Saving Amy (4 page)

‘We
really
did the best that we could and we encouraged them and we didn’t bully them and we didn’t hit them. We did the best that we could in our own limited way without going on a course in how to be the best parents in the world. We did really the best that we could. Maybe we could have done better, I don’t know.’

I ask Mitch about his relationship with Janis after the divorce. ‘[We] get on great. What is even nicer is that Janis and my wife, Jane, get on very well. … My wife is a nice person. My ex-wife is a nice person and I like to think that I am a nice person.’

I have to wonder, at this point, if Mitch really understands the dynamic that exists between Janis and Jane. In fact, Janis told me, on one occasion, that one of the hardest things for her to face, when Amy was in hospital in November 2008, was the fact that Jane, the woman that Mitch left her for, was sitting on the other side of her daughter’s bed. It seems that for Janis there is still a lot of pain attached to her divorce from Mitch and so his claim that everyone gets on well doesn’t really ring true. Perhaps it’s just easier for him to think that.

During the interviews, Mitch looks guilty when the matter of his divorce comes up. He often seems to torment himself, questioning whether his behaviour has led to Amy’s troubles and addictions. He tells me, ‘… The problem was that when we split up, I tried to overindulge the children a little bit too much. … I had a manufacturing company [then]. We had 400 employees. … I would work early in the morning before the children got up. … I came to the house. I got them ready for school. I took them to school. … I came back from work to pick them up from school. … I wouldn’t leave them alone. I wanted to be with them all the time. … I was at the house all the time and Janis had to say to me, “We are divorced; you really aren’t meant to be here.” In a nice way. We were trying to get over the fact that we were divorced, which was difficult for her more than me because I had Jane and it wasn’t appropriate for me to be there all the time.’

Mitch, at one point during our early interviews, says that Amy’s brother, Alex, suffered from depression for three years. He adds, ‘Looking back Amy wasn’t affected because she knew Jane from when Amy was two. She has known Jane her whole life. Alex knew Jane from when he was six. I thought it was Alex who was more affected by our breakup but clearly Alex has got over it. Alex is fine. … When we split up, Alex was older.’

When I first meet Janis in London, I get the chance to ask if she thinks Amy’s troubles began with her divorce from Mitch. ‘No, no, no,’ she denies. ‘I am very much a person of – it was life’s experience – and that’s it. We go through life and we experience it in our way.’

Yet, when I am with Amy in St Lucia months later, it occurs to me that, while there might not be a rift between
Janis and Mitch, Amy still behaves like that 9-year-old kid, trying to grab her parents’ attention. She needs it – craves it.

I ask Janis what her wish was for Amy and Alex when they were growing up. ‘For them to be happy and do what is best for them. And, that’s all I wanted for them. And they are both, both very, very talented. They are probably equally talented.’

Janis continues: ‘Mitchell and I always joke about Alex and Amy and Mitchell would always say “Alex, we adopted you” and Alex would be like “What! What! What! What!” – because that was the joke on them. And it would always be that either Alex was adopted or Amy was adopted. Just to throw them off-key.’

On the occasions that Janis and I meet or speak over the next months, it occurs to me that she continually drops ‘Mitchell and I’ into the conversation, in the way you would do if you were a couple. Although Janis is a woman who was abandoned by her husband and the father of her two children for another woman (about whom Janis had known for quite some time, as had Amy and Alex, from the ages of two and six respectively), in her mind she and Mitch are still a couple, still united.

When it comes to Amy, Jane is only the other woman and can’t compete. Janis and Mitch are Amy’s parents – Jane simply doesn’t enter into the equation.

After Janis and Mitch split up, Janis moved with Alex and Amy to a house in East Finchley, another Jewishdominated area in North London. Amy is reported to have
said that growing up there was ‘cool’, but it must have been very different to the life that she and her brother had had until then.

Janis recalls that Amy missed Mitch not being around and that this might be why there is a lot of anger in her songs. Mitch’s treatment of Janis and his affair with Jane is certainly something Amy deals with in her song ‘What Is It About Men’.

Aged 11, Amy moved to Ashmole Secondary School in Southgate, along with her friend, Juliette, where her musical tastes began to change and broaden. She listened to jazz, the music that Mitch liked so much and her uncles played, and sang along to artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, a singer who inspired Amy to realize that a ‘whisper can be so much more effective than just belting something out.’

Amy performed in amateur youth plays and school productions, sometimes more successfully than others, as Mitch noted in an early discussion. Recalling when he and Jane went to see a 12-year-old Amy sing at school, he commented, ‘She sang this song … and I said to Jane “Well, thank God she can have a career as an actress.” And the next year she [Amy] said, “Dad I am in this concert, will you come and see us?” So I said to my wife, “Well, we have got to go.” So, we went to see her and in a space of a year she could already sing. I remember the song she sang … the Alanis Morissette “Isn’t It Ironic” and it was great, so now in the space of a year she could sing. Whether it was in the right key I don’t know. She could sing and she was very good. …’

I ask Mitch at what point he believed Amy might be able to have a professional career as a performer.

