Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. Amy Winehouse
was an English singer and songwriter of soul, rhythm and
blues and jazz. She was known for her deep, emotionally
expressive lyrics and vocals and her eclectic mix of musical genres.
(00:22):
She shot to fame, winning five Grammy Awards for her
original and innovative songs that revealed her painful personal life.
My guest today is Jordan Runtalk, former music editor at
People Magazine and bh one dot com, a regular contributor
at Rolling Stone and e W and host of the
(00:44):
I Heart Music podcast Rivals. Amy Winehouse was born in
September of nineteen eighty three in a suburb of basically
North London, to a Jewish family. Mitchell a cab driver,
Janice a pharmacy assistant. But it's sort of a very
(01:07):
middle class life financially a middle class situation. There was
already a brother, her older brother Alex, in the family,
who was four years older than her, and really parents
who loved her, who wanted her, who wanted to have
a family, who wanted to have another child, But there
(01:28):
were already difficulties in that relationship and therefore in the
family probably the singular event of her childhood was her
parents divorce, and her dad later on would admit to
having had a lot of affairs in Amy's childhood and
sort of regretted not leaving earlier in a way because
it did make for a lot of tension between him
and his wife, and it left this gaping hole in Amy,
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as it does for a lot of children of divorce,
where she missed him and longed for him, but she
also resented him. And she wrote a song on her
first album, Frank called what Is It About Men, which
is an incredible song, and it basically picks apart her
father's failings before admitting you know that she's going to
also succumb. She calls it her Freudyan faith and talking
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about just people's sexual inhibitions in a way. This is
so important because especially that she did refer to Freud,
she was very aware of edible issues and those were
born out of having You know, clearly, her father loved
her and he wanted to be a present father, but
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as you point out, he started having an affair, particularly
one affair really when she was only eighteen months old
with a woman that he worked with that he clearly
fell in love with and so he appeared to be
working all the time. That's what Amy remembers, that he
was working all the time, and so he was absent,
a very absent father. He was probably in retrospect with
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this other woman a good amount of that time, but
nobody knew that at the time, and especially his wife
jan Us, who feels that she was completely blindsided and
had no idea. But he was very absent, and because
he was absent a lot. When he was present, he
was very over indulgent, so he rarely set limits. And
even if she was doing things which apparently, even according
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to her, she often was trying to get attention and
doing so by doing bad behavior, by acting out, by
being even rebellious really at a very young age. And
this was, you know, an attention getting maneuver that she
continued and continued up the Annie, especially as he did
not tell her what you know, she couldn't do that
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or really set limits. Either he wasn't around, or he
overindulged her and her mother, who was more present but
still working because they needed two salaries in this family,
so not omnipresent. Her mother, she described as very passive,
loving but not able to stand up to Amy essentially
and really set limits. And in fact, she may reference
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to that too verbally. You know, I needed a mother
to just say no, and her mother didn't. Her mother
was sort of like whatever or whatever went on because
she was kind of overwhelmed. Partially she was overwhelmed because
that was her nature to not set limits into be
kind of passive, but also because it turns out that
she had MS and she didn't know it for like
(04:23):
fifteen years, so she was often not feeling well and
she was working. And in fact, it was her mother
who was an important person in Amy's life, Cynthia who
was often responsible for a lot of the child care
and you know, maybe taking the school, moving kids around.
And that's important because that was an important relationship for Amy.
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And it's also important because Cynthia and actually both her
parents were very musical people, even though they weren't musical stars.
Let's talk about the presence of music in her early life. Oh, absolutely,
a lot of it. I think it was initially from
(05:03):
her father, who worshiped Frank Sinatra and Sara Van and
Dinah Washington. And as you said, she loved her father
so much. I mean, she was a self described Daddy's
little girl. She had the phrase tattooed on her arm,
and so a lot of those musical influence from her dad.
She grew up also idol worshiping from her early days.
That's where a lot of her her musical roots came from.
(05:23):
But as you said, her grandmother, Cynthia, her mother's mother
dated jazz legend in England called Ronnie Scott, and she
had all these connections in the jazz community, and I
think some of her uncles also were jazz musicians. So
it was a very musical household. But as you said,
her grandmother Cynthia recognized her gifts, I think probably before
her parents, and was the one who recommended that she
(05:44):
started attending stage school. And there's a great story that
her father says, he goes to see one of her
early recitals and he assumed she was just going to
be acting. He had no idea that she could sing
like that. She sung around the house a bit, but
he was just as shocked as most of the people
in the crowd when he first saw her on the
stage and opened her mouth. So he loved jazz music.
He played, as you said, Sinatra, who became very important
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to Amy herself, La Fitzgerald, Diana Washington. These were like
the early recordings, you know, and musical influences. This maternal
uncle who played the horn. Mother's sister was a jazz
singer herself, a sort of semi professional, if you will,
not you know, not really professional, but saying in clubs
and so on, and that made quite the impression on her.
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At the same time this is going on, she is,
first of all, it's important to say she is actually
very intelligent. She has noted as intelligent in early school years.
She reads fairly early, she writes early. Her potential, let's say, academically,
seems to be there on the one hand, and then
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on the other hand, is this rebellious behavior and as
she sort of describes it, easily bored. Not much holds
her attention, certainly not the kinds of things that school
offered academically and particularly in a rule bound sort of way.
Not hers, she would have described, not her cup of
tea um. But music music did, and singing did, and
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and sometimes she even describes becoming so overwrought or panicky
and anxious in school that she would just burst out
into a fly me to the moon by Frank Sinatra
as her way of just expressing her anxiety and singing
at the top of her lungs, which of course did
not win her any friends with her teachers. Her family
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is they're Jewish and they do Jewish traditions. So Cynthia
introduces sort of the idea of Shabbat dinner, having Friday
night dinners, and those elements of family and the traditions
of the religion seemed to be important to Amy, but
not religion itself. She's not a religious person, but she
does describe family and family identity as important. It was
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a great story when she was at school. She was
in the school's chapel playing with tarot cards and one
of the teachers called us that you can't play with
tarot cards in this church. She looks up and just goes,
but I'm Jewish. So her ideas like sort of like
spirituality or whatever that meant to her family, and that's
not unusual in a Jewish family that maybe they're more
secularly consistent in traditions but not necessarily religious, and it
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was that kind of family for her. Also, as you
bring up she's going to school, her father's absent and
he thinks he shouldn't leave for the sake of the children.
