy was saying that. She was singing about that and almost in a way that could be borderline unhealthy. Like we all have to check ourselves and be like, okay yes, I want to be in love. But you need to have other things going on in your life. 

Sarah: Of course. That's what I want, actually, is a an over the top, 90s power ballad love song about being so in love. But also having hobbies and like friends and stuff.

Eve: She was still local at this time. Like this album wasn't even released in the U.S. until 2007. But she became the pride of the UK, people loved her. This album won, she won Best Female Solo artist, Best British Urban at the Brit Awards. She was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize. She won an Ivor Novello award. She became the charming, funny, heartfelt girl from London, and everybody loved her. And this was the beginning of her life as a famous person, and the beginning of the British tabloid show. 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, this is 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 a huge influence on her artistic identity, and certainly her style. Which I could talk about her style for hours. 

Sarah: Give us at least a few minutes. This does feel so important.

Eve: Okay this is also when she meets Naomi Parry. 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 bouffant. So when she meets Naomi Parry, she eventually hires her as a stylist. 

And stylistically at the time, she is peerless. Nobody is doing what even is it? It's punk, and rockabilly, and indie sleaze, and twee, and ska. And it's a smattering of genres of style and music all coming together. She obviously loved the fifties and loved vintage style, loved vintage music and push it to the envelope. Certainly if you're a musician, pushing it bigger. And the skirts should be shorter, and the tits should be bigger, and the winged liner should get bigger, and the hair, like really see how far you can go. 

And that the fashion world clearly took notice of Amy. And even today we see her as a style inspiration in fashion shows. And that kind of goes back to the silhouette theory of, if you see me with a bit of a bouffant and a winged liner, you're probably going to be like, “Oh were you listening to Amy Winehouse today?” She just owned this look that I love so much. I wish that I could wear it every day. 

Sarah: What do you like about it personally?

Eve: She's painting in primary colors. And in one way, literally she's wearing yellow and red, like she's literally wearing the primary colors. It's the boldness of the silhouettes. And for somebody who's saying so much about wanting and needing men, this look is not appealing to men. There is something about what Amy is doing. It's just not interested in being hot, even when it's hot, it's not interested in being hot. 

Sarah: 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 emphasized all of that and made her bigger. 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 you really need to be constantly making yourself smaller for male consumption.

Eve: This is another kind of interesting dichotomy about her. We know that she had an eating disorder. We know that she had addiction issues. I don't mean to say that it's at odds with her eating disorder, but I don't know.

Sarah: I see what you're saying. I feel like it's the ways that we inflict on our bodies what we feel about ourselves are I feel like often contradict each other or complicate each other. And maybe this could be that or, 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. 

Eve: Yeah. I think also something about what Amy did that was probably the most divisive, 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 a consumer standpoint is it's not perfectly done. The ends of her hair are a little fried, and I love that. I think that is what is uniquely her. And the fact that people were so divided also makes it more powerful to me. Because when everyone likes something, it's boring.

So her style is emerging. She's being introduced to higher end brands and emerging designers. And this is also where she meets Blake Fielder-Civil, 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 are drawn to each other in a way that I think was super powerful for her. From what I've researched, every relationship she had ever had was very powerful for her. She's somebody who threw herself into these relationships, but this was maybe the first time that she was flushed with money and living on her own, and had an album under her belt and was really feeling herself. She could throw herself into a relationship and also throw some money at the relationship and it could really go somewhere.

And her and Blake add to the paparazzi frenzy because they're a little turbulent. They're on and off, they're found fighting in the street sometimes. 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 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 us when we talk about Back to Black, which we are about to enter the Back to Black era.

There are, I think, three or four years between Frank and Back to Black. So she is just putzing around London, being a hot bitch in the city, and the years are a little tumultuous. And these are the years that inspire Back to Black. And one of the main things that happens is that her grandmother Cynthia dies, who was a jazz singer. Amy felt very close to her. And that sort of plunges Amy into a bit of a depression and she's 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 goes a little reclusive and her friends show up at her apartment and it's in squalor.

