ROCK & POP: Amy Winehouse, the Death of a Songbird

Singer Amy Winehouse, who mixed pieces of soul, jazz, and gospel into pop ballads, was found dead in her apartment Saturday. Police are so far listing the cause of death as "unexplained." Her career as a musician was often overshadowed by her life off-stage, Winehouse struggled with drugs and alcohol throughout her life.

Amy Winehouse - Rehab

Amy Winehouse - Back in Black



Winehouse wasn't one to apologize for her substance abuse. In fact, it's a big part of what made the singer so famous, or infamous. Winehouse released her first album, Frank, in 2003, but three years later she shot to super stardom, with her song, "Rehab."

"Rehab" hit the top 10 in the UK and the United States, her album, Back to Black, shot to No. 1 and won her five Grammys. Rolling Stone contributor Claire Hoffman says that Winehouse was unlike any other of her time.

"It was basically like this scrawny little tattooed white girl from working-class London who somehow, when she got on stage, sounded like these great soul singers of the '60s," Hoffman says.

Born on Sept. 14, 1983, to a Jewish family with a history of jazz musicians, Winehouse was critical of her pop-diva predecessors. As she told the BBC in 2003, she made music in reaction to what she saw as a packaged, cheap sound in pop.

"I think when I was growing up, the music that was in the pop charts or the music that was — that people were releasing at the time, I just thought, 'This isn't music.' This is just watered down or this is just crap — someone else has just written it for you and you have to sing it. It's very much the case in some music today," she said.

Winehouse said that she wanted to write something that she could call her own, and though it sounded different, it didn't always sound great. As YouTube rose in popularity, so did videos of train-wreck performances from a drunken and belligerent Winehouse. The singer did check into rehab in 2008, 2009 and then again in 2011. She was often on the front pages of tabloids for her behavior off stage: fighting with fans, marriage problems, substance abuse. Hoffman says that this was the essence of her celebrity.

"It seemed like it went hand-in-hand that she was both so troubled and so talented," Hoffman says.

For a time, it seemed, there was hope. Rumors of a follow up to Back to Black buzzed in the music press for much of 2011. She's also featured on a duets album with Tony Bennett, set to be released in September. But in June she cancelled a European tour after a botched performance in Belgrade, Serbia. Winehouse returned to London to recover, but was found dead Saturday. She was 27 years old.

We lost Amy Winehouse today — another talented, troubled musician who happened to die at age 27.

 

But when I saw that Winehouse was 27, chills went through my body. What is it about the age of 27? My generation lost Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Brian Jones at that exact age. Kurt Cobain died at 27, and so did Badfinger's Pete Ham, Robert Johnson and Big Star's Chris Bell.

There's a book called The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll, by Eric Segalstad, with many more names and stories. You can hear Segalstad interviewed about his book on All Things Considered.

THE FULL STORY

LONDON — Amy Winehouse, the beehived soul-jazz diva whose self-destructive habits overshadowed a distinctive musical talent, was found dead Saturday in her London home, police said. She was 27.


Winehouse shot to fame in 2006 with the album Back to Black, whose blend of jazz, soul, rock and classic pop was a global hit. It won five Grammys and made Winehouse — with her black beehive hairdo and old-fashioned sailor tattoos — one of music’s most recognizable stars. But her personal life, with its drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders and destructive relationships, soon took over her career.

Police confirmed that a 27-year-old female was pronounced dead at the home in Camden Square northern London; the cause of death was not immediately known. London Ambulance Services said Winehouse had died before the two ambulance crews it sent arrived at the scene.

Singer and actress Kelly Osbourne, who helped Winehouse check into a drug addiction treatment facility in 2008, was one of many who grieved for the singer on Twitter.

“I cant even breath right now im crying so hard i just lost 1 of my best friends. i love you forever Amy and will never forget the real you!” she tweeted.

The singer’s father, Mitch Winehouse, had arrived in New York this weekend to prepare for his U.S. performing debut Monday night at the Blue Note jazz club, but upon receiving news of his daughter’s death was heading back home to London to be with his family, his publicist Don Lucoff said.

An ambulance could be seen parked beneath the trees outside her London home, and the whole street was cordoned off by police tape. Officers kept onlookers away from the scene.

Last month, Winehouse cancelled her European comeback tour after she swayed and slurred her way through barely recognizable songs in her first show in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. Booed and jeered off stage, she flew home and her management said she would take time off to recover.

