Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA mea podcast if you love
Speaker 1: extraordinary stories. M plus subscribers get early access to new
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Speaker 1: U forward slash M plus that's mp l us, or
Speaker 1: follow the link in the episode description. As a black
Speaker 1: Mercedes pulls up outside Grovesnor House, a luxury hotel in
Speaker 1: London's Mayfair, Amy Winehouse readies herself. She's chewing gum and
Speaker 1: wearing a strapless corset zebra print mini dress by American
Speaker 1: fashion designer Betsy Johnson. It's the same dress she will
Speaker 1: during a talk show interview on British TV the week earlier.
Speaker 1: But surely no one will notice that her eyeliner is
Speaker 1: thick her hair is out. Tonight, She's a ten the
Speaker 1: British music industry's most highly regarded songwriting awards, the Ebor Novello's.
Speaker 1: She's up for Best Contemporary Song for Stronger than Me,
Speaker 1: her lead single from her debut album, Frank you should.
Speaker 2: Be stronger than You've been here seven longer than me.
Speaker 1: You should be strong good. The car comes to a
Speaker 1: halt and an usher opens the door. This is it
Speaker 1: the night that could cement her future as a bona
Speaker 1: fide songwriter. She steps onto the pavement, adjusts her dress
Speaker 1: once twice, puts her candy pink clutch underneath her armpit,
Speaker 1: and makes her way over to a crowd that's lined
Speaker 1: up outside. She signs, autographs, poses for photos, and chats
Speaker 1: with dozens of waiting fans.
Speaker 2: How are you okay?
Speaker 1: It's two thousand and four, which, in the world of
Speaker 1: music means lots of Coldplay, Diadoh, the Sugar Babes, and
Speaker 1: The Darkness Tonight. Amy's competition includes Kylie Minogue and Dizzy Rascal.
Speaker 1: At just twenty years old, she's tipped as the underdog,
Speaker 1: but in front of a room full of songwriting legends,
Speaker 1: her contemporaries, and so called industry bigwigs, Amy Winehouse wins.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: I don't believe this.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Soddam.
Speaker 4: There's my picture of them.
Speaker 5: Slam is the most desporational producer I can work with.
Speaker 1: Many is surprised, but none are as shocked as she is.
Speaker 4: I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: You seem genuinely surprised, are you yeah?
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, no, you know.
Speaker 6: I ain't got no words.
Speaker 1: No, Amy's winternight is just the beginning. She sets her
Speaker 1: sights on the Grammys and international acclaim, But as she
Speaker 1: heads off to celebrate her victory, is this one of
Speaker 1: the last times Amy Whitehouse would be in control of
Speaker 1: her own life?
Speaker 5: My greatest fear is probably dying with no one knowing
Speaker 5: of any contribution I'd ever made to creative music. But
Speaker 5: that's cool because I made it now. I'm already that.
Speaker 5: I'm so proud of that. You know, if I died
Speaker 5: tomorrow touch words, you know, I would still feel fulfilled
Speaker 5: it in a way.
Speaker 1: You can recognize it in an instant. That iconic voice
Speaker 1: and a candid style of songwriting beyond her years. The
Speaker 1: sound of Amy Winehouse was a sound unheard of since
Speaker 1: the days of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. You know,
Speaker 1: the old familiar place. The name Amy Winehouse today seems
Speaker 1: to be as synonymous with talent as it is tragedy,
Speaker 1: with lyrics that tore at the heart strings and songs
Speaker 1: that story booked her life. The world watched a young
Speaker 1: woman climb to the heights of fame, only to have
Speaker 1: the darkness of her success consume her. On the mountaintop depression,
Speaker 1: eating disorders, self palm, alcohol, substance abuse, and a toxic
Speaker 1: codependent relationship. Amy Winehouse was plagued by her demons from
Speaker 1: childhood until she met her untimely end at just twenty
Speaker 1: seven years old. On this season of Extraordinary Stories, will
Speaker 1: dive deep into the life of Amy Winehouse, her rise
Speaker 1: to fame, her ar try, her pain, her loves, and
Speaker 1: her losses. What really killed Amy? Could she have been saved?
