It remains a cultural meme, documenting the deaths of celebrities, some noted for their high-risk lifestyles. Names are often put forward for inclusion, but because the club is entirely notional, there is no official membership.
"Often as a result of drug and alcohol abuse, or violent means such as homicide, suicide, or transportation-related accidents."
AMY WINEHOUSE
Amy Jade Winehouse was born on 14 September 1983. Winehouse is an English singer-songwriter, known for her eclectic mix of various musical genres including R&B, soul, and jazz. Winehouse won five categories at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Amy Winehouse is best known for her powerful contralto vocals and substance abuse and mental health issues. In 2005, she went through a period of drinking, heavy drug use, violent mood swings and weight loss. Amy Winehouse was found dead at her home on the afternoon of 23 July 2011.
B is for booze: ‘Rehab’, undoubtedly Amy’s biggest hit, was written in just 6 hours with close collaborator Mark Ronson. The singer’s other major vice also began with a b – her tempestuous on-again off-again relationship with husband Blake Fielder-Civil was the subject of many of her best-loved tracks. “I go back to things I maybe shouldn’t,” the singer said in 2004.
E is for early troubles: according to biographer Chloe Govan, Winehouse attempted suicide aged 10, shortly after her father Mitch Winehouse left mother Janis for another woman known as “daddy’s work wife”. Govan claims that Amy was so devastated by her parents’ separation that she fell into a spiral of self-harming, took an overdose of pills and was found by a friend foaming at the mouth.
I is for ink: Among Amy’s many tattoos were a razor blade over her heart with ‘Blake’ written above it, a native American feather, ‘Daddy’s Girl’, a naked woman, her grandmother Cynthia, a horse shoe, an anchor surrounded by the word ‘Hello Sailor’ and a lightning bolt she joked as liking because “like me, lightning’s a natural disaster!”
Henry Hate, the London tattoo artist who got to know Winehouse well, it has been painful to watch. “Fans sometimes come into my shop to ask me to tattoo her image. I don’t do it. For some people she is a caricature, an image. The girl I knew is the one that came into my shop all those times with not enough money on her phone,” he said.
K is for Kalemegdan Park: Amy’s last ever gig was at Kalemegdan Park in Serbia on June 18 2011. The show made international headlines after footage emerged appearing to show the star drunk and incapable of performing, but it’s widely understood that Winehouse was clean at the time of her death, leading her father to speculate that detoxing had killed her.
"Anna Joe Kida, a member of Zemlja Gruva has claimed that Amy Winehouse tried to leave the stage area before she was forced to perform in front of the baying crowd. The band who played alongside Amy Winehouse at the city's Kalemegdan Park says that Winehouse did try to leave the arena but was physically thrown onto stage. Anna Joe Kida has said: Four British bodyguards simply pushed her to step up on stage. She did not want to and was making a scene trying to escape them. It was distressing to see, she obviously needed help.""
O is for Ol’ Blue Eyes: Frank Sinatra was a major influence on Amy – so much so, she named her first album after the crooner (the title was also a nod to her honest lyrical style). Amy grew to dislike the record, however. “I’ve never heard the album from start to finish. I don’t have it in my house… Everything was a shambles,” she told the Observer.
Cynthia
As is well known, Amy went off the rails around 2006. She stopped looking after herself, and turned from a fresh-faced, curvy young lady into an increasingly tormented figure. Episodes of drug overdoses, self-harming, public scraps and tears became commonplace. She began to cancel concerts or appear on stage late and recklessly intoxicated. It was a shocking and striking change. Everyone wondered what had happened to her. Many assumed that the cause of this change was her relationship with the notorious Blake Fielder-Civil, which began around this time. However, her father Mitch has always said that the downturn in his daughter's life began after his mother Cynthia died in 2006.
Cynthia Winehouse was a singer herself who once dated jazz legend Ronnie Scott. That relationship ended due to an unbridgeable obstacle: Winehouse would not sleep with Scott until they married, whereas he would not marry her until they had slept together. Cynthia's influence on her granddaughter was forceful: so much so that Amy got her grandmother's name tattooed on her right arm. It was Cynthia as much as anyone who encouraged Amy to become a singer. They were like two peas in a pod: no wonder Amy was spellbound by her grandmother and so devastated by her death.
Winehouse wanted Hate to help her with a tribute to her father’s mother, Cynthia, once a singer. “She told me exactly what tattoo she wanted in honour of her nan. She was very direct. I just called my partner and warned him I was going to be late,” said Hate. “As we talked, we really did click. She was funny. I even let her smoke in the shop.”
There was a less conventional dimension to the spell her grandmother cast on Amy: Cynthia was a keen Tarot card reader. Amy inherited her grandmother's belief in the power of Tarot: she was often seen with a pack of Tarot cards in her hand and when asked if she believed her grandmother could read the future, Amy nodded solemnly and said "Cynthia knew..."
Given the reckless, fatalistic way Amy began to behave in the aftermath of Cynthia's death, the question arises: had something she had read in the cards disturbed her? There are hints in the grave mood and lyrics of her second album to suggest that she believed she was doomed. In the titular Back To Black, Amy sang about her "odds being stacked" and in Love Is A Losing Game she lamented receiving a "losing hand".
Meanwhile, she became obsessed with her own mortality. The video for her single Back To Black featured her at a funeral. When television presenter Simon Amstell asked her what had happened to the more wholesome Amy of the Frank era, she replied: "She's dead". Friends and colleagues confirm that death became a subject of increased conversational interest to Amy.
The narrative that painted her as a helpless naïf, led astray by a manipulative Blake Fielder-Civil, was always unfair on both of them. Fielder-Civil is not that sinister or capable, Amy was never that malleable. Could it be that her downfall was as much due to her dabbling with divination as drugs?
Death
Blake, who claims Amy drank miniatures to feed her addiction to booze, apparently regrets his ex never got to have a family of her own. ‘If she’d thought she was pregnant, she’d have stopped drinking in a heartbeat,’ he added. ‘It would have saved her because I think secretly she craved a reason to stop hurting herself so badly. She just didn’t love herself to do it on her own.’ - Q is for quitting showbiz: Winehouse appeared to have plans to leave behind singing before her death in 2011 to concentrate on family life. “I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mum and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends,” she told the Observer.
He believes years on her death was a kind of suicide saying: ‘Maybe she expected someone to come in and stop her, take the bottle away. But instead she was left alone to drink herself to death in that house.
Conclusion
As well as all of this research I watched the documentary 'Amy' for a better insight and learnt a lot about her personality and those who surrounded her. You hear the story of her downward spiral and a lot of it was down to her ex husband Blake, as well as her father failing to help her, and the world around her e.g. the press and other celebrities and media making fun of her when she was desperately in need of help.
I want to create a piece of work that focuses on something that was good in her life, however something that also undoubtedly contributed to her life choices or lack thereof. Her paternal Grandmother Cynthia.
Birthdate: October 21, 1927
Birthplace: London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Death: May 2006 (78)
Barnet, Greater London, England, United Kingdom
No comments:
Post a Comment