Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [43]
She also appeared at the Isle of Wight festival that summer. Wearing a vest and shortcut jeans, she gave an extraordinarily accomplished performance. The Spectator review seemed to be of another concert:
It was like seeing Bambi bounce into a clearing to find himself faced with a firing squad. Terrified, she fidgeted and scampered on the spot, calming down only when she sang, and it looked as if it took every ounce of muscle and morphine she could muster not to run for the hills.
Later in the festival, when the veteran rockers the Rolling Stones took to the stage, Amy joined them to duet with Mick Jagger on the Motown classic ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg’. This 1966 hit for the Temptations has also been covered by Rick Astley, Willie Bobo, Count Basie and his Orchestra, JJ Jackson, the J Evans Band, Ben Harper and others. Amy and Jagger were perfect together. It was a great performance all round by Amy and one she enjoyed, even if she almost missed it.
‘I’m not very ambitious at all,’ she said soon after the show. ‘I almost didn’t come to this concert. I almost didn’t go to the gig in Sweden yesterday. I almost didn’t go to the Isle of Wight, I almost didn’t do it.’ Citing Blake’s worries as the reason for her near-misses, she added, ‘I just want him to be happy. And, if for some reason he’s unhappy, then it just floors me.’
These words scarcely did justice to the drama and controversy that Amy and Blake’s relationship was to cause in the coming months.
Chapter Seven
A CIVIL PARTNERSHIP?
One day, while talking to friends, Blake Fielder-Civil received a text message on his mobile phone from Kelly Osbourne. The text informed him that Amy was in a hotel room in Los Angeles, wearing his underpants. As strange moments in his relationship went, this was small fry. Their relationship has been utterly wild. It’s been described as everything from a modern-day Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, to a dangerous, Fatal Attraction-style pairing.
Blake met Amy in 2005. He recalls, ‘We met at a pub called the Good Mixer in Camden. I’d just had a good win at the bookies so I went to the pub to celebrate, opened the door and Amy was the first person I saw and that was it. The drinks were on me for the first and last time! And from that night onwards, we began our tortuous love affair.
‘When we met we were attracted to each other instantly and we’ve never stopped being that way,’ he said of their love-at-first-sight encounter. ‘I know me and Amy are going to be together. She’s the love of my life.’ Within a month, that love was expressed in artistic form, as Amy got a new tattoo. Inked on her chest, over her heart, is a button pocket with the word ‘Blake’s’ on it. Hence, she was expressing that he’ll always be close to her heart. Blake, too, loves tattoos and even has the word ‘Sailor’ inked on the inside of his lip.
However, this initial courtship was not to last long because Blake already had a girlfriend. How inconvenient! As we were subsequently to hear in one of Amy’s best-loved songs, Blake quickly went back to his girlfriend and Amy, well, she went back to black. To deal with her heartache, Amy quickly took up with a new man, Alex Claire. Claire was twenty-one when he met Amy and was quickly taken in by her ‘very striking face with big brown eyes that suck you in’.
As for Amy, she recalls, ‘I made him buy me a tequila because they were refusing to serve me on account of a golf-ball-sized lump on my head from the previous