Speaker 1: And what does her death tell us of the pervasive
Speaker 1: grip of addiction and fame. I'm Emma Gillespie and this
Speaker 1: is the Amy Winehouse story. Ah too. That's the voice
Speaker 1: of fourteen year old Amy singing to her friend on
Speaker 1: a home video. She's been singing her entire life ever
Speaker 1: since she could teenage. Amie didn't yet know it, but
Speaker 1: she's not just a singer. She's a talented and prolific
Speaker 1: songwriter too. The poems she furiously scribbles in her journal,
Speaker 1: they're actually lyrics, and they're accompanying melodies already within her.
Speaker 5: And I write lyrics, I write songs, and I sing.
Speaker 7: Music played a very important role into her life from
Speaker 7: the very beginning. She was very talented as a young
Speaker 7: person and she had really big dreams of herself.
Speaker 1: That's Eleni Papa Vasiliu. She's the senior curator and collection
Speaker 1: manager at the Jewish Museum of Australia, where an exhibition
Speaker 1: all about Amy's life, put together by her brother Alex,
Speaker 1: was hosted back in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 7: It was a really beautiful and expansive show that aimed
Speaker 7: to portray Amy in a different light, I suppose, and
Speaker 7: just remind audiences of the you know, the young, ambitious
Speaker 7: and very talented young person that she was.
Speaker 1: Amy Jade Winehouse was born on the fourteenth of September
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty three at Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield in
Speaker 1: North London. Her mother Janie and her father Mitch had
Speaker 1: already become parents a few years earlier, when Amy's brother
Speaker 1: Alex was born. A Lenni says music played an important
Speaker 1: role in Amy's life right from the very start.
Speaker 7: Through her father's, mother's and grandmother's influence. Actually, her father
Speaker 7: was a taxi driver and her mother was a pharmacist,
Speaker 7: so you know, her upbringing was humble but incredibly ambitious.
Speaker 1: The white Houses had lived in London since the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: when Amy's great great grandfather arrived from Belarus thinking it
Speaker 1: was New York.
Speaker 7: Her grandparents, who had roots from Belarus, Russia and Poland,
Speaker 7: emigrated to the UK in the nineteen hundreds. Specifically, Amy's
Speaker 7: great grandfather, Harris, emigrated from Minsk in eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 7: and he was one of millions of Jews that had
Speaker 7: to flee Eastern Europe to destinations like Britain, South Africa,
Speaker 7: the US, even Australia and the late nineteenth century early
Speaker 7: twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Like many Jewish immigrant families of the day, they came
Speaker 1: through London's poor East End before settling in the fairly
Speaker 1: Jewish area of Southgate in London's northern suburbs. Amy's dad, Mitch,
Speaker 1: told the BBC in two thousand and eight that the
Speaker 1: first few years of Amy's life were happy.
Speaker 8: You know, my kids, you know, they grew up in
Speaker 8: you know, in a large extended family as I did
Speaker 8: as a child, you know, and they were surrounded by
Speaker 8: music and love and laughter, and we just all had
Speaker 8: a good time, as we continue to do now. Smashing kid.
Speaker 1: Young Amy attended Hebrew school every weekend and every Sunday
Speaker 1: she would beg her father not to make her go.
Speaker 7: It's not a typical of children that grow up in
Speaker 7: diverse cultural backgrounds. To show a degree of resistance, you know,
Speaker 7: to weekend activities and have to do with engaging with
Speaker 7: a cultural heritage is not uncommon. But Amy's family was
Speaker 7: not actually religious. They observed some of the traditions and customs,
Speaker 7: but their experience and the way that they expressed their
Speaker 7: Jewish identity sits within the great diverse of how people
Speaker 7: define themselves and express those customs and how they observe
Speaker 7: those traditions.
Speaker 1: While as a Lenny describes, the Winehouse family wasn't particularly religious,
Speaker 1: they held weeklish about dinners at Amy's grandmother's home. They
Speaker 1: were a close knit and fairly spirited lot. In a
Speaker 1: handwritten application to the Sylvia Young Theater School teenage, Amie wrote,
Speaker 1: all my life, I have been loud to the point
Speaker 1: of being told to shut up. The only reason I
Speaker 1: have had to be this loud is because you have
Speaker 1: to scream to be heard. In my family.
