There were two sides to Amy Winehouse. One side was triumphant. The other side was a disaster. Two consecutive appearances at the Glastonbury Festival made that crystal clear; one presented Amy at her best, and the other presented her at her lowest. But no matter which side she found herself on, she pulled no punches. She even threw some punches of her own.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Club is a production of I Heart Radio and
Double Elvis. Amy Winehouse died at the age of and
she lived a life that routinely straddled triumph and catastrophe.
I can give you twenty seven reasons why that statement
is true. Two was roughly the hour in the morning
(00:21):
that she would routinely call her manager from the bathrooms
of a handful of unspecified pubs in Camden, looking for
a ride and also for help. Another eight would be
the number of songs that would take before a kickoff
show for a fall tour went completely sideways and ended
in disaster. Eleven more would be the number of months
(00:42):
between a Victoria's show at Glastonbury and it ruined a
show at the very same festival the next year. Four
more would be the number of punches she would throw
into the audience from the photographer's pit at the latter
Glastonbury gig when the screaming, heckling, and flashbolving of eighty
thou concert ors became overwhelming. Into would be the number
(01:04):
of years she had left to live when she was
diagnosed with a disease so deadly she might need a
machine to breathe. All totally on this our third episode
of season four, unspecified Pubs Ruinous shows punches from the
pit in Amy Winehouse. I'm Jake Brennan in This is
(01:26):
the Seven clos Nick Shamanski wasn't sure what to do.
(02:09):
Fish or cut, bait, call or don't call. He was
holding the phone receiver in his hand and he could
hear the dial tone humming it's one note song, and
the flatlining sound taunted him. Fuck it. He'd call her,
but he'd have to lie. Okay, well not lie, lie,
but stretch the truth a little bit, make himself seem
(02:32):
a little more important than he really was. That was
the name of the game. Any game that got played
in the music business sort of went by that name.
Fake it until you make it inspired trust, even if
you intend to break it, Walk into the room like
you already have the job. All that positive self esteem
inflating mumbo jumbo. It worked. And although she was only sixteen,
(02:54):
word was that she could smell bullshit a mile away,
even on the other end of a phone. That's what
Tyler James said. Anyhow, Tyler also told Nick that her
voice was incredible. Tyler was another teenage singer that Nick
was working with. He was his quote unquote manager. Okay again,
that man in a bit of a stretch. Nick was
only nineteen and Tyler was just getting started. But Nick's
(03:17):
family was in the business, and he aspired to join
the family business. From a young age. He endeavored to
do things that managers did. Book the show, she said,
of the gig, pick up, drop off, create the opportunity,
make the call. So Nick did what a manager would do,
and Cole called the secondary school dropout with the incredible voice. Hello,
(03:39):
is this Amy? Yeah? It was Amy? And who the
hell was asking? The guy was going to make her famous?
The guy who could open doors, That's who, motherfucker. Nick
went big. He was Brian Epstein without the polosh accent,
Peter Grant minus the menace, Malcolm McLaren without the fetish gear.
Amy was as at tized. She sniffed into her under
(04:02):
the phone line bullshit, but it was more than that.
It's what she defined as bullshit, the industry at the bizz,
the money of the fame. She didn't want any part
of any of that, so she hung up, but Nick
called her again. He altered his tactic. This time, he
got more real. She hung up on him a second time.
So he tried again, and by the third call, Nick
(04:24):
had figured out that Amy Winehouse didn't need to be
wooed with promises of wealth and stardom, and Amy had
figured out that Nick Schmanski was a down to earth
guy with a similar sense of humor and love for jazz,
who could become an honest ally in a shitty business
that was full of con artists and backstabbers. Soon after
that third conversation, Nick received the package in the mail.
(04:46):
It was covered in hearts and kisses stickers. Amy was
written all over the outside, probably upwards of a hundred times.
Inside was a demo tape. Nick popped the tape in
his car stereo, pressed play and heard Amy singing the
jazz standard night and day. She owned the tune, and
that was it. She was even better than Tyler had
(05:08):
said she was. In the following years, Amy and Nick
were inseparable as artist and manager. He booked the gig
or the session, and then literally drag her out of
bed if needed to get her there on time. He
was the one who reminded to grab her phone, her keys,
her passport. He carried a camera wherever they went and
recorded video for posterity. A lot of his early footage
(05:29):
would find its way into Asa Kapadia's two thousand and
fifteen documentary on Amy. Nick was there for the writing,
recording a release of Amy's first album, Frank, and they
were making it up as they went along, the two
of them riding the wave of acclaim and God forbid
the title wave of fame that came along with it
and threatened to come crashing down on all they had
(05:50):
built up. Amy continued to insist she didn't want anything
to do with that, so Nick helped run interference on
the fame. But fame wasn't the only thing me Winehouse
had to worry about. In two thousand five, Nick returned
to London from holiday and everything had changed. Amy was
no longer Amy, at least not the Amy that he knew.
(06:12):
She'd flipped from one side of a record to the other,
from light to dark. She veered wildly from the past
that she had been forging with Nick and the person
she met on that detour, a man named Blake. Something
was off about him. Nick couldn't put his finger on it,
but seeing the two of them together just didn't feel
right at all. And then the phone calls started, not
(06:37):
like back in when Nick was nineteen and Amy was sixteen,
and Nick was telling her what he thought she wanted
to hear in order to earn her trust as a client.
Now it was Amy calling Nick one am, two am,
three am. Nick's phone rang at all hours of the
evening in early morning, Nick, come get me, the voice
(06:59):
on the other end of the phone would say, and
Nick knew it was Amy, but it always sounded like
someone else trying to sound like Amy, the Amy from
one side of the record, desperately trying to connect to
the Amy from the other side. Nick, Come get me.
I'm in the toilet at the pub. What probably you at, Amy,
Nick responded, The line went dead. Nick panicked. He hopped
(07:22):
in his car up and down Camden Town, scouring the
streets for the pubs with their lights still on process
of elimination. Sometimes he found her that wayfish body wrapped
around dirty porcelain in a bathroom, and other times it
was a fool's errand the calls always led to squabbles,
not just between an artist and her manager, but between
(07:43):
two friends. Nick said Amy wasn't denial denial that in
order to fend out the pressures of fame, she'd become
far too reliant on drugs and alcohol, denial that perhaps
in order to live out some mightyalized version of what
she thought a rock and roll stars should be, she
was rom antically involved with the kind of person who
would be her ruined, the kind of person who would
(08:04):
only make things worse. And finally, just like Nick had
long ago convinced Amy that he would make a good manager,
he once again flexed those manager chops and convinced her
to go to a rehabilitation facility. It was called Blue Water.