And this is a key moment where her manager at the time, Nick Shemansky, sits her down and says, “Hey, this album that you've been working on could be really big. And 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 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 knows that she's got this album that she's been working on already, but he basically says she doesn't need to go to rehab, she just needs to focus on her new album.

In the documentary, Amy, this is considered the crucial moment. This was before she was globally famous. She had a little bit of press in London, but it was basically manageable. But Blake was out of her life, she could have gone to rehab. She could have gotten clean. And then the flip side of that is, 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. What was the cost? 

Sarah: And I guess what was the cost of it happening at that moment?

Eve: Because I feel like, could she have made this perfect album five years later? Could she have? I think, yeah. I don't think that you have to create from pain. 

Sarah: Pain is part of the human experience, and there's insight and information there. But in terms of creating while in a state of pain, I don't think pain helps unless you're driven to distract yourself from your condition.

Eve: And I think that the difference is, are you swimming upstream or downstream? You will get to land no matter what. And in this case, land is the piece that you're working on, and it might be slightly different land, it might have different flowers on one island than the other. But if you're swimming upstream against the tide, it's just going to be so much harder to get there.

That quote, that line of, “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. 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. 

Sarah: And how clearly were they able to see it at the time?

Eve: She has a quote from this time where she says she was “waking up drinking and crying, listening to The Shangri-Las, going to sleep, waking up, drinking, crying and listening to The Shangri-Las.” And she wanted to turn all of that into her own songs. And that was how she got through it 

Sarah: And for people who don't know, The Shangri-Las are a very important girl group, who I feel like their best-known song is probably, Leader of the Pack. Do we agree with that? 

Eve: Yeah, I would say so. 

Sarah: Yeah, which contains the iconic line, “They told me he was bad, but I knew he was sad.” And that's just everything.

Eve: As we'll see, Amy's relationship with Blake - who she eventually gets a tattoo of Blake's name over her heart.  - don't know what her attraction to him was. But I think it had something to do with thinking that she understood him. 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 it all makes sense to her. 

Sarah: Girl group songs are like such a special genre. And to me that, probably to most people, that's like the Ronettes, the Crystals, the Shirelles, like the stuff you hear parodied in the chorus in Little Shop of Horrors or on the Dirty Dancing soundtrack, and the Supremes, of course. And all 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 complete desolation, joy, or sadness, but all of it being completely dependent on what your boyfriend is doing. 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. 

Eve: 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 in the body language where she is so one step behind him, but they're in the same stride. And you can just see this magnetic pull. And later on there's a clip of her performing at some award show, and she finishes performing and the announcer, the host 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 she's so fixated on getting off that stage and getting to Blake and kissing him. 

Sarah: And where do you fit this in with the rest of her life? How does this relationship seem to be affecting her, generally?

Eve: 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 Shemansky, who 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 sound. And she's really going for the inspiration of the girl groups. And all of this was in Frank, 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 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 Amy was upset about the fake strings and she was really precious about everything. This album poured out of her, which is incredible to me. 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. Like, all of the hits. And it was a fun experience, too. 

I don't know if she was, I don't think she was sober. I think she did have enough of a work ethic that she was focusing on making the album, and basically they would work from midday until dinnertime. And Amy would cook for everyone. She was a great cook. Isn't that sweet? I had no idea. She would make like meatballs and pasta, and 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 worked with him in New York City. They're walking around the city and they're just talking about life. And she's, “Yeah, they tried to make me go to rehab, and I was like, no.” And Mark goes, wait a minute. Say that again. And he was literally just like, that would be such a fun little gimmick and a cool lyric. And that became the song. 

And there's also the line, “If my daddy thinks I'm fine.” And that is interesting. And Nick Schemansky, when that song hits the radios, he does talk about being very conflicted because she's making a joke out of this very real thing in her life. And in my life, we wanted her to go to rehab. This is like when I heard of Amy Winehous I was probably in middle school, this song hit the airwaves and Rehab was a hot button topic. Because Lindsay Lohan was going to rehab, and Britney Spears was going to rehab, and like rehab was so hot in the early 2000s.

