Not many people come out of the film well, from her father whose desertion when she was a child seems to have triggered her later emotional problems to her husband who got her hooked on heroin and crack and the paparazzi and tabloid journalists who hounded her until her death. The only people who emerge with any credit are her first manger Nicky Shymansky and her schoolfriends who tried to help her and the singer Tony Bennett with whom she duetted not long before she died.
I can remember the first time I heard Amy Winehouse, on a pub jukebox singing Rehab. I was convinced it was a sixties soul record before the person I was with put me right.
Great voice; a lost talent. I used to get angry when I'd read self-righteous comments in threads about how we shouldn't glorify a junkie - it was her own choice, according to these perfect people. No one chooses to be a drug addict, any more than mountain climbers choose to fall off, or racing drivers choose to crash.
ReplyDeleteIt's a mistake to be judgemental - it's only good fortune that we haven't fallen, one way or another.