But at age nine, for Amy, they have this discussion
the mother and father and then they come and present
to the kids that he's going to leave. They're going
to get divorced. Apparently he doesn't want to leave. He
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loves her and he loves his lover. I just think
it's important for people to understand that's the model of
the man Mitchell, that is Amy's father, that he thinks
it would be reasonable to have it both ways. Janice,
despite her passiveives, does say no, that's not going to
work for me, thankfully, and he says, okay, I'm I'm
going to leave and be with the other woman. And
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they explain this to Amy, and there there does seem
to be this poignant moment where they explain to both
children that they're going to get this divorce. And apparently
Amy's reaction is to erupt in giggles, which makes Mitchell
think she's fine with this, and he always describes that
when she was fine with the divorce. But I think
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clearly what they didn't understand in there's other evidence to
suggest that neither of them are psychologically very sophisticated people
who have a good read on their daughter and her
emotional responses, they think that she's okay, and they go
on with life as usual. But in fact Amy is
far from okay. It is right after this time when
(09:44):
she starts behaviors that range from what's called self mutilation
but basically cutting herself, and shortly thereafter alcohol use, really
by the age of twelve, and then shortly following that
sexual activity such that her mother at age fifteen is
already put her on birth control pills because she's come
in to find her, in fact with a boy, clearly
(10:05):
in a sexual situation. And this is really important and
lays a lot of groundwork, I think for everything from
her amazing creativity to the degree of pain and emotion
that she is able to express in her lyrics, because
young people who cut do so usually because they're either
(10:28):
experiencing intense depression and or anxiety, and even something that
I'll later explain, the beginnings of borderline personality disorder, which
of course we can't diagnose Amy because I haven't spent
time with her, but she does meet an extraordinary number
of criteria for borderline personality disorder, which does start usually
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in teens. And cutting behavior is certainly very potentially indicative, though,
as I said, could just be depression or anxiety, but
she does shortly thereafter start to really describe feeling depressed,
and clearly her parents splitting up and the father moving
(11:12):
somewhere else and really only being available to her on
weekends is traumatic for her. I think also one of
the most troubling things that both her parents miss fairly
obvious signs was developing eating disorder. She would talk to
her mother and say, Mom, I've I've developed this really
great new diet where I eat anything I want and
then I bring it all up, and her mother just
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thought this was, you know, something that teen girls go
through and it would pass and kind of ignored it.
And her father sort of mentioned similar memories too, and
they didn't ignore it. And this was something that's a
recurring theme throughout her life, and sort of the more
time that elapses between her death and now, we kind
of think back, and I think her brother actually went
on record recently and said, you know, I think that
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her eating disorder was really what weakened her system so
much that probably ended up killing her. It's something that
shows up again and again throughout her story, and it's
really under discussed, absolutely, and it's worth noting that actually
body image issues specifically are a big symptom potentially of
borderline personality disorder, and so many both men and women,
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although women suffer more often than men who have borderline
personality disorder also have an eating disorder, and bulimia as
opposed to anorexias, seems to be the issue that Amy
really struggled with. In other words, eat binging on a
good amount of food. So it's not that she just
restricted all her food. She would eat, but then, as
you point out, she would throw it up. And she
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did reveal this to her parents, who continued to be like,
this is a phase and shall pass out of it,
so we're really not concerned, which really I think sounded
at least the way it's described as more of a
failure to understand anything about any disorders. You know, that
they just were perhaps not educated in any of these
matters and so didn't understand how dangerous this could be.
(13:02):
Need disorders and the borderline personality disorder, because so many
of the symptoms really just seem like it's hard to
distinguish between just being a rebellious teen and getting tattoos,
piercing her nose, acting out in school, which she later
says was part of the reason why she ended up
being expelled from some theater schools. It's hard to tell
if that's an underlying psychological problem or if it's just
being a teenager. So this is the difficult thing for
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mental health professionals who are trying to help adolescence who
are going through As you point out, you know, what
of these symptoms is adolescence and what if these symptoms
might be something more. It might be helpful for people
to understand that if you have borderline personality disorder, the
symptoms as listed in the DSM five are chronic feelings
of emptiness, which certainly Amy goes on to describe, not
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only in detail but often in her lyrics. So that's
we will talk about that, and that's worth understanding. Emotional
instability and so yes, you can think, oh, adolescence, they
can be very reactive and up and down, but the
day to day intense episodic sadness, irritability, and anxiety that
she describes would certainly fit frantic efforts to avoid real
(14:13):
or imagined abandonment. Okay, this ends up being a tremendous theme,
as I'm sure you'll point out at her lyrics. We
can discuss in recurrent songs identity disturbance or an unstable
self image or sense of self. Will describe where that
pops up. But you know, who am I? Where do
I end? Am I enough for me? Or do I
(14:35):
need to be completely embedded in somebody else to feel whole?
And we'll describe that in future relationships. But I think
it will just be helpful for people to have this groundwork.
Impulsive behavior such as spending, sex, substance abuse, binge, eating,
so specifically, many of those things really fit. Intense or
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uncontrollable anger, which again is something that later we do
see with her, but even earlier in school, sort of
having tantrums and walking out, leaving, saying inappropriate things, intense
and interpersonal relationships that are very stormy. And again, you know,
it's it's hard to imagine how she doesn't fit all
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this self harming behavior. And lastly, for some people paranoid
thoughts or dissociative symptoms, she meets and extraordinary like really
all of the criteria and then some. So that's why
people have wondered if in a way This wasn't really
always at the crux of the multiple symptoms that she
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ended up experiencing, but it's certainly made school very difficult
for her. Right if she wasn't singing in the center
of attention, school is really really hard for her. So
she was trueant a lot. But she did make good friends,
so maybe you could talk a little bitter. She had.
Juliette Ashby is a friend that she meets I think
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at age ten, and this becomes a really intense friendship. Absolutely.
