92 replies to this topic

[HelloSailor]

Thanks. I obviously can't read handwriting.

 

that's alright...I can't work out what sex she's meant to be

[Uno]

Janis mentions her weight in the prologue of the Kindle book that they have on the Amazon site, she also thought Amy was going to be a boy ...

I’ll never forget the midwife congratulating me on being so calm and quiet during the final stages. I couldn’t stop giggling because she’d clearly been oblivious to the screams I’d let out into the gas mask every time I held it to my mouth as I pushed down. ‘It’s a girl!’ I heard her announce as all 7lb 1oz of Amy finally popped out. I sat bolt upright. ‘Oh shit!’ I shouted, which probably sounded completely inappropriate, but my brain had to quickly readjust. A girl? Really? Wow.

[catpuss]

that's alright...I can't work out what sex she's meant to be

They havn"t put the sex on the card the HC 33cms is her head circumference, which is quite small in relation to her birthweight!!! This was probably just her cot card though not her baby labels

[amylove]

I don't know why I didn't think of that. I knew something was missing with the length being on there.

My parents thought I was going to be a boy too... they were very happy when I turned out not to be tho haha

[Uno]

Interview: Janis Winehouse
Memories of Amy - a mother's memoir

By Charlotte Oliver, September 23, 2014 (THE JEWISH CHRONICLE)


Janis Winehouse threw caution to the wind six months ago when she strapped a parachute to her body and jumped out of a plane flying at more than 13,000 feet. This would be challenging for anybody, but particularly someone struggling with the debilitating effects of Multiple Sclerosis on a daily basis.

But for the 59-year-old, backing out was not an option. Her go-to answer these days is simply "why not?" Besides, she had an important reason for completing the stunt. It was the final event to commemorate what would have been the 30th birthday of her late daughter, Amy. "I am one for living life," she says.

It is now more than three years since the death of the global icon who, in her short life, made an enormous impact on the musical world and beyond. We all know the story. The girl with bouffant hair, spine-tingling voice - and latterly multiple tattoos - who lived life in the fast lane and whose career progressed apace, before ultimately succumbing to the trappings of fame and addiction.

But for Janis Winehouse, who witnessed her daughter's rise and fall at close quarters, that narrative fails to grasp the core of the real Amy. Her newly published memoir, Loving Amy: A Mother's Story, is her attempt to set the record straight.

"It was important for me to show a different side to her, the much softer side to the persona," she says. "Amy hid behind her beehive hair in public because it made her feel more comfortable. She could use it as a prop, but it wasn't the real her. She was a very complex person, and deliberately so."

Winehouse says her decision to write the book - charting Amy's life from the day of her birth at Chase Farm Hospital in north London to the very end - was not one she took lightly. She first considered the idea in 2007, but was then warned off it by her daughter, who told her: "I don't want people to know who I am."

Now the book serves as both a handy resource for others with drug-addicted friends and family, as well as a deeply personal memento for the writer. "The condition that I have affects memory," she says. "I thought I had to do it while I could still remember all my stories about her. It felt good to relive them - a therapeutic experience. For me, it is a very personal thing. It is not about a famous person. It is about a real person. I wanted to show that these issues can affect anyone.

"I worry about the day when Amy stops being alive in my head and my heart," she adds. Not the performer whose bleary-eyed images were emblazoned across the world's tabloids in her final years, but the little girl who attended Yavneh nursery at Cockfosters and North Southgate Synagogue and portrayed Rizzo with impressive accuracy in an Osidge Primary School production of Grease.

The book is certainly insightful, offering rare glimpses behind the maelstrom of Amy's public life. One revelation is the crippling pressure the singer felt to surmount the success of her second album Back to Black, which went eight-times platinum.

Winehouse herself learned a lot about her daughter by "asking friends and family to recall their stories and find old photos. It was painful for me and for a lot of people. There were a lot of tears. But then there was also a lot of laughter."

One anecdote was of an eight-year-old Amy convincing her friend, Michael - the son of Winehouse's now husband, Richard - to race their bicycles downhill "with their trousers and pants around their knees and their bums in the air". When told off by a stunned elderly man, Amy responded with a V-sign.