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

Eve: I was a kid, so I didn't really 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 as this song permeates and as people start to learn more about her and things start to happen to her in the press, the joke of Amy Winehouse and rehab. It's like it started immediately. It's like she set herself up for these cruel jokes. 

Rehab makes her a commercial star. This is when she becomes a household name. She's notably very uncomfortable with this. 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. Ha! Knock knock, it's Blake. 

Sarah: Knock, knock, knocking on Amy's door.

Eve: They are almost immediately engaged. She's done this whole American press tour with Rehab and I'm No Good, and it really hit America in this major way. And he accompanied her on the press tour. That was when they 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. 

Blake, I think it was a part of his life, and it's assumed, and I think he has confirmed that he got her into it. And I think that they always as a couple exhibited addictive behavior, and they were very volatile and all of that. But this is another key moment where it's like they latch on to each other and they just start spinning out of control. I'm not blaming him alone. I do 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 I don't know. These people, I don't know what they were dealing with. And I'm sure we've all made bad decisions with somebody who needed our help. Like, we can't blame any one person, right? 

But so she's back in Camden, she's performing. This is when she starts performing under the influence. And there's so much heartbreaking footage of this time because she's performing Rehab while clearly drunk or high, and it's this weird battle cry of, “I'm not going, even now, even as you're watching me fumble, I will not go.”

And then people start really seeing a difference 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. Damage from her eating disorder, and damage from her drinking, and if she has another seizure she will die.

So there's another intervention that's done, and this time Mitch is 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. 

Sarah: What do you think it means? 

Eve: I think that Mitch told the press where it was happening. This man brought television cameras to a family vacation because he was filming a documentary called, My Daughter Amy. And she was so upset. There's always someone in the inner circle who is leaking shit. It doesn't just happen. 

Sarah: And British tabloids are even worse than American ones. And 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. If not multiple people.

Eve: I can't necessarily relate to having a member of my family become world famous, seemingly overnight. But I'm sure it brings out parts of you that you're not necessarily proud of. If I really wanted to get tickets to a basketball game and my sister was world famous, then yeah, I probably would be like, “I'm actually the sister of whoever”. I think it does create a bit of a monster in anyone who is close to you, close to the famous person. 

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 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. You do not go to rehab with the person who got you into the stuff that you're rehabbing from. You need that space. It's great that they both go, but they gotta go to separate places, is what I would assume. Guess how long they stay in rehab? 

Sarah: 45 minutes?

Eve: I think it was like three days or something.

Sarah: Wow. Better than what I said, but not great.

Eve: Yeah, still not great. Still not great. I think there is actually another time though in her life where she’s photographed walking into a rehab clinic, and then an hour later walking out as if she just came in to get a lowdown of 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 is some really distressing photos of them, like bloody and disheveled and bandaged, and like walking on the street. Amy wore these ballet flats all the time. I think they were fully like actually ballerina shoes. And there's an image of them just covered in blood that is like, when I was a kid, I was like, that's so glamorous. But now it's very distressing, and blood is not actually a fun thing to look at. 

Sarah: I think it's like 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 did I think that?

Eve: This actually sucks. This actually feels so shitty.

Sarah: Yeah. But I don't know. When you're too young to feel like you have a life, it's just exciting to think of having something long enough for it to get destroyed. 

Eve: Yeah, I guess that's what it is, huh.

Sarah: I don't know. It's something. 

Eve: 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 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 the same principle as when you cut your Barbie's hair and color all over her face. It’s lzke, I'm responsible. This is my thing that I can do whatever I want with. And because I have Zero impulse control, I'm going to ruin it. 

Sarah: Yeah. But at least I have the power to ruin it, which is not much to cling to, but, sometimes. 

Eve: There's a moment that they talk about in the documentary where 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.”

Sarah: Amy, honey, he's just a guy. Hit him with your car.

Eve: On November 8, 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 2007. And then paid him £400,000 to keep quiet about it. And this is unsubstantiated, but I would assume that £400,000 came out of Amy's pocketbook. Because how did he have that kind of money? 