It was near where her father, Mitch Winehouse lived. Nick
also had buy in from Mitch, who said that he
(08:26):
would offer his complete support until he didn't. When Nick
and Amy got the Blue Water, Mitch pulled a one eight.
So I would really have to go, daddy, Amy asked him,
with that heart string tugging tone that only the father
of a daughter knows, and only the father of a
daughter cannot resist. No, of course not, came Daddy's response.
(08:48):
Nick and Amy had come a long way over nearly
seven years, but now Nick was back to where he started.
That same feeling he had when he first rang her
up ball those years ago. He didn't know what to do.
He was pretty sure that no matter what he did,
it wouldn't help. He was also pretty sure that Namy
didn't want his help. She made that clear with her
(09:10):
biggest hit to date, released in two thousand and six.
That same year, the same year that Nick and Amy
ended their professional and personal relationship. Where As many listeners
her Rehab as black comedy or a defiant mission, statement,
to Nick, it was a disk track playing and simple.
He tried to make a go to rehab Nick and
she said no. Nick saw himself as the butt of
(09:32):
a joke of that song. But it was where his
Namy story ended. But it was far from the end
of the story. Nick knew that he just didn't want
to be there. When the story reached what would surely
be a tragic conclusion. The crowd was agitated, impatient, packed
(10:14):
like sardines inside Birmingham's National Indoor Arena. Showtime came and went.
It was November fourteenth, two thousand and seven, and the
opening night of Amy Winehouse's Fall tour was missing only
one thing, Amy Winehouse. She was late. The tardiness was
an expected deal of the whole experience. It was part
(10:35):
and parcelal of the rickety Amy Winehouse package, but that
didn't make it any less irritating to those who had
plunked down a portion of that week's paycheck for a ticket,
And by the time she appeared, some thirty minutes late,
the audience was already dealtful that they were going to
get a stellar performance. Amy walked on stage wearing a
mini skirt and low cut top. She clutched a glass
(10:58):
in one hand. She knocked the look wood back and
gestured for another round, and the seven piece bands started
up and they sounded tight. Amy began to sing in
her jazz inflected voice was the perfect foil to the
steady backbeat, and the crowd was momentarily relieved. Maybe it
was going to be a great show after all. Amy
(11:18):
opened was addicted, and then just friends and tears drag
on their own. Each song sounded as good as the last,
but the setist was long that night, seventeen songs plus
a two song encore. It was still plenty of show
to get through in plenty of time for it to
go off the rails. Someone brought Amy another drink and another.
(11:41):
Amy's mind trailed on the crowd literally watched it happen.
She stood still, look straight up in her mind, just
left gone. She dropped the microphone, picked it back up,
took another swig. She tried to pull it together and
dedicated the next song, wake Up Alone to Blake. Had
to work. That just made her cry. The next song,
(12:03):
Some Unholy War, made her cry even more. Her voice
was no longer the perfect jazz inflected foil to her
type band's backbeat. It was that voice from somewhere, from
out of the past, the one that came from radio static,
But now it was its own static. Something pitiful half
formed the signal from the radio. Dying out, Amy stumbled
(12:26):
on the stage and a road. He caught her. Blake her, Blakey.
He was all she could think about. She knew the
audience that started to boom. She saw groups of the
crowd turned their backs and walk for the exits. They
had all written her off, just like that, not even
half an hour into her set. She didn't care. She
(12:49):
didn't listen to them. She kept thinking about Blake, wondering
if he was all right, wondering when he'd be back,
wondering if he thought about her the way she thought
about him. Just six days prior they took him away
in handcuffs, and the police had been waiting for Amy
and Blake to return home to their Camden flat that evening.
(13:11):
The same evening they had staged a raid when no
one was home. Once the couple was back, the cops
went through the motions all over again, only this time
they got what they wanted. Blake field her civil in
custody for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Amy
wouldn't let him go, and the tears ran down her
face and took eyeliner and mascara with them. She clung
(13:34):
to Blake's arms, sobbing, and the cops tried to peel
her away, and they underestimated her love for him, her commitment,
and Blake tried to play it cool. He was tough, tall, tattooed, trouble.
He knew it, and they all knew it. He wasn't
the crying kind. He let Amy do the crying for
the both of them. A few days later, she'd gone
(13:54):
to visit him in prison. More tears, more tough guy,
but cheese, more emanating from Blake. He look smaller behind bars,
And now back at the Burnley Game Show, Amy couldn't
help break down again. Blake's arrest consumed her. The crowd
had gone from restless to pleasantly surprised too honestly not surprised,
(14:15):
and back to restless again. The very few of them
were cheering her on anymore, and they booed, they jeered,
They headed for the exits, and they wanted their money back.
Who's booing? Amy asked, Her speech was slurred. She went
to work on a fresh drink in her hand. She
thought of Blake some more as she looked out on
the dwindling audience in front of her. To them people booing,
(14:38):
she said, wait till my husband gets out of incarceration.
And I mean that tom Stone wasn't waiting around for ship,
not for blake Field or Civil to make bail, not
for the next show on the tour, and not for anything.
Amy winos could go and funk right off. And when
she was done fucking right off, she could go find
(15:00):
herself a new tour manager. It wasn't that the opening
gig in Birmingham was a disaster, though it clearly was.
By the end of the set, it was hard to
discern any of the words that were coming from Amy's mouth,
and during the encore, which the audience hadn't exactly asked for.
It was simply an expected piece of musical theater. Amy
stopped singing in the middle of her version of the
(15:20):
Zooton's Valerie, dropped her microphone onto the stage, and stumbled
off as the mic fed back white noise into the crowd.
The headline on the BBC News website the next day
read wine House bowed as tour kicks off. Another headline
in The Independent read Drunken wine House heckled off stage
at shambolic concert. Now that show wasn't what had Tom
(15:44):
Stone packing it in after one night. It was what
he discovered at his doctor's office. Something you want to
tell me, Tom, the doctor asked, sitting across from Tom
in the sterile white examination room, routine test results in
his hands. Tom didn't have the foggiest There had been
no major changes to his health as far as he knew,
(16:04):
and he tried to keep it that way. Healthy as
healthy as one could be. Really, given his line of work.
Sure he was in the employee of Amy Winehouse, but
don't compare him to Amy Winehouse. He didn't have the
luxury to be burnt out on drinks and drugs. Seven,
because he had to be the responsible one. Like Nick
Shamansky before him, Tom had to get Amy and the
(16:25):
crew from one place to another. He had a purpose
and it was to be reliable. So color tom Stone
surprised when his doctor told him the traces of heroin
had been found in his system. And how the hell
did tom Stone get heroin in his system if he
didn't do heroin? The bus, the fucking tour bus stuck
(16:46):
inside that thing for miles upon miles, hours upon hours,
while Amy and Blake smoked what they wanted. Tom tried
to stay out of it. He didn't want to know
if they were smoking crack, cocaine or heroin back there.