They formed a band together called it was like a
salt and pepper type hip hop group called Sweet and Sour,
and of course Annie was sour and she really almost
like a pre romantic relationship. They really formed what some
might say an unnaturally close relationship, very tempestuous. And I
(16:24):
seem to remember when when Juliet like started dating she
like Amy, started getting really really sort of angry with
her because she felt again rejected as the recurring theme
of somebody leaving her for somebody else, her father and
now her best friend exactly. And you know that again
if we think about yes, teenagers and girlfriends often do
have very intense relationships with spats and loving feelings but
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the level of intensity here does make you wonder if
this is sort of the beginning of these turbulent and
difficult relationships that she suffered. She also developed a first
boyfriend who becomes important in terms of the first you know,
musical history right exactly exactly like who does she write about?
And it also brings up well, let's talk a little
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bit about him. I mean, I think almost all you
need to know about him is in the song stronger
than Me. Uh, you're supposed to be stronger than Mey,
you're here seven years longer than May. You're supposed to
be the man real character assassination just listed categorically listing
this guy's failings as being somebody who's not strong enough
for her. Who she really is always constantly looking for
an older man, you know, a father figure in a way,
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to be there for her and to kind of put
her in her place in a way. And I think
she she acts out looking for someone, you know, attentions,
you can behavior someone to finally look and say no, stop,
we care about you. Stop doing that. So Chris Taylor,
who was older than her, and it seems like a
reasonably steady guy actually, which she interpreted as passive and
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not exciting, right, he was, you know, I mean it
seems like her her first you know, identifiable serious boyfriend,
and she did want him to be a father figure,
and she does describe that in her music. And she
also displays what is again typical of people with borderline
personality disorder in relationships to either over idealize or then
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quickly devalue. It's a phenomenon called splitting, like I either
see you on a complete pedestal or you are the
worst in every way. And so initially right, she's madly
in love with him and they can't have enough with
each other. And then at the end she writes this
song You're like a lady man, you are so you know,
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feminized to me, not a PC song, but exactly that, right,
A total devaluation of him, a total emasculation to a
total emasculation with the with the intent to be hurtful.
It's religious and to see him in this very devalued light.
And so that is lays the groundwork, as I said,
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for future relationships, that that is what she does, and
also that she therapeutically, according to her pours her feeling
states into her lyrics, which she finds to be one
of the ways that she can express herself and actually
make herself feel better. That's the beginning of that, I mean,
one of the most interesting songs from She releases an
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album called Frank, which is nowhere near as famous as
Backed Black, but it has some amazing songs on it.
It's more of a sort of a jazz influenced album.
There's a song called I Heard Love is Blind. And
so much of what we know about Amy is this
really just fiercely devout, loyal, devoted wife and girlfriend whoever
she's with, I mean, her most famous partners, her her
(19:43):
husband at one time, husband Blake. But she also has
a lot of affairs and she's which doesn't seem to
jibe with the idea of this extremely devoted wife her girlfriend.
And it's a song I Heard Love is Blind where
she sort of talks about justifying why she had this affair.
She was just was telling her boyfriend that she she
slept with this guy because it looked like him. He
(20:05):
wasn't there, Her boyfriend wasn't there, So this guy looked
like him. He's not as tall, but it was dark
and I was lying down, I couldn't tell what did
you expect you left me here alone? She says in
the song, and you were in my mind because it
was you in my mind. It's not really, she's not cheating,
you've been on my mind. Yeah, let's take a quick
break here. We'll be back in a moment. Amy is
(20:34):
already achieving success at this point, right. She's sort of
a buzzed about artist in the UK. I think her
Frank did number. I think got the thirteen in the charts.
It wasn't released in the States or anything, but locally
she was. She was generating a lot of buzz and
and people had a lot of high hopes for because
nobody sounded like that looked like that. This was in
the She was signed to a guy named Simon Fuller,
(20:54):
who was the guy who started pop Idol, which kind
of became American Idol over here, and it was all
about pop star as being this really perfectly produced. He
also founded the Spice Girls too, These like idols of perfection.
You know, idol is a very telling word there. And
here comes Amy who just sings about all of her
flaws and you know, just extra relationship affairs and just
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all these things that are really you know, a lot
of people with view is very shameful. She sort of
wears them on his sleep. It makes this beautiful music
which she sings like nobody else. I mean, I don't
think we've talked enough about her incredible instrument that she
was blessed with so um she really stuck out even
though she hadn't had a hit at that point. And
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this is about two thousand four or two thousand five.
People knew the name and had expected great things from her.
So she releases her first album, Frank Promotions Done. She's
sort of has some time off to herself for the
first time in as an adult, really, and it's the
first time she's not really like struggling to get a
record deal, struggling record struggling to giggle over the place.
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She has some downtime and she's had a U and
she meets Blake. He's a music video production assistant, sort
of on the fringe, not really a successful guy, and
it's really love it first sight. And those around her
have never really been able to quite figure out why
because he, as he said, he's just sort of on
the fringe of the entertainment industry, is not a very
(22:20):
powerful guy. He's not rich, he's not particularly talented, he's
not no offense, not particularly handsome, but he becomes this
almost living embodiment of her rebellious streak, and they both
immediately just fall in with each other to become fixated
on each other. Absolutely absorbed. Obsessed is probably the best word. Hurt. Well,
you know, one could posit some other drivers in terms
(22:43):
of what attracted her to him. He is involved with
a girlfriend, so technically he's unavailable, right, very true. So
she becomes the other woman when she gets involved with him,
and the other woman is who got her father, right,
who who will end up with her dad? The other woman?
So she is now playing that role, which probably is
(23:07):
a preferable role to her and her singing about you know,
her view of infidelity allows her to forgive all parties
and the original infidelity that occurred in her life her father,
and also to some degree demonstrates why she might be
so drawn to the role of the other woman. But
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I would suggest that that is part of the mix.
And it is also interesting that the people that she
has drawn to are more like the people in her family,
more like her father. Her father was a cab driver,
and in fact he was a cab driver who was
out of work. He really, for many years of her
childhood wasn't working. That was okay with him. He wasn't
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a highly ambitious guy, and he wasn't a successful guy.
And you know, here's as you said, Frank might not
have cat pulted her to the top of the charts,
but she had already won Best Female Solo Artist in
Britain and when she met Blake. But also important, as
I had said earlier, she started drinking alcohol by the
age of twelve. It is known that those who start
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drinking alcohol before the age of fifteen, because the brain
is so plastic early in young life, there are changes
made that make it five times as likely that you
will basically be an alcoholic if your brain is introduced
to alcohol repeatedly before the age of fifteen. So she's
already drinking at age twelve, she's already smoking cigarettes, she's
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already piercing herself, getting tattoos. You know, she she is
is demonstrating her direction. And it's true that a lot
of it is appealing to creative people, who are you know,
in the singing world, in the in the creative world.