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 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.

Sarah: I feel like she exists in a different cultural moment.

Eve: And then, 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…

Sarah: Wow. That's a name I've not heard.

Eve: 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, “Will somebody go wake up Amy Winehouse, wherever she is?” And then he, under his breath, says “drunk ass”. 

Sarah: What?

Eve: Yeah. At her Grammy nomination. Could you imagine?

Sarah: No. 

Eve: She was like this cartoon character. And I think maybe because she was British. 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.

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

Eve: Exactly. Exactly. And it trickles down. So when George Lopez makes this joke, and Jay Leno makes that joke, suddenly you have kids in middle school just being like, “Oh, Amy Winehouse is going to die”. This is a woman who literally has in her hit songs, in the song Back to Black, the music video is a funeral procession. And the lyrics are basically her being like, “My odds are stacked.” The messaging is it is destiny that I'm going to die. 

Sarah: Yeah, and it's yeah, eventually, Amy. But it's but it's so weird when we have this sort of cultural complicity and wow, she really was destined to burn bright and flame out early. And it's No, she wasn't. This is our fault. 

Eve: I just can't. It's so fucked up, Sarah. It's just yeah, it's so sad. And it's so 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, in that case black, to me, black is her depression and her negative traits, her self- destructive traits. 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, 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. 

Sarah: 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 he can just be like, listen, this is not going anywhere good. Trust me. You don't have to trust that this is the right relationship for them. 

Eve: 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 Tony 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. 

Sarah: Okay. Three, two, one.

**recording**

“And the Grammy goes to Amy Winehouse.”

“Thank you to everyone at Island Records. Everyone at EMI Music Publishing. To Raye Raye and Joe. Ten years this year, Raye Raye and Joe. To Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi. To my mum and dad. For my Blake. My Blake incarcerated. And for London. This is for London.” 

Eve: 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 shocked. In a way that makes you wonder if she felt maybe undeserving or something. But this is similarly the payoff of years and years of hard work and passion.

And that wasn't the only thing she won that night. 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, that’s this one. And then Song of the Year and then Best Female Pop Vocal performance. So she won five Grammys that night.

And you are watching what is theoretically the greatest moment of someone's life, and yet Amy is numb for a few seconds. And then she turns around and goes to hug her band. Which also speaks to, I don't know, the teamwork that goes into making the product of Amy Winehouse. And maybe she understands that it's not just her, which I love. The girl who wanted to perform jazz songs in seedy 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. 

Sarah: Oh God, wow. 

Eve: Yeah, and I don't want to make this whole episode about she relapsed and then she went to rehab over and over. I think her story could be that, and I'm sure I'm already making it that and buying into it, and that it's really hard to talk about somebody who is an addict. But this particular relapse is interesting to me because I'm someone who's very familiar with addiction, and 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 also very interesting to me. She didn't really bask in her win, she just was like, I gotta stop feeling.

And I think maybe she misses Blake. One of the first people she mentions in her acceptance speech is Blake. And perhaps using these drugs made her feel closer to him. Or to even be considered the most talented person who does what you do. Who can live up to that? It's a lot, it's a lot to deal with.

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 back to where she was. And she's making huge money. Her fees have gone 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. 

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… 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 a Glastonbury Festival where Naomi Parry talks about it like she seemed fine, and then literally 20 minutes before she was meant to go on, suddenly she was falling on the floor. And she had this creative idea at Glastonbury to put little cocktail umbrellas in her hair, and it's delightful looking and it's a fine performance. But the thing that everyone talks about is 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 Ssrt of what everyone talks about, which is very interesting. Because nowadays there's a big conversation about being a fan in a crowd and what is respectful, and you shouldn't be throwing teddy bears at the performer. You shouldn't be throwing things at the performer, touching them. 

Sarah: But at the time, we believed that you should pull strangers hair pretty much. 

Eve: And I think that also this was maybe pre social media. To be in the presence of someone that you admired that much, like maybe you wouldn't really know what to do. Like you wouldn't have control of your faculties or something.

