Amy, My Daughter. Mitch Winehouse
was just wonderful. We went backstage afterwards and there was a line of about six people waiting to be introduced to her. When it was Mum’s turn, Ronnie said, ‘Sarah, this is Cynthia. She was my childhood sweetheart and we’re still very close.’
Then it was my turn. Ronnie said, ‘This is Mitch, Cynthia’s son.’
And Sarah said, ‘What do you do?’
I told her about my job in a casino and we carried on chatting for a couple of minutes about one thing and another.
Then Ronnie said, ‘Sarah, this is Matt Monro.’
And Sarah said, ‘What do you do, Matt?’
She really had no idea who he was. American singers are often very insular. A lot of them don’t know what’s happening outside New York or LA, let alone what’s going on in the UK. I felt a bit sorry for Matt because he was, in my opinion, the greatest British male singer of all time – and he wasn’t best pleased either. He walked out of the club and never spoke to Ronnie Scott again.
Amy also started watching musicals on TV – Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly films. She preferred Astaire, whom she thought more artistic than the athletic Kelly; she enjoyed Broadway Melody of 1940, when Astaire danced with Eleanor Powell. ‘Look at this, Dad,’ she said. ‘How do they do it?’ That sequence gave her a love of tap-dancing.
Amy would regularly sing to my mum, and my mum’s face would light up when she did. As Amy’s number-one adoring fan, who always thought Amy was going to be a star, my mum came up with the idea of sending nine-year-old Amy to the Susi Earnshaw Theatre School, in Barnet, north London, not far from where we lived. It offered part-time classes in the performing arts for five- to sixteen-year-olds. Amy used to go on Saturdays and this was where she first learned to sing and tap-dance.
Amy looked forward to those lessons and, unlike at Osidge, we never received a complaint about her behaviour from Susi Earnshaw’s. Susi told us how hard Amy always worked. Amy was taught how to develop her voice, which she wanted to do as she learned more and more about the singers she listened to at home and with my mum. Amy was fascinated by the way Sarah Vaughan used her voice like an instrument and wanted to know how she could do it too.
As soon as she started at Susi Earnshaw’s, Amy was going for auditions. When she was ten she went to one for the musical Annie; Susi sent quite a few girls for that. She told me that Amy wouldn’t get the part, but it would be good for her to gain experience in auditioning – and get used to rejection.
I explained all of that to Amy but she was still happy to go along and give it a go. The big mistake I made was in telling my mum about it. For whatever reason, neither Janis nor I could take Amy to the audition and my mum was only too pleased to step in. As Amy’s biggest fan, she thought this was it, that the audition was a formality – that her granddaughter was going to be the new Annie. I think she even bought a new frock for the opening night, that was how sure she was.
When I saw Amy that night, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Dad, never send Nan with me for an audition ever again.’
It had started on the train, my mum piling on the pressure: how to sing her song, how to talk to the director, ‘Don’t do this, don’t do that, look the director in the eye …’ Amy had been taught all of this at Susi Earnshaw’s but, of course, my mum knew better. They finally got to the theatre where, according to Amy, there were a thousand or so mums, dads and grandmothers, each of whom, like my mum, thought that their little prodigy was going to be the new Annie.
Finally it was Amy’s turn to do her bit and she gave the audition pianist her music. He wouldn’t play it: it was in the wrong key for the show. Amy struggled through the song in a key that was far too high for her. After just a few bars she was told to stop. The director was very nice and thanked her but told her that her voice wasn’t suitable for the part. My mum lost it. She marched up to the director, screaming at him that he didn’t know what he was talking about. There was a terrible row.
On the train going home my mum had a go at Amy, all the usual stuff: ‘You don’t listen to me. You think you know better …’ Amy couldn’t have cared less about not getting the part, but my mum was so aggravated that she put herself to bed for the rest of the day. When Amy told me the story, I thought it was absolutely hysterical. My mum and Amy were like two peas in a pod, probably shouting at each other all the way home on the train.
It would have been a great scene to see.
Amy and my mum had a lively relationship but they did love each other, and my mum would sometimes let the kids get away with murder. When we visited her, Amy would often blow-wave my mum’s hair while Alex sat at her feet and gave her a pedicure. Later my mum, hair all over the place, would show us what Amy had done and we’d have a good laugh.
* * *
In the spring of 1994, when Amy was ten, I went with her to an interview for her next school, Ashmole in Southgate. I had gone there some twenty-five years earlier and Alex was there so it was a natural choice for Amy. Incredibly, my old form master Mr Edwards was still going strong and was to be Amy’s house master. He interviewed Amy and me when I took her to look round the school. We walked into his office and he recognized me immediately. In his beautiful Welsh accent, he said, ‘Oh, my God, not another Winehouse! I bet this one doesn’t play football.’ I had made a bit of a name for myself playing for the school, and Alex was following in my footsteps.
Amy started at Ashmole in September 1994. From the start she was disruptive. Her friend Juliette had also transferred there. They were bad enough alone, but together they were ten times worse, so it wasn’t long before they were split up and put into different classes.
Alex had a guitar he’d taught himself to play, and when Amy decided to try it out he taught her too. He was very patient with her, even though they argued a lot. They could both read music, which surprised me. ‘When did you learn to do this?’ I asked. They stared at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. Amy soon started writing her own songs, some good, some awful. One of the good ones was called ‘I Need More Time’. She played it for me just a few months before she passed away. Believe me, it’s good enough to go on one of her albums, and it’s a great pity that she never recorded it.
I often collected the kids from school. In those days I had a convertible, and Amy would insist I put the top down. As we drove along, Alex in the front alongside me, she’d sing at the top of her voice. When we stopped at traffic lights she would stand up and perform. ‘Sit down, Amy!’ we’d say, but people on the street laughed with her as she sang.
Once she was in a car with a friend of mine named Phil and sang ‘The Deadwood Stage’ from the Doris Day film Calamity Jane. ‘You know,’ Phil said to me, when they got back, his ears probably still ringing, ‘your daughter has a really powerful voice.’
Amy’s wild streak went far beyond car rides. At some point, she took to riding Alex’s bike, which terrified me: she was reckless whenever she was on it. She had no road sense and she raced along as fast as she could. She loved speed and came off a couple of times. It was the same story when I took her skating – didn’t matter if it was ice-skating or roller-skating, she loved both. She was really fast on the rink, and the passion for it never left her. After her first album came out she told me that her ambition was to open a chain of hamburger joints with roller-skating waitresses.
She was wild, but I indulged her; I couldn’t help myself. I know I over-compensated my children for the divorce, but they were growing up and needed things. I took Amy shopping to buy her some clothes, now that she was nearly a teenager and going to a new school.
‘Look, Dad,’ she said excitedly, as she came out of the changing room in a pair of leopard-print jeans. ‘These are fantastic! D’you think they look nice on me?’
* * *
Whenever she was staying with Jane and me, Amy always kept a notebook with her to scribble down lines for songs. Halfway through a conversation, she’d suddenly say, ‘Oh, just a sec,’ and disappear to note something that had just come to her. The lines looked