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2003 Interview with Amy - The Guardian


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#1 Lainey

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Posted 14 April 2008 - 10:14 PM

Here's an early interview with Amy From the Guardian in October 2003. Wearing the ballet pumps back then, too!

Dietrich with a nose-stud

Her voice belongs in a 1940s jazz bar. But Amy Winehouse may be the future of hip-hop. Dave Simpson meets her

Tuesday October 28, 2003
The Guardian

At 15, Amy Winehouse had everything going for her. She was a pupil at London's Sylvia Young stage school; her classmates included Billie Piper, Matt Jay of Busted and Jon Lee of S Club 7. Her headmaster, however, was on the warpath. He didn't much take to her "desecration" of the "prissy" school uniform, nor a perceived "lack of application". The final straw came when the elfin teen turned up in class wearing a nose-stud. She says mischievously: "I was expelled."

Now just turned 20, the Londoner is having the last laugh. Winehouse's debut album, Frank, is receiving the kind of reviews that come along once in a career. Some critics have mentioned her "extraordinary voice". Others purred: "The best British debut in years." Frank's delirious mix of styles has prompted fevered - if bewildered - comparisons to everyone from Lauryn Hill to Stevie Wonder. "I'm most pleased when they mention Minnie Ripperton," Winehouse says. "I'm less flattered by comparisons to Macy Gray."

Her attitude has not dimmed since her school reports: the offending nose-stud, for one thing, has been augmented by a fetching silver cheek attachment ("I've had everything pierced at some point"). The music on Frank is the product of that rebelliousness. Winehouse's raspy vocals could have come from a smoky jazz bar in the 1940s; her grooves bear the subtle stamp of hip-hop. The two genres are not expected to meet. "When people say things like that I wonder, 'But why not?'" she grins.

Winehouse is in Manchester to play her first gig outside London. In the brief period before our interview starts, she charges excitedly into the wrong venue, confuses a student radio interviewer by raving about Thelonious Monk ("He's, uh, an old dead guy") and coaxes her road manager into giving her a piggyback across Manchester city centre. "My new ballet shoes and wet pavements don't mix," she explains.

Winehouse's songs radiate this kind of feistiness. In the Marlene Dietrichesque Stronger Than Me, she moans about an older lover who has become the weaker partner ("I'm not gonna meet your mother any time, I just wanna rip your body over mine"). Fuck Me Pumps blasts wit at the Footballers' Wives woman ("At least your breasts cost more than hers"). Elsewhere she shows great maturity in her dissection of rejection and fracturing relationships.

As most critics have noted, Winehouse's songs sound as if they come from a 60-something world-weary old lady, not a young girl. "So people say," she muses, gearing up for the interview with a packet of cigarettes and two glasses of Jack Daniel's. "But it's not as if I've lived."

Well, that's not entirely true. Her family life sounds like an episode of The Sopranos. Mystery surrounds the employment history of her father, a cabbie now who was once "shady. He moved house every two years. I've no idea what he was trying to run from." He left the family home under a cloud when Winehouse was nine, leaving her to compete with her older brother for the attentions of various strong women, notably her grandmother, who is "abrupt, frank" and has been 62 "for at least 16 years".

The various houses buzzed to the sounds of Julie London and "Dino" (Dean Martin) and, later, Winehouse's modern favourites like Erykah Badu and Mos Def. She picked up a guitar aged 13, rehearsing singing by "imagining Tony Bennett was in the audience".

A stage school scholarship was her first big break. After she was expelled she went to an all-girls school, and in the absence of male company got intimate with the music room piano. Subsequently, she drifted from pool halls to covers bands to the studio - and now she is amazed that she has made an album at 20. "My plan was to get to this point by 30."

It's difficult to remember that Winehouse is still not long out of childhood. Much of Frank documents her highly complex relationships with males. What Is It About Men dissects her father's serial infidelities and her own teenage experiences as "the other woman"; Winehouse now finds it too personal to perform. "Writing it made me realise a lot about myself and why Dad cheated," she explains. "I've grown to realise he's not a big bastard, just a man with a dick."

And several songs, including Stronger Than Me, derive from a torrid nine-month relationship she had with her "extremely emotional" older boss while working in a London office. "He's pissed off with me," she sighs.

But Winehouse has also written a song lamenting her dead canary. She is prone to the odd crass, juvenile statement ("I don't have emotional needs, only physical ones"), and has entertainingly brattish moments, too, as when she says: "It scares me that people still buy Dido!"

Bizarrely, her biggest worry is that she's already past it. "I'm 20 now," she sighs. "I smoke a lot of weed anyway and feel like I'm losing it." Still, at least she'll never have to hear what her old head-master makes of her career. "He got the sack," she says, "shortly after getting rid of me."

· Frank is out now on Island.


And the photo that came with the article is attached.

#2 veronika

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 01:35 AM

Nice interview, thanks for posting Lainey!

#3 Alfredo_t

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 05:37 AM

Thanks for posting. I LOVE the Amy quotes!

#4 Mimi

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 12:50 PM

"I've grown to realise he's not a big bastard, just a man with a dick."



:amylove:

#5 kevd7

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Posted 15 April 2008 - 02:29 PM

"Now just turned 20, the Londoner is having the last laugh." Haha...reminds me of another chic singer from yesteryear who said in an interview she was going home to her high school's 10th anual renunion to "laugh alot"..."they laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state, man...so i'm goin' home!!" Success can be oh so sweet in many ways!!!

#6 suestev07

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Posted 16 April 2008 - 02:18 AM

Wonderful article. Thanks so much for posting Lainey.

"Bizarrely, her biggest worry is that she's already past it. "I'm 20 now," she sighs. "I smoke a lot of weed anyway and feel like I'm losing it."

Interesting....




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