Speaker 7: There was a lot of accounts about how several guests
Speaker 7: musicians are the friends of Amy's would also sit through
Speaker 7: some of those dinners. So I think that those traditions
Speaker 7: and her jewishness. The way that they were observed connected
Speaker 7: to her heritage and her ancestors, something that she was
Speaker 7: really very fond of, as she was very interested in
Speaker 7: her own family history.
Speaker 1: By the time she was primary school aged, Amy was
Speaker 1: described by friends and family as boisterous and defiant, notoriously
Speaker 1: good at getting her way.
Speaker 4: Teachers complained when she was ten years old, you know,
Speaker 4: she couldn't be quiet in class and she was always
Speaker 4: wanting to sing.
Speaker 1: That's doctor Peter Hughes. He's a UK based psychologist, philosopher
Speaker 1: and writer. Peter says it was clear from a very
Speaker 1: early age that Amy was a rebel. Her parents didn't
Speaker 1: know how to say no to her, but there was
Speaker 1: always one person who could. Amy's paternal grandmother, Cynthia, who
Speaker 1: became a steady stalwart of Amy's life. A flamboyant character
Speaker 1: who taught Amy to read tarot cards and even allowed
Speaker 1: her and her older brother Alex to smoke around her.
Speaker 7: She was particularly close to Cynthia. Cynthia's described as very
Speaker 7: glamorous and dependent, stylish woman. That was even a mention
Speaker 7: in the exhibition that she dated musician Ronnie Scott in
Speaker 7: the nineteen forties. And that she loved jazz herself. So
Speaker 7: it's really interesting to see how how you know, that spirit,
Speaker 7: that dynamic energy that Amy had herself finds its roots
Speaker 7: back to this woman as her love for music. There
Speaker 7: were some old photographs of Cynthia and the exhibition, so
Speaker 7: you know there was a connection there. There was actually
Speaker 7: quite a close resemblance, but also a connection to Amy's
Speaker 7: distinctive style and her sense of fashion.
Speaker 1: Cynthia's love for all things jazz and mid century music
Speaker 1: rubbed off on Amy quickly. Her grandmother introduced her to
Speaker 1: the sounds of Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, voices
Speaker 1: that inspired Amy's lifelong love affair with music.
Speaker 5: Like singing on stage, it's like breathing, like I'm probably
Speaker 5: most of peace when I'm singing on stage.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a love for old world music that
Speaker 1: Amy shared with her grandmother, Cynthia. Amy became enamored with
Speaker 1: gangster films, the Godfather franchise. She'd tell her friends as
Speaker 1: a kid how she fantasized about life as a gangster's wife.
Speaker 1: But beyond their bond over music, Cynthia came a dependable
Speaker 1: shoulder for Amy, to lean on during her parents' divorce
Speaker 1: when she was just nine years old. Amy's dad, Mitch Weinehouse,
Speaker 1: had been having an affair with a colleague for most
Speaker 1: of young Amy's life before he and her mother, Janis,
Speaker 1: eventually split. It was a turning point for Amy, and
Speaker 1: the years to come saw a strained relationship with her father.
Speaker 1: The collapse of her family unit, and the toilet took
Speaker 1: on her would become clearer over time, but almost immediately
Speaker 1: she began acting out in school. It's a pain that
Speaker 1: Amy would eventually write about through song.
Speaker 4: This is a preview pessant girl. She's growing up, she's
Speaker 4: finding her identity, you know, at the age of ten,
Speaker 4: you know, she teachers couldn't control her at school, and
Speaker 4: she was always singing, and she formed her first band,
Speaker 4: a first rap band called Sweet and Sour, And she
Speaker 4: was on this kind of path. And who knows how
Speaker 4: traumatic she felt that For all we know, it might
Speaker 4: have been deeply and profoundly traumatic, and meant much of
Speaker 4: her behavior may have been synonymous with or exhibiting symptoms
Speaker 4: of post traumatic stress disorder. Because for a nine year
Speaker 4: old girl to watch her parents split, we don't know
Speaker 4: how her affections were distributed between them. We don't know
Speaker 4: whether the extent to which our world fell apart, but
Speaker 4: I think it's fair to assume that warring parents and
Speaker 4: a messy divorce at the age of nine is not
Speaker 4: psychologically healthy for anybody, male or female, and it wasn't
Speaker 4: psychologically healthy for Amy.
