Slow, lonely and predictable: the sad death of Amy Winehouse

Monday, July 23, 2018 07:42

The Last Days of Amy Winehouse

Like Frank, her first album, a journalist asked Amy Winehouse:

– How Are You you famous? be?

-My music does not fit this scale. I do not think I will be famous. I do not believe, either, to be able to support it – replied the young singer

In light of the facts, it is clear that Amy failed that at 50% of his predictions. He was a celebrity, very famous. But she could not resist

On July 23, 2011, her bodyguard found her dead in bed. Although he is 27 years old, no one has been surprised by the news. His fall had been predictable and immensely public. Every intoxication, every excess, every contractual violation had been in everybody's eyes.

Amy Winehouse was a huge singer. His voice was a force of nature. His first recordings are incredible. A twenty-year-old girl who sings with the depth of a veteran, with a unique voice color and dazzling technical handling. In the fullness of his faculties he was noted with total control of his art, an innate ability. It was real, emotional, authentic. There was no artifice. There was ancestral pain in his singing. Once, she acknowledged that it had not occurred to her to be a professional singer because singing for her was natural, everyday, something that was always at her side. Her first public appearances showed a girl of great frankness, with a wild naturalness and an unusual frontality.

At first, she considered herself a jazz singer, but with her two official records (after the death of the record company released uneven albums with rejected hits) became the great singer of R & B, soul and pop of the 21st century. Back to black is a small masterpiece, the pinnacle of his art, his rare heritage. In addition to a critical success has been a huge sales success. Millions of copies worldwide and rewards of all kinds. Five Grammys, the Mercury Award and several British Prizes.

When did your fall begin? Impossible to say precisely. The charges began the day he died. Who were the main people responsible? His father, his ex-boyfriend, the press, the industry? Amy from her early youth suffered depression and bulimia. The eating disorder was hidden for a long time. Then alcohol and drugs arrived. In industrial quantities

Frank, his first album, had a warm welcome, the impact of the unexpected. A voice that seemed to belong to someone of much older age. The artistic research was permanent, I wanted to be authentic. The texts of his songs compose an autobiography, an anthology of small chess, a catalog of amorous frustrations. Already in those years scandals began to haunt her. Erratic behavior in several public appearances, some suspended concert, recitals with vocal performances far below their possibilities. What was not known at the time was that the alcohol and drug problems were serious. She had had collapses and hospitalizations due to overdoses that put her on the verge of death several times. In one of them, they found traces of alcohol, cocaine, crack and heroin in the blood, although that may seem like a lie. It was the time when she was dating a fiance with Blake Fielder-Civil, a young man a little taller than her, whom many people in the neighborhood blame for. have dipped in drugs. It seems difficult to reach such a verdict. Blake was, like Amy, a broken person. They sabotaged with equal effectiveness. And these needs, these shortcomings brought them together and they were recognized as peers and fell in love. Then the separations and reconciliations would come – they would always come back – until Blake was jailed for almost two years. One of these breaks gave all the lyrical content to Back to Black, Amy's dedicating work.

In this album with the voice of Amy, his unique phrasing was added to the production of Mark Ronson. This gave the songs an air soulero, a mix of Phil Spector's productions with Motown, with all the advances of the new century, which catapulted the album and its singer to the top of all the charts. The album sold, worldwide, more than 20 million copies. The question that had the greatest circulation was "Rehab". The one in which the singer says no, no, not to enter rehabilitation.

In Amy, the Oscar-nominated documentary directed by Asif Kapadia (specialist in documentary biopics who mastered Senna and finalizes one on Maradona) we see another of those identified as guilty and to whom after the death of Amy did not hesitate to go out and draw charges to all fronts: Amy's father, Mitch Winehouse. Negador, he did not recognize until very late the problems of his daughter (he was long one of the main opponents at the entrance of his daughter in rehabilitation centers). Absent in much of his daughter's life appeared at the wrong time. Fascinated by celebrity, by flashes, he does his best not to lose the representation and get the maximum benefit from this new situation: to be the father of the new star of the moment.

Still in the movie an important presence of the tabloid press, trying to keep a piece of this body that has disintegrated in full view. The vulnerability of the singer did not cause them compbadion; on the contrary, he nourishes his voracity. The paparazzi, dozens, were permanently at the door of their house. Capturing an image with makeup, blood on clothes, attending a marital fight or, perhaps, a physical collapse was an ever present possibility in Amy's chaotic life. And no one was ready to miss it. The soundtrack of every public appearance of the singer was the clatter of photographic flashes. Amy disintegrated in real time before the ever-frugal paparazzi. A cloud of photographers came to accompany him up to the admission of one of their hospitalizations.

Amy Winehouse was the last to get the unwanted entry to the exclusive Club of 27. This is known to the list of rockers who died at this age. His predecessors: Brian Jones, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and even the Robert Johnson blouse. The phrase is often repeated: "Long live fast, die young and you will have a corpse that looks good". As clever as the phrase seems – some attribute it to James Dean, others to Truman Capote – it is absolutely wrong. Most of these famous deaths seemed older at the time of his death. They had the mark of excesses on their faces, which usually cost a high price. They were pierced by the pain, the inability to stop the inertia of self-destruction. Amy was not an exception.