But she's already pretty far out there at a very
young age, and he embodies a out of that. So
(25:00):
while he might not be very successful or as you
point out, particularly attractive, he's very involved with drugs, more
so than she at that point, and that seems to
be the nature, sadly, of a lot of their connection
drug use. She later said in a few interviews that
she first started experimenting with heroin and crack cocaine because
(25:24):
she wanted to feel what he was feeling. And and
this is something she's demonstrated a number of times. One time,
during an argument, Blake cut himself with a with a
bottle or glass or something, and she reached over and
took the glass and cut herself gave herself a corresponding
wound to feel that as well so a lot of
his flaws, she adopted his vices. Rather, she adopted just
(25:46):
to sort of be there with him. They had this
sort of bondy in clyde Us against the World mentality.
I would argue even that her description of I need
to be in your skin and feel what you feel,
that need to merge had to do with her struggle
with a lack of sense of self, her feeling of
emptiness and confusion about who am I again, a predominant
(26:09):
symptom often in borderline personality disorder. But she described this
feeling of needing to feel what somebody else felt for herself,
you know, to to feel in order to feel, and sadly,
as you point out, you know, she was by then
she smoked pot and cigarettes and drank, but she wasn't
doing cocaine and she wasn't doing heroin until she met Blake,
(26:32):
and he was and he introduced her to that, and
she became you know, involved with an addicted to harder drugs, sadly,
and that became a big part of her continued journey
really until the end, I would say, sadly, and that
combination with bulimia in the eating disorder was particularly damaging
(26:53):
to her body. And so she you know, in terms
of being vital and strong and being able to do
the kinds of things that she'd been doing. But she
was someone who would so immerse herself in her work right.
She would work for hours and hours and hours, oh
absolutely in concerts and really needing to be physically strong,
as you said, I mean, the drinking around the stage
was also extremely successive. She would go to the pub
(27:16):
and everybody would have their pint glasses of beer. She
would have a pint glass filled with whiskey or some
kind of spirits and then down at like other people
would a beer. I mean, which is you know? And
so this is around the era of late two thousand
five when her management tried to get her to go
to rehab. As she famously saying about and the song
pretty much tells the story. She said, you know, I'll
(27:38):
go with my father, her hero, the man that always
the only person really who could tell her what to
do and put her in her place, and he said,
now you're fine, right, I ain't got the time. And
if my daddy thinks I'm fine, and suddenly he said
you're fine. So she she often didn't feel this. Even
when she went, it was for very short a periods
(28:00):
of time where it's impossible, I mean you could barely
be detoxed and often weren't even officially detoxed in the
amount of time, you know, hours to days. Is not
going to rehab. And she would often insist in going
with Blake and treating a codependent you know, drug addicted couple,
you can't treat them together. And so she would just
leave exactly amazing that actually during this time she could
(28:24):
continue to create, write lyrics basically poetry in a way
or journaling her feeling states, and then composing music. So
talk to us a little bit about her musical work.
How she put this together. How would she write and
then compose and create I mean, a Grammy Award winning
(28:47):
album during this time of you know, drug use and
turbulence in this relationship. It's funny she didn't actually write
a lot when she was with Blake, but then he
went back to his his ex girlfriend and the heartbreak.
The only thing that she could do with those feelings
was to put it into music, I mean, and act
(29:07):
out and and try to drown it with with drugs
and alcohol. But all the songs on Back to Black,
almost across the board are about Blake and about you know,
you go back to her and I go back to black.
You know, you go back to your ex girlfriend, and
I'm just going to be here with the bottle and rehab.
You know, I never want to drink again. I just
need a friend. And it's just they're all cries for help,
(29:29):
Just this incredibly lonely, sad person tears dry on their
own I'll be some next man's other woman soon. She
wears the other woman tag. As you mentioned with with Pride,
Their love is a losing game. Just the thing about
that album I think is just so amazing is that
it appeals to the voyeur almost in all of us.
It is so real, and it is so raw, and
(29:50):
it is so painful, and it's executed with such precision.
I mean, Mark Ronson's production is amazing, and the backing
musician that that Kings are in doable. But just you
can't fake that. You have to live through all the
pain and heartbreak that she obviously lived through in order
to write songs like that and perform them is a
losing game. Is like something Sinatra would have saying, that's
(30:11):
a that's a modern standard. It's an incredible song. Her
capacity to tap into her inner feeling states and not
have to compartmentalize them so much, which many, I mean
most people who are suffering at that level often do so.
She did have an unusual capacity for self reflection and
then a creative capacity to I mean, it's not unusual
(30:35):
for people who are suffering and can tap in into
it to journal or to write, or to talk to
their therapist about their feelings. But then to have the
creative capacity to put it to music that resonated with
people and in such an original way was really well.
(30:55):
It was unique. It was kind of one of a kind.
But other people connected to it, or it wouldn't have
been so popular. There's something funny about torch singers, where
you know, singers that are singing these very overwrought songs
about about heartbreak, we want to believe that it's their story.
From Billie Holiday to Janice Joplin and Edith p Off,
all of whom I believe, you know, died early of
(31:17):
you know, of one form or another broken heart, you know.
And it's just I think after her death, Lady Gaga
wrote this really beautiful remembrance of Amy on Twitter that
said she lived jazz, she lived the blues, and I
think you could say about all those other names I
just mentioned too. She was just so small and so fragile,
but she had that power and you know, I mean
(31:37):
listening to some of her music, I mean it makes
you really believe in souls like you don't know where
that that voice came from. There's she was very petit.
She was you know, five ft tall, or something, but
that huge voice, there's no no other way to explain
how that came out of that body. I think there
was a beautiful description of her voice as sounding like
a broken heart, marinating and whiskey and cigarette smoke. It's
(31:57):
just very, very evocative. It also was, I mean, for
better and for worse. It was part of her self destruction, right.