Speaker 1: Doctor Peter Hughes says it's fair to assume the divorce
Speaker 1: of Amy's parents would have been corrosive on a nine
Speaker 1: year old girl. A clue to the impacts of that
Speaker 1: pain were found years later by Amy's older brother.
Speaker 4: He said that she kept tucked away in a drawer
Speaker 4: all her life, preserved perfectly a school jumper from her
Speaker 4: primary school. And that's actually quite fascinating because amidst all
Speaker 4: the chaos, all the madness, all the trauma, all the violence,
Speaker 4: some of it inflicted on or some of itself inflicted,
Speaker 4: that she hung onto this and maybe it was talismanic
Speaker 4: for her. Maybe it was an anchor for her, something
Speaker 4: to keep her grounded to something that was essential, and
Speaker 4: perhaps hoping one day that they might be stronger than
Speaker 4: an addiction.
Speaker 1: Those who knew Amy, people like Russell Brand, recognized quickly
Speaker 1: how talented she was the unlikeliness of that huge voice
Speaker 1: from that tiny frame, an element of surprise that sparked
Speaker 1: intrigue everywhere she went and every place she sang.
Speaker 6: Because she was a jazz singer, right, I was like,
Speaker 6: who gives a shit about Jack? Like, you know, she
Speaker 6: was sort of around there, and I thought she was
Speaker 6: sort of sweet and lovely and unusual and strange, but
Speaker 6: I didn't pay that much attention. Then I went into
Speaker 6: the roundhouse and she like did some sort of drop
Speaker 6: in thing, and like just hearing her sing before seeing,
Speaker 6: you know, when going up trying to get into a
Speaker 6: venue her the voice was so unbelievable and powerful and
Speaker 6: then like, yeah, I saw it for what it was.
Speaker 6: I saw it for what it was. She was a
Speaker 6: channel man, Like that's what you get from certain people.
Speaker 6: They're channeling. You see it in sport, and you see
Speaker 6: it in art, like no one can do that. You
Speaker 6: can't do that.
Speaker 7: She was a young person and that was really ambitious,
Speaker 7: had really big dreams about herself and chased those dreams
Speaker 7: and really made something out of herself through her beautiful
Speaker 7: talent and her big voice.
Speaker 1: And as Eleni Papa Vasiliu from the Australian Jewish Museum.
Speaker 1: Discovered as a teenager, Amy found inspiration from all music genres.
Speaker 7: We had a playlist on loop, a soundtrack and the
Speaker 7: exhibition from a tape that she called Songs from a
Speaker 7: Chill Out tape that included Frank Sinatra to Pearl Jam
Speaker 7: and the Offspring, so some of her favorite songs.
Speaker 1: When Amy struggled to conform in the environment of a
Speaker 1: mainstream school, she took matters into her own hands. But
Speaker 1: helping Amy to realize her potential via the conventional means
Speaker 1: of vocal training, it was no easy feat.
Speaker 4: She managed to arrange her own audition to get into
Speaker 4: a Sylvia Young Theater school in London.
Speaker 1: I think when she was fourteen, aspiring young performers all
Speaker 1: over the UK treamped of getting into Sylvia Young. It
Speaker 1: was the school for hope, future starts. Could this be
Speaker 1: it Amy's big break? Her lift off moment from the
Speaker 1: launchpad of a prestigious performing arts academy, Well not quite.
Speaker 1: Amy was eventually asked to leave. She flouted uniform rules
Speaker 1: by wearing a nose ring, and despite a powerfully intellectual mind,
Speaker 1: she didn't care a bit for academia.
Speaker 4: She got expelled from there. So there's always been a
Speaker 4: kind of a rebellious, rebellious streak to em your own house.
Speaker 1: But it didn't slow Amy down, and before long she
Speaker 1: was accepted into the prestigious Brits School. Sure enough, though
Speaker 1: the ever defiant, willful Amy dropped out. By sixteen, she
Speaker 1: was working part time and performing with jazz groups.
Speaker 5: When I was about eighteen, I've started playing gigs. I
Speaker 5: just played pub gigs.
Speaker 2: I've had some songs.
Speaker 4: I just to pup gigs.
Speaker 5: I'm going with my with my strata or something. You
Speaker 5: just played pub gig.