The day the Grammy nominations were announced, Back to Black received recognition in most major categories: Best Album, Best Song, Best Recording, Best Producer, Revelation. In one of these articles, the ad manager (several figures are turned to publicize the nominations before the press) was comedian George Lopez. After announcing that Amy was aiming for another award, she made a joke that was very much celebrated by all present: "Can any one wake up Amy around 6 pm to let her know?"

The night of her greater glory, the one in which he won five Grammys, came from one of his detox periods. It was presented by satellite from London. The drug problems had not allowed him to travel; The United States did not grant his visa until the last moment and it did not seem prudent to interrupt the rehabilitation in this case. She had to appear before the world, she knew that she would be one of the main stars of the evening and she had to be sober. That night, he ousted, among others, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Justin TImberlake and Taylor Swift. In this glorious night, in a state of lucidity, he could not appreciate either. He told one of his badistants: "It's very boring without drugs."

Once Felix Frascara, a great sports journalist, to titrate the obituary of Justo Suárez, a short-lived boxer – perhaps, the first great popular idol of Argentine sport – used a verse from a tango: "The light of a match was". That's how brilliant, so ephemeral was Amy's career. Just two discs. Three years in which his physical and musical faculties shone; then, autumn.

His musical career ended at 23 years old. After the second album there was almost no recording in the next four years. The only highlight is a duet with Tony Bennett, the standard body and soul. His recitals were a bet. You never knew what could happen to them. If he showed up, they would finish or even he would be able to sing an entire song without the choristers having to come to his rescue. In several videos of these performances, you see Amy, who four years ago, dominated each scene with a rarely seen presence and captivated the audience with each of his notes, wandering aimlessly among his musicians, without the gaze, without it could even approach the microphone, babbling incoherently, while the initial ovation of the audience turned into whistling and booing when he discovered his condition. It's happened in his last recital. It was June 18, 2011 in Belgrade. It was just a little more than a month before his death.

Amy's last days were very similar to any of the days of the previous four years, to everything that happened after Back to black. The boyfriend was another, Reg Traviss, an unknown and prolific director, his problems are the same. His closest affections have been debated, as it always happens in this type of situations that become chronic, between commiseration and boredom. The treatments failed. Amy is away from the drug but has returned to alcohol. In July 2011, I was at this point.

I wanted to record a record again. The offers of more than a million dollars per story that he had known are not repeated: the producers no longer trust him. Those who had invited her as a stellar musical number on her TV show were laughing at her every opportunity. After the role of Belgrade suspended the tour that was to represent his musical renaissance. He stopped the drugs. People around her noticed her more focused, trying to get out of the well she was in. The relapses did not alert them. There were already a lot of them and he had always recovered, or at least he had survived. On July 20, he attended the presentation of his artistic goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield. He went on stage to accompany him on a subject but could not even count the chorus; he confined himself to dancing, to forced, spasmodic movements. The day before his death, his mother visited him by surprise. He found it a little off, inconsistent, but he was not alarmed: it was a painting he had witnessed hundreds of times.

Alcohol seemed more harmless than drugs. A lesser evil At sunset that day, his doctor visited. He noticed her moved, with several glbades on top, but she did not worry too much either. At the end of the day, it was about Amy and by that time, at least, she was able to have a consistent conversation with her. They even talked about an upcoming album. This fact, which the patient thought about in the future, seemed to rebadure the doctor who was retiring at home.

Amy was then accustomed to some loneliness. Reg Traviss, the filmmaker's boyfriend, had left him a few months ago – though after his death he was another one of those who tried to take advantage of the limelight to gain importance; Blake, Amy's eternal and toxic love, was still in prison; his childhood friends were stranded after several fights with his entourage for trying to change his lifestyle; his parents seemed to live in his world with denial as a flag. That night of July 22, 2011, there was not even the paparazzi in the part of his house in Camden.

Only his bodyguard said goodbye around midnight. At three in the morning, Amy texted a friend, "I'll be here forever, and you?" At ten o'clock in the morning, the bodyguard approached his door and heard nothing. This did not surprise him. Not when he repeated the movement at noon. At three o'clock in the afternoon, alarmed by the lack of response from the singer, he entered his room. She had been dead for several hours. Three empty vodka bottles were lying on the side of the bed. Toxicological tests showed that there was no trace of drugs in his blood, only alcohol. Many a disproportionate amount. 4.16 grams per liter of blood. The limit before alcoholic coma is 3.5. Nobody showed too much surprise. Amy was dissolved in public. As I had written in the song that titled the album that dedicated it, Back to Black: "I have died hundreds of times". This 23rd of July was the last and final. A slow, lonely, predictable and early death.

Source: https://www.infobae.com/teleshow/2018/07/23/una-muerte-lenta-solitaria- predictable-the-last-days-of-day 39; amy-winehouse /

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