She was trying all the while that she's projecting this
booming voice. Physically she's disappearing, right, She's immersed in this
eating disorder. She's getting smaller and smaller literally, as if
trying to disappear. She's doing things that actually were in
(32:21):
some ways really hurting her voice, right, all the smoking
and the drinking and the drug use and making it
difficult for her to show up on time for things
or participate in concerts that you know she needed to
and probably would have wanted to. So there was this
yin and yang of you know, putting herself well out
there in the world and at the same time shrinking.
(32:43):
Interesting that her first song that most people knew, including myself,
was Rehab because it almost you know, it's like making
a joke about something that you're ashamed of yourself. Everybody.
Everyone's like, oh, she knows, she knows, she has a problem.
It's fine, we can ignore it. Became such a part
of her image that we didn't see it anymore, Like
it just became like, oh, that's who she is, They're all.
(33:03):
This is after back to Black, health wise, she really
started to deteriorate. She also go back with Blake. Blake
re entered the picture as soon as she had a
hit album, which I always found very telling. I think
he sold his story to one of the British tabloids
saying that this huge, multi platinum album was written about me,
and then sort of hazittate to say weaseled his way
back into her life. But that's what I'll say. But
(33:25):
she was still pining for him, and she wanted him back,
no question about it. He sort of made pretense of, well,
he didn't really marry her for the money. In the
divorce settlement, they he didn't get any money, which is
I thought, interesting, that's interesting. I mean, he said, I
wanted to show everybody that I didn't marry her for
the money. So it's it's entirely possible that it didn't
(33:45):
have to do with money, but certainly her fame and
her her appeal. He was didn't hurt. He was certainly
happy to be involved and used the money to buy
drugs and to you know, and to stay involved in
the fame that was occurring. But she was really emotionally
dependent on being with him, you know. That kept her
(34:05):
also very involved in the drugs. And I think it's interesting,
you know, so many of the men in her life commented,
why do you need to have sex like a man?
Whatever that meant? Um, I mean, it seemed to me,
why do you have a voracious sexual appetite or why
do you, you know, need to have sex a lot?
(34:27):
And it doesn't necessarily have to be flowery or romantic,
but like, let's get down to it was seems to
be what men asked her, right, And she never really
understood why that was so confusing to people. She was like, Yeah,
for me, it's like it's like having a joint, you know,
It's like it feels good, it feels good, Yeah, exactly,
she said in an interview she forgave her father. I
(34:48):
think the quote was something like, you know, why should
I resent my father for having a penis? Like, like
for having that affair. You know, it's just that like
that's a totally natural human thing to want to do,
which maybe she believed that, maybe that's something she told
herself have to help forgive her father because she did
idolize him so much. I don't know, but yeah, her
her views on that are very interesting. For somebody who
does have such strong attachments to, you know, one person
(35:10):
at a time, one partner, it seems very dichotomist. Certainly,
I would say she envied to some degree her father's
ability to be the chooser, right, I choose who I'm
going to be with, what I'm gonna do. He had
more power in the relationship, and he left them they
were the left ones. So clearly this was a conflict
(35:31):
for her ongoing. You know, she wanted to be with Blake,
but she didn't want to be the left one, and
she didn't want to be the one hurting and the
one who felt bereft and needy. You know, she preferred to,
obviously and understandably, to be the more powerful one, but
she often, no matter what happened, ended up feeling like
the hurt one. I need love, but love tortures and me.
There were a number of really interesting profiles written about
(35:54):
her in the summer of two thousand and seven, after
Back to Black came out in the States, and they
all have these really sort of troubling moments of where
one interviewer describes Amy's just sort of eyes kind of
wandering away, and then she snaps back and goes, oh,
I'm sorry, I was just thinking about Blake, just like
can't even stay focused on the conversation because she's thinking
about her boyfriend or her her husband. Actually, at that point,
they married in Miami, just sort of on the spur
(36:14):
of the moment. I had like a courthouse wedding, even
though he's sitting right there, and she talks about she
really admires Dolly Parton, not only for her musical ability,
but she loves the idea that Dolly there's this myth
about her that she wakes up four hours before her
husband so she could put her face on and get
all ready for him to wake up, and she just
thinks that's the coolest thing, which, you know, I find
(36:36):
that a little troubling, tragic, right, sad Dad She does
marry him in two thousand and seven, and it seems
there's a brief period of happiness about that, but there's
a lot of drug use, and he's now really using
a lot of crack cocaine, which it's hard to say
(36:57):
something is more addictive and concerning that cocaine, But crack,
it turns out to be such a dangerous drug, is
so highly addictive and ravaging in terms of one's body.
This is a disaster for both Blake and Amy. He
ultimately gets involved in a physical assault altercation. Then he
(37:19):
tries to pay off the person he assaulted and is
basically charged with assault and bribery and has to go
to prison for thirty six months. While he's there, she
can't tolerate this separation. She really cannot tolerate it. As
you brought up earlier, One thing that's really sad is
that while all of this use of crack and heroin
is going on and she's sort of self destructing, the
(37:41):
media is, as you said, branding her as well, that's
just her, you know, a mess, a real mess, and
they're elevating that, mocking her, but also making it almost
hard for her to deviate from that brand like that's
who she is as an artist, and making it hard
for her to go to rehab or get herself straightened
(38:04):
out because It's almost like this is part of her
selling point. And if you do, you already have an
unstable sense of self. As you mentioned, if you have
every paper in the country in the world telling you
this is who you are, you know, who are you
to say otherwise in a way if you were her.
So her father is saying, no, she's okay. He seems
sadly overly invested in her, just continuing to do whatever
(38:25):
it is that's making money. Well. At this point, he
goes on TV and makes an appeal to her. At
this point he's recognized that there is a problem, but
he goes on British daytime TV to address his daughter,
and he claimed it was because that was the only
way that she would pay attention to him, was to
do it in this big public way. I find that questionable.
I find that to be a questionable way to try
(38:45):
to address a problem with your daughter. But you know,
I don't have kids. I don't know. I'll affirm that
that is a questionable all affirm that that is not
a not a great way to try to convince your
child to go to rehab. He seems very concerned about
her disappearing, you know, into have or anything. Else for
an extended period of time, because he keeps reminding her
she's got concerts and and he follows her with a
(39:07):
TV crew, and you know, she needs to keep signing autographs.