Speaker 1: But beneath the facade of bravado and ambition, teenage Amy
Speaker 1: was in the throes of more than one silent battle
Speaker 1: as patterns of self destructive behavior began to emerge. When
Speaker 1: Amy told her mother she'd discovered a great new diet,
Speaker 1: it would eventually manifest into an eating disorder, and at fourteen,
Speaker 1: Amy was diagnosed with depression and prescribed antidepressants as her
Speaker 1: behavior grew ever erratic.
Speaker 4: Amy's vulnerabilities tell us a lot about her state of mind, really,
Speaker 4: because these were multiple vulnerabilities, you know, anxiety, self harm,
Speaker 4: eating disorders, depression. This is an enormous amount for anybody
Speaker 4: to cope with psychologically and her history of eating disorders.
Speaker 4: Her brother Alex said in an interview that that all
Speaker 4: the girls on her her estate were all filling themselves
Speaker 4: up and vomiting it out, but Amy never stopped the
Speaker 4: other girls. Most the other girls stopped, they moved on.
Speaker 4: Amy never did.
Speaker 1: It was through her music, her songwriting that Amy sought
Speaker 1: to self soothe, and eventually it would captivate fans. Fans
Speaker 1: like writer Polly Taylor, Muma MIA's commissioning editor.
Speaker 9: She was so real, so raw, like every lyric, every
Speaker 9: song was a story that she was telling you about
Speaker 9: her life.
Speaker 5: Could you know I've been three times where I've been
Speaker 5: so fucked up about a situations that I've had to
Speaker 5: just be like write everything down, you know, even feelings
Speaker 5: that I don't want to acknowledge, especially feelings I don't
Speaker 5: want to acknowledge, and things that I wish were not
Speaker 5: true and they are. And you know, it's just good
Speaker 5: because someone else might hear that and be like, I'm
Speaker 5: not an idiot for feeding any things.
Speaker 1: By the time she'd reached adolescentce, Amy was feeling lost
Speaker 1: and directionless. She knew her life's purpose was to sing,
Speaker 1: but she didn't know how or if she could make
Speaker 1: a career of it until a chance meeting with a
Speaker 1: man called Nick Schiminsky that would change everything, a guy
Speaker 1: who'd become a rare force for good in Amy's ever
Speaker 1: complex life.
Speaker 6: Nick Joy is Amy your favorite during girl.
Speaker 10: At from your Mum, I don't know what you're playing
Speaker 10: at you.
Speaker 2: There was very much I love you.
Speaker 1: She was sixteen and he was nineteen. Both of them
Speaker 1: were sort of as clueless as each other. Sure, Nick
Speaker 1: was working in the industry, but even he since admitted
Speaker 1: he didn't really know what he was doing. Nick was
Speaker 1: managing an artist called Tyler James at the time. It
Speaker 1: was Tyler who convinced Nick he had to hear Amy sing.
Speaker 1: In an interview with The Guardian in twenty fifteen, Nick
Speaker 1: recounted his first phone call with Amy, one where he
Speaker 1: pretended to be a hot shot manager that could make
Speaker 1: things happen. But Amy didn't.
Speaker 7: Go for it.
Speaker 10: Obviously she thought I was a wanker. She made it
Speaker 10: very clear. I realized humor was the backup plan, and
Speaker 10: that's how we connected.
Speaker 2: Time.
Speaker 10: She was saying she had absolutely no interest in making music.
Speaker 10: I got this package through the post with a demo
Speaker 10: tape with two songs on, and the Jiffy bag was
Speaker 10: covered in stickers of hearts and kisses and had Amy
Speaker 10: scribbled all over it about one hundred times. It didn't
Speaker 10: fit with the girl who didn't want to be noticed.
Speaker 10: I put it on in my car and it blew
Speaker 10: my mind. As soon as producers heard her, they were
Speaker 10: in from the off. She was very funny, very blunt.
Speaker 10: She was different.
Speaker 1: She was a personality, and so a friendship and partnership blossomed.
Speaker 1: By age twenty, Amy was on the cusp of achieving
Speaker 1: her dreams. After years of scribbling lyrics of her innermost
Speaker 1: thoughts onto notepads in her bedroom, she recorded a studio album.
Speaker 1: It would be called Frank.
