The first time I saw Amy Winehouse perform live was in the basement of Pizza Express in Soho, in 2003. It was a more innocent time, before the beehives and tattoos, before the release of her witty debut album, Frank, later that year, long before the breakaway global success of Back to Black (2006) and the well-documented personal problems that followed in one of the most spectacular falls from grace the modern music business has witnessed.
Amy was just a great young singer-songwriter, with a set of smart, sassy, soulful original pop songs and some classic jazz standards. I met Amy's extended family, who were out in support, including her cab-driving father, Mitch Winehouse, his wife, Jane, and ex-wife Janice (Amy's mum).
At some point in the proceedings, the burly, white-haired Mitch joined Amy for a knock-out duet of the 1930 classic You Go To My Head, as recorded by Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday and others. Mitch was a natural, ebullient performer with a bluff, jazzy style, and Amy clearly enjoyed singing with him. When I interviewed Amy in 2004, she spoke glowingly of Mitch. "My dad's great," she enthused.
"He is like the karaoke Sinatra. He could be a lounge act, he's that good."
"That was a good night," recalls 59-year-old Mitch, smiling. "I always wanted to sing at every opportunity: weddings, parties, bar mitzvahs, I would be up there."
It was that very night, apparently, where the seeds of Mitch's own late-blossoming musical career were sown. "Amy said, ‘Why don't you do an album?' I said, ‘Hang on a minute, I know I can hold a tune, but millions of people can hold a tune.' She said, ‘Yeah, but you're better than that.' And we spoke about it for two or three years. Then she wasn't very well, as we all know, and now she's a hundred thousand per cent better, and the timing was right."
Faith in amy
Mitch's declaration of Amy's improving health suggests a poor grasp of mathematics but a touching faith in his daughter. Meanwhile, her faith in him is demonstrated with the release this week of Rush of Love, his debut album, through Janey Records.
The temptation to dismiss it as a vanity project falls away in the face of what is an accomplished piece of work, a nicely orchestrated jazz swing album of mainly obscure old songs from the fringes of the great American canon, which Mitch delivers in an offbeat style, never straying into impersonations of his heroes — Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme and Chet Baker.
"Look, I've said it myself a hundred times, if I wasn't Amy's dad, I wouldn't get to make an album," says Mitch. "The world isn't short of singers. But who wouldn't do this, given the opportunity? I love to sing, and I think we've made a nice album. And what I am able to do, with no expectation on me at all, is to reintroduce slightly more obscure songs, lovely songs that the world has forgotten."
In Amy's breakout 2006 hit Rehab, she protested that she'd be okay as long as "my daddy thinks I'm fine". Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. I asked Mitch if he felt any responsibility for her descent into alcohol and drug abuse. "Well, first of all, I never put her on the stage, she put herself on stage. That's all that she wanted to do. We can all be wise after the event, but she's always made decisions for herself, and that's right."
Reports still occasionally appear suggesting that Amy has not put her problems behind her. A producer who worked with her once described her to me as a "write-off". Mitch wrinkles his nose in disgust. "Well, she's not a write-off. She'll show that on the next album. Talk is cheap, we'll have to wait and see. Amy's a recovering addict. And she's been recovering now for at least 18 months. Do you know how difficult that's been for her? I know, generally, people want her to do well but there's also an element, certainly in the tabloid press, that feed it and perpetuate it. I know what the reality is and it's good."
Mitch's album is full of love songs of loss and regret, including a touching version of I Apologise. I wonder if that is a theme? "I'm not sending a message to my wife or my ex-wife, if that's what you think. I've done all my apologising. I've had a life of apologising. Maybe I should apologise for my singing, I don't know. I don't feel I've got anything to apologise for."
As for whether his musical career might be seen as exploiting his daughter's fame, he laughs if off. "Well, it was my name before Amy's. You could say she's been exploiting my name, I'm just catching up."
