Fifteen years on from her passing, the love for Amy Winehouse and her music only gets stronger and deeper
JULY 23, 2011, was one of those days when most of us remember where we were.
It was the day Amy Winehouse died.
In my case, it was a music festival in Gateshead on the banks of the river Tyne.
The tragic news spread through the crowd like wildfire that balmy late Saturday afternoon.
The initial reaction was a combination of shock and dismay at the loss of Britain’s finest female singer.
But, for me and for those I spoke to that day, there was also an air of inevitability about Amy’s death at 27, joining an unwanted “club” with Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain.
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She was a shooting star, burning bright for a fleeting moment and then she was gone.
Fifteen years on from her passing, the love for Amy and her music only gets stronger and deeper.
She had the voice, the image, the songs, the wit, the heart and the soul — but the story she told through her music was also filled with pain.
Her second album Back To Black charted in unflinching detail her turbulent relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil as well as her persistent problems with alcohol.
Of course, it scored an emotional bullseye with her listeners, becoming a Grammy-grabbing chart-topping sensation.
Rehab, You Know I’m No Good, Love Is A Losing Game, Tears Dry On Their Own and the title track are all indelibly etched into our collective consciousness.
Though she drew comparisons with some of the greatest soul/jazz voices — Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan and Etta James — there has been nothing quite like Back To Black before or since.
With that rich expressive contralto, she could hold us in the palms of her outstretched hands.
In 2004, the year after she released her debut album Frank, Amy, then 20, was asked by Jonathan Ross if music industry types had told her to change the way she looked or spoke or behaved.
“Yeah, one of them tried to mould me into a big triangle shape,” she replied, laughing and forming a triangle with her fingers. “And I went, ‘Nooo’.
“I’ve got my own style and I write my own songs. If someone has so much of something already, there’s very little you can add.”
When she chatted to my SFTW colleague Jacqui Swift to mark Back To Black’s release, Amy, 23 by then, opened up about her inspirations while also displaying more of a fiercely independent nature.
She described reaching her lowest ebb and being begged by management to go into rehab, to which she famously responded “No, no, no!”
“Rehab is like Butlin’s — it’s a holiday camp,” she said. “It’s an everyday thing for some people, like going to Tesco’s.”
She elaborated further: “I was having a particularly nasty time with things and just drinking and drinking.
“My management decided to stop buying for me and said they were taking me to rehab. I asked my dad (Mitch) if he thought I needed to go. He said: ‘No, but give it a try.’
“So I did, for 15 minutes. I went in, said hello, and explained that I drink because I am in love and have f***ed up a relationship. Then I walked out. I didn’t need help because, if I can’t help myself, I can’t be helped.”
Five years after she aired those feelings, Amy lost her life at her house in Camden, North London, the coroner recording a verdict of “death by misadventure”, an unintended consequence of heavy drinking after a period of sobriety.
The tragedy led to acrimony and blame games around why she wasn’t given enough support.
Blake, her family and record company execs were all in the firing line at various times.
Some believed it was her own self-destructive nature — but it is Amy’s voice and songs that define her legacy.
Musically, she and legendary “Godmother Of Punk” Patti Smith had little in common apart from their raw, honest approach and unbridled spirit.
But soon after Amy died, Patti recorded a heartfelt tribute in the form of a poem set to music, beginning with the lines, “This is the girl for whom all tears fall”.
During a trip to London, she told me: “I’m heartbroken as a fan and as a human being.
“What Amy did was magnificent and I had been looking forward to see how she would evolve. It would have been wonderful to go through life hearing what Amy did next.”
Though Patti vividly remembered herself at Amy’s age, wild and impulsive, This Is The Girl came from a different perspective.
“I actually looked at Amy in a maternal way, she was a similar age to my kids,” she said. “I was very concerned about how things were managed around her.”
What to her, I asked, was so special about Amy’s music?
“I loved Joan Baez when I was young and Darlene Love and all the R&B singers,” said Patti. “I really love Adele’s voice but Amy was a cut above us all I think.
“She had a gift you seldom hear. There was an authenticity to her voice. She understood R&B and jazz from the deepest part of her. It was organic.
“Not only did Amy have that thing from the Forties, Fifties and Sixties but she was modern. When she sang Rehab or Back To Black, she wasn’t stuck in the past or nostalgic.”
In 2026, Amy’s legacy is plain to witness through those who followed in her wake, including fellow BRIT School alumni Raye and current chart favourite Olivia Dean.
