By Daphne Barak
Last updated at 10:00 PM on 06th February 2010
One of the greatest and certainly most original talents to emerge in the 21st Century, Amy Winehouse fascinates us all. Everyone loves to read about Amy. Her dissolute lifestyle, her turbulent on-again, off-again relationship with Blake Fielder-Civil, and her erratic performances both on and off stage make headlines round the world.
As a journalist, film-maker and author, I have spent months with her father Mitch, his second wife Jane, Amy’s mother Janis and with Amy herself in London, Switzerland and St Lucia for my book Saving Amy – which is published on Thursday – and an accompanying documentary. My aim was to show the love, fear and powerlessness that families experience as they watch the lives of loved ones spiral out of control. The one constant is the love that Mitch and Janis have, and often express, for Amy. But is that love healthy? How much of her addiction is fuelled by something in her past? How much stems from the relationship that Amy has with Mitch, and the other women in his life? Is it possible that families sometimes fuel the addictions of their loved ones? And what can be done to break the cycle?
For me, one question stands out: just what happened to Amy Winehouse in the past to make her pursue the path which she is following? In November 2008, I meet Mitch at Les Ambassadeurs, a private members’ club in Mayfair. As we talk, his mobile suddenly rings and his face lights up. ‘It’s Amy!’ he exclaims before chatting animatedly with his daughter.
Mitch is obviously pleased, but for the rest of our meeting, I notice he periodically glances at his phone, almost willing it to ring again. When I mention his anxiety, he admits: ‘I worry when I get a phone call because I don’t know what bad news I may get. But I’m just as worried when I don’t hear because I don’t know what might have happened.’ This love and fear for Amy is a recurring theme throughout my many conversations with the Winehouse family. But I can’t help wondering how much of her addiction is rooted in her childhood, in her parents’ divorce and in the way she is treated by her parents now – as a naughty child, rather than an adult.
During my time with the Winehouses I’m struck by the different approaches that Mitch and Janis take to their daughter. Janis is a trained pharmacist who has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
Although Mitch states that he can’t ‘lock Amy up’ he is always keeping an eye on her. Her bodyguards are constantly reporting back to him on Amy’s whereabouts and he seems to devote all of his time to trying to save his daughter from her addictions. Janis’s fatalistic view and her almost cold acceptance that only Amy can help herself is the opposite of Mitch’s behaviour. Mitch seems to have little real understanding of the difficult dynamic within his family, as I witnessed first hand at a party I threw for him in late December 2008, again at Les Ambassadeurs. Flanked by his beautifully turned-out first and second wives, he told me: ‘Somehow I managed to find this woman [gesturing to Janis] first of all, and this lovely lady [Jane] after that. They’re not so lucky. I’m the lucky one and this is what it’s all about. OK, these women are just fantastic. They are strong women, Janis and Jane. I love them both – only Jane just a little bit more. So, that’s the way that it goes.’
Mitch tells me his relationship with his ex-wife is still warm. ‘We get on great. What is even nicer is that Janis and my wife, Jane, get on very well. My wife is a nice person. My ex-wife is a nice person and I like to think that I am a nice person.’ But Janis says that one of the hardest things she had to face when Amy was hospitalised with a serious lung infection in November 2008 was the fact that Jane was sitting on the other side of her daughter’s bed.
And despite all his protestations of happy families, there is no doubt that the pivotal event in the life of the Winehouse family was Mitch and Janis’s separation in 1992, when Amy was just nine years old and her brother Alex, 12. Janis recalls that Amy missed Mitch not being around – he was a travelling salesman and Jane was his long-term secretary – and that this might be why there is a lot of anger in her songs. Indeed, Mitch’s treatment of Janis and his affair with Jane is certainly something Amy deals with in her song What Is It About Men.
If, as Mitch insists, the family was all kisses and cuddles before he walked out on his wife and children, the subsequent divorce must have been even more painful for those he left behind.
He tells me: ‘I have looked back and thought how could we have done things differently. Maybe if I had stayed with Amy’s mum – I was not unhappy with her but I wanted to be with Jane. What would that have done to me? Maybe it would have made the situation worse. ‘Maybe if I had been firmer with Amy. Maybe I was too firm. We did the best that we could in our own limited way. We encouraged our children, we didn’t bully them and we didn’t hit them . . . maybe we could have done better, I don’t know.’
But Janis denies that the divorce had an effect on her daughter’s life. ‘No, no, no,’ she tells me. ‘It was life’s experience – and that’s it. We go through life and we experience it in our own way.’ However, it was clear by the time Amy was 14 that she was starting to act up in earnest. ‘She began to stay out all night,’ says Mitch. ‘I had to go and find her and I was convinced that she was dead. That is the way that my mind works, unfortunately. ‘I would be driving through the streets of North London looking for her, knocking on people’s doors . . . completely irrational, but that’s the way you are where your children are concerned.’
I ask him if he thought Amy did it on purpose. ‘It’s possible, but I don’t think so. I don’t think Amy has ever thought through the consequences of her actions. She has never taken responsibility for her actions. I don’t think she was any different to how she is now.’ I comment that anorexia sufferers often don’t want to be treated as women; they want to be treated like little children. ‘I am not a psychiatrist,’ he says. ‘But I would say that would be fairly accurate. She has found it difficult doing what she has done for so many reasons and maybe deep inside her mind she would prefer it to be as it was. A lot less complicated, like when she was 14 years old.’ I know many people believe Mitch is capitalising on his daughter’s fame and enjoying a luxurious lifestyle at her expense. While I do believe that Mitch really cares about Amy and would do anything to help her, I think that the money is a real issue. Mitch brings up Amy’s finances in our interviews and it does seem to be an important topic for him.
He says: ‘The thing Amy loves more than anything else is to perform live. But at her worst, she was taking ridiculous decisions. She was about to board the plane for one concert, when she turned around and walked off. That cost her £80,000 in lost fees. There was a missed performance later in Paris that cost her maybe £100,000. I tried to sit down and explain to her what this was going to cost her and she didn’t care.
‘At that early stage in her career, that could make or break her. I remember thinking to myself, “My daughter is going to be a superstar with absolutely no money.” Although we don’t care about money per se, you wouldn’t want to be without it.’ When I first met Mitch and we began this project together, he was not in full control of Amy’s money. However, when Amy was in hospital in November 2008, the step was taken to put Mitch and Janis in control. I don’t doubt that he had good intentions and, at that point, I thought it was a good idea, as it would help to stop Amy spending her money on drugs.
Edited by Lainey, 06 February 2010 - 11:34 PM.