Speaker 2: Help You, If You help yourself.
Speaker 9: I would absolutely describe myself as a huge Amy House fan.
Speaker 9: I was thinking about this, and I feel like there
Speaker 9: aren't many artists where you can remember where you were
Speaker 9: the first time you heard their voice. But I remember
Speaker 9: it so clearly. I think I was about seventeen or eighteen.
Speaker 9: I had a friend who was studying or working in music.
Speaker 9: She was super into her music. Got in her car
Speaker 9: and she was like, you have to hear this new artist.
Speaker 9: Put a CD in because obviously that's how long ago
Speaker 9: this was. It was a CD and it must have
Speaker 9: been the Frank album. I can't remember what song it was,
Speaker 9: but the second I heard her voice, I was like,
Speaker 9: Oh my god, who is this? This is something special?
Speaker 9: And yeah, from that moment I was just obsessed.
Speaker 5: Literally. They said, we'll give you all the studio time
Speaker 5: you want. I said, why would you do that and
Speaker 5: they were like, because you're going to make an album
Speaker 5: for us and we'll make a return off that. And
Speaker 5: I was like, yeah, okay, right, I see that.
Speaker 1: And on the twentieth of October two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Frank was released. In the days after Amy's dad, Mitch,
Speaker 1: was on a shift behind the wheel of a cab
Speaker 1: before he stuck, brought upon a billboard of his daughter.
Speaker 1: Here's what he told the BBC about it. Back in
Speaker 1: two thousand and.
Speaker 8: Eight, Amy's album came out, the first album, Frank. It
Speaker 8: was October two thousand and three and we were driving
Speaker 8: through London and there was this massive poster up on the
Speaker 8: wall with Amy with Frank, and I said to the
Speaker 8: bloke behind, I said, I said, here mate. I said,
Speaker 8: shaid that picture over there. He said yeah, I said,
Speaker 8: that's my daughter. He said, do me a favor, will you?
Speaker 8: He said, I'm on the phone. He said, do you mind.
Speaker 8: He said, I'm trying to. I'm trying to. He said
Speaker 8: I'm not interested. He said, just drive and I thought,
Speaker 8: well it is.
Speaker 1: It was rude. Frank climbed the UK charts immediately. Amy
Speaker 1: set off on to work captivating audiences around Europe with
Speaker 1: her other worldly sound Here's Polly again.
Speaker 9: The first time I saw her was not that long
Speaker 9: after the first time i'd heard her the Frank album,
Speaker 9: and it was completely by chance. I was in Harrogate,
Speaker 9: which is a northern town in the UK. I was
Speaker 9: there for a writer's festival and I was in this
Speaker 9: tiny little hotel and I walked up to the reception
Speaker 9: and there was a sign on the reception desk that
Speaker 9: said Amy Wynehouse Tickets for tonight sixteen pounds that's about
Speaker 9: thirty dollars. I was like, oh my god, I'm going.
Speaker 9: So I just bought a ticket and went that night.
Speaker 9: And it was a tiny little venue. I was probably
Speaker 9: in like the second or the third row, and it
Speaker 9: was just absolutely incredible. Like, hearing that voice in person
Speaker 9: is even more of an experience than hearing it on
Speaker 9: a record. Her band were amazing. She was just like
Speaker 9: chatting like you were her best mate in between songs.
Speaker 9: It was just one of the most memorable gigs I've
Speaker 9: ever been to, Absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: Amy wasn't anything like the pop star songstresses of the day,
Speaker 1: as Mark Ronson described in a twenty fourteen ted X talk.
Speaker 1: Her voice, her look, the be high, the eyeliner, it
Speaker 1: entranced us.
Speaker 3: There's no doubt that Amy had this love for this
Speaker 3: gospel soul and blues and jazz that was evident listening
Speaker 3: to the musical arrangement. So it was she brought the
Speaker 3: ingredients that made it urgent and of the time.
Speaker 1: If Amy Weinhouse could make magic in a recording studio,
Speaker 1: what she brought to those early live performances, it was
Speaker 1: nothing short of enchantment.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 4: I had a friend of mine who saw Amy perform
Speaker 4: at a university in the.
