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[Uno]

First half in this post, second half in next post ...

Soulful chanteuse Amy Winehouse reveals her passions, her dislikes (people who assume she has a drinking problem), and what's finally made her happy
By Chris Willman | May 18, 2007

Amy Winehouse is in her current uniform of choice, a teensy white tank top and denim shorts. Combine those with the mile-high hairdo, and the British soul songstress looks like a combination of Daisy Mae and '60s popper Lulu. She's visiting a radio station, L.A.'s Star 98, doing an acoustic live set before a small audience of contest winners. Between songs, the station's morning DJs are attempting to interview her, and as usual, she's charming and funny at times, and blatantly disinterested if the question doesn't catch her fancy.

"What was the main difference with the audiences over here, in response to your music, that you found from performing in London?" asks the DJ who calls himself Valentine.

"The big difference," she answers slowly, "is the crowds are...American." She gets a big laugh from the audience on that one.

They ask about Winehouse's recent engagement to off-again, on-again beau Blake Fielder-Civil, whom she lovingly calls "my boy."

She introduces her signature song, "Rehab," by saying, "Here is a song I wrote when he left me a couple years ago. I wrote the whole album about it, really. We went on our little separate ways, and then realized that we loved each other. Life's too short."

"You had other relationships while you were separated, right?" asks DJ Lisa Foxx.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had other relationships while we were together." Big, big laugh for that moment of candor.

In other moments, she's less engaged. They ask Winehouse if she finds American accents as sexy as we find British ones. (As if!) "Yeah, I guess so. Yeah." An awkward pause ensues. "Can we do a song?"

They want to know if she was an ordinary kid who at some critical moment discovered she had an extraordinary vocal gift. This flummoxes her. "Yeah, if you like. I don't know — yeah. I don't know. I don't know." They want to know how she discovered her voice. Winehouse looks bored but then brightens: "It's all in the hair."

"You feel like your hairstyle gives you attitude," says Foxx, "that it helps you hold it all together?"

Winehouse doesn't say another word, but just leans her beehive into the studio microphone and keeps it there, as if she is willing her hair to finish the rest of the interview for her. This pantomime doesn't make for great radio, but the in-studio crowd goes nuts.

In our own conversations with the rising star during that same visit to Los Angeles, we too found Winehouse sometimes impossibly charming, sometimes guarded. We quickly learned that certain fields of inquiry — anything having to do with success, demographics, marketing, or the nature of her growing appeal — are greeted with the same mantra about how she's "made an album [she's] really proud of," and how none of the rest of it matters. But get into it with her about her hair, her influences, or — to some extent — her love life, and she'll open up. Some of that interview appears in EW's spring music preview issue (on newsstands now), and here, as an EW.com exclusive, is more of our interchange with Britain's hottest export.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I get the feeling that conquering America wasn't necessarily a longtime goal of yours.
AMY WINEHOUSE: No, I mean, I just did an album that I'm really proud of, that means a lot to me, and I really stretched myself doing it. The fact that I get to come to other places other than where I live and I'm from, and do shows, that's just icing on the cake. I'm really proud of myself. I really love my album. That's pretty much the beginning and end for me. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm a really lucky girl.

Some of us thought your album would be a harder sell here than it turned out to be. It's been instantaneously successful without a huge radio hit or any of the obvious stuff. Some people thought it'd take a while to catch on, as there are retro elements, and older audiences don't turn out to buy CDs that quickly. Do you have a sense of who is buying it?
No. I mean, I just wrote the songs, and I sing them. That's pretty much it for me. I guess the rest of it's all record company stuff, right?

It's interesting that things are being marketed in different ways now. I feel like people are discovering you through exposure on things like Perez Hilton's website. I don't think anybody plans a marketing campaign around Perez Hilton, but he does have an impact, and there was nothing comparable to that a few years ago.
Yeah. [Awkward pause] I'm sorry. Like I said, I just make the records, and the rest of it, I don't even think about that. I don't really have much note of the marketplace or demographics or any of that other stuff like that, or even how things come about...I'm just a musician, really.

Fair enough. Now, I hate to be superficial and ask about your hair...
I would rather you did the whole interview about my hair.

When the music of this album was coming together, was there some sense in which you thought, I need to visually represent, somehow, what this sounds like?
Not consciously. I don't really think it was because of the album. But I know that over the last year that my hair has got significantly bigger.

Do you have good hive days and bad hive days?
Never. Never. My hair is always on point, even if the rest of me is really naff.

NEXT PAGE: "I'm not interested in writing songs so people can find out who I really am. I don't give a f---. There's stuff that I wouldn't want people to know."

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ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: "Back to Black" is your second album, though it's your first to be released in America. Your actual debut, "Frank," was much jazzier. When you were hitting upon what worked with this album, did you have that sense of, I'm finding who I really am with this? Was it, this is me now, or this is me forever?
AMY WINEHOUSE: No, when I went into this album, I just felt really sad. I felt really bad. I was clinically depressed, and I put it into music. And that was me at that time...I'm not a very premeditated person. I wrote my first album when I was listening to a lot of jazz, a lot of hip-hop. When I listen to my second album, I was listening to a substantially smaller amount of music — soul, doo-wop, girl groups — and it shows. I was just listening to very different types of music when I did two different albums.