There's also this recording of her singing Rehab through gritted teeth. And I think I said it already, but it's like Rehab became this 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 there are jokes about her appearance because she's using, she's an active user. So when you use stuff like heroin or crack, you pick at your skin. You are dozing off in public. And the jokes just, I feel like for someone like Jay Leno, it's like the jokes are writing themselves. 

Sarah: Yeah, and you have to have 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. But then the problem is like, when and why did we decide that these were the jokes we had to make? And why can't we undecide that?

Eve: Maybe it's just because I've dealt with addiction. And to see these videos of paparazzi taunting her on the street, it's just so anathema to me. I just can't fathom. 

Sarah: It's like lions preying on a wounded antelope or something. 

Eve: 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, the Back to bBack album promotion is over and her husband is in jail, and she's left to her own devices. And this is when she fell out of being a musical act and really just was a tabloid fixture. And the images of her are just so bad. To publish the worst image of someone to me is, I take group photos and I like to try and find the one where everybody looks good, and I get approval from everyone. But this was a time where people were trying to find the worst photo ever. 

Sarah: Yeah, because that's the business we decided we're going to have. 

Eve: 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 St. Lucia is like her happy place, so she manages to stay off of drugs. She's still drinking, but she's 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 she has her extensions out. She's got this curly mop of hair and she's just like doing cartwheels on the beach and she seems to really be like at ease. And she has a sort of fight with her father Mitch about the camera crew. But this is like the beginning of a good thing, I think. She divorces Blake while he's in jail.

Sarah: Oh, wow. What do we know about her reaching that place emotionally?  

Eve: I couldn't find too much. It seems like everybody is saying she just came to her senses. I don't know what 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 this is a woman that we know throws herself into every relationship, so I imagine that she met somebody, and the drama and the attraction of Blake just wasn't doing it anymore.

Sarah: And, according to medieval lit, the best way to fall out of love or to cure sort of the heartache of lost love, is to fall in love with someone else. And I think that's often true. 

Eve: 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. And she signs her 13-year-old goddaughter Dionne 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 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 little sweater dresses and like argyle sweaters and polos. And so many cute things. Little shirt dresses. I have a little sweater dress that I love that's perfect. 

She goes from having a full knowledge bump to having a fall that is more of a bouffant. And it's slightly, I don't know, it's just slightly more mature, a little less caricature-y to me. I think she looked 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 drinking. She gets healthy. She like is visibly healthy. We start seeing photos of her. 

I remember seeing photos of her during this time. This is probably 2010, 2011, where she just looked great and she was 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 is still there, so people seem to think she's doing great. The people 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. Like a lot of them, we'll see that a lot of them never get worn. And I have a book called, Amy Winehouse Beyond Black that has detailed photos of all of the dresses, and they're all so cute. They're like these little vintage looking 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 not connecting to the material. Like this is all the Back to Black, it's all written about Blake and it just doesn't speak to her. Her life is good and she has to go out there and sing Back to Black about her ex-husband. And she's clearly a sensitive person and it's just like opening these old wounds. So she starts drinking again. 

And then I believe it's one of her first shows at Belgrade and this video made its rounds. It's just a couple of months before she passed in 2011, and it is her in one of these beautiful dresses, in a yellow one. I'm sure you've seen it. I'm not going to send it to you because it's really, it's just really shitty. But she enters the stage and she's giddy, but she's clearly very drunk. And I actually went in 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 30 seconds because it's just… first she's giddy, and she's 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 if the Grammy win was like watching the greatest moment of her whole life, this video is perhaps one of the worst moments of her whole life. It's really sad. And 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 Shemansky, who's getting married. 

So she, once again, gets herself together, gets 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 Schimansky. One of the girls in the happy birthday video, she calls her on July 22nd and she just calls her and is, “Hey, it's been a long time. I'll see you at the wedding. And I'm so sorry. I know we lost touch.” And she cries, and the friend is just, it's so great to hear from you. I'm really talking to you, and I'll see you tomorrow. I'll see you at the wedding. 

