I only knew about Amy Winehouse after Rehab became a hit. Winehouse was undeniably talented with a voice like Billie Holliday or Sarah Vaughan and a style reminiscent of soul girl groups from the 60s, but I believe what Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” I took one look at her, listened to the lyrics and said to myself, “She is going to die.” I’m not psychic. I‘m just an old soul, and anyone shocked by her death wasn’t really listening or looking. I can’t sit back and enjoy someone killing herself no matter how great the work is. So when everyone tried to get me to go to the theaters to see Amy, I politely said no, thank you and patiently waited until it came out on DVD. Amy was in my house for almost a month before I could watch it.
While Amy is an amazing documentary, it felt like watching a snuff film as a once vibrant, uninhibited and determined person became a dazed skeleton forced to repeatedly sing her own dirge, the retrospectively horrific and condemning Rehab. The most shocking thing that I learned was that the Daddy referenced in Rehab wasn’t a colloquialism for her lover, though her lover/husband was equally as unhealthy an influence as others who surrounded her, but her actual father! No one becomes successful on the international music stage without having a lot of autonomy and an indomitable will so even without her father’s codependent encouragement to stay away from rehab, she was probably steering towards a destructive path.
What shocked me was how much of the early footage was casually generated by Amy, her friends and colleagues as part of daily, fun life and how even that nonstop desire to document did not aid her in dealing with the expected side effect of fame, paparazzi. Even someone like Amy who was wholly unconcerned with respectability and untouched by shame could be dragged by the undertow of the invasive tabloids.
Even though Amy documents Winehouse’s creative and collaborative process, and numerous artists allude to her deep knowledge of jazz, it was disappointing that the only explicit quote of her musical influences cited James Taylor and Carole King, who are the last people that I would have guessed. Amy is primarily interested in Amy as a human being and as an artist second.
While watching Amy, I vaguely remembered that one of the back up singers featured in 20 Feet from Stardom basically said that if she became famous, she would have died. Amy, the documentary, seems to confirm that success can be a death sentence, particularly for women who have the added pressure of having to look a certain way. Side note: Amy confirms that Tony Bennett is the Lady Sybil Thorndyke of singing (see My Week With Marilyn). What a mensch!