Do you feel like you're a true romantic, or is there cynicism that keeps you from that?
No, I'm a very romantic person. I'm romantic about everything.

I think people think of you as being...
A miserable, cynical person?

No, not really. Some of the songs describe obsessive love, and listeners, whether they're in that moment or not, want to believe that's real for the singer, and that at the peak of experience you're that obsessive about love and who you're with.
Yeah. If you don't throw yourself into something, you'll never know what you could have had.

But then you have songs that might be construed as not so romantic, like "You Know I'm No Good." It's hard to pick up on your exact attitude about love, because...
Well, they're just the way I feel about certain things at a certain time, rather than who I really am. I'm not interested in writing songs so people can find out who I really am. I don't give a f---. There's stuff that I wouldn't want people to know.

Can we ask about the engagement? You must be very happy.
Yeah! I'm very happy, thank you.

That's less than a week old at this point, right?
Yeah, I think so.

How long have the two of you been back together?
Oh, we've been back together about a month, but we've been seeing a lot of each other for quite a few months. We are best friends, and it was a strain not to be able to see each other because we were both in other relationships. It's not nice to hurt other people's feelings, so...[long pause] I choose my words very carefully.

The boyfriend that you recently broke things off with was writing some mean stuff on his MySpace page about how upset he was that you were back together with Blake.
Well, understandably, he felt really hurt. And I think when we hurt, we all make things seem a certain way, or make things look worse than they are. I think he'll be all right. Something tells me he'll be all right.

We always end up reading about your love life and extracurricular exploits on Perez Hilton's site. And of course you're friends with him now. How did you meet?
I met him at some style awards thing, and I just loved him. I'd seen his site twice or something, and then Kelly [Osbourne] introduced us...I just thought, I like you. Because he's a bitch. Although, when I showed him my ring the other night...I went in to see him [at the gossip blogger's unofficial office, the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Sunset Blvd.], and he was like "Show me your ring, show me your ring," and I showed it to him, and he's like, "It's tiny!" And I'm just like, "Perez, you know what, you better be f---ing glad you're gay, because this is why no one is ever gonna buy you a ring."

NEXT PAGE: "I'll be all right by myself...You're just worried that we're gonna go and get a flight to Geneva, aren't you?"

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[Uno]

Second half ...


Amy Winehouse has a screw loose. Well, we're telling it wrong. The screw is still lodged where it belongs, in her pierced upper lip, but..."That little ball's popped off again! I knew it was the wrong f---ing size," she says, looking around the floor of the van, searching for the missing silver component. An assistant offers her a possible replacement in a Band Aid-like package. "Here she comes to save the day!" Winehouse sings, happily appropriating the "Mighty Mouse" theme in thanks.

We're on our way from the Star 98 mini-concert to the Los Angeles airport, where Winehouse will get on a plane to San Francisco, where she has a gig and — more importantly, for her — will be meeting up with her fiancé, who's coming over this same night from London. "Six and a half hours away from kissing Blake!" she gushes, counting the time like a smitten schoolgirl. "You can kiss him first, Tom," she tells her road manager. "What if he goes for you first? That'll be embarrassing! If you can't jump out of the way."

But then a dispute arises. She really wants to be alone at the San Francisco airport for this romantic reunion. The road manager is insistent that someone go along, "for safety reasons." It's not as if Winehouse can exactly go anywhere unrecognized nowadays, with her album having been in the Top 20 since it came out. "None of you have got to go with me. It's my boyfriend," she emphasizes, then proudly corrects herself. "My fiancé...I'll be all right by myself...You're just worried that we're gonna go and get a flight to Geneva, aren't you?" Well, it wouldn't be the first time she missed a gig...

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: When you canceled those London gigs at Shepherds Bush in March, right when you were breaking up with the other boyfriend, it made all the London papers, and got picked up on gossip websites over here. Were you surprised when you miss a gig that it's international news? There were all these pictures of you that day in the wine aisle of the market.
AMY WINEHOUSE: Oh, when I was walking my friend home, yeah yeah yeah. Yeah, you don't think it will get to that point, really.

And the worst part was that you let Sir Elton waiting! He was at the show you canceled, and his publicist issued a statement saying he was very sorry he didn't get to see the show.
Really? Sorry about that. There'll be a next time.

The latest story that came out of the Sun or one of those papers was that you were at a show and snapped at a promoter who offered you a drink, saying "I don't drink," which everyone found very strange.
Oh, that was a joke. We set that up together, me and the promoter. It was funny at the time. Well, I didn't think it was that funny. I just thought I'd let [the promoter] get away with a little joke, because he's rather funny.

When I saw you at the Leno set yesterday, one of your stylists was trying to get you to go out for a night of drinking, and you were turning him down.
No, I mean, I don't have a drinking problem. I just didn't feel like drinking. [To her manager] I only had one drink last night, didn't I? I was drinking Shirley Temples, and then I had a Jack and Coke. But that was it, really.

