had lived, she would have released many great albums, I know, but as she’d had no idea her life was going to end so early and so abruptly, she hadn’t left behind enough finished recordings to make a complete album in the way that
We had given producers Salaam Remi and Mark Ronson our consent to compile the album and they worked together on it. Salaam said, ‘It makes no sense for these songs to be sitting on a hard drive, withering away.’ We were very pleased with the final result, which was why we, Amy’s family, endorsed its release.
After Amy passed away, Jane and I spent a lot of time with Reg. I guess being with him made me feel close to Amy. Reg talked about the times he had spent with her and we laughed a lot because we focused on Amy’s brilliant sense of humour and wit; he, too, had found her very sharp. There was no crying. I knew Reg, like all of us, was missing Amy so much and suffering terribly. On Valentine’s Day 2012, Reg took flowers for Amy to her house in Camden Square; her cat, Katie, now lives with him.
I was reminded recently of a regular conversation I used to have with Amy. She loved joking with me about a movie about my life, in which Amy was the casting director. She decided that Ray Winstone would be perfect to play me. I would counter that by saying George Clooney would be a better choice. Amy said Reg could play the part of my dad as a young man because he looked like him; Jane would be played by Helen Hunt, and my mum by Elizabeth Taylor, who was still alive at the time. We both knew it was never going to happen but we loved the game.
Amy never said whom she would cast as herself.
Hearing Amy’s music – even if we just walk past an open window and hear it playing inside somewhere – is still difficult for me. One evening Jane and I were passing a bar where they were playing ‘Rehab’, and I heard the line, ‘My daddy thinks I’m fine’. I wrote in my diary, ‘This is so hard. I don’t know how much more of it I can take. Amy’s everywhere I go, but she’s not here. I need some comfort, but there is none.’
But Amy and my mother Cynthia are together now. Amy believed, and I believe, that love conquers all. Even death.
Thank you for allowing me to share with you the story of Amy’s all too short life. Writing this book has brought it all back to me: reading my diaries, remembering the good times, the bad times and the very worst time of all, when Amy passed away. It’s easy to forget that Amy was only a young woman when she died, as so much had happened in those years, and so many people had been touched by her life and her music. I sometimes think that perhaps I should have handled some situations differently, but that’s me. For my own sake, and that of Amy’s family, I decided not to look back and regret, because nothing good would come of that. I always did my best for Amy but sometimes I couldn’t cope and hindsight can be very cruel.
Amy will be in my heart and mind for ever. I miss her so much that sometimes it physically hurts. Her legacy is already having a positive effect on many young people’s lives and, as I have said, I will be spending the rest of my life working for Amy’s Foundation. Together with my family, my dear friends and the many, many other people helping us, we will ensure that Amy is never forgotten.
Amy was a great girl with a huge heart. Please keep her in yours.
A NOTE ON THE AMY WINEHOUSE FOUNDATION
One major factor helping me through the months after Amy’s death was creating the Foundation that carries her name.
Many people have helped in all sorts of ways to ensure that the Amy Winehouse Foundation was established, is funded, properly run and able to give financial support to those organizations most in keeping with our aims. They are too many to name here, but among those I worked closely with in establishing the Foundation were my lawyers and accountants, Universal Records, the Outside Organization and Comic Relief, who, through their US arm America Gives Back, are assisting with the collection of donations in the US.
So many individuals found ways to offer their support for the Foundation. Matt Goss asked me if I would open for him at the Royal Albert Hall, my fee to go to Amy’s Foundation: Amy’s passing had resonated with him as his little sister Carolyn died in 1988 when a drunk-driver crashed into her car. John Taylor, of Duran Duran, wanted to offer more than just financial support, and proposed setting up our own juvenile rehabilitation facility; it may take time for this to come about, but his strong interest in the Foundation’s planned work was a real boost to me. Robbie Williams’s mother, Jan, who helps to run Robbie’s charity, Give It Sum (also administered by Comic Relief), met us to discuss working in partnership together.
Individually, some amazing donations came in. Michael Buble made a generous donation. When Tony Bennett and his record label, Sony, told us they were donating $100,000, my breath was taken away – what an incredible thing for them to do. Amy’s fans from all over the world made donations, which, however modest, have brought us the greatest pleasure of all, affirming to those who work for the Foundation and who have supported it that Amy’s life and work will always be treasured.
As well as the income that Amy’s music generated for the Foundation, other organizations collected money for us. Fred Perry decided, with our support, that they would go ahead with Amy’s autumn 2011 and spring 2012 collections, with all Amy’s commission paid to the Foundation. Most of the work on the collections had been done when Amy was living at Bryanston Square and it always amazed me how brilliantly she could transfer what was in her mind to paper. I guess it was just another of her many creative talents.
By October 2011 Fred Perry reported that sales of Amy’s collection were 40 per cent up on the same time the previous year.
In November the dress that Amy wore on the cover of
The Foundation has provided hundreds of thousands of pounds to a variety of projects, both in the UK and elsewhere, including hospices and other organizations devoted to terminally and chronically ill children and young adults, such as Chestnut Tree House near Arundel, the Little Havens Children’s Hospice, Rayleigh, Essex, Hopes and Dreams charity in Essex, and the LauraLynn House in Dublin, Ireland’s first children’s hospice. I was so proud and pleased to be helping these kids in Amy’s name.
Amy had told me she wanted to do something for some of the children on St Lucia – Janis is spearheading this project on behalf of the Foundation and is currently discussing a long-term project with the St Lucian government.
The Foundation is also supporting New Horizons Youth Centre, in Euston, London, by helping to fund its music work, designed to provide skills to young people, and their free food service for those unfortunately homeless.
With the Angelus Foundation, set up by author and broadcaster Maryon Stewart after losing her daughter, Hester, in 2009, after she had taken the ‘legal’ drug GBL, the Foundation is supporting efforts aimed at encouraging the government to introduce drug-awareness education into schools in the UK.
I had been speaking to MPs and to the government already on the issue of rehab centres for young addicts who wanted to quit. I had meetings with Keith Vaz MP, chairman of the Home Office select committee, and James Brokenshire MP, Home Office minister for crime and security. I learned that half of the government’s budget to help people with addiction problems – some ?200 million – was used to enable addicted offenders within the criminal justice system to receive treatment in a residential rehabilitation unit. This meant a convicted criminal was five times more likely to be offered residential rehab than a non-offender.
At a further meeting with some senior civil servants I was told they viewed residential rehabilitation as ‘an
