This week is the 15th anniversary of Amy Winehouse’s death at the age of 27. It is a difficult loss to process, still. Her talent should have allowed for a career that spanned decades and genres. With one absolute masterpiece to her name by the age of 23 along with a deep knowledge of musical standards and contemporary styles, she would have carried on successfully if not for a number of factors that led to her early death. Amy had whatever it was that makes singers into worldwide celebrities.
She’s been the subject of many books and films since her death, some of which her family supported and others they have not. Each of her parents has written a memoir about their daughter; mother Janis takes the lead on 2021’s Reclaiming Amy, a BBC-sponsored single-episode documentary about Amy Winehouse from the people who knew her best. These include both of her parents (and their current spouses) and three of her close friends from the time before she became a household name. In this way, it’s not as in-depth a look into Amy’s thoughts and feelings as Amy Winehouse: In Her Words. It’s more of a combination of father Mitch’s memoir (the first to make it to print after her death), Janis’ memoir, and the indispensable Amy Winehouse: Beyond Black, which features accounts of some of the same friends that are featured here. As Mitch states early on in Reclaiming Amy, this text is meant to be a response to 2015’s Amy because he felt it showed him and his daughter in an unflattering light.
The emphasis is on the reclaiming more than Amy as a subject. Yes, they’re reminiscing on camera because they knew her personally; of course, it’s about Amy Winehouse the person. What they have to offer is context that is unavailable elsewhere. The they in this case also includes “the friends and family who knew Amy best and were with her until the end” because the friends especially have been overlooked in most accounts of Amy’s life. Janis states, too, that the group wants to “celebrate Amy as the complex, incredible woman that she was.” That complexity comes across clearly throughout the documentary due to the closeness those involved had with Amy.
Most of what her parents have to say about her is similar to what they have written in their respective books. Janis’ current husband claims that “Mitch suffered more than anybody” in the wake of the negative publicity about 2015’s Amy. Janis herself says she was most hurt by that film’s implication that “[Amy] had an unhappy childhood.” If that account of her life is a “caricature,” then Reclaiming Amy is an attempt to put Amy’s life back into human proportions. The complexity of Amy’s life was diminished and then amplified in sickening ways to create a distorted picture of a young woman finding her way in the world.
Bringing that complexity into proper focus is easier said than done, which might be clear when her proud parents are recounting the night she won five awards at the 2008 Grammys. Amy wasn’t present at the actual awards because she was in rehab and was also unable to obtain a visa in time to travel to the United States. In other segments, Reclaiming Amy does not shy away from her struggles with addiction, mental health, disordered eating, and gender identity so it struck me as odd that they didn’t give a quick aside about why she wasn’t there in person to receive praise and an award from Tony Bennett.
Apart from that minor quibble, the rest of the brief documentary is compelling. Friends Naomi, Catriona, and Chantelle who “knew another Amy” give a fresh perspective. It’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to think of the Amy Winehouse as a peer in one’s social group. That’s just what this clique of four women were. They knew her before she was famous and were still a part of her life through the next few years. Catriona shares that she and Amy slept together and that Amy would say, “I’m only a lesbian after I’ve had four sambucas.” To add a bit more clarity, Catriona characterizes her relationship with Amy as “unique and undefined.” These comments open a new avenue for interpretation of Amy’s relationships and friendships. Hearing the testimony of Naomi and Chantelle also gives more context to the idea that Amy was exploring gender boundaries and her own preferences as a woman even though all the tabloids ever focused on was her heterosexual relationships and their volatility. It’s important to know that she stuck with these three friends through all her hard times when she could have easily drawn clear boundaries and kept them at a distance. These friendships are authentic, at least from my outsider’s perspective.
Her friends’ comments help to make Amy seem more like any other twentysomething living in a big city trying to figure herself out. It follows that the death of her paternal grandmother, Cynthia, would be quite devastating. Her own mother says that “things started to unravel” for Amy at that point. Note that this explanation does not point to Blake or to drugs or alcohol as the beginning of her most tumultuous years. A 23-year-old losing a beloved grandparent and feeling set adrift is as normal an experience as anyone could have had. It just so happens that a few months later that 23-year-old would release a world-class album that demanded more of her as a public figure than she may have been prepared to give.
By focusing on her friendships and and connection with her grandmother, Reclaiming Amy succeeds in doing the task its title implies. She is more complex than a brief reading of the tabloid headlines would suggest. (“Oh the girl who sang about not wanting to go rehab eventually drank herself to death? Shocking.”) That said, those same friends and family knew she had a wild streak, even as a kid. In explaining her attitude and personality, even during the most trying times of her attempts at sobriety, Mitch said “nobody controlled Amy; Amy was the guvnor.” Her willfulness as a person definitely contributed to her success as a musician. It’s hard to hold back someone who believes so strongly in their ideas. Chantelle offers that Amy “was vulnerable, but she wasn’t fragile,” meaning that she recognized in her friend a susceptibility to addiction in various forms. At the same time, Chantelle also knew that Amy wasn’t a delicate flower. She was tough, but no level of toughness is enough to prevent addiction from taking root. For her part, Naomi contends that Amy’s alcohol issues were a means of masking her mental health struggles. As with Chantelle’s and Catriona’s comments, Naomi sees a different side of Amy than the general public and is able to help us understand her friend even better than the top-down analysis from news and music media that is all we usually get to know. It’s a good good thing that we have the perspectives of those friends to help reclaim Amy by sharing experiences that are grounded in friendship.
What would Amy have said about these attempts to control the narrative about her life? One gets the sense that she’d think all parties have it wrong and that there is more to her than anyone else could ever know, let alone claim for their own. We’ll have to continue wondering what could have been.
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