Just as she was breaking through, Olivia paid this tribute to her fellow Londoner: “I don’t think Amy had any interest in being a pop star — she just wanted to be herself.
“It was clear in her music that she was using it as a form of therapy and then we just so happened to be hearing it. It was so personal.”
Of Back To Black, she added: “My interpretation of the lyrics is that you can’t have all of her. Amy was a free spirit. We were very lucky to have her.”
Another BRIT School success story, Adele, had this to say: “Amy paved the way for artists like me. She made people excited about British music again.
“I don’t think she ever realised just how brilliant she was and how important she is.”
From the States, where Back To Black was equally huge, Lady Gaga gave a typically singular view: “I don’t believe what I do is very digestible and somehow Amy was the flu for pop music.
“Everybody got a little bit of the flu — and fell in love with Amy Winehouse. And now, when more flu comes along, it’s not so unbearable.”
Lana Del Rey, a singer like Amy known for her retro styling, said: “I believe in Amy Winehouse. I know she’s not with us any more but I believe in who she was, and, in that way, she got it right.”
As if to prove that Amy’s flame burns as bright as ever, the Rolling Stones recorded her You Know I’m No Good for their recent No1 album Foreign Tongues.
Guitarist Ronnie Wood told me that he, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards jumped at the chance to pay their respects.
“Amy was such a jewel,” he told me last month. “A very lost jewel in a jewellery box but she was wonderful.”
Ronnie remembered how he had provided a shoulder to cry on “shortly before she died”.
“She was asking me, ‘Oh Ron, what am I going to do? And I was going, ‘Don’t worry because everyone knows you’ve got vodka in your water bottle. Just don’t hide it and try to go on stage tonight’.
“Amy needed a carer or else she went off the rails.”
But Ronnie also recognised her stellar talent and added: “She was like Billie Holiday. She had that once-in-a-lifetime deep blues.”
Back To Black co-producer Mark Ronson told SFTW: “Amy was an incredible singer. She had so much power in that tiny frame.
“I was so spoilt because everything she was coming out with was so spectacular.”
Salaam Remi, who worked on both of her studio albums, gave us a wonderful insight into Amy’s playful character.
He said: “She was one of those people who could make you cry with laughter — or say something deep. Her character was a big part of her talent.
“She cleaned my kitchen one time and it was better than any cleaning lady.
“It was three or four shades whiter when she’d finished. She said, ‘I’m meant to be a Jewish mum, of course it’s sparkling.’ ”
One of Amy’s final recordings was with the last of the legendary crooners, Tony Bennett.
She was so nervous that there were several false starts before they nailed the sultry jazz standard Body And Soul.
It was typical of Bennett’s kind manner that he was able to put his duet partner at ease.
He said afterwards: “People think that anyone can sing jazz, but it’s a spirit you’re born with . . . or not. Amy was born with that spirit.”
It’s also important to salute Amy’s striking image, developed during the Back To Black era in step with her Sixties girlband influences such as The Shangri-Las — her sky-high beehive, that winged cat-eye make-up and those daring halterneck minidresses.
She once said: “I’ve always had my own style. I’ve always been different.
“I don’t like to wear anything that anyone else is wearing because it’s very important for me to make a statement.”
In her short life Amy made a statement — and then some.
The last words are with Dale Davis, her bass guitarist and musical director who still leads The Amy Winehouse Band on its frequent tours.
He told me: “For a long time I was her favourite person to go anywhere with — then I was second after Blake. After they split up, I was back to being her favourite person.
“If she liked you, she really liked you. If she loved you, she loved you hard.
“She was a warm, beautiful, generous person who made me feel special right from the off.”
Dale estimated they played around 170 shows together, the last being a desperate performance at an outdoor venue in Belgrade in June 2011.
“That final one was my most difficult night on stage,” he said. “To this day, I can’t believe we played for an hour and 20 minutes.
“It was a funny thing with Amy because I thought she only needed to take one step to be happy, but that step was too difficult. She was never far from being OK.”
Amy and Dale’s final conversation took place by phone on the night she died at her Camden townhouse.
Clearly finding the memory painful, he recalled: “I talked to her at 11.30pm, three hours before she went to bed. She was on good form.
“She said, ‘Dale, I’ve just been watching myself on YouTube and I can sing, can’t I?’.
“I replied, ‘Of course you can sing. You’re the best’.”