"I couldn't believe that story when Michael told me," Winehouse laughs. "But then I'm sure they got up to far worse. The happiest part of writing this book for me was recalling her childhood. My coping tool is to find the humour in these things."

Winehouse - who became a grandmother for the first time in the week of the book's publication - says its completion brought a sense of closure, after a year of "sleepless nights" as she relived the highs and lows of Amy's life.

She is now focused on the future and ensuring that some good comes from tragedy through the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which she runs with her ex-husband, Mitch. All author proceeds will be donated to the charity, which works in the UK and the US to educate about drugs and treat addiction, and also to help nurture talent in the young and disadvantaged.

"We send reformed alcoholics and drug addicts into more than 200 schools across the country who tell it like it is. It is important to get to children at a young age because there is still not enough understanding or awareness. It's not about lecturing them, but giving them the honest facts.

"It also helps the recovering addicts. It puts them back in the system. By employing them, we are helping their recovery."

Among the foundation's diverse projects, it feeds more than 60 homeless children in central London every night, runs music therapy at the Haven House Children's Hospice in Woodford Green, Essex, and finances gifted, underprivileged children at the Brooklyn Music Conservatory in New York. It has also made a sizeable donation to Norwood, a poignant contribution for Winehouse, whose father was a Norwood orphan.

"To be able to link Amy's name to something so important is very satisfying," Winehouse reflects. "We knew something positive had to come from her passing."

Later this month, she and her husband will fly to St Lucia, the Caribbean island that became Amy's refuge in the last few years of her life, to present a cheque to the governor-general and prime minister. The money will be used to help children from impoverished backgrounds. She says the trip will be an "emotional experience", given that she last went to the island in 2009 to visit her daughter.

"Amy was so happy there," she recalls. "She was comfortable and free to run around and be herself, without having to deal with reporters. She didn't have to be Amy Winehouse any more." A week ago, she also attended the unveiling of a life-size bronze statue of Amy in Camden.

Her greatest hope is that the memoir will "set the record straight once and for all". To this end, she is at pains to stress that Amy had stopped using heroin by 2011 and had "turned a corner". It was alcohol that had caused her death. Beyond that, she wants to shed light on a complex, extraordinary talent. "I look at photos of her as a child and can't quite believe it," she says. "She was just my little girl, who I used to tell to shut up when she wouldn't stop singing."

http://www.thejc.com...janis-winehouse

[DARE TO BE D]

finished the book.. I found this book to be the best one i have read about Amy.

I love how she is  honest about Mitch .. How she points about the difference between " Daddy Mitch & Mitch Winehouse.

How she thanks her Fans and actually appreciates the Love we have for Amy..

READ THIS BOOK.. You will get to know Amy and for that I am grateful.. 

[melnyk]

Yes, the book is great. I'm reading and dragging it as slowly as I can, because I don't want it to come to the end. And I'd be so happy if the end hadn't come...

[Amy Jenna Harper]

Where did you find the book?like amazone??
After Mitch ,Janis,thats very cool !!!

[Tara]

A 5-Star Amazon review from me: "This is probably the best book published about Amy Winehouse to date, and given her mother's unique insight I'm not sure it can be improved upon. Unlike Amy's father, Janis has largely stayed out of the limelight. And while Mitch Winehouse may have been more involved in the tabloid drama of Amy's final years, it's clear that Janis was the main caregiver during Amy's childhood and adolescence. So even if she wasn't 'in the thick of it' later on, she remained a grounding influence until the very end. Ultimately this is a sad book, but with her wisdom and compassion, Janis Winehouse brings a clarity to her daughter's life story that has been lacking for so long. All profits go to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which is making great strides in helping other young people struggling with addiction."

[Fierce]

For now I'm reading book too.

So many rare pics and truly brilliant information... It's like I'm sitting next to Janis and listen to her story

 

[Uno]

Fresh from my inbox ..

 

Your Amazon.com order of "Loving Amy" has shipped!

 

I can't wait

[YouShouldBeStrongerThanMe]

This is the best book written about Amy. Read it. For once you really get to know who Amy was. I also loved to read about Janis. 