It wasn't any of his business. He was paid to
make sure they got to the next city on time
and kept to the road were schedule. He wasn't her handler.
(17:08):
But toms Stone couldn't keep his head in the sand
any longer there was heroin in his system. He didn't
want heroin in his system, and there was only one
way for him to make sure it would leave his
system for good. He put the tour van in park,
switched off the ignition, and walked away. We'll be right
(17:30):
back after this word word word. It was the day
after Jimmie Hendricks died September. Michael Eavis didn't have time
to mourn the dearly departed guitar god dead at Michael
Eavis was busy worrying that he'd gotten in over his head.
(17:54):
He stood and watched in horror as one of his
hay wagons, the same one handed down to him by
his father, went up in flame. Games He could hear
the hay sizzle as the fire burned orange and blood
red against the backdrop of a starry night sky. What
had he signed up for? What had he done? He
was just a dairy farmer. He knew cows, English countryside,
(18:15):
stone cottages, the kind of pastoral life evoked by the
music of bands like Fairport Convention in Pentangle. He himself
loved music, but didn't know music festivals, especially not those
on the grand scale of America's Woodstock from the previous year,
or closer to home, the Bath Blues and Progressive Rock
Festival that had taken place earlier that summer, just an
(18:37):
hour up the road, with bands like Pink Floyd and
led Zeppelin spreading the gospel of electric urban music through
the misty mountains. But how hard could it be? Michael
called Pilton home, a village of less than a thousand
people in Somerset, and there was more than enough room
to set up a stage at Worthy farm. Bands could
(18:58):
use Michael's farmhouse for a dress sing room. How hard
could it be? That was what Michael Jesus asked himself
as he threw a plan together for what he would
dub the Pilton Pop Blues and Folk Festival, a one
day event with about a dozen bands, free milk in
ox row stand as the handmade posters promised films, freaks
and funny things. As Saturday September nine approached, there was
(19:23):
one particularly bad omen that Michael had to contend with.
The festival's headliner, The Kinks, dropped out after they'd heard
the concert described as a mere mini festival. Ray Davies
literally went to his doctor and got a note that
set his throat her and he couldn't sing better than
facing the humiliation of standing on a plywood stage and
(19:43):
playing village green to an actual fucking village. So Michael
scrambled and found two long haired folks with a token
fetish willing to step in Tyrannosaurus Rex joined the lineup
that included Jethro Talsey and Anderson, as well as an
English blues band called steam Hammer, whose members would later
go on to play with groups as disparate as Rod
(20:05):
Stewart and Tangerine Dream. The performances themselves were fine, and
everything went smoothly, even if Wayne Fontana was a no show,
which to the assembled crowd of unlightened hippies was just
fine by them. The sun had already set on Fontana's
cheesy game of love horseshit it anyway, he was the
(20:26):
Hell's Angels who brought instability, doubt, in fear to the weekend.
The Hell's Angels for the reason that Michael Vis was
standing in the middle of his field, his jaw on
the ground, watching his hay wagon burned to a crisp
as the flames rose, Michael's heart sank. How hard could
it be? This was how hard it could be. Michael
(20:49):
Evis hired the Hell's Angels to work security for the festival.
September wasn't even a year removed from the Rolling Stones
infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival, and which an angel stabbed
an audience member to death, and the Hell's Angels did
limit their damage at Pilton to non humans, but it
was damaged nonetheless, and it wasn't just Michael's hay wagon.
(21:11):
They stole the ox from the Ox Roast, which, along
with the Kinks, was one of the two things promised
on the festival's original poster that Michael now couldn't deliver.
But the worst thing about that weekend was the attendance.
Only people showed up half of what Michael Eavis had anticipated.
For a dairy farmer with a dream, it was a
(21:33):
serious financial blow. He didn't have enough money to cover costs.
He lost all of his money. He bet the proverbial farm,
and now he was afraid he'd actually lose worthy farm.
Salvation came not just in the form of a sympathetic
financial institution that saw promise in an idea, but also
in the form of fellow organizers and collaborators who had
(21:55):
the vision to take Michael's concept to the next level.
And so, against all odds, the event came back the
following summer one, rebranded as the Glastonbury Fair, named for
a nearby town that had its own fabled history with
utopian movements decades later, Michael Eavis's Mini Festival as it
(22:17):
could had evolved into the Glastonbury Festival, a cultural beheemoth
that's spread out over multiple days. It no longer attracted
a mere fifteen hundred people like it did in nineteen seventy.
These days it was more like a hundred and fifty thousand.
Some years even bigger three hundred thousand attendees reportedly descended
upon Pilton in Somerset, England for the festivals iteration every year. Glastonbury,
(22:43):
by way of Pilton transformed itself from sleepy farmland to
a vibrant, expanse hotbed of sound vision impossibility, even against
the odds of its traumatic origins. Amy Winehouse was thinking
back to her triumphant performance at the two thousand seven
Glastonbury Festival. The place itself was magical. It was mythical,
(23:06):
and not just because King Arthur is supposedly buried there.
Any UK performer worth their salt wanted to play the
multi day music festival at Worthy Farm. It wasn't just
the magnitude of the place. It was a stage where
anything could happen, no matter the odds. Careers were made
and remade in spite of the odds, David Bowie as
(23:26):
a virtual unknown in one new order, playing synth rock
to confused Bikers in eighty one, the Smith's unwittingly egging
on the Hippies in four and back in two thousand seven,
amid headlining performances by the likes of The Arctic Monkeys
and The Fucking Who, Amy Winehouse added her own name
(23:48):
to a long list of artists with careers to make,
odds to be in things to prove. In its rear view,
The Guardian called her voice flawless and hailed her set list,
which included not only originals from her two studio albums,
but inspired covers of Toots and the Maid, Tiles, Monkey Man,
Sam Cooke's Cupid, and of course the Zutons Valerie, which
(24:10):
she had easily made her own courtesy of her frequent
collaborator Mark Ronson. And that was August two thousand seven,
a year ago, might as well have been a lifetime.
She thought back to the performance, to the way she
was able to control her voice and command her band.
It was a little victory that just happened to be
(24:30):
one in front of a hundred and seventy seven thousand people.
Now it was June two. Amy Wine Else was back
at Glastonbury, but little victories were in the rear view.