He reminds her and be nice about it, and he
just doesn't seem to understand that this has become a
life or death situation, right, I mean, the St. Lucia
period is really interesting. This is in early two thousand nine,
and she apparently had kicked hard drugs in the fall
of two thousand eight, and she really at this period
(39:30):
alcohol was the big problem in her eating disorder. She
had friends in St. Lucia. She's she started getting an
actor down there who recalled that she would basically live
on like candy bars and soda and McDonald's and binge
and then and then purge. And you can see in
photos she's she's looking a little healthier, but still she
seems very fragile. But she does a lot of the
(39:50):
serious like the skin lesions that like people who are
the heroin tend to have, those have cleared up, and
she she seems a little better, as pictures of her
horseback riding on the beach each and and looking slightly stronger.
Really at this point, it was the Booze. There was
stories of her being rude to to wait staff down there,
and and everybody at this resort dreaded her coming getting
(40:12):
into physical altercations. Of course, this person that she took
up with in St. Lucia's was technically cheating on Blake
who's now in prison, and sees a photograph of that
and says that that's it, I'm going to divorce you.
And she's like, what's the big deal. You know, hard
for her and understand why that would matter, but fine,
then fine, if you want to divorce, we'll have a divorce.
(40:35):
You won't get any money, which she didn't. Which she didn't,
which is actually kind of amazing. I don't think she
ever fully let him go though. She moved back and
she bought a new house because she's been in this
one house that she'd had since I think she she
signed her first record deal, you know, in two thousand three.
So she bought this new house as a way to
kind of start over. But she told the press, oh, yeah,
he's gonna come back and live with me, like it's
(40:56):
it's gonna be great. So there's I don't think she
ever really fully let him go. I think she thought
that they were like these sort of star cross lovers,
he would find their way back to each other. Let's
take a quick break here, we'll be back in a moment.
(41:17):
Back to Black wins actually three Grammys, Record and Song
of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocalist, I mean, really
a smash album, like an incredible album. Did she leave
you with the impression that she was shocked by her
success in that way? Oh? Yes, I mean the Grammy's
performance I think is one of maybe her last highlights
(41:37):
because she's she's not allowed in the United States. She's
officially an undesirable alien because of all of her her
drug problems. So she's performing on telecast from England and
Tony Bennett talk about rejection, talk about your right struggle
with rejection. But yes, it's awful. So Tony Bennett reads
the winner for I Think was the Album of the
(41:57):
Year and reads her name, and the look on her face.
I encourage everyone to go to YouTube and look it
up is genuine shock. You know, you see all these
celebrities at these awards shows make the shocked face when
they win, and it's sort of like she her parents
are right there, they hug her. I mean, Tony Bennett
is one of her dad's big heroes. This is peak
moment for her. It is one of the most pure
(42:19):
celebrity moments I've ever seen. She has done a really
incredible performance earlier that night, she's back her voices in
strong form, which at that period in early two thousand eight,
which was kind of her low point, that was a
rare occasion to get a good set out of her.
Really beautiful moment, and I would say maybe her last
high point. Clearly, her voice is unique, as you pointed out,
(42:39):
just her instrument itself is is truly unique. But the
way she uses her instrument in this jazzy but modern
style that no one is sort of listening to and
pop at the moment, is also incredibly innovative. Oh it's funny,
she just merged. She hit every genre. I mean, she
had the rock and roll punk attitude she has that
(43:01):
had the jazz stylings. She had the kind of motown
ron at sixties thing that would appeal to, you know,
people of a certain age group. It really covered all
the bases. I mean, her fan base was so wide
for that reason. I mean, it really hip hop artists
loved her. I think ghost Face Killer did a verse
on one of her songs. Jay Z did a remix
I think of one of her songs a huge number
(43:23):
of fans. She did go on medication for depression when
she was about fifteen, so she was not a stranger
to nor uncomfortable in a stigma sort of way with
receiving treatment. It's just that, sadly, I think once the
drugs really took hold, it wasn't something that she was
willing to sort of stay in one place to do.
(43:43):
She definitely reported that writing lyrics was therapeutic, as I
said earlier, was therapeutic for her, and she continued to
do that. But it's I think it's important for people
to understand that, whether it's self analysis or with a
fashional substance use and abuse make it almost impossible to
(44:06):
learn new material and to understand old material in such
a way that therapy can really be useful, or self
analysis can even really be useful. So, for example, when
someone comes in with a what we call a dual diagnosis,
they've got say, substance abuse and perhaps in her case,
maybe depression or anxiety or borderline personality disorder. The first
(44:26):
thing that we we say we have to do is
treat the substance abuse in order to then do the
therapy on the other diagnosis and have it be meaningful
or have it actually do something. So sadly, once she
was so immersed in substance abuse and that wasn't being treated,
that was difficult. And then also, as you pointed out,
the boliemia was physically weakening her condition. We know that
(44:49):
long term boliemia weakens the cardiovascular system, causes things like cardiomyopathy.
So in addition to what substance abuse would be doing,
so her ability to tolerate the kinds of substance abuse
that she was doing would be diminished. But I think
what's amazing when you listen to her lyrics and the trajectory.
(45:10):
So now she's done, Frank, she's done back to black.
She's actually in the process of recording yet another album
which is not released until after her death. But what's
amazing actually and telling her story is that really For example,
you brought up what is it about men? On? Frank,
those lyrics can't help but demonstrate my Freudian fate. My
(45:34):
destructive side has grown a mile wide. I'll take the
wrong man as naturally as I sing, I'll save my
tears for uncovering my fears for behavioral patterns that stick
over years like that is a summary of psychoanalytic proportion
that one could only hope to come to maybe after
(45:56):
years of therapy. You know that she could so succinctly
put in a paragraph of a song is amazing. And
yet she was always really resistant to seeking professional psychological treatment.
I always thought that was such a funny dichotomy as well,
that she had that level of self awareness but didn't
when anyone else'd analyze her. I guess maybe that's not
(46:16):
that surprising now that I say that it's not. And actually,
in addition, unfortunately so the last line there, history repeats itself,
it fails to die. She had a fatalism about her
that she may not have believed that even that knowledge
being power, which I I'm saying to people, hey, do therapy,
because if you know about yourself, you don't have to
(46:37):
keep repeating the same behavioral patterns. She seemed to believe
she was faded to repeat her history, and that makes
it hard to break out or believe that therapy can
really be helpful to you. You also have to stay
in one place for long enough and be willing to
invest in the work. But again, her lyrics are so amazing.
