Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [81]
But maternal Amy wants to be a mummy to more than her friends. She is keen to have children of her own. She says, ‘While I love music, I’d really love to have a family, and that’s the most important thing to me. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to start one right now, as I think I’ve got another album in me. In the long term I have more family plans. I’ve got to a point where I’ve made an album which I’m proud of. Now I need to follow that up, but to have kids as well. Then go to Vegas, open my own casino and perform there every night!’
More maternal muttering was forthcoming when she was asked where she sees herself in 10 years time. ‘Well, I’ll have at least three beautiful kids,’ she replied. ‘I want to do at least four or five albums and I want to get them out of the way now. And then I want to take ten years out to go and have kids, definitely. I never used to be broody, but then I realised that I’m turning into a soppy bitch. Goodness in life comes from a sense of achievement and you’d get that from having a child and putting it before yourself.’
She dreams of parenthood and of further albums, but more important than either of these aspirations for Amy must be regaining a sense of control over the chaos that has engulfed her life. With her drink and drug issues, together with Blake’s incarceration on remand, 2007 saw her challenged on many fronts. However, 2008 was to be just as dramatic for Amy and her husband. The central act of the drama came in July, when Blake and his friend Michael Brown both admitted grievous bodily harm and perverting the course of justice. Blake was sentenced to 27 months by the judge, who told him: ‘In joining in that attack by kicking out at Mr King after he had already been both punched and kicked by Mr Brown you behaved in a gratuitous, cowardly and disgraceful way’.
Amy was not present at Snaresbrook Crown Court for the sentencing, but she had already offered her own commentary on the case in a typically bizarre manner. When she appeared at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday party at Hyde Park, she took to the stage to one of the loudest cheers of the night, and performed ‘Rehab’ and ‘Valerie’. She then left to more rapturous acclaim. But it was never going to be as simple as that. When she returned to the stage at the end of the night, to lead the entire ensemble through the Specials’ iconic hit ‘Free Nelson Mandela’, she gave the lyrics her own personal twist. ‘Freeeee, Blakey my fella,’ she sang over the chorus at one point. Jaws dropped across the park. Reaction was divided between those who thought it was little short of obscene for her to compare her drug-addled husband with one of the finest figures in human history on the occasion of his 90th birthday, and those who thought it was a moment of typical cheeky genius from Amy, whose wit had always equalled her musicianship.
She then performed at a series of festivals, including Glastonbury, the Oxegen Festival, V, and T In The Park. During the course of these shows Amy served up her increasingly familiar live-performance cocktail: the wonderful, the weird and the wasted. The most dramatic moment came at Glastonbury when she appeared to punch a fan in the front row of the audience. ‘You don’t even know how happy I am to be here tonight,’ she had earlier told the audience. Her happiness had clearly subsided when she lashed out at the fan. She topped off the night by spitting chewing gum into the crowd and calling rapper Kanye West a ‘c**t’. Thank you, and good night.
This was almost the last that live audiences were to see of Amy for a while, because she had by this stage been diagnosed with emphysema according to her father. ‘Theres a small amount there which hasn’t gone too far and it