She looked out on the crowd and she saw a
sea of hands holding up pocket sized cameras, and they
weren't paying attention to the music. They didn't care that
(24:52):
the band was tight. She was giving them a ship
performance this time around, and how could she not. Her
husband was about to be sentenced to jail for his
role in the assault of pub land lord James King
in the subsequent attempt to obstruct justice. No, these people
with their cameras aloft wanted to capture whatever happened next
on video and then uploaded to YouTube, put it on
(25:14):
social media, or sell it to the highest bidder in
the tabloids. And there are all little paparazzi wankers that
are watching her story in the press all year. The
video of her smoking crack, the video of her singing
one amounted to a racist nursery rhyme. The attempts that rehab,
the fights and pubs and on street corners in Camden Town,
(25:34):
her own home rated by London's Finest. A seizure and
hospital stay brought on by the stress of a life
lived under a microscope. Amy Winehouse was a car wreck
and no one could turn away from it, so they
kept watching. They kept their cameras rolling, and Amy walked
down from the stage into the photographer's pit, close to
(25:56):
the audience, microphone in her hand, and maybe she could
make a musical or emotional connection by also making a
physical connection. She felt hands run over her body, voices
screaming her name as she sang. Cameras rolled lenses in
her face in front of her. Behind her, she felt
a tug on her behind hair do someone got a
little too handsy and groped at her breasts. She swore
(26:19):
she heard someone in the crowd talk shit about Blake
and that was the last straw. She looked out at
the faces directly in front of her chose one didn't
matter who it was, if they yanked on her hair,
or grabbed her body, or insulted her man, any face
would do. With one eye on the security guard shadowing
her every move, Amy held the mic with her left
hand and gave a quick jab of her elbow into
(26:41):
the crowd. She felt the connect with someone's body, a
shoulder in our maybe a face, but it wasn't forceful enough.
She knew that the security guard was watching her every move,
but she didn't care. She also didn't care that her
performance was being filmed, like most of the festival's performances,
by television cameras, This on top of the many personal
(27:03):
cameras hoisted in the air and thrust in her face.
She tightened her grip on the mic, saying a few
more lyrics, and when she reached a gap between lines,
she bawled up her right fist and sank it into
the crowd. Once she connected with someone shirt twice, she
with three times Bam a skull. That's what she was
(27:23):
going for, the dull flack of skin on skin, drowned
out by the music and the crowd noise. She went
in for a fourth punch, but at this point the
security guard had stepped in and moved her away from
the crowd. It was her against eighty thousand. Most would
have been against her, but she liked those odds, especially
at a place as magical and mythical as Glasston Berry,
(27:46):
and especially if like Gamy Winehouse, it felt like every
day there was less and less to lose. Monday, July
(28:16):
two thousand, East London, Amy Winehouse wasn't in attendance at
the snares Brook Crown Court. She didn't get to hear
firsthand as a judge described her husband as cowardly and disgraceful.
She didn't get to watch as that same judge sentenced
Blake to twenty seven months in jail for the two
thousand and six assault of Landlord James King outside the
(28:39):
Macbeth Pub, along with subsequent attempt to obstruct justice. The
judge described the attack, which left King with metal plates
in his face and indefinite therapy, as vicious and one sided.
Blake was drunk and high on coke that night of
the attack. Now standing in court in front of a judge,
he was no longer high, but he was dry sober
(29:03):
as the judge whould put him away. He didn't feel
much of anything, to be honest, He didn't frown, didn't smile,
didn't indicate that what was being said to him or
what was being handed down to him at any effect
at all. And the way Blake saw it, he had
already served nine months on romand if he acted on
his best behavior, he'd be able to taste freedom in
the next four or five months. Big fucking deal. As
(29:27):
the courtroom staff led him away to his cell, he
stole a glimpse at the small collection of family and
friends who had gathered in the overcrowded public gallery. I'll
see soon, he mouthed with his lips. It would not
be soon enough for Amy, who felt Blake's continued absence
more than anyone president at the Snaresbrook Crown Court that day.
She had been luckier than Blake when it came to
(29:48):
her own case of assault. The man she clocked in
the head at Glastonbury opted not to press charges. At
the end of the day, he told Daily Mail, It's
all part of being at the front, to be honest
with you, and being crushed by thousands of people here
at Glastonbury. At the end of that day, Amy Winehouse
just wanted to get as far away from people as
(30:09):
she could people, all those fucking people. She coughed, her
lungs burned. She felt a tightness in her chest and
wondered if another panic attack was coming. She continued to
cough and her lungs burned even more, which reminded her
that her night wasn't over. In some ways, it was
just beginning. She climbed into a helicopter on the outskirts
(30:33):
of the Glastonbury Festival grounds and flew directly to the
London Clinic, a private healthcare organization on the corner of
Devonshire Place and Marley Vun Road. Unlike her previous inc
in rehab, however, the London Clinic wasn't treating Amy for
drug addiction. They were treating Amy for an early onset
of emphysema at twenty four years old. Her father, Mitch Winehouse,
(30:58):
had broken the news to the UK tabloid The Sunday
Mirror earlier in June. Her lungs were at seventy capacity.
She made me a breathing apparatus just to get around.
He said that doctors had urged Amy to quit smoking
everything from cigarettes to crack cocaine, that if she continued
to smoke, it wouldn't just destroy your voice. Her life
(31:19):
was literally on the line. She voted to get clean.
Don't worry about me, dad, she reported. Me told Mitch,
I know, I get to stop taking drugs now. Mitch
had heard that one before everyone had. Even Amy had
heard herself for pete empty promises on the regular. She
had to want it a reason to get better, to
(31:40):
stay alive. She hoped that Blake was behaving himself behind bars,
that his release would come sooner than later. They said
he was no good, that he was a major reason
why she was addicted in the first place, But she disagreed,
not her Blakey seeing him again on the outside, that
was something she could work towards, something she could live for.
(32:02):
Whether or not she could actually do it, only time
would tell, and whether or not Emy Winehouse knew it,
time was something that was most definitely not on her side.
I'm Jake Brennan and this is the Seven Club. Seven
(32:33):
Club is hosted and produced by me Jake Brennan for
Double Elvis in partnership with I Heart Radio. Zeth Lundie
is the lead writer and co producer. This episode was
mixed by Matt Bowden. Additional music and score elements by
Ryan Spraaker and Henry Unna. Story and copy of by
Pata Healing. Sources for this episode are available at Double
(32:54):
Elvis dot com on the Seven Club series page. Talk
to me on Social Act, Disgrace and Pod, and hang
out with me live on my Twitch channel disgrace land Talks.