First book where I cried and laughed! 

[YouShouldBeStrongerThanMe]

Can I share some of my favorite moments from the book? (Well, you can't say no because I'm going to post it before you even know it, ha!)

 

Amy meeting Riva, now Alex's wife, for the first time. I thought it was a great moment that made me smile. I have always imagined Amy to be shy, well, now I know for sure she was.

 

"Because Alex and Riva had only just started dating, Riva hadn't met Amy before, but she'd loved Amy's music and she'd seen her occasionally in the bars in Camden Amy used to go to. She confesses now that she had naturally assued Amy would be intimidating and that she hadn't been sure of what to expect. But Amy was infinitely more nervous about meeting Riva. 

We were let in by one of the security staff, but Amy was upstairs in her bedroom on the mezzanine floor and when Alex called her up  she refused to come down.

Riva laughs about it now - four years later she married Alex - but God knows what she must have thought. The three of us ended up chatting in the living room below for a couple of hours with Amy occasionally interjecting comments from above. When Riva talked about her family in Blackpool and how she missed being near her own mum, suddenly we heard 'Awww, that's so sweet!" from upstairs. 

Occasionally Amy would bob her head over the balcony. All Riva could see was a mass of beehive hair, but whenever Rica looked up Amy would quickly disappear back behind the mezzanine wall. " (205)

 

This is the part when Amy had some trouble with the law, but it really shows how funny and lovely Amy was. I loved this part! 

 

"But there's another drawing of Amy by the same artist that I would have loved: Amy  with her bar leg outstretched, pointing her toe under the nose of the district judge. He asked if it was possible for her to have intimidated Ms Flash that evening. A 'yes' or 'no' was not enough for Amy.

She marched out from behind the witness stand, lifted her leg up above her waist and gestured towards her ballet pumps. 'Could someone with feet this small be intimidating?' she asked him. 

Apparently, he was lost for words." (223)

 

I cried when Janis mentioned the day Amy won 5 grammys because I remember the night so clear. I cheered for Amy. I thought it was one of her best performance she had done in a long time. She seemed happy. It was a very emotional day and it surprised me that I began to cry when I read it again. 

 

I struggled through the last pages. I feel so sorry for Janis (and of course the rest of Amy's family). The last time she saw Amy, Amy was really drunk, but I'm so happy that Janis got to say she loved Amy before they said goodbye. Heartbreaking.

 

“Evertime I opened or closed my eyes I saw Amy. I trawled through the events of Friday, 22 July - the last time I'd seen her alive. She was drunk, yes, but did that mean by the morning she'd be dead? I kept going over our goodbye, how she'd draped her arms around me and how, as we left, I had told her that I loved her. I desperately held on to that. 

I told her that I loved her. She died knowing that.”

 

GO buy this book! It was a great experience. I didn't want to finish the book, because it was like to say goodbye to Amy again but it also felt like a closure. A great one. I'm also pleased that the money will go to the foundation. 

[Yousaymyname]

I agree with all posters who said 'you really get to know Amy' through this book. Janis has done herself, Amy and the family proud in writing this. I think someone else said on this thread that it feels like closure, I definitely feel that also. It's lovely to see that Amy wasn't just her stage/public persona and to read how Janis illustrates her as just an ordinary girl. I think that is why us fans loved her so much and continue to do so. Janis shows how Amy was also the same as any person who succumbs to addiction and/or eating disorders/ and possibly mental health issues.

I feel this also chronicles her downfall very well, as Janis mentions that she feels Amy may have been too young for her own success. I always suspected that, and Janis has given all of us fans a gift, an insight into her beautiful daughter who was so headstrong, and such a hell raiser naturally! The photo of her as a baby in her pram with the little bow is so cute, but if you look closely near her hand and the strap, it looks like some kind of light there, I imagined I could see Amy with her beehive! ... I hope the family will find peace in their new addition with Alex's new baby. Great book. Read it, buy it, the money goes to the foundation! 

[Yousaymyname]

Please Janis and Mitch let it out there eventually .