When Amy Winehouse took off for the Caribbean after her marriage to Blake Fielder-Civil imploded, people were hoping it would help her clean up her act and get off drugs and alcohol. For a brief time, Amy did seem to be doing better, but as any recovering addict can tell you, a simple change of location doesn’t magically get rid of your substance abuse problems. Now, after several months in St. Lucia, it’s been revealed that Amy’s record company is spending thousands of dollars a day to keep the troubled singer there, hoping she will keep it together long enough to finish her next album.
Wednesday, about 9am, at the Cotton Bay Village resort in St Lucia and Amy Winehouse is at the bar drinking her second shot of tequila of the day.
‘I think I’m doing very well,’ she chirrups. ‘I’d normally have had six shots by now. Today I’ve only had two.’ And she smiles – that big, heartbreaking smile which is eight parts of sorrow and two of joy.
In this quiet resort, popular with families and honeymooners, you really cannot miss Amy. With her curly hair and huge gold-hooped earrings, she could not look more out of place. She is unwashed, barefoot and looks in need of a good meal.
Yesterday’s make-up has run across her face and she is wearing a bright-pink bra under a cropped Nike top.
You can see scars which indicate that she has been self-harming – cutting herself – again and there are two cigarette burns on her stomach, which are healing.
Amy, who is 25 and was hailed as the most exciting vocal talent of her generation, is living in two villas which cost her record company about £2,000 a night each and come with their own butler and maid.
It’s a curious, dissolute life and Amy, lonely and drunk, seems quite lost in her Caribbean idyll.
She has company: half-a-dozen minders who have been engaged by her record company at a cost of £250 a day each. This week, she also has her cousin, Lauren, and her boyfriend, who have flown out to try to stop her from ‘being bored’.
In truth, they are trying to keep Amy sober enough to work – and trying to steer her into the recording studio which has been installed in the second villa at eye-watering cost.
Some £500,000 has been spent so far by Universal Records on accommodation, staff and equipment for Amy’s Caribbean jolly.
The hope is that Amy can again create an album like Back To Black, the multi-award winning phenomenon which sold 11 million copies after the songs seemed to tumble out of her during an extraordinary two-week period in 2006.
What are the chances of success, though? In recent months, Amy has been hospitalised three times after alcoholic benders lasting up to three days. One time, she ended up on a drip for dehydration.
This week, Amy was so keen to get her shots of tequila that she sneaked great gulps straight from the bottle when the barmaid’s back was turned.
It’s no surprise to find her this way: a performance at the St Lucia Jazz Festival earlier this month was an utter disaster. She was late, drunk and ‘too emotional’ to sing.
‘Singing in St Lucia brought back too many painful memories,’ said her spokesman – presumably of her broken marriage.
She honeymooned in St Lucia with her now estranged husband Blake Fielder-Civil.
Amy also cancelled plans to fly to Britain to sing at a concert to celebrate the 50th birthday of her record label. She also failed to take up an invitation from legendary producer Quincy Jones to sing on his album.
And she’s been working on new material for her third album for two years, seemingly without making any progress because of her battles with addictions – to heroin, to crack, to cocaine, to Blake. And now to alcohol.
In March, Universal told her the demo tracks she had composed and recorded so far were not up to scratch, and she should start again.
So will she ever return to form? And can anyone save Amy from her new fight, against an addiction to alcohol which seems to be raging just as dangerously out of control as her previous dependencies on narcotics?
Her father Mitch has flown back to the UK, saying his daughter needs to save herself.
On the evidence of the scenes at the Cotton Bay Village, she is neither willing nor able to do that. When we caught up with her, she was too out of it even to light her cigarettes.
Amy says her best friend is a local six-year-old girl, Aaliyah, and nothing seems to bring her as much pleasure as hanging out with her.
‘It feels like home here,’ Amy says, with a sweet smile…
This week, Mitch said he did not mean that he was no longer trying to help his daughter, adding: ‘I’ll always be there for Amy, always have been and always will be.’
But Amy’s mother Janis said they can only stand back and hope she would decide to stop drinking. ‘It’s another demon she has to beat,’ Janis said.
‘She came off drugs on her own, so I know she’ll stop drinking so much, too. It has to be her decision, though. No one else can stop her.’
Certainly the staff who run the Cotton Bay Village resort aren’t able to help her. By 10am on Wednesday, Amy and her friend had been encouraged by the bartender to have a cup of tea, and had picked out some camomile teabags.
