Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [7]
This book might surprise those who like to see Amy as ‘out of control’ or ‘spiralling towards death’, to use two of the tabloid press’s favourite phrases when discussing her life. Getting to the truth behind the hype, it instead paints a portrait of an intensely shrewd, witty and grounded woman. She knows how to play the tortured soul for the press, because she knows that is the Amy they wish to portray. Always one to play the press at their own game, when she once knew there was a press pack waiting outside a club for her, she painted a false tear on her cheek and rubbed quite innocent white powder all over her nostrils. Some of the papers got the joke the next day, but it went right over the heads of others and they painted it not as a joke by Amy but as a real tear and real cocaine.
So let’s ride the roller coaster that is Amy Winehouse’s life, from the hit records and prestigious awards to the overdoses and scraps with husband Blake. While riding these ups and downs, we’ll uncover the real Amy Winehouse – an act who does indeed have a glittering future, but also a fascinating past.
Chapter One
BORN TO BE WILD?
It was once said of Amy Winehouse, ‘She often strikes as a personality born slightly out of time.’ She was born on 14 September 1983, in Southgate, north London. Less than ten miles from central London and within the borough of Enfield, Southgate is adjacent to the North Circular Road. Other famous – and not so famous – people to have been born in Southgate over the years include Conservative Party legend Norman Tebbit and S Club 7 singer Rachel Stevens.
Many of the families who live within the redbrick houses of Southgate are Jewish. Jewish people have lived in the Enfield area since 1750 but it was between World Wars One and Two that many Jewish families moved from east to north London. By the time of the Swinging Sixties, around 280,000 Jews were living in north London. There are now five synagogues and three Jewish cemeteries within easy reach of Southgate.
Although there are photographs of Amy dressed up in costume for the Jewish festival of Purim, hers was not an especially religious family. ‘We didn’t grow up religious. I’m just a real family girl. I come from a big family. I think it’s important to have your family around you, to be close to your family. I’m very lucky I have a mum and dad.’
Zeddy Lawrence, editor of Jewish News, says, ‘She’s been happy to talk about her Jewish identity. I don’t know that she’s milked her Jewishness that much, to be honest. She’s not ashamed of mentioning that she’s Jewish or talking about that, but there are very few interviews where the Jewish thing has come out.
‘As far as the Jewish community goes, I think we were very excited when she first came on the scene. We wondered who this Jewish pop star was. There are very few of them about apart from Rachel Stevens, who didn’t have much credibility because she was in S Club 7. Stevens was just good-looking with a nice pair of breasts, if you’ll excuse me for saying that. She has talent, I suppose, but she was very much a pop princess.
‘But in terms of a Jewish artist, I think it had been a long time since there was anyone like that. I can’t remember the last credible Jewish artist in England. Amy came across as a credible artist, so there was a lot of excitement in the community because of that. I think since then she’s fallen out of favour a lot because of her behaviour.’
Amy says she didn’t enjoy going to cheder classes – the traditional elementary school teaching the basics of Judaism and the Hebrew language. ‘Every week I’d say “I don’t want to go, Dad, please don’t make me go,” she says. ‘He was so soppy he often let me off. I never learnt anything about being Jewish when I went anyway.’ However, she does attend synagogue on Yom Kippur and observes the Passover festival. ‘Being Jewish to me is about being together as a real family,’ she concludes. ‘It’s not about lighting candles and saying