Memoir by Amy Winehouse’s mother is both sweet and nightmarish

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This article was published 23/01/2016 (3830 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Before her death at age 27, Amy Winehouse made headlines around the world for her sultry voice and unique blend of jazz, blues and pop, earning her five Grammys. Sadly, she also earned a permanent place in the tabloids for her struggles with drugs and alcohol.

Loving Amy: A Mother’s Story, a memoir by Amy’s mother Janis, is both sweet and nightmarish, revealing in touching detail the little girl who loved Cabbage Patch dolls, playing Boggle with her “mum” and, of course, singing. Despite her mammoth talent, beyond the beehive – her signature hairdo – Amy was a vulnerable young woman plagued with anxieties and self-doubt.

Born in New York, Janis was raised in London, where she later married Mitchell Winehouse. Amy was born in 1983, two years after her brother Alex.

Janis and Mitchell divorced when Amy was nine. While raising her two children, Janis worked as a lab and pharmacy technician, then pursued a second degree, a bachelor of pharmacy.

As a teenager, Amy had been writing songs and performing locally, eventually landing a record deal. Her first album, Frank, was released in the U.K. in 2003, the same year Janis was diagnosed with secondary progressive multiple sclerosis.

Frank sold more than 200,000 copies, and Amy, then 21, was garnering attention. But as Janis explains, Amy was not always comfortable with the trappings of fame.

“Despite coming across as confident and opinionated, Amy was ill at ease talking about herself,” Janis writes.

In her first television interview, Amy affected a thick cockney accent and was sporting thicker eyeliner than usual. Was she merely experimenting, or was her image becoming a kind of mask to hide — or protect — the real Amy?

As a teenager, Amy would hold her mother’s hand when they were out shopping, something she did until she was 18. “She seemed to need to check that I was there for her,” Janis says. As the years passed, things changed: “I’d watched my daughter hatch into this butterfly… she flitted around and only landed near me now and again.”

Yet Amy still seemed to draw comfort from her mother’s presence; during performances, she would reach out to Janis in the crowd, shouting, “There’s my mummy! I can see my mummy!”

Janis knew Amy was drinking heavily and smoking marijuana on a regular — if not daily — basis. She had also admitted in the past to trying heroin, vowing it wasn’t for her.

But in 2005, she met Blake Fielder-Civil, a former video-production assistant, whom Janis believes was the “catalyst” that reacquainted Amy with hard drugs — including crack cocaine — though she admits there were likely other contributing factors.

She stops short of blaming herself, but remembers Amy taking her to task as a young girl: ” ‘Mum, you’re not tough enough. I know that if I really want to do something, I can do it.’ “

Amy was now losing weight drastically and falling asleep during studio sessions. She was unreliable, and often appeared unkempt; her skin was blotchy and at one point she lost a tooth.

The stress began to affect Janis, at times making her condition worse, and family members conspired to keep the worst of Amy’s exploits from her. As her disease progressed, Janis was unable to drive, and could not walk without the aid of a cane.

She is honest about her own denial: “There was a part of me that downplayed the gravity of what (Amy) was doing in order to protect myself.”

Amy’s first visit to rehab lasted only 15 minutes before she discharged herself, and is now immortalized in the song Rehab, from Amy’s second album Back to Black. Released in 2006, it sold 1.85 million copies, making it the best-selling album of 2007.

Increasingly, Janis was losing the Amy she knew. Paparazzi were literally around every corner; though Janis seldom saw the real Amy, her picture was on every newspaper and magazine. Janis bought them all, “forced into being a fan rather than Amy’s mum.”

Amy continued to refuse medication or therapy, in part because she feared it would “affect the highs and lows that fuelled her creativity.” Both Janis and Mitchell were widely criticized for “failing to save their daughter,” but Janis is adamant that “no one could have saved Amy except Amy.”

On July 23, 2011, Amy was found on the floor of her Camden flat. Ironically, she had started a drug-replacement program and had been clean of drugs for almost three years, but her blood-alcohol level was over five times the legal limit for driving.

As a teenager, Amy wrote, “‘I want people to hear my voice and forget their troubles for just five minutes. I want to be remembered for being… a singer… For being… just me.'”

Her mother, at least, remembers her that way. “She is simply Amy. She was my daughter and my friend.”

Janis retired in 2009 and re-married. She now runs the Amy Winehouse Foundation with Amy’s father, Mitchell.

 

Lindsay McKnight works in the arts in Winnipeg.