For more news on your favorite podcast, Follow at Double
Elvis on Instagram. Rock Rolla, what's up for your ears?
The Club is a production of I Heart Radio and
Double Elvis. Amy Winehouse died at the age of and
she lived a life that routinely straddled triumph and catastrophe.
I can give you twenty seven reasons why that statement
is true. Two was roughly the hour in the morning
(00:21):
that she would routinely call her manager from the bathrooms
of a handful of unspecified pubs in Camden, looking for
a ride and also for help. Another eight would be
the number of songs that would take before a kickoff
show for a fall tour went completely sideways and ended
in disaster. Eleven more would be the number of months
(00:42):
between a Victoria's show at Glastonbury and it ruined a
show at the very same festival the next year. Four
more would be the number of punches she would throw
into the audience from the photographer's pit at the latter
Glastonbury gig when the screaming, heckling, and flashbolving of eighty
thou concert ors became overwhelming. Into would be the number
(01:04):
of years she had left to live when she was
diagnosed with a disease so deadly she might need a
machine to breathe. All totally on this our third episode
of season four, unspecified Pubs Ruinous shows punches from the
pit in Amy Winehouse. I'm Jake Brennan in This is
(01:26):
the Seven clos Nick Shamanski wasn't sure what to do.
(02:09):
Fish or cut, bait, call or don't call. He was
holding the phone receiver in his hand and he could
hear the dial tone humming it's one note song, and
the flatlining sound taunted him. Fuck it. He'd call her,
but he'd have to lie. Okay, well not lie, lie,
but stretch the truth a little bit, make himself seem
(02:32):
a little more important than he really was. That was
the name of the game. Any game that got played
in the music business sort of went by that name.
Fake it until you make it inspired trust, even if
you intend to break it, Walk into the room like
you already have the job. All that positive self esteem
inflating mumbo jumbo. It worked. And although she was only sixteen,
(02:54):
word was that she could smell bullshit a mile away,
even on the other end of a phone. That's what
Tyler James said. Anyhow, Tyler also told Nick that her
voice was incredible. Tyler was another teenage singer that Nick
was working with. He was his quote unquote manager. Okay again,
that man in a bit of a stretch. Nick was
only nineteen and Tyler was just getting started. But Nick's
(03:17):
family was in the business, and he aspired to join
the family business. From a young age. He endeavored to
do things that managers did. Book the show, she said,
of the gig, pick up, drop off, create the opportunity,
make the call. So Nick did what a manager would do,
and Cole called the secondary school dropout with the incredible voice. Hello,
(03:39):
is this Amy? Yeah? It was Amy? And who the
hell was asking? The guy was going to make her famous?
The guy who could open doors, That's who, motherfucker. Nick
went big. He was Brian Epstein without the polosh accent,
Peter Grant minus the menace, Malcolm McLaren without the fetish gear.
Amy was as at tized. She sniffed into her under
(04:02):
the phone line bullshit, but it was more than that.
It's what she defined as bullshit, the industry at the bizz,
the money of the fame. She didn't want any part
of any of that, so she hung up, but Nick
called her again. He altered his tactic. This time, he
got more real. She hung up on him a second time.
So he tried again, and by the third call, Nick
(04:24):
had figured out that Amy Winehouse didn't need to be
wooed with promises of wealth and stardom, and Amy had
figured out that Nick Schmanski was a down to earth
guy with a similar sense of humor and love for jazz,
who could become an honest ally in a shitty business
that was full of con artists and backstabbers. Soon after
that third conversation, Nick received the package in the mail.
(04:46):
It was covered in hearts and kisses stickers. Amy was
written all over the outside, probably upwards of a hundred times.
Inside was a demo tape. Nick popped the tape in
his car stereo, pressed play and heard Amy singing the
jazz standard night and day. She owned the tune, and
that was it. She was even better than Tyler had
(05:08):
said she was. In the following years, Amy and Nick
were inseparable as artist and manager. He booked the gig
or the session, and then literally drag her out of
bed if needed to get her there on time. He
was the one who reminded to grab her phone, her keys,
her passport. He carried a camera wherever they went and
recorded video for posterity. A lot of his early footage
(05:29):
would find its way into Asa Kapadia's two thousand and
fifteen documentary on Amy. Nick was there for the writing,
recording a release of Amy's first album, Frank, and they
were making it up as they went along, the two
of them riding the wave of acclaim and God forbid
the title wave of fame that came along with it
and threatened to come crashing down on all they had
(05:50):
built up. Amy continued to insist she didn't want anything
to do with that, so Nick helped run interference on
the fame. But fame wasn't the only thing me Winehouse
had to worry about. In two thousand five, Nick returned
to London from holiday and everything had changed. Amy was
no longer Amy, at least not the Amy that he knew.
(06:12):
She'd flipped from one side of a record to the other,
from light to dark. She veered wildly from the past
that she had been forging with Nick and the person
she met on that detour, a man named Blake. Something
was off about him. Nick couldn't put his finger on it,
but seeing the two of them together just didn't feel
right at all. And then the phone calls started, not
(06:37):
like back in when Nick was nineteen and Amy was sixteen,
and Nick was telling her what he thought she wanted
to hear in order to earn her trust as a client.
Now it was Amy calling Nick one am, two am,
three am. Nick's phone rang at all hours of the
evening in early morning, Nick, come get me, the voice
(06:59):
on the other end of the phone would say, and
Nick knew it was Amy, but it always sounded like
someone else trying to sound like Amy, the Amy from
one side of the record, desperately trying to connect to
the Amy from the other side. Nick, Come get me.
I'm in the toilet at the pub. What probably you at, Amy,
Nick responded, The line went dead. Nick panicked. He hopped
(07:22):
in his car up and down Camden Town, scouring the
streets for the pubs with their lights still on process
of elimination. Sometimes he found her that wayfish body wrapped
around dirty porcelain in a bathroom, and other times it
was a fool's errand the calls always led to squabbles,
not just between an artist and her manager, but between
(07:43):
two friends. Nick said Amy wasn't denial denial that in
order to fend out the pressures of fame, she'd become
far too reliant on drugs and alcohol, denial that perhaps
in order to live out some mightyalized version of what
she thought a rock and roll stars should be, she
was rom antically involved with the kind of person who
would be her ruined, the kind of person who would
(08:04):
only make things worse. And finally, just like Nick had
long ago convinced Amy that he would make a good manager,
he once again flexed those manager chops and convinced her
to go to a rehabilitation facility. It was called Blue Water.
It was near where her father, Mitch Winehouse lived. Nick
also had buy in from Mitch, who said that he
(08:26):
would offer his complete support until he didn't. When Nick
and Amy got the Blue Water, Mitch pulled a one eight.