‘She won a scholarship to go to Sylvia Young Drama School
⁴
, which is one of the top drama schools in London, but she went as an actress and dancer. The singing was – I don’t even know if they heard her sing and I think there was 800 applicants and there were two places and she won one of the places. …

‘My friend phoned me up, who is in show business, and said “Go out and buy
The Stage
[theatre paper].” … So, I went to about 10 newsagents before I found
The Stage
and there it was – Amy ha[d] won a scholarship and there was a picture of her …. We thought “Wow, now things are starting to move forward a little bit”, but even then we didn’t think about her singing … prior to that she had done a couple of pretty big acting jobs. She was at a theatre in a principal role, in a production as an actress, so that was more what we were really thinking, acting, maybe a little bit of dancing, tap dancing like Ginger Rogers, fabulous. … She loved to dance, but at that stage again there really wasn’t any sort of indication that she was a singer.’

Janis agrees with this when I interview her and Mitch together. ‘[Amy] was like the jolly kid, always a lovely, lovely child. She was like jolly and jumpy and happy and she was just enjoying it. And that was the most important thing. She enjoyed performing.’

‘So, you never pushed her?’ I ask Janis.

‘No. And I always said, “What do you call a mother that’s not a pushy Jewish mother” and she said,
“Mummy, that’s you
!”’

Mitch says that if anyone was pushy it was his mother, Cynthia, who Amy loved, so much so that she has her Nan’s
name tattooed on her body. ‘Amy was always, “Mum, I don’t want to upset Nan,”’ Janis adds.

‘What about when she took her to the audition for
Annie?’
Mitch recalls. ‘And there was a newspaper article the next day … They sent her along, it wasn’t Sylvia Young, it was Susi Earnshaw
⁵
, the one before, and they told us and they told Amy we are only sending you [along] for experience because the key’s not your key …. Somehow or other we forgot to tell my Mum about this. So, my Mum before Amy goes on the stage says “Now Amy, this is what you’ve got to do …” … but [Amy] said, “Nan, I’m only going for experience …”.

‘Of course, the song’s in the wrong key and she [Amy] comes off stage and my Mum wasn’t nasty to her, but it was, “Amy, why couldn’t you sing the song properly?”, “Nan, I’m trying to explain to you, it’s not my key. I’m only here for the experience.”

‘In the papers the next day, there was a review of the auditions and there was a whole section about pushy grandmothers and mothers. She [Cynthia] was [like], “You’ve got to do better.” To my Mum if you put your mind to it you could do anything you want [sic]. Which obviously you can do – but you can’t if it’s in the wrong key.’

Cynthia’s legacy is long-lasting and Amy frequently refers to her in interviews. We speak about Cynthia a few times in St Lucia and Amy tells me that she misses her still.

When Amy applied to Sylvia Young, all the applicants were asked to write a short essay about themselves and
their dreams. The 13-year-old Amy wrote, ‘All my life I have been loud, to the point of being told to shut up. The only reason I have to be this loud is because you have to scream to be heard in my family. … I’ve been told … I have a lovely voice … I want to do something with the talents I’ve been “blessed” with. … Mostly, I have this dream to be very famous. … I want people to hear my voice and just … forget their troubles for five minutes. …’

At Sylvia Young, where Amy stayed for three years until 2000, she became good friends with Tyler James, a singer–songwriter, who later would help give her career a welcome boost.

Sylvia Young immediately spotted the young girl’s potential, commenting that Amy’s talent could have put her in the same league as Judy Garland or Ella Fitzgerald, but all was not completely well for Amy at the school. She was incredibly clever, but she was bored when she wasn’t performing and was often disruptive. She wouldn’t wear her uniform properly, had a nose ring and chewed gum in lessons.

It was about this time that Mitch also noticed Amy had began to act up in earnest. ‘… Maybe she was 14, and she would stay out all night. I had to go and find her and I was convinced that she was dead … I am morbid. That is the way that my mind works unfortunately.

‘I would be driving through the streets of North London looking for her, knocking on people’s doors … Completely irrational, but that’s the way you are where your children are concerned.’

I ask him if he thought Amy did it on purpose. ‘It’s possible. I don’t think so. I don’t think Amy has ever
thought through the consequences of her actions. [Has] never taken responsibility for her actions. I don’t think she was any different to how she is now.’

At school, however, the teachers had had enough of Amy’s behaviour, it seemed. Janis recalls, ‘I got called into school … and the head teacher there said to me, “Well, Amy’s not doing what she could do … academically. She’s a very, very bright girl, should be doing such and such … And he’s talking all the talk, but saying “Find her another school.”’

It would have been a tough moment for any parent, I say, having not only their child but themselves as parents judged by this teacher.

Mitch continues, ‘Sylvia Young now will say that didn’t happen, but it did … But basically she [Amy] was asked to leave. …

‘In the normal academic school, 100 percent of the day is taken up with studying, apart from the physical activities. At this stage school, it’s probably two-thirds stage work, music and dancing and a third academia and Amy … just messed around. She couldn’t wait to get back into the performance so she was asked to leave. … We sent her to another private school and she made their life there hell for them.’

I ask Janis and Mitch if they were angry with Amy.

No,’ Mitch says. ‘You could never be angry with her … There are children who are nasty and they are malicious. She was never malicious. You know, she just laughs, even now ….’

Janis adds, ‘And that’s how she
is
with problems ….’