Speaker 11: UK when Amy might have been eighteen and she herself
Speaker 11: was a musician, and she said she came out of
Speaker 11: that thinking, I've just seen something unbelievable. I have never
Speaker 11: seen a performance liner from such a slight, tiny woman,
Speaker 11: this enormous power, this incredibly soulful voice.
Speaker 1: The critical acclaim rolled in hard and fast too. The
Speaker 1: New York Times described Frank as a glossy admixture of
Speaker 1: breezy funk, dub and jazz infected soul. The Guardian described
Speaker 1: her sound as somewhere between Nina's Amone Rikabadu. The Times
Speaker 1: called the album a staggeringly assured, sit up and listen debut,
Speaker 1: both commercial and eclectic, accessible and uncompromising. It was a hit,
Speaker 1: and despite the comparisons to the booming voices of motown legends,
Speaker 1: Amy became an unlikely soul star. She may have written
Speaker 1: and sung with the maturity and heartache of a seasoned
Speaker 1: blues matriarch, but Amy had written much of that album
Speaker 1: as a teenager. Now she was a petite young woman
Speaker 1: who the music world couldn't look away from. But the
Speaker 1: very best and the very worst was still yet to
Speaker 1: come for Amy Whitehouse.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying you can be hounded by the press,
Speaker 4: but you're gonna have certain responsibilities.
Speaker 7: They are going to come onto your doorstep that you
Speaker 7: may not.
Speaker 2: Particularly oay, And that's cool.
Speaker 5: But I think the more people see of me, the
Speaker 5: more they realize that all I'm good for is making tunes.
Speaker 7: So leave me alone and I'll do it.
Speaker 1: While it would go on to inspire her most renowned
Speaker 1: body of work and skyrocket hurty international fame, a toxic
Speaker 1: love affair was awaiting Amy, the grip of which would
Speaker 1: hold her so tightly it would crush her completely.
Speaker 4: So you have this extraordinary talent and at the same time,
Speaker 4: you've got this immense capacity for self destruction. So when
Speaker 4: she got it together with Blake, I mean, the scenes
Speaker 4: in the tableaus that were double Paige spread front page
Speaker 4: news inside front page news, and everybody knew where it
Speaker 4: was going to end.
Speaker 9: She wasn't with us very long, but she was entirely
Speaker 9: authentic in every single wayment that she was.
Speaker 1: Next time on Extraordinary Stories, Amy Winehouse has every success
Speaker 1: she's ever dreamt of at her fingertips, and in two
Speaker 1: thousand and five she meets the man of her dreams.
Speaker 1: His name is Blake feel.
Speaker 4: The civil Blake's mother said, you know that they're both
Speaker 4: as bad as each other, and to some degree that
Speaker 4: was true. But for Amy, she said, you know, he
Speaker 4: was my soulmate. He was a male version of me.
Speaker 1: Through throws of pain and joy. Amy will find inspiration
Speaker 1: from her deepest sorrows to produce her most poignant art,
Speaker 1: and nothing would ever be the same.
Speaker 8: Will you accept what I say when I say that
Speaker 8: she's doing great. She's working on a new album and
Speaker 8: she can't wait to get back into it again.
Speaker 1: Between her love for Blake and her adoration for her father,
Speaker 1: we'll investigate how the men in Amy's life both inspired
Speaker 1: and tormented her.
Speaker 12: I don't think her father's intentions were ever bad, but
Speaker 12: you know there's clearly along the way lots of people
Speaker 12: made bad judgment calls that maybe weren't the right calls
Speaker 12: for Amy.
Speaker 8: He said that he introduced Amy to Class A drugs.
Speaker 8: She took to it like a duck to water.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this episode of Extraordinary Stories.
Speaker 1: It was written and produced by me Emma Gillespie with
Speaker 1: Callieborg and Tea Usage. Audio production is by Madelin Joannu.
Speaker 1: The next episode of Extraordinary Stories will be released next week.
Speaker 1: If you don't want to wait, you can listen right
Speaker 1: now by following the link in the episode description or
Speaker 1: by heading to mammamea dot com dot a U forward
Speaker 1: slash M plus Mama Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of
Speaker 1: the land. We have recorded this podcast on the Gatagul
Speaker 1: people of the Eor Nation. We pay our respects to
Speaker 1: their elders past and present, and extend that respect to
Speaker 1: all Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander cultures.