So I would really have to go, daddy, Amy asked him,
with that heart string tugging tone that only the father
of a daughter knows, and only the father of a
daughter cannot resist. No, of course not, came Daddy's response.
(08:48):
Nick and Amy had come a long way over nearly
seven years, but now Nick was back to where he started.
That same feeling he had when he first rang her
up ball those years ago. He didn't know what to do.
He was pretty sure that no matter what he did,
it wouldn't help. He was also pretty sure that Namy
didn't want his help. She made that clear with her
(09:10):
biggest hit to date, released in two thousand and six.
That same year, the same year that Nick and Amy
ended their professional and personal relationship. Where As many listeners
her Rehab as black comedy or a defiant mission, statement,
to Nick, it was a disk track playing and simple.
He tried to make a go to rehab Nick and
she said no. Nick saw himself as the butt of
(09:32):
a joke of that song. But it was where his
Namy story ended. But it was far from the end
of the story. Nick knew that he just didn't want
to be there. When the story reached what would surely
be a tragic conclusion. The crowd was agitated, impatient, packed
(10:14):
like sardines inside Birmingham's National Indoor Arena. Showtime came and went.
It was November fourteenth, two thousand and seven, and the
opening night of Amy Winehouse's Fall tour was missing only
one thing, Amy Winehouse. She was late. The tardiness was
an expected deal of the whole experience. It was part
(10:35):
and parcelal of the rickety Amy Winehouse package, but that
didn't make it any less irritating to those who had
plunked down a portion of that week's paycheck for a ticket,
And by the time she appeared, some thirty minutes late,
the audience was already dealtful that they were going to
get a stellar performance. Amy walked on stage wearing a
mini skirt and low cut top. She clutched a glass
(10:58):
in one hand. She knocked the look wood back and
gestured for another round, and the seven piece bands started
up and they sounded tight. Amy began to sing in
her jazz inflected voice was the perfect foil to the
steady backbeat, and the crowd was momentarily relieved. Maybe it
was going to be a great show after all. Amy
(11:18):
opened was addicted, and then just friends and tears drag
on their own. Each song sounded as good as the last,
but the setist was long that night, seventeen songs plus
a two song encore. It was still plenty of show
to get through in plenty of time for it to
go off the rails. Someone brought Amy another drink and another.
(11:41):
Amy's mind trailed on the crowd literally watched it happen.
She stood still, look straight up in her mind, just
left gone. She dropped the microphone, picked it back up,
took another swig. She tried to pull it together and
dedicated the next song, wake Up Alone to Blake. Had
to work. That just made her cry. The next song,
(12:03):
Some Unholy War, made her cry even more. Her voice
was no longer the perfect jazz inflected foil to her
type band's backbeat. It was that voice from somewhere, from
out of the past, the one that came from radio static,
But now it was its own static. Something pitiful half
formed the signal from the radio. Dying out, Amy stumbled
(12:26):
on the stage and a road. He caught her. Blake her, Blakey.
He was all she could think about. She knew the
audience that started to boom. She saw groups of the
crowd turned their backs and walk for the exits. They
had all written her off, just like that, not even
half an hour into her set. She didn't care. She
(12:49):
didn't listen to them. She kept thinking about Blake, wondering
if he was all right, wondering when he'd be back,
wondering if he thought about her the way she thought
about him. Just six days prior they took him away
in handcuffs, and the police had been waiting for Amy
and Blake to return home to their Camden flat that evening.
(13:11):
The same evening they had staged a raid when no
one was home. Once the couple was back, the cops
went through the motions all over again, only this time
they got what they wanted. Blake field her civil in
custody for attempting to pervert the course of justice. Amy
wouldn't let him go, and the tears ran down her
face and took eyeliner and mascara with them. She clung
(13:34):
to Blake's arms, sobbing, and the cops tried to peel
her away, and they underestimated her love for him, her commitment,
and Blake tried to play it cool. He was tough, tall, tattooed, trouble.
He knew it, and they all knew it. He wasn't
the crying kind. He let Amy do the crying for
the both of them. A few days later, she'd gone
(13:54):
to visit him in prison. More tears, more tough guy,
but cheese, more emanating from Blake. He look smaller behind bars,
And now back at the Burnley Game Show, Amy couldn't
help break down again. Blake's arrest consumed her. The crowd
had gone from restless to pleasantly surprised too honestly not surprised,
(14:15):
and back to restless again. The very few of them
were cheering her on anymore, and they booed, they jeered,
They headed for the exits, and they wanted their money back.
Who's booing? Amy asked, Her speech was slurred. She went
to work on a fresh drink in her hand. She
thought of Blake some more as she looked out on
the dwindling audience in front of her. To them people booing,
(14:38):
she said, wait till my husband gets out of incarceration.
And I mean that tom Stone wasn't waiting around for ship,
not for blake Field or Civil to make bail, not
for the next show on the tour, and not for anything.
Amy winos could go and funk right off. And when
she was done fucking right off, she could go find
(15:00):
herself a new tour manager. It wasn't that the opening
gig in Birmingham was a disaster, though it clearly was.
By the end of the set, it was hard to
discern any of the words that were coming from Amy's mouth,
and during the encore, which the audience hadn't exactly asked for.
It was simply an expected piece of musical theater. Amy
stopped singing in the middle of her version of the
(15:20):
Zooton's Valerie, dropped her microphone onto the stage, and stumbled
off as the mic fed back white noise into the crowd.
The headline on the BBC News website the next day
read wine House bowed as tour kicks off. Another headline
in The Independent read Drunken wine House heckled off stage
at shambolic concert. Now that show wasn't what had Tom
(15:44):
Stone packing it in after one night. It was what
he discovered at his doctor's office. Something you want to
tell me, Tom, the doctor asked, sitting across from Tom
in the sterile white examination room, routine test results in
his hands. Tom didn't have the foggiest There had been
no major changes to his health as far as he knew,
(16:04):
and he tried to keep it that way. Healthy as
healthy as one could be. Really, given his line of work.
Sure he was in the employee of Amy Winehouse, but
don't compare him to Amy Winehouse. He didn't have the
luxury to be burnt out on drinks and drugs. Seven,
because he had to be the responsible one. Like Nick
Shamansky before him, Tom had to get Amy and the
(16:25):
crew from one place to another. He had a purpose
and it was to be reliable. So color tom Stone
surprised when his doctor told him the traces of heroin
had been found in his system. And how the hell
did tom Stone get heroin in his system if he
didn't do heroin? The bus, the fucking tour bus stuck
(16:46):
inside that thing for miles upon miles, hours upon hours,
while Amy and Blake smoked what they wanted. Tom tried
to stay out of it. He didn't want to know
if they were smoking crack, cocaine or heroin back there.
