The new issue of Rolling Stone features a bizarre but revealing interview with Amy Winehouse conducted just before the fainting spell that landed her in the hospital. Apparently, the reporter from Rolling Stone simply waited outside the singer’s door until about 4 in the morning, when Amy invited her inside for a beer. What the reporter found inside was quite a sight, but not much of a surprise: Amy’s home was a disaster, and so was she.
All around her, Winehouse’s home is in disastrous disarray: Discarded bags of potato chips, crumpled nuggets of tinfoil, beer bottles, lingerie boxes and scattered old credit cards tell of a long night that hasn’t ended in weeks, maybe months…
For the last hour, Winehouse has been getting ready to meet the paparazzi; she’s been carefully drawing the dark, thick Cleopatra swoops around her eyes, over smudges of makeup past, her long, manicured red fingernails masking a black resin lining, her lip gloss glittering pink, foundation covering little scabs that raid her face. “What are you going to say, Amy?” I ask her from the couch where I’ve been slumped over, scratching notes for the past few hours. At 4 a.m. — after I’d spent half the night outside her apartment, hoping for an interview — Winehouse had, much to my surprise, opened the door and invited me in for beer. Since then, Winehouse has been puttering around her house in varying states of consciousness, disappearing every half an hour or so upstairs to her bedroom and returning to talk to me a little about her music, a little about her drugs and a lot about her imprisoned husband. Through it all, she’s an attentive and open hostess, boiling me tea and giving me extra slips of paper to take notes. Now, thinking about the waiting paparazzi outside, she keeps her eyes fastened on her image in the mirror.
Amy goes on to say that she doesn’t really think she has a problem with drugs- she thinks she’s just young, bored, and likes to get her rocks off. She proudly reveals that during her last stint in rehab just before the Grammys, she did drugs the entire time.
Winehouse has insisted from the beginning of her career that she is a simple girl crazy in love with her man. Her life, her history and talent all seem barely worth talking about when one could talk about Blake, how fit he is, how perfect for each other they are. “We are so in love, we are a team,” she rhapsodizes to me. “Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake, Blake.” It’s as if she’s putting herself in a trance…
Winehouse fell hard; his name was quickly tattooed on her chest. But the romance was rocky, and during one breakup, when Fielder-Civil left her for another woman, she wrote the bulk of Back to Black, her second album. Following incidents of public intoxication, her management tried to pack Winehouse off to rehab. Famously, she refused. By the time Back to Black hit the U.S. last year, Winehouse was hailed as the future of soul music. The album sold 2 million copies in America and eventually earned her five Grammys…
With her husband gone, Winehouse slid into a despondent place. She canceled her tour at the end of 2007, saying, “I can’t give it my all onstage without my Blake.” And in January, after a clip of her smoking crack was released to the tabloid The Sun, she was sent to rehab by her record label again. She didn’t stay long, and she happily tells me she did drugs the whole time…
Winehouse says all of this is the product of heartbreak from being separated from her true love, whose name appears in a little heart pin she often wears in her hair. “To be honest, my husband’s away, I’m bored, I’m young,” Winehouse tells me. “I felt like there was nothing to live for. It’s just been a low ebb.”
If this is what she calls a “low ebb,” I’d hate to see what her version of rock bottom is! If anything, this interview shows how co-dependent Amy is when it comes to Blake Incarcerated. She seems to think that real love means ceasing to function when the other person isn’t there. It’s really sick. It sounds like Amy is going to have to kick her Blake addiction before she can address anything else. What the hell is it going to take?
Picture note by Celebitchy: Amy Winehouse is shown on 6/2/08 outside her husband’s trial. There are more recent photos of her, but none in the past week and a half or so. Thanks to WENN.
Wow, she is far worse than i thought. She doesn’t thinkshe has a problam with drugs? WTF?
All we can do for her is pray for her…she is a LOST soul!
Why is this news?
Everyone knows this is the case. Is really sad, she is definately not in a good place.
What a waste of such a talent, hopefully she will wake up and realise she has a serious addiction and its gonna kill her, but I’m afraid that wont happen, she seems completely controlled by the drugs to the point that its normal and okay, its like to her its no big deal! Scary. She can’t see the real her.
Knew her house was a pigsty — she comes across as unpretentious….totally fucked in every way….but unpretentious with it. I like her. She seems kind.
People are allowed to like drug addicts aren’t they?
As a journalist, all I can say: I am green with envy! I would have loved to have been in that woman’s shoes. Writing for Rolling Stone is pretty cool, but now I bet that among her colleagues, she is knighted-by-Samuel-L-Jackson kinda cool. Getting such an interview is every journalist’s dream. Obviously at this stage it’s not really news to us anymore, but still.
As for Winehouse: there’s nothing left to say. She better not fuck up her appearance at Mandela’s concert though or the world will truly hate her.
I read this interview the day it came out and honestly? I’m convinced that one day not too far in the future we’re going to be blogging about her overdose. She thinks her lifestyle is completely normal and sees nothing wrong with it because Blaaaaake is not with her and therefore it’s OK to be the living definition of hot mess? It seems like even if people stepped in and got her sober and acting normally again it wouldn’t matter be cause the minute they gave her a moment to herself she’d slip right back into it. Such a shame…
Check this out:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=60vzvBLHuss
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tcmGGuwAoJs
oh this is terrible….man. that bums me out!
its sad but the thing that i do like about amy is that she seems approachable and friendly.
Keep in mind, this interview was before she collapsed. I think she realizes that drugs are not only messing up her health and looks, but are now costing her livelihood.
Check out the YouTube – Amy Winehouse at the 46664 Mandela concert:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Hu9OavX3jQ
http://youtube.com/watch?v=tcmGGuwAoJs
Hurry and watch! They may take this down!
With the trend of quality reporting we see these days, seems like something the reporter could easily have made up. After all, Amy’s too F*ed up to remember or probably even care whether she actually did let a reporter into her house at 4 AM. Plus, you could write just about anything about this woman and it would sound plausible…Gonzo journalism lives!
The only way I’d be surprised at this is if you told that me she WASN’T doing drugs in rehab. Then I’d spit in your face and call you a liar because it is after all Amy Winehouse we’re talking about here.
I watched the first of those YouTube clips at the Mandela concert. She looks completely strung out. Ironically the news media in Britain reporter her as looking “tanned” and “healthy”. Looks like it’s not just Amy in denial about her problems…
Well I watched the concert on tv and Amy, tho a bit nervous and frail, did just fine. Not up to her former standards but she was great and the crowd loved her.
Concert was fab, very moving.
Here’s a vid about Winehouse’s Rolling Stone Interview:
http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/amywinehouse/videos/video/21491926/behind_the_feature_amy_winehouse