I live In Camden and think that Amy was the greatest thing to come out of my borough. I moved to Camden when Back to Black hit the charts and lived round the corner from her house. I saw her falling through Camden High Street with rich kid hipsters, failed indie bands and anyone who wanted in for the ride. I saw loads of bands like that, some sold some records and some didn’t but on the scale of making a world changing album, only Amy managed that.
I saw Amy live a few times. Sometimes she was terrible, sometimes she was great. I could say the same about so many bands or acts that have turned up drunk, wasted or disinterested and been booed off stage while I waited to be entertained: Oasis at Wembley, Diana Ross in Vegas and, last month, Carl Barat at a corporate gig for journalists. But I know those people are great, I’ve seen them prove it before and I forgive their fuck ups because my record collection wouldn’t be the same without them and what little Amy put on record was incredible.
The loss of Amy is massive to music because she inspired everyone as well as writing her own incredible songs. The dark mix of failed bands that trailed her, desperate to appear in the papers or on a support slot, were just as bad as the rich hipsters and label marketeers who wanted to inject some glamour into their dull lives by living the life of a weekend rockstar and snorting coke with the tourists in the toilets of the Hawley Arms.
My commute often took me past Amy’s record label and I caught snippets of loud conversations from marketing types at the label, excited about new tracks from Amy that never came. As the months passed, their excitement turned to frustration and then to jokes. Recently, I often spend some time in a members club where I hear the same type of people talk about the excitement of Adele, then reference Amy as the blueprint for commercial success as a female artist. The pressure seems immense and while I’m sure Adele can handle the pressure from her label, there’s a line that needs to be drawn. Is it a good idea to play festivals in foreign countries if you’re tired, recovering from addiction and emotional? Isn’t that like checking out of the Priory and getting on the helicopter to Glastonbury?
When Babyshambles were on the bill at Reading festival, I sat backstage watching a group of thirty people carry someone into the enclosure. I assumed that they had passed out or been injured. But the person was conscious, drunk and being positioned for photos with strangers like a confused puppet. Then I saw the hat and realised. It was Pete Doherty. The similarities with Amy are obvious. Same bars, same fans, same hangers on.
Amy’s battle with drink and drugs isn’t unique but while she’s been paraded as part of a group of musicians who also died at the same age, it’s not the same age we live in. Keith Richards’ drug use wasn’t chronicled on a daily basis, he didn’t have 18 megapixel photos taken of his feet and discussed on mainstream news channels and no one said he was a fool for his personal relationships in the Sunday papers.
I’d like to think Amy didn’t give a toss about that, but she did and this isn’t an attack on the press or the public demand for instant celebrity gossip, it’s a question of how to protect someone vulnerable from the parts of society that can follow you, hound you and destroy you in an age of instant information and phone hacking. While most celebrities embrace security and bodyguards, Amy didn’t seem to have many, and walked around as freely as she liked, globe trotting superstar as a Camden wannabe. I don’t think she saw the difference between her and the musicians that followed her and turned to the wrong people for protection and love. I once met Pete Doherty in a Camden basement doing a sound check for a MySpace gig. I watched the sound check, had a drink with the band and then watched as the people on the guest list arrived. They didn’t know the songs, they had blagged their way in to see Kate Moss but Pete was oblivious in the same way as Amy and welcomed everyone.
Whenever artists talk about beating drugs, it’s with the help of the rest of a band, family or perhaps sobering up after witnessing the death of a friend. While Amy had her family, she had a legion of people who were along for the ride and wanted a bit of the tabloid action, a bit of the fame and a bit of her, hoping that the talent would rub off by association. But it didn’t. There’s members of those same bands that work in bars in Camden, famous for a festival season and their fashions but now back at the bottom of the pile. So many great bands have come to Camden to make it since the nineties but there’s a stack of failures who produce an image and sound for the label execs rather than music fans.
Amy made the music she wanted to hear. It just happened that the whole world wanted to hear it too. At the weekend, I took some flowers to her house and saw the biggest mix of music fans – crying teenagers, glum mothers and young children leaving their own crayon sketches behind. The signs of fans too cool for the media jamboree were left overnight, with booze trailing the gutters. I hope they make music for themselves and for Amy.
Tags: Amy winehouse
Recent Comments