Winehouse was last publicly seen on at a London concert on Wednesday when she joined her goddaughter Dionne Bromfield on stage. In that impromptu appearance, Winehouse danced with Bromfield and encouraged the audience to buy her album, before leaving the stage.

“I didn’t go out looking to be famous,” Winehouse told the Associated Press when Back to Black was released. “I’m just a musician.”

But in the end, the music was overshadowed by fame, and by Winehouse’s demons. Tabloids lapped up the erratic stage appearances, drunken fights, stints in hospital and rehab clinics. Performances became shambling, stumbling train wrecks, watched around the world on the internet.

Born in 1983 to Mitch Winehouse, taxi driver, and his pharmacist wife Janis, Winehouse grew up in the north London suburbs, and was set on a showbiz career from an early age. When she was 10, she and a friend formed a rap group, Sweet ’n’ Sour — Winehouse was Sour — that she later described as “the little white Jewish Salt ’n’ Pepa.”

She attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, a factory for British music and acting moppets, later went to the Brit School, a performing arts academy in the Fame mould, and was originally signed to Pop Idol svengali Simon Fuller’s 19 Management.

But Winehouse was never a packaged teen star, and always resisted being pigeonholed.

Her jazz-influenced 2003 debut album, Frank, was critically praised and sold well in Britain. It earned Winehouse an Ivor Novello songwriting award, two Brit nominations and a spot on the shortlist for the Mercury Music Prize.

But Winehouse soon expressed dissatisfaction with the disc, saying she was “only 80 per cent behind” the album.

Frank was followed by a slump during which Winehouse broke up with her boyfriend, suffered a long period of writer’s block and, she later said, smoked a lot of marijuana.

“I had writer’s block for so long,” she said in 2007. “And as a writer, your self-worth is literally based on the last thing you wrote. . . . I used to think, ‘What happened to me?’

“At one point it had been two years since the last record and (the record company) actually said to me, ‘Do you even want to make another record?’ I was like, ‘I swear it’s coming.’ I said to them, ‘Once I start writing I will write and write and write. But I just have to start it.’ ”

The album she eventually produced was a sensation.

Released in Britain in the fall of 2006, Back to Black brought Winehouse global fame. Working with producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi and soul-funk group the Dap-Kings, Winehouse fused soul, jazz, doo-wop and, above all, a love of the girl-groups of the early 1960s with lyrical tales of romantic obsession and emotional excess.

Back to Black was released in the United States in March 2007 and went on to win five Grammy awards, including song and record of the year for Rehab.

Music critic John Aizlewood attributed her trans-Atlantic success to a fantastic voice and a genuinely original sound.

“A lot of British bands fail in America because they give America something Americans do better — that’s why most British hip-hop has failed,” he said. “But they won’t have come across anything quite like Amy Winehouse.”

Winehouse’s rise was helped by her distinctive look — black beehive of hair, thickly lined cat eyes, girly tattoos — and her tart tongue.

She was famously blunt in her assessment of her peers, once describing Dido’s sound as “background music — the background to death” and saying of pop princess Kylie Minogue, “she’s not an artist ... she’s a pony.”

The songs on Black to Black detailed breakups and breakdowns with a similar frankness. Lyrically, as in life, Winehouse wore her heart on her sleeve.

“I listen to a lot of ’60s music, but society is different now,” Winehouse said in 2007. “I’m a young woman and I’m going to write about what I know.”

Even then, Winehouse’s performances were sometimes shambolic, and she admitted she is “a terrible drunk.” She acknowledged struggling with eating disorders and told a newspaper that she had been diagnosed as manic depressive but refused to take medication. Soon accounts of her erratic behaviour, cancelled concerts and drink- and drug-fuelled nights began to multiply.

Photographs caught her unsteady on her feet or vacant-eyed, and she appeared unhealthily thin, with scabs on her face and marks on her arms.

There were embarrassing videos released to the world on the internet. One showed an addled Winehouse and Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty playing with newborn mice. Another, for which Winehouse apologized, showed her singing a racist ditty to the tune of a children’s song.

Winehouse’s managers went to increasingly desperate lengths to keep the wayward star on the straight and narrow. Before the June concert in Belgrade, her hotel was stripped of booze. It did no good, and the concert was painful to watch.

Though she was often reported to be working on new material, fans got tired of waiting for the much-promised followup to Back to Black.