In terms of having some personal insight, where do we
(47:00):
attribute her ability to compose in the way that she did.
She was always very vague about that. I think that
was really through being a jazz fan and the way
that you can kind of extemporaneously solo. I think she
would start with her lyrics and just sort of scat sing.
A lot of her early early early recordings when she
(47:21):
was in I think the National Youth Jazz Orchestra or
sort of bebop influenced scat song. So I my guess
is that it was sort of born out of that.
As you said, she got her own place. She still
thought Blake would come back, but that's not really what happened.
She ends up dating and actually getting engaged to REDG. Travis,
who seems like a pretty good guys, a filmmaker. He
(47:44):
does well, he's not involved with drugs, and she's doing
fewer drugs. At that point. The last year of her
life seemed to be a major improvement. She looked great,
she seemed strong, she was the head of Universal said
that she was recording again and the demos he heard
sounded great. She recorded a cover of Leslie Gore's It's
My Party for a Quincy Jones tribute album, which was,
you know, one of the first things she'd released in
(48:06):
eighteen months, two years something like that. And the high
point of the period for her was in March, she
did a song with her father's hero, Tony Bennett and
I did cover Body and Soul for his His Duets
Too album, And the footage from that recording session is
sweet because she turns into this almost little girl. She's
so just in all of Tony Bennett. But it's also
(48:30):
tough to watch because she is so hard on herself
and she and you see, even though she is Annie Winehouse,
multi Grammy winning back to Black World conquering, she she
she'll flood lines or not be happy with some of
her her vocal stylings and hold the take and she'll
just have her head in her hands and just say
to Tony over and over again, I don't want to
(48:51):
waste your time. I don't want to waste your time.
That was terrible. I was rubbish. I'm gonna want better.
Don't worry. I'm sorry. I was terrible, but next time
I got it and he it's It's very sweet, but
it's also very sad to see how truly insecure she
she still is, even after all she's accomplished. Yes, it's
insecure and self defeating. Right, she's sort of beating herself up.
You watch her emotionally, you know, kind of punching herself
(49:14):
over being not good enough. But also you can see
her deriving incredible pleasure from Tony Bennett saying, yes you are.
I'm so like, No, that was great, that was great.
Like she's still a little girl who wants a daddy
to say, I'm listening. I'm listening to you, and you're
(49:34):
wonderful and I appreciate it. And so it is really
poignant that, you know, I think looking for that father figure,
looking for that kind of love that isn't about money
or a deal or you know, what have you done
for me lately, but is really about being appreciated. And
in the last year of her life too, you tend
(49:54):
to notice that her alcohol binges tend to line up
with when she has performances to do. She actually left
rehab early to go on the road to do a
tour European tour in June, and she really thought she
could do it her. There's conflicting theories about why she left.
Her father said she was her choice. Other people say
(50:15):
that she was persuaded to go because there was all
this money on the line. I won't speculate. She got
one day in in Belgrade and it was extremely tragic
to watch. She could barely keep her head up, barely
knew the words of her own songs. I mean it
went viral immediately thereafter and the rest of the tour
was canceled. But apparently in the weeks and months before that,
(50:37):
she had really abstained. So I think that she she
needed that courage. She didn't, you know, didn't have Blake there,
didn't have drugs there. That was really one of the
last crutches she had was was alcohol to sort of
steel herself for these performances. Did she have stage fright?
Did she have performance anxiety? Because you don't get that
impression certainly and listening to her and her joy in
being the center of attention, But people who do love
(51:00):
it still can get stage right. Literally, I don't think
it's stage I almost think it's just perfectionism. I think
that if she doesn't achieve to her satisfaction, because it
would be in the studio too, I mean the footage
with Tony. I mean, obviously Tony Pennett is enough of
an audience to give anyone stage right, But uh yeah,
I think it was almost failure to achieve what she
knew she could. So she arrives back home from the
(51:23):
aborted European tour and for about a month, I don't
think she drank at all for about three weeks. Then
she went on stage with her god daughter, who was
a young fifteen year old singer named Dion Bromfield, and
Amy just sort of went to kind of be be
a supporter. It was it was Dion's show. She wasn't
really going to do it or anything. But I guess
that day, for reasons only known to her, she started
(51:45):
drinking again. And I don't know if it was because
she knew she was going to be on stage and
there even it wasn't to sing it or perform, it
was something about that, or if it was just coincidence,
I'm not sure, But that day, it was three days
before she died, she apparently started drinking again, and drinking
quite heavily. So one thing that's a little confusing is,
for example, when she was in Europe and supposed to
(52:06):
go on stage and was too drunk at that point. Basically,
you know, often it seems that singers have managers and
management who are kind of trying to make sure that
they don't drink too much, that they that they do
get on stage, and that they do stay safe. And
in one piece, where were her people, the famous they
(52:28):
have They tried to make me go to rehab. She
I think fire them and got new management, sort of
more tolerant management or management that would sort of look
the other way with this. And it's tough to say.
I think that on some level it's the same thing
that we were talking about the song rehab. I think
maybe a lot of people just thought, oh, that's just
how she is. And I think just show business in
(52:49):
general is so sort of shamefully indulgent, intolerant of this
kind of behavior because they're focused on on the bottom
line and not the person who's generating the come, just
the income itself. I think that there's a false belief
that all of the chemicals have something to do with
the creativity, have something to do with the not only
(53:12):
the persona, but the production and the appearance of everything
that's appealing in the concert. You know, a lot of
the audience will be doing substances, the singers, the band
will be doing substances. That it's sort of part of
the atmosphere, which is unfortunate because the reality is that,
(53:34):
you know, overuse of drugs and alcohol does not promote creativity.
