It was none of my business where and whom my twenty-one-year-old daughter kissed but I’ve always been a bit hot-headed, especially where my kids are concerned.
* * *
Amy’s old friend Tyler James says that he noticed a massive change in Amy when she first met Blake. To Tyler, the day Amy met Blake, she fell in love with him, and after that they wouldn’t leave each other’s side. He became the centre of Amy’s world and everything revolved around him. Tyler told me that the first time Blake visited Amy’s flat at Jeffrey’s Place, he offered Tyler a line of cocaine while they were watching TV – not something that Tyler or Amy would normally have come across. Amy was, as I said, dead against class-A ‘chemical’ drugs, as she called them, and while Blake was doing cocaine, Amy stuck to smoking cannabis (which led to her lyrics on ‘Back to Black’, ‘you love blow and I love puff’). And she was still drinking.
I found out later that Blake had been dabbling in heroin when Amy had first met him. Tyler, who was staying at the Jeffrey’s Place flat at the time, would wake up in the morning and throw up because of passive heroin intake but he didn’t know for sure that Blake was a user until Amy told him.
Tyler wasn’t the only one who saw a change in Amy. Nick Shymansky remembers a pivotal moment around this time when he called Amy from a ski trip. She sounded ‘really different’. ‘I’ve just met this guy,’ she told Nick. ‘You’ll really love him. He’s called Blake and we’ve fallen madly in love.’
Nick came back from his trip and saw immediately that Amy must have lost a stone and a half in weight while he had been away. She started phoning him in the early hours of the morning when she was drunk. One night she called saying she had had a row with Blake and was in a pub in Camden and wanted Nick to pick her up. Nick always felt protective towards Amy so naturally he went to collect her. This was the first time since Chris that Amy had been in love and, according to Nick, it was a terrible two or three weeks. Everyone was worried about her and they all knew something was up.
Amy and Blake’s turbulent relationship only got worse. As if the drug use wasn’t bad enough, Amy soon found out that Blake was cheating on her with his old girlfriend, a discovery that culminated in the first of their many splits. According to Tyler, Amy ended the relationship because of the heroin and the other woman. Until then, Amy and Blake had been together every day, and then they simply weren’t.
She took the break-up hard. Not long afterwards, Amy and I were walking on Primrose Hill – she loved our walks there and, back then, few people recognized her so we weren’t mobbed by fans. That afternoon I could tell she was miserable.
‘You know, I really want to be with him, Dad, but I can’t,’ she told me. ‘Not while he’s still seeing his ex.’
I didn’t know whether to be encouraging or realistic. After all, I didn’t know anything about Blake at that time. ‘You know what’s best, darling. I’ll support whatever decision you make.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘It’s me, isn’t it, Dad? I always pick the wrong boys, don’t I?’
‘Tell you what,’ I said, wanting to do something, anything, to make her feel better. ‘You know Jane and I are off to Spain on holiday? Why not come with us?’ I didn’t think for a moment she’d agree, but I was delighted when she did.
The three of us stayed at Jane’s dad Ted’s place in Alicante. It’s a lovely old farmhouse, secluded, with a pool. We’d all been there before and had a great time. On that trip we’d gone to a nearby jazz café where Amy had stood up and sung with the band. I felt this holiday would give her a chance to forget about Blake and write some more songs without too many interruptions.
The only problem was that she’d forgotten to bring her guitar. We went into the nearby village of Gata de Gorgos and bought her one from a fantastic workshop owned and run by the brothers Paco and Luis Broseta – we were in there for hours. Amy must have tried out a hundred before she settled on a really nice small one, perfect for someone of her size.
When we got home, Amy went to her room to start writing. I could hear her strumming, then pausing to write down the song. She never brought the guitar out of her room to play any of her songs to us, it all went on privately. This went on for quite a while and then there was quiet. After about an hour, I went to her room and she was on the phone to Blake. When she finished the call, she came outside and happily told me that he wanted to get back with her. After that, they were on the phone for hours – and I do mean hours.
Amy was missing the best parts of the holiday, shutting herself away with the phone. Even dinnertime meant nothing to her. ‘Will you come out of your bloody room?’ I said to her. ‘You’re driving us mad.’
So she would leave her room and start walking up and down in the garden – but she’d still be on the phone all the time. It went on and on and on, every day of the holiday.
When we got back to England, Amy and Blake were together for a few weeks until they split up again. And so it began.
It was around that time that Amy met a guy named Alex Clare, and they were together on and off for about a year. Alex was really nice and I got on very well with him. We both loved Jewish food and we’d often go with Amy and Jane to Reubens kosher restaurant in Baker Street in London’s West End to eat together.
Shortly after Amy met Alex he moved in with her and, initially, they were very happy. At one point they even talked about getting married. Amy loved cats and dogs, and not long after Alex moved in, she bought a lovely dog called Freddie, but he was like a raving lunatic. One day Amy and Alex were out with him for a walk and Freddie got lost. ‘He’d probably had enough of me and ran away,’ Amy said. ‘I don’t blame him!’ He was never found.
Looking back on the period between the end of the promotion for Frank and the release of Back to Black, I realize I had no idea of what was about to happen to Amy musically or in her private life. Her habit of writing highly autobiographical songs meant that when she was happy she didn’t turn to her guitar often. There weren’t that many gigs, but she didn’t seem bothered. I began to wonder if there would ever be a second album. I felt she was drifting.
19 were also wondering about the next album. They’d been ready for her to do something as early as 2004, but with her focus elsewhere, there had been little development. Towards the end of 2005, Amy’s contract with them was running out and my impression was that she and 19 were tiring of each other. 19 had set up meetings at restaurants with Nick Gatfield, head of Island Records, and Guy Moot, head of EMI Publishing, and Amy had not shown up. These were big people in the music business, so her no-shows were embarrassing for 19 and they started to lose faith in her.
Amy, in turn, was disappointed that they hadn’t broken her into the US market. And, of course, she hadn’t been happy with the final cut of Frank. When it came time to think about the follow-up, those issues reappeared. Regardless of the problems each side had with the other, the reality was that no money was coming in and I was starting to worry about Amy’s finances. Jane and I went to see her play at a pub in east London where the room was thick with smoke (this was before the smoking ban), and she was paid just £250 (I didn’t know that she was playing as a favour to a friend).
The next day, I told Amy we might have to think about selling the flat unless the money started coming in.
‘Dad, you can’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I’m going to bring out another album.’
I