Occasional bits of recording saw the light of day. Her rendition of The Zutons’ Valerie was a highlight of producer Mark Ronson’s 2007 album Version, and she recorded the pop classic It’s My Party for the 2010 Quincy Jones album Q: Soul Bossa Nostra.

But other recording projects with Ronson, one of the architects of the success of Back to Black, came to nothing.

She also had run-ins with the law. In April 2008, Winehouse was cautioned by police for assault after she slapped a man during a raucous night out.

The same year she was investigated by police, although not charged, after a tabloid newspaper published a video that appeared to show her smoking crack cocaine.

In 2010, Winehouse pleaded guilty to assaulting a theatre manager who asked her to leave a family Christmas show because she’d had too much to drink. She was given a fine and a warning to stay out of trouble by a judge who praised her for trying to clean up her act.

In May 2007 in Miami, she married music industry hanger-on Blake Fielder-Civil, but the honeymoon was brief. That November, Fielder-Civil was arrested for an attack on a pub manager the year before. Fielder-Civil later pleaded guilty to assaulting barman James King and then offering him 200,000 pounds ($400,000 US) to keep quiet about it.

Winehouse stood by “my Blake” throughout his trial, often blowing kisses at him from the court’s public gallery and wearing a heart-shaped pin labelled “Blake” in her hair at concerts. But British newspapers reported extramarital affairs while Fielder-Civil was behind bars.

They divorced in 2009.

Winehouse’s health often appeared fragile. In June 2008 and again in April 2010, she was taken to hospital and treated for injuries after fainting and falling at home.

Her father said she had developed the lung disease emphysema from smoking cigarettes and crack, although her spokesperson later said Winehouse only had “early signs of what could lead to emphysema.”

She left the hospital to perform at Nelson Mandela’s 90th birthday concert in Hyde Park in June 2008, and at the Glastonbury festival the next day, where she received a rousing reception but scuffled with a member of the crowd. Then it was back to a London clinic for treatment, continuing the cycle of music, excess and recuperation that marked her career.


CELEBRITY REACTION

"Truly sad news about Amy Winehouse. My heart goes out to her family. May her troubled soul find peace." — Demi Moore


"So sad about Amy Winehouse - she was so talented. Really tragic." Jessica Alba

"So many people saying that because it's not a surprise that Amy Winehouse passed, it's not sad. I hope you have more compassion for friends." — Rob Thomas

"R.I.P. Amy. Your Voice will live Forever." — Joel Madden

"This Amy Winehouse news is just so sad . To anyone struggling with addiction, please, please, please seek treatment." — Sophia Bush

"I'm not sure how anyone with a soul can make jokes about the passing of one of the most talented artists this generation will see." — Samantha Ronson

"My God! So sad to hear about Amy Winehouse! My deepest condolences to her friends and family and fans. You will be missed Amy xoxox" — Dave Navarro

Amy Winehouse: Muere la estrella más atormentada y talentosa de la última década

La artista fue encontrada muerta en su residencia en Londres y la policía aún no establece las causas de su deceso. Hoy se hará su autopsia.

Good for the soul (Bien para el alma). Aunque no es una canción propia, sino que de su ahijada artística, la también inglesa Dionne Bromfield, esa fue la última composición que Amy Winehouse incitó a cantar sobre un escenario, cuando la noche del pasado miércoles ambas aparecieron juntas en el festival iTunes de Londres. Casi como un simbolismo, fueron también las últimas palabras mencionadas en público por la cantante antes del más fatídico y esperado de sus desenlaces: ayer una de las figuras más mediáticas y talentosas de la última década, dueña de una impronta que hizo escuela y responsable de recuperar el soul para las nuevas generaciones, fue encontrada muerta en Camden Town, al norte de Londres, muy cerca del lugar donde hace escasos días realizó su última escala en un escenario. Tenía 27 años.

Según informó la BBC, una persona llamó a las 15.54 horas de Inglaterra (10.54 en Canada) al servicio de ambulancias para alertar sobre el hecho. La entidad envió dos vehículos y encontró a la estrella ya fallecida. Raj Kohli, portavoz de la Policía Metropolitana, confirmó el deceso y calificó como "inexplicables" las causas de su fallecimiento. Cuando se le preguntó si todo apuntaba a una posible sobredosis, sólo se limitó a decir que consideraba inapropiado caer en especulaciones. Cinco horas después, el cuerpo de la voz de Rehab fue retirado de su residencia y para hoy se espera la autopsia que arroje más luces sobre su muerte.

