‘Who can I make a cup of tea for?” Those were the first words the 20-year-old Amy Winehouse said to the photographer and me in February 2004 when we arrived at her messy flat in Camden for an interview with this charismatic young meteor of a burgeoning jazz revival. Back then I was struck by the thoughtfulness of the seemingly mundane gesture, given how rare it was (and still is) for musicians in the spotlight to think of anyone but themselves. Now, 13 years after her death, in the wake of her short life receiving the biopic treatment in Back to Black, I’m saddened by the memory of someone who came across as funny, intimidating, probably drank a bit too much and in no way seemed like a tragic figure in waiting. She was like so many of the north London Jewish girls I used to fancy as a teenager, in fact: streetwise beyond her years.
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It was weird watching Back to Black. The interior of that flat seemed pretty authentic, what little I remembered of it. The period in the mid-Noughties when pubs were enveloped in a fog of smoke, guitar bands were the thing and everyone in Camden under 25 acted like a pool-playing lad or ladette in a Fred Perry shirt was also rendered faithfully. Marisa Abela’s portrayal of Winehouse evoked her blend of toughness, sweetness and single-mindedness, and although the film fell into the trap of dramatic exaggeration so typical of biopics, it also felt more true to her spirit than Asif Kapadia’s documentary Amy, which came with such a strong narrative agenda that I ended up not trusting it. Back to Black captured who Winehouse was, not just what happened to her.
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I also admired Back to Black’s commitment to Winehouse’s musical life. There is a scene of her falling in love, which is set against the heavenly harmonies of Minnie Riperton’s Les Fleurs; I looked back on that interview from 2004 to find Winehouse eulogising Riperton “for her range and feeling — she was someone who could convey what she felt with ease”. She said of the jazz singer Dinah Washington, who also appears on the soundtrack, “I love Dinah because she would sing all over the song, rather than just do it straight.” Back then it was unusual to meet a young singer taking inspiration from classic jazz and soul, alongside hip-hop stars big at the time such as Mos Def and Outkast. “No one shares my taste for the older stuff,” she confirmed. “Jazz is my own language.”
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Music features in the scene marking the beginning of the end: Winehouse’s future partner in dissolution, Blake Fielder-Civil, acting out Leader of the Pack by the Shangri-Las when the two meet at the Good Mixer pub. Soon after she seems to have become a different person from the one I met, someone ruined as much by fame, bulimia and the invading power of the paparazzi as she was by drugs, drink and toxic codependency, but I admired Back to Black for going beyond the tragedy and delving into the character within. As Winehouse said in that interview, back when everything was to play for, “music is the thing that means the most to me. I love everyone in my life but you don’t get any shit with music. It’s pure beauty and there’s no small stuff attached. It’s an immense thing.”
Back to Black (15, 122min) is in cinemas
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