Perhaps one could say small amounts small amounts of alcohol
may disinhibit one, but disinhibition is not the same thing
as creativity. And her emotional experience and her awareness of
(53:55):
her emotional experience, and I would even say her early depression,
her early struggle with DEPRESSI and many people who have
struggled with depression have a lot of access to their
feeling states, which make them unusually empathic and and usually
able to tap into those dark times and use that
material in a potentially very creative way. Many writers, many poets,
(54:18):
and you know, writing music is a form of poetry, really,
you know. And and certainly her lyrics were so I
think her creativity coming from reflections back on times of panic, anxiety, depression,
struggles with identity. She exemplified the kind of originality and
(54:41):
creativity that often come from people who have these kinds
of struggles. Of course, she then also had this incredible
voice to do it with and control of her voice
and that unique style. But I would really argue that
it's unlikely that the substances in any way contributed to
making that better, and you know, sadly, in some ways
(55:02):
really derailed her from that creative ability. And you find
that people tend not to want to look into their
their underlying psychological motivation because they're afraid that it's going
to make the gift go away. You know what I mean?
You hear that again and again with a lot of
people who write, is that they don't almost don't want
to know where it comes from because they're afraid if
they figure out how they do it, it'll leave them,
it will interfere with the process, which maybe explains in
(55:24):
some level why she was so hesitant to receiving a
kind of counseling. It may sadly explain her hesitancy. But
last season we talked about John Lennon and in fact,
he went into this period of therapy to understand his
struggles and his feeling states, and what did he do?
He produced more great music that had to do with
those feeling states. So really the ability to self reflect
(55:45):
and understand and use that material is often actually a
source of great creativity, and I think that's a sad
myth that does sometimes keep people, particularly artists of various sorts,
from self exploration, and of course, tragically for her. You know,
she basically died and was discovered dead in July, having
(56:06):
clearly gone out for a night of tremendous drinking. She
I think her blood alcohol level was like five times
the driving limit, So clearly she could have died from
pure alcohol toxicity alone, which would stop your breathing, but
exacerbated by the fact that, as you brought up earlier,
this eating disorder had really weakened, and she had been
(56:29):
told in the months leading up to this time by
a physician, you're going to die. Your bulimia is severe
and it has weakened your cardiovascular system. It is we
you know, they were doing blood tests to try to
look at where things were, look at her liver, which
probably wasn't in good shape with all the alcohol use,
look at her cardiovascular system, look at her kidneys, and clearly,
(56:51):
you know, we don't know. I don't think that information
has ever been released appropriately so since she was the patient.
But there was certainly insinuations from release conversations from the
doctor that there were blood tests indicative that there were
some medical problems as a result of bulimia and ongoing
drug use and probably malnutrition in that sense. So the
(57:14):
combination certainly was probably also instrumental in her death. It's
surprising in a way that she was discovered and that
there was no one with her, you know, during that day,
since people were so often around. You know, the last
person who saw her alive was her her bodyguard, and
she was watching YouTube clips of herself on stage, and
I guess she she said to him, you know, boy,
(57:36):
I could sing Pody. Car was like, yeah, yeah, you can.
Then that's so sad, I'm told she looked at him
and said, but you know, if I could give it
all back to just be able to walk down the
street like a normal person again, I would. Gosh, you
said you were going to cry, but maybe now I'm
going to cry. That's really tragic to be alone, alone
in the middle of the night. She died alone, watching
herself at the peak of her powers. I you know,
(57:58):
she deserves a better just goes to show the feeling
of abandonment real or imagined, that the trauma that that induces,
and the desperate need to be the center of attention
at all costs at all times, and how self destructive
that can be if it's not understood and worked through
and resolved. But clearly, while organically or physically speaking, the
(58:23):
alcohol and the bolima were the cause of her death,
I would argue that, you know, in psychologically, her unresolved
dilemma in terms of feeling abandoned and never being able
to feel whole, drove these behaviors that led to her death,
and that's really just a tragedy. So so young, clearly
(58:46):
so much ahead of her in terms of her talent.
She had been recording Lioness, which was released after her death.
There weren't a lot of tracks that she had finished
for it, unfortunately, but the ones that she had done
were you know, just as as forthright as ever. It
was a song called Between the Cheats, just reflecting on cheating,
(59:07):
so she was just as you know, as funny and
self lacerating as ever. A great song. Yeah. I mean,
most of that album I think was sort of like
B sides and and unreleased stuff that she'd done prior
to it. She hadn't done a lot for the third album.
But it's just great to hear her sing sing anything.
It is great to hear her sing anything. But you know,
(59:28):
the deeper one does get into substance use and abuse,
the more it does interfere with work, production, innovation, the
ability to think, just think and put you know, strength,
string things together. So her ability to be original and
creative in the third album I think was lacking compared
to the first two, and probably a reflection of how
(59:51):
much she had been involved at that point in the
drug use and abuse. Sadly, she always say, you know,
music is what I'm good for. It's the only thing
I can hold my head up high for. One wonders
if her difficulty, her struggle and being as innovative as
she had been before played a role in keeping her
immersed in alcohol use or or drug use, because, as
(01:00:13):
you're pointing out, she needed to reflect and feel that
that was the thing that was special about her, right
her ability to do that, and seeing herself do less
of that would be really painful. Oh yeah, I mean,
that's what one of the things that that first drew
me to her and her music. I mean, I first
started listening to Back to Black when I was going
through a heartbreak too. And you know, I think that's
so many of her fans they really felt like they
(01:00:34):
knew her because I mean, she just put it all
out there in her music, not talking about all the
tabloid headlines and the photos and everything. I mean, it
was really so vulnerable and so personal, and so I mean,
you can be vulnerable and personal and not have a
tenth of the amount of talent that she had, But
she also had She had the goods in the vocal
(01:00:54):
department too, and in pain, she expressed some universal feelings
right what many of us feel. She made me feel
less alone, and I'm a wish that we could have
made her feel less alone. The fact that she felt
so alone is probably part and parcel of her creation
of those very lyrics that connected to you and to
(01:01:15):
all of us to make us feel that somebody understood.
Thank you. That wraps things up for this episode. Appreciation
to my guest Jordan Runtag. And if you want to
know more about Amy Winehouse or musical people, take a
listen to his podcast Rivals. If you'd like to know
(01:01:36):
more about the concepts in personlogy. You can check out
my book The Power of Different The Link Between Disorder
and Genius for psychological advice. You might want to check
out my other podcast, How Can I Help? Follow me
a Twitter at doctor Gayl Saltz and Until Next Time.
Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive
(01:01:57):
producers are doctor Gayl Saltz and Tyler kle Ng. The
associate producer is Lowell Berlante. For more podcasts from My
heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. M