It wasn't any of his business. He was paid to
make sure they got to the next city on time
and kept to the road were schedule. He wasn't her handler.
(17:08):
But toms Stone couldn't keep his head in the sand
any longer there was heroin in his system. He didn't
want heroin in his system, and there was only one
way for him to make sure it would leave his
system for good. He put the tour van in park,
switched off the ignition, and walked away. We'll be right
(17:30):
back after this word word word. It was the day
after Jimmie Hendricks died September. Michael Eavis didn't have time
to mourn the dearly departed guitar god dead at Michael
Eavis was busy worrying that he'd gotten in over his head.
(17:54):
He stood and watched in horror as one of his
hay wagons, the same one handed down to him by
his father, went up in flame. Games He could hear
the hay sizzle as the fire burned orange and blood
red against the backdrop of a starry night sky. What
had he signed up for? What had he done? He
was just a dairy farmer. He knew cows, English countryside,
(18:15):
stone cottages, the kind of pastoral life evoked by the
music of bands like Fairport Convention in Pentangle. He himself
loved music, but didn't know music festivals, especially not those
on the grand scale of America's Woodstock from the previous year,
or closer to home, the Bath Blues and Progressive Rock
Festival that had taken place earlier that summer, just an
(18:37):
hour up the road, with bands like Pink Floyd and
led Zeppelin spreading the gospel of electric urban music through
the misty mountains. But how hard could it be? Michael
called Pilton home, a village of less than a thousand
people in Somerset, and there was more than enough room
to set up a stage at Worthy farm. Bands could
(18:58):
use Michael's farmhouse for a dress sing room. How hard
could it be? That was what Michael Jesus asked himself
as he threw a plan together for what he would
dub the Pilton Pop Blues and Folk Festival, a one
day event with about a dozen bands, free milk in
ox row stand as the handmade posters promised films, freaks
and funny things. As Saturday September nine approached, there was
(19:23):
one particularly bad omen that Michael had to contend with.
The festival's headliner, The Kinks, dropped out after they'd heard
the concert described as a mere mini festival. Ray Davies
literally went to his doctor and got a note that
set his throat her and he couldn't sing better than
facing the humiliation of standing on a plywood stage and
(19:43):
playing village green to an actual fucking village. So Michael
scrambled and found two long haired folks with a token
fetish willing to step in Tyrannosaurus Rex joined the lineup
that included Jethro Talsey and Anderson, as well as an
English blues band called steam Hammer, whose members would later
go on to play with groups as disparate as Rod
(20:05):
Stewart and Tangerine Dream. The performances themselves were fine, and
everything went smoothly, even if Wayne Fontana was a no show,
which to the assembled crowd of unlightened hippies was just
fine by them. The sun had already set on Fontana's
cheesy game of love horseshit it anyway, he was the
(20:26):
Hell's Angels who brought instability, doubt, in fear to the weekend.
The Hell's Angels for the reason that Michael Vis was
standing in the middle of his field, his jaw on
the ground, watching his hay wagon burned to a crisp
as the flames rose, Michael's heart sank. How hard could
it be? This was how hard it could be. Michael
(20:49):
Evis hired the Hell's Angels to work security for the festival.
September wasn't even a year removed from the Rolling Stones
infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival, and which an angel stabbed
an audience member to death, and the Hell's Angels did
limit their damage at Pilton to non humans, but it
was damaged nonetheless, and it wasn't just Michael's hay wagon.
(21:11):
They stole the ox from the Ox Roast, which, along
with the Kinks, was one of the two things promised
on the festival's original poster that Michael now couldn't deliver.
But the worst thing about that weekend was the attendance.
Only people showed up half of what Michael Eavis had anticipated.
For a dairy farmer with a dream, it was a
(21:33):
serious financial blow. He didn't have enough money to cover costs.
He lost all of his money. He bet the proverbial farm,
and now he was afraid he'd actually lose worthy farm.
Salvation came not just in the form of a sympathetic
financial institution that saw promise in an idea, but also
in the form of fellow organizers and collaborators who had
(21:55):
the vision to take Michael's concept to the next level.
And so, against all odds, the event came back the
following summer one, rebranded as the Glastonbury Fair, named for
a nearby town that had its own fabled history with
utopian movements decades later, Michael Eavis's Mini Festival as it
(22:17):
could had evolved into the Glastonbury Festival, a cultural beheemoth
that's spread out over multiple days. It no longer attracted
a mere fifteen hundred people like it did in nineteen seventy.
These days it was more like a hundred and fifty thousand.
Some years even bigger three hundred thousand attendees reportedly descended
upon Pilton in Somerset, England for the festivals iteration every year. Glastonbury,
(22:43):
by way of Pilton transformed itself from sleepy farmland to
a vibrant, expanse hotbed of sound vision impossibility, even against
the odds of its traumatic origins. Amy Winehouse was thinking
back to her triumphant performance at the two thousand seven
Glastonbury Festival. The place itself was magical. It was mythical,
(23:06):
and not just because King Arthur is supposedly buried there.
Any UK performer worth their salt wanted to play the
multi day music festival at Worthy Farm. It wasn't just
the magnitude of the place. It was a stage where
anything could happen, no matter the odds. Careers were made
and remade in spite of the odds, David Bowie as
(23:26):
a virtual unknown in one new order, playing synth rock
to confused Bikers in eighty one, the Smith's unwittingly egging
on the Hippies in four and back in two thousand seven,
amid headlining performances by the likes of The Arctic Monkeys
and The Fucking Who, Amy Winehouse added her own name
(23:48):
to a long list of artists with careers to make,
odds to be in things to prove. In its rear view,
The Guardian called her voice flawless and hailed her set list,
which included not only originals from her two studio albums,
but inspired covers of Toots and the Maid, Tiles, Monkey Man,
Sam Cooke's Cupid, and of course the Zutons Valerie, which
(24:10):
she had easily made her own courtesy of her frequent
collaborator Mark Ronson. And that was August two thousand seven,
a year ago, might as well have been a lifetime.
She thought back to the performance, to the way she
was able to control her voice and command her band.
It was a little victory that just happened to be
(24:30):
one in front of a hundred and seventy seven thousand people.
Now it was June two. Amy Wine Else was back
at Glastonbury, but little victories were in the rear view.
