Tom Dunne: Rare generational talent of the late Amy Winehouse
A new book successfully reclaims and preserves Amy Winehouse, the friend Tyler James met when they were both kids. Picture: PA Photo/Organic
I still remember the CD. It was in the litter bin, with just its top peeking out. From across the studio I could just about make out the word 'Amy'. "Nah, couldn’t be," I thought. This cannot be the five-track album sampler of Back To Black. In the bin? Surely not.
Earlier that day I had been exposed to Rehab. I was mesmerised. I called the label. "Who on earth is this?" I’d asked. They were giddy with excitement. But in this pre-download age the only other tracks they had were on a five-track sampler. It had already gone in.
The CD I fished out of the bin had Tears Dry On Their Own on it. Somebody working at a music station had heard that track and hadn’t rated it. I played it that night and every night after. It and the album, Back to Black, one of those rare instances of music that will top the charts and wow the music specialist audiences.
Since then, the phrase used to describe Amy Winehouse has been ‘generational talent.’ I subscribe to that and every song I’ve heard, interview she’s done, or film that I’ve watched have confirmed it. I simply marvel at her talent.
But I never got to interview her. Two chats were scheduled, but in the chaotic post Back to Black world, neither happened. And then of course, almost inevitably it seemed, she was gone. I did get to talk to her dad: heartbroken by her loss, bewildered by her talent.
I thought I would never get much closer to answering the questions of where that talent came from or how she got so good, so fast. Or, as you watched her frightening decline in Asif Kapadia’s brilliant film, Amy, discovering why everyone seemed so powerless to stop the forces destroying her.
Until this week. This week, as we approach the 10th anniversary of her passing, I talked to Tyler James, the author of My Amy, The Life We Shared. He was Amy’s best friend since they met in stage school, aged 12, and her frequent flatmate right up to her death.
There is a magic in early pages. Two kids goofing off, getting in trouble and making each other laugh. The first time they met was singing Happy Birthday in school. He did a Stevie Wonder-styled version. She put her arm around him and did her version. He, too, gasped in astonishment.
But the school they were in was more like a Hogwarts than your local secondary. The Sylvia Young Stage school turns out talents like their classmate Billie Piper. It is not unusual on graduation to find yourself in the latest boy band, selling millions and touring the world.
But Tyler and Amy had their sights set elsewhere. Amy was quickly signed to two deals, each worth a quarter of a million. Tyler was writing songs with other people and an offer of £500,000 was soon on the table. At one point they shared a place in LA, with Amy swooning locals bars with her version of Carole King’s So Far Away.
These were heady days, but Tyler recalls the moment it all changed. He’d heard her work on Rehab, downstairs in their flat for weeks, but one night he heard the produced version. "Amy," he said fatefully, "this is going to change everything." The extent to which it changes was captured masterfully in the Asif Kapadia film. There, it starts with a lone camera flash which then builds to a deafening crescendo of camera clicks, shouting voices and blinding lights. It is the moment fame subsumes Amy.
What happened next is well documented but still an uneasy read. "Don’t put your daughter on the stage," Noel Coward had warned back in 1935, because if you do and she falls ill and leaves it, the record company will tell her bodyguards to carry her back on, barely conscious or not.
Tyler’s triumph with this book is to reclaim and preserve the friend he met when they were both kids. A reformed addict himself, they were living together when she died. To try and stop her relapses into drinking he would leave every time she did.
That last time had been like all the others. She’d called him to apologise and he’d agreed to come back the next day, assuming she was good to her word and stopped. But the next day there was an ambulance at the flat as he arrived. This time it wasn’t like the others.