NEXT PAGE: "I made an album I'm really proud of. That's not the beginning or end of it, but for me, that's it."

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Do you ever feel like you might let people down, if they expect this hard-drinking raconteur, and you don't deliver?
No. If someone goes "Amy, let me buy you a tequila," and I'm like "No no, I'm not drinking," if they ask why, I always say that I'm on antibiotics. Because I'm ashamed to just go, "You know, I'm just not drinking." So I have to say that I'm on a course of medication. I feel ashamed.

Americans are very conflicted with our attitudes about consumption. There's a backlash against the rehab culture now, but still, people get nervous any time anything can be seen as promoting non-abstinence — like your song "Rehab." But there's that backlash where people say, maybe we had it right in the 1950s.
Yeah. Exactly. Everyone knows that there's certain things that aren't good for you, but there's a fine line between enjoying yourself and being completely healthy. You can be healthy to a point where you're not having fun anymore.

When your first album, "Frank," came out a few years ago in England, an interviewer at the time asked where you'd be 10 years from now, and you said...
Dead? Dead in a ditch, on fire?

Ha. No, quite the contrary. You said you envisioned yourself being a happy housewife with three kids. Now, if you still want to make that goal within a few years, you have some catching up to do.
Is that a proposition?

[Blushing] Ah, no, I'll leave that to the people that really deserve it. But my question is, are you at point now that you have to be a little bit careerist, think about what professional goals you want to set up for a few years' time, even in spite of not wanting to concern yourself with that stuff?
No, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. I made an album I'm really proud of. That's not the beginning or end of it, but for me, that's it. I've done it. The rest of it's just really nice, a lot of opportunities that I'm really pleased to have got.

You keep saying you're proud of your album. I'd be among the people who go the extra step toward saying this is a classic album. Do you see what other people see in it, to that extent?
I'm proud that I've got an album where I managed to turn something good out of some s---, and how bad I felt at the time. I still love the songs. I love playing 'em live. I love just sitting and playing 'em on occasion if I'm ever in my house, even. I REALLY like the album. I doubt other people like it as much as I do!

http://www.ew.com/ew...0038813,00.html

[Mrs. Jones]

I REALLY like the album. I doubt other people like it as much as I do!

Oh...Amy! If only you knew!!

[LiamSullivan]

"Is that a proposition?" Haha! God, she is great.

[amylove]

"She introduces her signature song, "Rehab," by saying, "Here is a song I wrote when he left me a couple years ago."

That's interesting... in the interview with Mitch I just watched didn't he say it was about the guy she wrote about in the Frank album?


Anyway, this interview is great.. so funny... why was she always so funny? Ugh.

Edited by allisost, 04 July 2012 - 06:31 PM.

[Mrs. Jones]

That's interesting... in the interview with Mitch I just watched didn't he say it was about the guy she wrote about in the Frank album?


.

Yes, I just heard Mitch's interview also where he gets confused and says Rehab is about the bloke from Frank... I don't think he's entirely reliable when it comes to details!

In one of his interviews (when the family was on TV in the states, can't remember which one), he claims that Amy wrote Rehab in 10 min at his house. He says something like "yeah, she was staying with me at the time, ans she wrote it at my house in like 10 minutes"...when in fact we all know she wrote it with ROnson in New York as they were walking down the street...
So I question his memory a little.

[amylove]

I thought it was interesting she said this:
Well, they're just the way I feel about certain things at a certain time, rather than who I really am. I'm not interested in writing songs so people can find out who I really am. I don't give a f---. There's stuff that I wouldn't want people to know.

[masterac]

"Do you ever feel like you might let people down, if they expect this hard-drinking raconteur, and you don't deliver?
No. If someone goes "Amy, let me buy you a tequila," and I'm like "No no, I'm not drinking," if they ask why, I always say that I'm on antibiotics. Because I'm ashamed to just go, "You know, I'm just not drinking." So I have to say that I'm on a course of medication. I feel ashamed."

This was my favorite part of the interview. We've all been in situations like that where we have to lie or quickly make something up cause we're embarrassed. I just love that she admits to doing little things like that.

It's funny, but she was kind of honest about being dishonest at times. lol.

[dunkinz]

When your first album, "Frank," came out a few years ago in England, an interviewer at the time asked where you'd be 10 years from now, and you said...
Dead? Dead in a ditch, on fire?

I know she was joking but still :'(
the rest was hilarious. as usual, typical Amy...."the musician" love her

[ancre]

I know she was joking but still :'(
the rest was hilarious. as usual, typical Amy...."the musician" love her

Yeah, as Amy's mum said once that Amy was never suicidal but fatalistic at times. And as the interview continues this way...

Journalist: Ha. No, quite the contrary. You said you envisioned yourself being a happy housewife with three kids. Now, if you still want to make that goal within a few years, you have some catching up to do.

Amy: Is that a proposition?

...we have our Amy back to the ironic and wit.