Saving Amy (2 page)

The idea for this book arose in 2008, when Mitch Winehouse first asked to meet me in London. At that point, Amy Winehouse was in the news, less for her talent and more for her alleged addictions, erratic behaviour, hospitalizations and her relationship with Blake.

We met, a couple of times, at
Les Ambassadeurs
, an exclusive private member’s club in Mayfair, where Mitch impressed me by seemingly talking frankly about his daughter. He wasn’t defensive and he didn’t appear to take offence at any of my questions.

At our second meeting at the club, in November 2008, when Mitch was actually beginning to convince me that this might be an interesting project and that we should start filming, he said something that caught my attention, something which I immediately understood.

‘Daphne, at the end of the day, I’m going to talk only once about my private life – my family’s private life – do you understand?’

Well, of course, I understood. Who wants to share his private life,
his family’s
private life, especially a complicated one, more than once? Once is usually hard enough.

During the course of that meeting, we discussed making a documentary film, one that should be from Mitch’s viewpoint, to show how addiction not only affects the person who is afflicted but also how it impacts on his or her immediate family, extended family, friends, and so on.

At one point, after I had asked Mitch how this talented and charismatic young woman had reached this point, he gestured to the photograph that he had been clutching throughout our meeting. It showed a young, beautiful, big-eyed Amy Winehouse, brimming with confidence. Staring at it, Mitch told me that Amy had been holed up in London, in bed, hiding under the covers, for weeks now.

Suddenly Mitch’s mobile rang. His face immediately lit up.

‘It’s Amy!’, he exclaimed.

He chatted with his daughter briefly before hanging up.

A short while later, his phone rang again, and it was Amy. Mitch was obviously pleased, but for the rest of our meeting, I noticed that he periodically glanced at his phone nervously, almost willing it to ring again.

He finally admitted to me: ‘I am worried when I get a phone call from her or her security [people] because I don’t know what bad news I may get. But when I
don’t
hear from her or her security, I am worried as well – what might have happened [
sic
]?’

Then, Mitch said the words that cemented my decision to make the film: ‘When Amy’s addiction began, I went to private doctors, to experts, to learn about the problem. I had no knowledge, nobody to talk to. You feel so helpless, yet we can afford, financially, more than other people who face the same problem. So if I can share what I have gone through, and what I have learned, and by doing so help at least one other family … then this is what I would like to do.’

That’s how it all began…

My meetings with the Winehouses over the next few months, in London, Switzerland and St Lucia, were certainly never dull and I learned a lot about their relationships with each other and their daughter through our conversations, their interaction with each other and my own observations of them – and this book is the result of that time.

Saving Amy
is based not just on the taped interviews, but also on my diaries and personal notes and recollections while spending time with Mitch, Janis, Jane (Mitch’s wife) and Amy, herself.

This book was never meant to be a biography, but it is an exploration of addiction. Through the words and first-hand experiences of those closest to Amy Winehouse, my aim was always to show the love, fear and powerlessness, indeed, the emotions that most families experience as they watch firsthand the spiralling out of control of their loved ones. In this case, the subject may have been a young woman who was certainly one of the most talented musicians of her generation – but having a talent doesn’t make addiction any easier to live with.

The one constant throughout our discussions is the love that Mitch and Janis often expressed for Amy. But my interviews and meetings with the Winehouse family, and, indeed, with the many other people who I have interviewed over the years and who have discussed addictions with me (and these include Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Kathleen Turner, Barry Manilow, Kid Rock, Art Garfunkel, Michael Bolton, Charlton Heston, Donatella Versace, Roberto Cavalli and Omar Sharif), have raised many questions with me about the nature of addiction and how it is caused.

While, without a doubt, Amy Winehouse was loved, was that love healthy? How much of her addiction was fuelled by something in her past? How much stemmed from the relationship that Amy not only had with her father, but with others, such as those existing between Mitch and Janis, Mitch and Jane, Jane and Janis, and Mitch with all three of the women in his life?

Is it possible that families sometimes fuel the addictions of their loved ones, admittedly without necessarily knowing that they’re doing so? And, what can be done to break this cycle, when it does happen?

These are just some of the questions I had to ask myself both during filming and also off camera when I spoke to these people individually and watched how they interacted with each other and with Amy, herself. Now, for me, one question, out of all of them, still stands out: What happened to Amy Winehouse in the past that made her want to pursue the path that she followed?

In any story, whether a film or a book, the usual place to start is at the beginning. So, when we start filming
Saving Amy
in November 2008, it seems right to go back to the place where Mitch Winehouse and his first wife, Janis, grew up – in London’s East End.

Much has been made about Amy Winehouse’s ‘normal’ family upbringing, the North London Jewish community in which both she and her parents grew up and the influence that her grandmother Cynthia, Mitch’s mother, in particular, had on the young Amy. Family plays a big part in Amy’s life, as becomes increasingly evident in the discussions that I have over the next months with the Winehouses and, later, Amy herself.

Amy’s family has shaped the way in which she’s grown up, the decisions she’s made – even the kind of musician she’s become – and this place, where Amy’s parents grew
up, is an integral part of all that, of helping to explain how Amy has become the person she is today.