Later that night, Naomi Parry goes to her house and drops off some clothes for the wedding. She's still her stylist. She sets up some outfits and I think Amy is there. Maybe she's not there, but they don't really talk, 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 she's like, “I was really good. I can really fucking sing. I have a great voice.” And he's like, “Yeah, you do.” And she's  just watching herself. And then, she says something to the effect of, “I would give it all back if I could just walk down the street and not be accosted by paparazzi or people or fans.”

Oh, and then a couple of days before that, on July 20th, Dionne Bromfield, her goddaughter who she signed, is performing at London's Roadhouse. And Amy is not scheduled to be there, but she does show up and she's backstage and Dionne has her come on stage and they sing that song that's “Mama said there'd be days like this, there'd be days like this.” 

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 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 go through with your nuptials. Some of the first things I saw about her death were more jokes about overdosing and rehab and her public persona. 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 these drinks that night, she would have been physically stronger and perhaps would've been able to make it to that wedding.

Sarah: When she died, it reminds me of when Anna Nicole Smith died. When it felt like this sense of oh wow, we finally kicked the ball over the fence. Like we did the thing. We've been trying, but not really trying, but trying to do this whole time. 

Eve: Yeah, exactly. Perhaps people didn't realize that they were actively contributing to this. I think also certainly with that Belgrade video, which was I think like a month or something before her eventual death. It was once again, this moment, this like final moment of ‘please help me’. And to their credit, the people in her life did cancel that tour. Like they did maybe listen to the cry for help. 

Sarah: Yeah, and I just don't know. How do you wish things had been different? What do you think? Because it feels impossible to look back and say what would have made a difference, because everything is so entangled with everything else. But I don't know. Do you have thoughts about that? 

Eve: I think that any one thing, like it wasn't any one thing. And I wish that she could have known some sort of peace in her time on earth. I do think that there is a version of her in some alternate universe and some ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ universe where she stopped at 19, when she was signed to Simon Fuller before Darcus Beese, and she was making her £250 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 relationships.

I wish that moment could have lasted forever for her or been what her life ended up being. Certainly everything post Frank, it was just too much pressure for her, and it put her at odds with herself again, and at odds with her body. And yeah, I always imagine that she saw herself on these talk shows and maybe got self-conscious, and it triggered her eating disorder to come back or something. And if she could have been exposed less to herself or something. 

Sarah: Who do we need to have the power to make things better. 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.

Eve: Yeah. And ultimately 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 is 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 be as famous as she was. It's really interesting because it's this thing that happened to her that she truly did not want or ask for. But it was a perfect storm. 

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

Eve: 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, 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 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.

Sarah: Yeah. And maybe a different way to approach it is remembering her for the pain that she experienced. Not just so that we can gawk at that, but so we can understand what she was creating through. I don't know, a lot more people now than 10 years ago seem capable of admitting that they're messy and they make bad choices, and that they also say no, no, no. And that she could admit what people needed to hear in order to feel like somebody else knew what it was like, but that they couldn't say themselves.

Eve: Yeah. Yeah. I think that's exactly it. Two albums, this girl gave us two albums and left that much of a mark. And I just, the death of any young person, any artist, is a bad thing. But to think that this girl could have… She didn't owe us anything. To think of the other things that she could have given us if she wanted to.

Sarah: Yeah, aside from us as an artist, don't you feel like part of the gift of being alive is continuing to grow in the work that we do and to feel our, I don't know, with every project I do, if I'm growing through each one, then with each one I feel I understand more deeply who I am, in a way.

And, I don't think there's any glamour to dying young. There's not. There aren't glamorous deaths or less glamorous death. It's all just death. You guys, death is death. The pipes all go to the same place. It doesn't matter if you do it in a Porsche Spider.

Eve: And Ronnie Spector, who I'm sure - the lead singer of the Ronettes - and so many artists, Adele, Lady Gaga, they all cite Amy as an inspiration. But Ronnie was a big inspiration to Amy. In fact, her hairdo came straight from Ronnie. And she was compared to Ronnie a lot, because the thing about the Ronettes where they were the girl group, but they were like the bad girls from Queens. They were tough and chewing gum and smoking cigarettes. And so that was so clearly in the DNA of Amy. 

