Howard Sounes - 27: A History of the 27 Club through the Lives of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix

Also by Howard Sounes:

Fab: An Intimate Life of Paul McCartney

Down the Highway: The Life of Bob Dylan

Charles Bukowski: Locked in the Arms of a Crazy Life

Bukowski in Pictures

Fred & Rose

Heist

Seventies

The Wicked Game

A History of the 27 Club through the Lives

of Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin,

Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, and

Amy Winehouse

HOWARD SOUNES

DA CAPO PRESS
A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210.

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

First Da Capo Press edition 2013

Reprinted by arrangement with Hodder & Stroughton Ltd.

ISBN 978-0-306-82169-1 (e-book)

Published by Da Capo Press

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

www.dacapopress.com

Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Now hes gone and joined that stupid club. I told him not to

Kurt Cobains mother

CONTENTS

Midway this way of life were bound upon, I woke to find myself in a dark wood, Where the right road was wholly lost and gone.

Dante

You departed from that busy gate, the so-called stupid one.

Eric Erlandson, Letters to Kurt

It was just after six p.m. on a summers evening when Amy Winehouses doctor visited the star at home in London. It was a routine house call, routine in as much as Amys life had become so troubled in recent years, so precarious, that her doctor visited her at home almost as often as the postman delivered the mail.

Dr Cristina Romete saw at once that Amy had been drinking. She was tipsy and she smelt of booze. The doctor asked when Amy had started again, after two weeks of sobriety. Amy replied, shame-faced, that she didnt know. But her live-in bodyguard, Andrew Morris, said that she had begun on Wednesday. It was now Friday, 22 July 2011.

Doctor and patient proceeded to have a frank conversation, talking together in Amys light and airy home in Camden Square. Dr Romete asked Amy why she had started drinking again. Amys explanation was that she was bored.

The doctor asked Amy whether she planned to stop drinking. Amy said she didnt know.

Dr Romete reminded Amy of how serious this was. Only two months ago she had warned Amy in writing, the letter copied to her father and her manager, that her habit of binge-drinking was putting her in immediate danger of death. Amy assured her that she did not want to die. There were things she still wanted to do with her life. She didnt give the impression of being suicidal, though her behaviour was evidently reckless and self-destructive.

The doctor tried to persuade Amy to consider therapy, to deal with her alcoholism, as well as her underlying psychological problems. Amy shook her head. She had always resisted psychologists and psychiatrists, fearing that if she let such people into her mind, she would lose touch with the mercurial part of her brain that allowed her to create original work. Dr Romete knew this, and knew her patient to be a stubborn, yet intelligent woman, who always wanted to do things her own way. In her most famous song, Rehab, Amy sang about when her family and colleagues first tried to get her into a rehabilitation clinic, to dry out, to which suggestion she gave an emphatic: no, no, no. This simple but memorable repetition of words had become a catchphrase. It was also the story of her life.

After their talk, Dr Romete left the house. She would never see her patient alive again.

Amy had a history of substance abuse and self-destructive behaviour stretching back to when she was a teenager. The serious problems began, however, in 2006, when her album Back to Black was released. It won five Grammy awards. As Amy became a star she also became addicted to crack cocaine and heroin. Although she quit hard drugs in 2008, she did so by switching to alcohol. Amy was a small woman, five foot three inches tall and slightly built, but she drank like a sailor on shore leave, drinking herself into a coma in May, and into hospital as a result. Dr Romete wrote her a warning letter after this incident, but Amy didnt take it seriously. She joked that her doctor thought she might be dead soon. And she carried on binge-drinking, getting out of her mind before a show in Belgrade just five weeks previously. Between binges Amy had periods of self-realisation and guilt when she quit the bottle. But when the thirst returned she bought vodka at corner shops in Camden Town, stashing the booze in her room.

Amy was a Londoner who had lived her whole life all 27 years and ten months, save vacations and tours in north London. Her various homes from childhood until she died were within a few stops of each other on the London Underground. The Camden Square house was her grandest residence yet, a large Victorian property that had been gutted and refurbished to her taste. The dcor was sparse and bright, with black floors and white walls, apart from the basement music room, which was red. The ground-floor kitchen was styled like an American diner. A vintage juke box had pride of place in the lounge. A gift from Amys ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, the juke box, like the marriage, had never worked properly.

Amy shared her home with friends and staff. Andrew Morris, her close protection officer, a huge young man of West Indian background, slept in one of the guest rooms upstairs. During the four years he had worked for Amy, Andrew had grown close to the star, like brother and sister. She was a diamond person not a regular person, he says fondly. She was the sort of person, if you met her once, you would never forget her. She was very honest. If she didnt like you, shed tell you. If she loved you, shed tell you.

Amys stylist, Naomi Parry, also stayed at the house on occasion, as did a friend named Tyler James, whom Amy had known since drama school. But Naomi and Tyler were away at the time. In fact, after Dr Romete left the house on Friday evening, Amy was home alone, save her minder and her cat, Anthony Jade.

Many of her friends were at a summer music festival. There were other friends whom Amy would once have called upon for company, but was estranged from at the end of her life. Amy was lovable, but demanding. Shed recently lost her temper with two of her band members, and had fallen out with several girlfriends over the years. The drinking didnt help. Lauren Franklin, who had known Amy at school and then drifted apart from her friend, had recently reconnected with her on Skype, and was shocked by the state Amy was in. She was terribly drunk, she says, of the last time they spoke online. She had a bottle in her hand. I was, like, What are you doing?

So, for one reason or another, Amy was on her own as the week came to an end. Basically, everyone was out, says her friend Doug Charles-Ridler. She hated [being alone]. Thats why everyones feeling really guilty.

Amys father, Mitch Winehouse, a former London cabbie, was normally around, but he was in New York to perform his nightclub act. Mitch sang saloon-bar standards in the style of Tony Bennett. It was a semi-amateur career hed revived on the back of Amys success. He had visited his daughter at home on Thursday, just before his trip to the United States, and found her in an introspective mood, looking at family photographs.