Winehouse joins the 27 Club
What a deeply sad and utterly tragic waste of talent. When it comes to the premature deaths that crowd the dark iconography of pop culture (“the Stupid Club”, as Kurt Cobain’s mother called it), the death of Amy Winehouse at 27 is as bad as it gets.
I watched her arrive on the scene as a young, fresh and feisty newcomer, just bursting with music and spirit. She quickly blossomed into a major musical star who changed the landscape of modern pop culture but wilted in the heat of the spotlight. She was an amazing musical artist, but also a deeply troubled soul. Sadly, the two all too often go hand in hand. Amy had talent to burn. Instead, it burned her.
What is deeply shocking to me is that I thought she was winning this battle. I saw her in Abbey Road studio in March, singing a duet with Tony Bennett. She swept in late, surrounded by an entourage, and looked edgy and wary of strangers, but physically I thought she looked well. Her hair was big, her eye make-up almost Egyptian. Dressed in retro cardigan, mini-dress and big ear-rings, she was clearly sober, steady, and looked tanned and healthy. She had filled out since her scrawny, drug-addled worst.
She told me it was her first time in a studio in over a year, and she was quite obviously nervous, fiddling with her hair, shuffling her feet – but when she sang… boy. Watching the old veteran and young ingénue together was extraordinary. They stood side-by-side but wrapped their voices around each other, rising and falling, scatting and blending in jazzy cadences, as they worked up a version of Body and Soul.
Amy spoke with the sulky eyes and dropped aitches of a bratty London teenager (“It’s gettin’ there, innit?” she said, after a few takes), and responded to production suggestions with a sniffy: “Alright, whateva!” But then she opened her mouth and out came this ancient, mature voice, like Dinah Washington blended with Billie Holiday. Bennett was impressed, and told me she was as good as any singer he had worked with. Winehouse, for her part, had shown up because she was a fan. “You’re one of my idols,” she said. “I’m just happy to be here. It’s a story to tell my grandchildren to tell their grandchildren to tell their grandchildren.”
There will be no generations of grandchildren now, and the stories that will be told will not be happy ones. Amy embodied the best and worst of the music business, an exceptionally gifted artist brought low by the kind of self-destructive, hedonistic lifestyle that is such an integral part of the rock and roll myth. Like her heroine Holiday, or the great Janis Joplin – exceptional singers who struggled with addiction in less media-saturated times – Winehouse became a poignant rather than a heroic figure, someone whose intensity of expression and tendency towards self-destruction seemed psychologically linked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club
———–
jones joplin hendrix morrison and cobain have a new member to their club..RIP..27..2 + 7 = 9
her good was good but her bad was bad..
401