Medios ingleses también informaron que su familia supo casi de inmediato la noticia y que su padre, Mitch, estaba volando hacia Nueva York debido a compromisos laborales. Con la divulgación del hecho, empezó el ritual de lo habitual: un puñado de fans se acercó hasta su casa para depositar flores, peluches y carteles con mensajes. La policía debió acordonar el lugar y suspender por momentos el tránsito debido a las pericias de los forenses y al arribo de seguidores y curiosos.

A la artista le sobreviven sus dos padres, su hermano mayor, Alex, un frustrado matrimonio con el hombre de su vida, Blake Fielder-Civil, y un sorprendente historial de éxito que creció a la par con el vía crucis de excesos y temporadas en el infierno que la persiguieron durante toda su carrera (ver páginas 67 y 68).

Antes de su sorpresiva y casi inadvertida aparición en el concierto de Bromfield -dueto inmortalizado a través de videos informales en YouTube-, la inglesa ingresó en mayo a la clínica Priory, de Londres, para desintoxicarse una vez más del alcohol y las drogas. Era su último intento por zafar de sus capítulos más salvajes. Estuvo una semana y salió con un tratamiento ambulatorio que le prohibía beber y acercarse a las drogas más duras. De hecho, en octubre, la propia artista había confesado que se sentía lentamente alejada de todo tipo de adicciones y que esperaba estar limpia por, al menos, tres años.

Tras su paso por la rehabilitación, Winehouse se alistó para iniciar una gira de 12 días por Europa, pero su presente siguió remitiéndose a la crónica roja más que a la crítica musical: el 18 de junio apareció en su show de Belgrado, Serbia, completamente borracha y sin opción de domar su voz para cantar, lo que detonó el abucheo por parte de sus fans. Debió cancelar el periplo, que tenía contemplado paradas en Grecia, Turquía y España.

Durante este año sus días transcurrían entre su residencia en Londres y su descanso en Santa Lucía, una pequeña y paradisiaca isla situada en el Caribe, lejos de los traficantes y las malas juntas que merodeban su vida británica. Hasta ahí llegó por consejo de su padre, quien la quería apartar de los oportunistas y los compadrazgos de dudosa influencia. Hasta ahí además llegaron amigos más cercanos, como Cee Lo Green o Bryan Adams.

Ahí también ultimaba su esperado nuevo álbum, el que, según su sello, estaba listo y que calificó de "sensacional". Pero todo se vino al suelo ayer, en la fatídica tarde londinense donde culminó su vida y comenzó su mito.

Los fallidos intentos por llevarla a Chile a principios de año: solo fue a Brasil

Se mandaron presupuestos y se preguntó formalmente por una extensión de su visita a Brasil. Pero nada. Una productora chilena de alcance regional intentó a comienzos de este año traer a Chile a Amy Winehouse, considerando que la británica tenía confirmada una serie de conciertos en ese país, entre el 8 y el 15 de enero. Pero, de acuerdo a lo que se comentó en ese momento, fue la misma intérprete la que declinó ampliar su gira hacia Chile y Argentina.

Eso fue lo más cerca que Winehouse estuvo alguna vez de presentarse en el país, pero, a juzgar por los reportes de la prensa brasileña durante esos días, lo más probable es que el espectáculo no hubiera sido del todo satisfactorio.

Florianópolis, Recife, Río de Janeiro y Sao Paulo fueron las ciudades que la voz de Rehab visitó en el contexto de una gira con la que intentaba ponerse en forma para volver a los escenarios (no actuaba públicamente desde octubre de 2010) y donde fue acompañada por Janelle Monáe y Mayer Hawthorne, quien sí se presentó en Santiago durante ese mes.

El último show de esa gira, la de Sao Paulo, partió 25 minutos tarde y fue descrito como "vacilante" por los medios locales: la británica cantó 17 canciones durante una hora y terminó a los tropezones sobre la tarima.

En Río de Janeiro, en tanto, protagonizó un polémico episodio en el hotel donde se alojaba (Hotel Santa Teresa) cuando ingresó a la habitación de otros pasajeros para sacar las botellas del minibar. En el mismo recinto se paseó desnuda por los balcones atrayendo a los fotógrafos que no le perdieron paso.