Amy sipped the tea, saying she would soon have breakfast. But as soon as the barmaid left, she ran behind the bar and swigged a huge gulp of tequila from the bottle.
She said: ‘I know I’m not supposed to – don’t tell anyone.’ When the barmaid returned, Amy asked for another shot, but the barmaid said: ‘Not until you’ve finished your tea.’
Minutes later, the barmaid left and Amy jumped behind the bar for another swig. As the alcohol spilled down her chin, she turned to the other guests and said: ‘Well, what can I do if she’s not going to give it to me
The article goes on to say that Amy is still hopelessly pining for Blake, who is having a child with a 31-year-old woman he met in rehab.
I’m sure the record company is in a tough spot here- after all, Amy has made them a lot of money and she is under contract. But the best thing they could do- the best thing everyone could do – is to pull the plug on Amy’s lifestyle and stop enabling her. They’re spending thousands on her resort, and hundreds a day on “minders” who don’t sound like they’re doing a very good job keep Amy out of the bar and in the recording studio. Clearly it’s not working, so why do they continue? The record company is basically paying for Amy to drink herself to death in a Caribbean paradise, and any music she has recorded so far, according to sources, isn’t even close to releasable. So, what gives? It sounds like Amy’s mom is the only one who understands what needs to be done here.
Amy Winehouse is shown on St. Lucia on 4/6/09. Credit: BARM/Fame Pictures
Would YOU want to be one of Amy Winehouse’s ‘minders’? There is not enough money in the world…
A person is not going to quit until THEY’RE ready to quit. You cannot force anyone to quit their addictions. It’s a shame, because this girl does have talent, but no willpower to conquer her inner demons. Until Amy Winehouse decides to help Amy Winehouse, we’re going to continue to see her in a downward spiral. It’s sad to say this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if one day I wake up, get on celebitchy and see a post that says “Amy Winehouse: passed away in the carribean”
This is just sad: Her record company keeps throwing money at the problem in the hope of making big bucks out of a woman/child who is on the verge of total, permanent oblivion.
I always groan when I hear ‘no willpower’ to conquer her inner demons. This is almost always from non-addicts who don’t understand the nature of the beast at all.
Amy obviously does not want to make music anymore. She says she does, but I think she really doesn’t… at all.
it’s not about her health. it’s about making money off her next album.
Sad. Come back someday Amy. We miss your talents.
Sure you can say the record company wants to make money off of her, but they didn’t just hang her out to dry. They are spending millions where formerly they just stood back and waited for an artist to solve their own problems. The ball is in her court.
No wonder the record industry is in shambles if this is how they spend their money.
we haven’t seen her lately in her signature hair and make up…
CT, don’t say that again unless you want to see her crawling down the beach in full smeary-eyed drag.
I wish somebody would get her to do a full-bore celebrity rehab show. It could be riveting. And in the fantasy ending, she would be all curvy and pink, full-cheeked with health and vitality, and smile a sober smile and warn us all how deadly alcohol addiction is nothing to take lightly. It’s tragic seeing her tiny body killing itself slowly. 🙁
I don’t know if the record company is doing her any favours–let’s not feel warm and fuzzy…it is a company, not a charity, and the only reason they are willing to put money behind Amy now is because she has made them a bundle in the past and they are willing to bet–literally–that she will make them money in the future.
However, how is supporting her switch from drugs to alcohol in St. Lucia helping her? How do they think that tucking her away out of sight, out of reality, is going to make her suddenly sober up?
Worse, they seem to care only that she produce saleable music. The ‘handlers’ don’t really care if she is drunk 90% of the time, as long as for the other 10% she can make decent music (they even put in a studio right there to capture the bits and pieces of anything worthwhile she produces).
It’s disgusting, actually. They are like vultures hovering over her slowly decaying body hoping for one last album (or even a song) they can cash in on before she is beyond any help at all.
There is such a thing as being involuntarily committed as we’ve seen with Ms. Spears. If the person is seen to be a harm to themselves or others it can be done. Clearly she is harming herself, burning, cutting, etc. What else will it take? Oh, sorry I forgot, I suppose a completed album and more millions in the pockets of her “minders” would flip the switch. Give me a break. Universal should be ashamed. She is being used up until she breaks and there is proof that she cannot produce, kind of like an old race horse, except she is young and sick. She has no business working in any capacity let alone trying to create a blockbuster album.