Amy Winehouse_ The Biography - Chas Newkey-Burden [9]
Asked whether they can cite any childhood influences on Amy, Mitchell points to Janis. ‘The influence comes from my ex-wife’s family… there are some excellent musicians in there. But it’s more what we listened to at home: Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah Washington.’ As for Janis, she passes the credit back to Mitchell. ‘Like any parent with talented children I’m hugely proud of their achievements but can honestly say I’ve never pushed or cajoled them into show business. I just want them to be happy. I’m not in awe of greatness and don’t take special credit for the way their talents have risen to the surface.’
Janis confirms, ‘It’s always been her dream to be a singer. That was all she ever wanted. She was always singing around the house.’ She would sing ‘I Will Survive’ by Gloria Gaynor while lying in the bath. Neighbours, too, remember the early Amy Winehouse performances – and her fledgling cheek! Paul Nesbitt lived near the Winehouse family. He said, ‘When I moved in, Amy popped her head out of her bedroom window and started singing with a microphone. She was talented. But she was a bit naughty. There was a bald copper who lived opposite and Amy would shout “slaphead” at him. She’d hold parties when her mum had gone out.’
Her brother Alex, too, was a huge music fan and therefore a big influence on Amy’s development in the field. She says, ‘As a little kid I was too shy to sing and my brother was the one standing on a chair in his school uniform and doing his Frank Sinatra.’ His ability on the guitar inspired Amy to learn. ‘He taught himself, so I took inspiration for teaching myself from him and he showed me a couple of things,’ she has said. ‘He was into jazz music when he was eighteen and I was fourteen and I’d hear Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald; and I learnt to sing by listening,’ she says.
Her first guitar was a Fender Stratocaster ‘It’s my favourite guitar,’ she said many years later. ‘It’s classic, it looks good and it sounds beautiful. It really lends itself to anything.’ However, she has also awarded the ‘favourite guitar’ tag to another model. ‘The Gretch White Falcon is my favourite guitar of all time. It’s beautiful. There’s this great picture of a falcon on the scratch plate.’
Young Amy was eventually to step out of Alex’s musical shadow. ‘When I was about nine, I did it,’ she recalls. ‘“Sing!” my nana would shout. “And smile!” But I still needed to hold a fan to my face for “Eternal Flame”: “Close your eyes, give me your hand…”’
Amy’s best friend is Juliette Ashby. As children the pair would play a game. ‘She was Pepsi and I was Shirley, the backing girls for Wham!. I think we clicked because we were both a bit off-key.’ This soon led the pair to form their own double-act called Sweet ’n’ Sour. ‘Me and my friend loved Salt-N-Pepa,’ she explains. ‘So we formed a band called Sweet ’n’ Sour. We had a tune called “Spinderella”, which was great… but it was a long time ago.’
Salt-N-Pepa were more than mere pop stars to the young Amy. ‘My first real role models were Salt-N-Pepa,’ she says. ‘They were real women who weren’t afraid to talk about men, and they got what they wanted and talked about girls they didn’t like. That was always really cool.’
More traditional pop girls had held little appeal for Amy. ‘I liked forward-thinking hip-hop like Mos Def, and conscious stuff like Nas,’ she said. ‘You know how there’s always one artist who makes you realise what it means to be an artist? I was into Kylie Minogue and Madonna, and then I discovered Salt-N-Pepa, and I realised there are real women making music.’ As well as ‘Spinderella’, Sweet ’n’ Sour’s other song titles included ‘Who Are the Glam Chicks (Us)?