She looked out on the crowd and she saw a
sea of hands holding up pocket sized cameras, and they
weren't paying attention to the music. They didn't care that
(24:52):
the band was tight. She was giving them a ship
performance this time around, and how could she not. Her
husband was about to be sentenced to jail for his
role in the assault of pub land lord James King
in the subsequent attempt to obstruct justice. No, these people
with their cameras aloft wanted to capture whatever happened next
on video and then uploaded to YouTube, put it on
(25:14):
social media, or sell it to the highest bidder in
the tabloids. And there are all little paparazzi wankers that
are watching her story in the press all year. The
video of her smoking crack, the video of her singing
one amounted to a racist nursery rhyme. The attempts that rehab,
the fights and pubs and on street corners in Camden Town,
(25:34):
her own home rated by London's Finest. A seizure and
hospital stay brought on by the stress of a life
lived under a microscope. Amy Winehouse was a car wreck
and no one could turn away from it, so they
kept watching. They kept their cameras rolling, and Amy walked
down from the stage into the photographer's pit, close to
(25:56):
the audience, microphone in her hand, and maybe she could
make a musical or emotional connection by also making a
physical connection. She felt hands run over her body, voices
screaming her name as she sang. Cameras rolled lenses in
her face in front of her. Behind her, she felt
a tug on her behind hair do someone got a
little too handsy and groped at her breasts. She swore
(26:19):
she heard someone in the crowd talk shit about Blake
and that was the last straw. She looked out at
the faces directly in front of her chose one didn't
matter who it was, if they yanked on her hair,
or grabbed her body, or insulted her man, any face
would do. With one eye on the security guard shadowing
her every move, Amy held the mic with her left
hand and gave a quick jab of her elbow into
(26:41):
the crowd. She felt the connect with someone's body, a
shoulder in our maybe a face, but it wasn't forceful enough.
She knew that the security guard was watching her every move,
but she didn't care. She also didn't care that her
performance was being filmed, like most of the festival's performances,
by television cameras, This on top of the many personal
(27:03):
cameras hoisted in the air and thrust in her face.
She tightened her grip on the mic, saying a few
more lyrics, and when she reached a gap between lines,
she bawled up her right fist and sank it into
the crowd. Once she connected with someone shirt twice, she
with three times Bam a skull. That's what she was
(27:23):
going for, the dull flack of skin on skin, drowned
out by the music and the crowd noise. She went
in for a fourth punch, but at this point the
security guard had stepped in and moved her away from
the crowd. It was her against eighty thousand. Most would
have been against her, but she liked those odds, especially
at a place as magical and mythical as Glasston Berry,
(27:46):
and especially if like Gamy Winehouse, it felt like every
day there was less and less to lose. Monday, July
(28:16):
two thousand, East London, Amy Winehouse wasn't in attendance at
the snares Brook Crown Court. She didn't get to hear
firsthand as a judge described her husband as cowardly and disgraceful.
She didn't get to watch as that same judge sentenced
Blake to twenty seven months in jail for the two
thousand and six assault of Landlord James King outside the
(28:39):
Macbeth Pub, along with subsequent attempt to obstruct justice. The
judge described the attack, which left King with metal plates
in his face and indefinite therapy, as vicious and one sided.
Blake was drunk and high on coke that night of
the attack. Now standing in court in front of a judge,
he was no longer high, but he was dry sober
(29:03):
as the judge whould put him away. He didn't feel
much of anything, to be honest, He didn't frown, didn't smile,
didn't indicate that what was being said to him or
what was being handed down to him at any effect
at all. And the way Blake saw it, he had
already served nine months on romand if he acted on
his best behavior, he'd be able to taste freedom in
the next four or five months. Big fucking deal. As
(29:27):
the courtroom staff led him away to his cell, he
stole a glimpse at the small collection of family and
friends who had gathered in the overcrowded public gallery. I'll
see soon, he mouthed with his lips. It would not
be soon enough for Amy, who felt Blake's continued absence
more than anyone president at the Snaresbrook Crown Court that day.
She had been luckier than Blake when it came to
(29:48):
her own case of assault. The man she clocked in
the head at Glastonbury opted not to press charges. At
the end of the day, he told Daily Mail, It's
all part of being at the front, to be honest
with you, and being crushed by thousands of people here
at Glastonbury. At the end of that day, Amy Winehouse
just wanted to get as far away from people as
(30:09):
she could people, all those fucking people. She coughed, her
lungs burned. She felt a tightness in her chest and
wondered if another panic attack was coming. She continued to
cough and her lungs burned even more, which reminded her
that her night wasn't over. In some ways, it was
just beginning. She climbed into a helicopter on the outskirts
(30:33):
of the Glastonbury Festival grounds and flew directly to the
London Clinic, a private healthcare organization on the corner of
Devonshire Place and Marley Vun Road. Unlike her previous inc
in rehab, however, the London Clinic wasn't treating Amy for
drug addiction. They were treating Amy for an early onset
of emphysema at twenty four years old. Her father, Mitch Winehouse,
(30:58):
had broken the news to the UK tabloid The Sunday
Mirror earlier in June. Her lungs were at seventy capacity.
She made me a breathing apparatus just to get around.
He said that doctors had urged Amy to quit smoking
everything from cigarettes to crack cocaine, that if she continued
to smoke, it wouldn't just destroy your voice. Her life
(31:19):
was literally on the line. She voted to get clean.
Don't worry about me, dad, she reported. Me told Mitch,
I know, I get to stop taking drugs now. Mitch
had heard that one before everyone had. Even Amy had
heard herself for pete empty promises on the regular. She
had to want it a reason to get better, to
(31:40):
stay alive. She hoped that Blake was behaving himself behind bars,
that his release would come sooner than later. They said
he was no good, that he was a major reason
why she was addicted in the first place, But she disagreed,
not her Blakey seeing him again on the outside, that
was something she could work towards, something she could live for.
(32:02):
Whether or not she could actually do it, only time
would tell, and whether or not Emy Winehouse knew it,
time was something that was most definitely not on her side.
I'm Jake Brennan and this is the Seven Club. Seven
(32:33):
Club is hosted and produced by me Jake Brennan for
Double Elvis in partnership with I Heart Radio. Zeth Lundie
is the lead writer and co producer. This episode was
mixed by Matt Bowden. Additional music and score elements by
Ryan Spraaker and Henry Unna. Story and copy of by
Pata Healing. Sources for this episode are available at Double
(32:54):
Elvis dot com on the Seven Club series page. Talk
to me on Social Act, Disgrace and Pod, and hang
out with me live on my Twitch channel disgrace land Talks.
For more news on your favorite podcast, Follow at Double
Elvis on Instagram. Rock Rolla, what's up for your ears?
Host
Jake Brennan
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