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 like something from a poem and later she would use those lines in a song, alongside ones written on totally different occasions.
Amy continued to be good at maths because of the lessons she’d done with her mother. Janis would set Amy some pretty complicated problems, which she really enjoyed doing. Amy would do mathematical problems for hours on end just for fun. She was brilliant at the most complex Sudoku puzzles and could finish one in a flash.
The pity was that she wouldn’t do it at school. We received notes complaining regularly about her behaviour or lack of interest. Clearly Amy was bored – she just didn’t take to formal schooling. (I had been the same. I was always playing hooky but, unlike my friends, who would be out on the streets, I’d be in the local library, reading.) Amy had a terrific thirst for knowledge but hated school. She didn’t want to go so she wouldn’t get up in the mornings. Or, if she did go, she’d come home at lunchtime and not go back.
Though Amy had been a terrific sleeper as a baby and young child, when she got to about eleven she wouldn’t go to bed: she’d be up all night reading, doing puzzles, watching television, listening to music, anything not to go to sleep. So, naturally, it was a battle every morning to get her up. Janis got fed up with it and would ring me: ‘Your daughter won’t get out of bed.’ I had to drive all the way from Chingford, where I was living with Jane, and drag her out.
Over time Amy got worse in the classroom. Janis and I were called to the school for meetings about her behaviour on numerous occasions. I hope the head of year didn’t see me trying not to laugh as he told us, ‘Mr and Mrs Winehouse, Amy has already been sent to see me once today and, as always, I knew it was her before she got to my office …’ I knew if I looked at Janis I’d crack up. ‘How did I know?’ the head of year continued. ‘She was singing “Fly Me To The Moon” loudly enough for the whole school to hear.’
I knew I shouldn’t laugh, but it was so typically Amy. She told me later that she’d sung it to calm herself down whenever she knew she was in trouble.
Just about the only thing she seemed to enjoy about school was performance. However, one year when Amy sang in a show she wasn’t very good. I don’t know what went wrong – perhaps it was the wrong key for her again – but I was disappointed. The following year things were different. ‘Dad, will you both come to see me at Ashmole?’ she asked. ‘I’m singing again.’ To be honest, my heart sank a bit, with the memory of the previous year’s performance, but of course we went. She sang the Alanis Morissette song ‘Ironic’, and she was as terrific as I knew she could be. What I wasn’t expecting was everyone else’s reaction: the whole room sat up. Wow, where did this come from?
By now Amy was twelve and she wanted to go to a drama school full time. Janis and I were against it but Amy applied to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in central London without telling us. How she even knew about it we never figured out as Sylvia Young only advertised in The Stage. Amy eventually broke the news to us when she was invited to audition. She decided to sing ‘The Sunny Side Of The Street’, which I coached her through, helping with her breath control, and won a half-scholarship for her singing, acting and dancing. Her success was reported in The Stage, with a photograph of her above the column.
As part of her application, Amy had been asked to write something about herself. Here’s what she wrote:
All my life I have been loud, to the point of being told to shut up. The only reason I have had to be this loud is because you have to scream to be heard in my family.
My family? Yes, you read it right. My mum’s side is perfectly fine, my dad’s family are the singing, dancing, all-nutty musical extravaganza.
I’ve been told I was gifted with a lovely voice and I guess my dad’s to blame for that. Although unlike my dad, and his background and ancestors, I want to do something with the talents I’ve been ‘blessed’ with. My dad is content to sing loudly in his office and sell windows.
My mother, however, is a chemist. She is quiet, reserved.
I would say that my school life and school reports are filled with ‘could do betters’ and ‘does not work to her full potential’.
I want to go somewhere where I am stretched right to my limits and perhaps even beyond.
To sing in lessons without being told to shut up (provided they are singing lessons).
But mostly I have this dream to be very famous. To work on stage. It’s a lifelong ambition.
I want people to hear my voice and just forget their troubles for five minutes.
I