Mitch, accompanied by my film crew and I in my two limousines, drive around the places where he grew up as a child.

‘This is Albert Gardens
¹
,’ he tells our chauffeur. ‘And this is the place where I grew up and where my Mum grew up. As you can see, even now it is very attractive. It was actually built for sea captains, so I was told; I don’t know if it is true or not. It is a nice place.’

Mitch lived here when he was younger and went to school in Stepney, about half a mile from where we’re currently sitting. The whole of this part of London is rich in culture and history, a place where Jack the Ripper walked the streets, where immigrants first settled when they came to England, where local Jews, Irish dockers and Oswald Mosley’s black shirts came to blows, as Mitch tells us, on Mansell Street, in what became known as the Battle of Cable Street
²
.

‘There was no racial tension,’ Mitch says, ‘or anything that I can remember as a child – not in this area.’

It’s obvious that Mitch loves this place. With great pride, he points out the maternity hospital where his mother and her twin sister, Lorna, were born, and talks about the cinema that used to be there, the Troxy-Gaumont. That picture house and one in Mile End formed a big part of his life growing up: it was in these places that his grandmother, ‘Bubba’, could be found most days, and which formed a microcosm of life in the East End.

‘I can tell you some stories,’ he reminisces. ‘… You couldn’t watch the film because people were eating, they
were chewing, they were laughing, they were making love. It was fantastic. It was great times. When you look at it now, it is still nice, isn’t it?’

When I ask Mitch to tell me a bit about his mother, Cynthia, and the effect she had on him and on Amy, he comments emotionally: ‘… A lot has been written about my mum and her influence on Amy, and of course this place [Albert Gardens] had the greatest influence on my mother and on me because this is where we both grew up and you can see even today what a lovely place it is….

‘I think a place; your upbringing has got a lot to do with your character.’ He adds, ‘I still love it here: it’s funny isn’t it? It is like my home.’

When Mitch was a child, he lived at 31, Albert Gardens. And, it’s here we end up. His grandmother lived in the house from the early 1920s until her death.

When we arrive there, we walk along Albert Gardens. Mitch comments that every house here was Jewish when he was growing up.

‘There are still a few old Jews here today,’ he adds.

‘This is the house,’ he says, stopping outside one of the buildings. ‘The same front door. There used to be a board there, because they were dressmakers so they would put a board and the board would say they need a felling hand, which was someone who pressed. They would need a presser and the vacancies would be up there. That was our lounge down there. That was our front room.’ He points to various rooms as he speaks.

I have to admit I’m quite surprised at the size of the building. It’s big, maybe three or four storeys high. I say this to Mitch.

‘Yeah,’ he comments. ‘It was big inside.’

I ask him to tell me who lived there with him when he was growing up and he reels off several names – his mother, Cynthia, her twin, Lorna, who shared the first floor room, also his grandmother, his great uncle, and on the top floor, a man named Izzy Hammer, who was a holocaust survivor – they all lived in the house.

‘This place has really great memories,’ Mitch says. ‘And Amy and my son, Alex, they love coming here, although obviously my grandmother had gone by the time they came along.’

Janis and Mitch first met through Martin, Janis’s cousin, who was Mitch’s best friend from the age of 13. Janis was just eight or nine when the boys became friends and Mitch thought she was horrible then. They didn’t really meet again until 1975, when Janis was about 22 or 23 and a pharmacy technician; by then, Mitch was a doubleglazing salesman.

‘And all of a sudden this horrible little eight-year-old was now a beautiful young woman,’ Mitch reminisces. ‘And I pestered Martin for a year or two to make the introduction, but he wisely thought I wasn’t good enough for his cousin, but somehow we got together …’.

Things actually took off between Mitch and Janis after they bumped into each other at a party. Hilary, Mitch’s girlfriend at the time, went off with someone else and Janis and Mitch ended up spending the evening together.

‘The rest, as they say, is history,’ Mitch murmurs.

I get an opportunity to ask Janis about that day when I interview her with Mitch later in November 2008. Mitch had originally told me that it might be a problem speaking to Janis. She suffers from multiple sclerosis (MS) and she walks with a cane. When Mitch describes Janis, he says she is disabled. Mitch is obviously mystified, when Janis agrees to see me: ‘I don’t understand why she agreed so fast,’ he says.

I like Janis immensely and when we put her and Mitch together, there is no doubt that she steals the show.

When did they meet? I ask Janis. At a party on 11 October 1975, she replies; Mitch counters that he thought that it was November.

Janis continues, ‘I’d just come back from America and it was a case of Mitchell asking me to dance. And I knew at that moment that “yes” would mean life. I knew we would be together, the whole time, and it was a case of “yes” or “no”, so I said “yes!”’

‘And we were married two hours later!’ Mitch interjects. ‘No! That’s not true.’

Janis initially kept the fact that she was going out with Mitch a secret from friends and family, even though Mitch had given her a ring by that stage. She comments, ‘… If everyone knew I was with Mitch they’d go: “Oh no! No! No!”’

Mitch seems surprised by this and asks his ex-wife why she says that. She explains: ‘Because you were like rowdy and it was a case of, like, are you mad? So, I kept to myself … it was a secret that I was going out with Mitchell.’