But here's a quote from Ronnie Spector. “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.” 

Sarah: Something I didn't really understand until the last few years, and I'm shocked by, but is very true, which is that some of the people you admire most, like you. There may come a day when they're inspired by your work, and that reveals not just what you are capable of what we all are, but the fact that 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. 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 all, 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 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.

Eve: There's a layer to anything you make that is, this was for me. Like I needed to deal with the loss of my father or this thing that happened to me, or I got married, I got divorced, or whatever it is. Then there's the other layer of 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 yeah, if it helps someone in an unintentional way, then isn't that just beautiful. That cycle is so beautiful and so powerful and encouraging. And then it's tragic that the cycle could not continue. 

Sarah: Yeah. because she would get boring. She would move to Malibu and there would be stupid articles and people about Amy Winehouse opens up about her home gym. It would be so nice to watch her become boring. 

Eve: Oh my God. That would have been so cool. It does bring up the feeling of we started by talking about the forever 27 club. And obviously there's like that whole element of it where it's that's your Saturn return. And the shit is going to hit the fan and blah, blah, blah. And I like, I got sober at 27. So in some ways the shit did hit the fan for me. All of those people in that club, there's an element of it that their legacy could have changed. Maybe for the worst or, I don't want to be morbid here or whatever, like shit on anyone's legacy. But it's who knows? Like maybe Kurt Cobain would have become a has been. 

Sarah: Yeah, which is the dream really to survive long enough to be a has been.

Eve: Yeah. Would he have been a guest star on Glee or something? It could have been, there is an alternative. 

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

Eve: Yes, like their legacies are sealed.

Sarah: And it feels like glamorous celebrity death. It's not glamorous for the celebrity. They're dead. They don't appreciate it. It's only glamorous if you're looking at it and would love to imagine you're on Instagram and then you're like, “Oh my God, another ad for Jim Morrison essential oils.”

Eve: Yeah. Or “Oh God, Kurt Cobain posted his breakfast” or something, like that.

Sarah: I was never particularly cool. And lately I have been noticing like, oh yeah, I am simply not young anymore, and I never will be again. And there's also a freedom and being out of the young years, where you get to just wear more comfortable shoes for a start.

Eve: There was a time in my life where I thought I would die at 27 because everyone who I loved did. And I thought, 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 drinking, and to live this stupid, boring little life. I love it.

Sarah: Yeah, I think this is advice that's 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 being like, tonight's going to be a five.

Eve: Yeah, and a five is a good night. Oh my god. Yeah, I love a five. 

Sarah: You get a big potato. 

Eve: A big potato. I think a ten is you get ten tens in your whole life. Oh my god, yeah. That's a high number, to be honest. Yeah, you can't force a ten. Because 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 that night should have been the 10. 

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 they run into a tree and they run over a stick and fall and get back up, and they keep running and they just can't and the balloon will slip out of your hands and move into the sky, and you'll never be able to get it. And the longer you run after it, the more danger you're in. I don't know, she wanted to stop running, but also she kind of didn't. Maybe she didn't know how to stop running. 

Sarah: Yeah, and it's so hard to want what's good for you, too. We've talked about this in probably many other episodes of this show, but how we have this idea of why couldn't she just make good choices? And do you have any idea how unattractive and in fact scary good choices can feel? They do not look good when compared to the balloon. 

Eve: Right. And to be 27. I mean, that was not a long life. Like she was barely an adult, like how can we expect good choices here? These are children in adult bodies.

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

Eve: 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.

Sarah: 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? 

Eve: Oh, gosh. I'm on strike right now, so there's not a lot to experience. 

Sarah: They just have to come to your house. 

Eve: 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.

Sarah: I guess send good vibes.

Eve: Send good vibes, be my friend. And I probably will listen to both of her albums now, back to back. 

Sarah: I'm going to get in the car and do the same thing. I think I'm going to be walking soulfully around Costco later today. Can't go wrong.

Eve: Yeah. She's great for Costco.

Sarah: 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.