Chasing Amy

It was music that yanked Winehouse out of her stoner’s lassitude. The five-foot-two girl had a voice many times her size: a brassy, blues-toned sound that carried echoes of her father’s vocal heroes, but with a rugged, contemporary edge. She taught herself to play her brother’s guitar and began to write songs. As a 15-year-old high school dropout, she started doing occasional singing gigs with local jazz bands. It was on one of those dates, in 2001, that Winehouse was spotted by an associate of Simon Fuller, the Svengali behind American Idol. At 18, Winehouse signed a deal with Fuller’s management company and landed a recording contract with EMI a short time later.

The result, released just a few months after Winehouse’s 20th birthday, was her debut album, Frank, which earned critical raves — but she wasn’t satisfied. She called the record overly slick and declared herself unable to listen to it. In late 2005 an EMI executive introduced Winehouse to the star DJ and producer Mark Ronson, who shared her love of vintage soul and R&B. Winehouse had been hanging out in a pub in her Camden neighborhood listening to oldies on the jukebox — Shirley Bassey, the Shangri-Las, the Angels — and arrived in Ronson’s New York studio determined to infuse her new album with the vast, echoey sonics and romantic sturm und drang of early-’60s pop.

Winehouse’s new inspiration reflected a fresh emotional immediacy in her songwriting — and the melodrama of her personal life. “There’s no artifice in Amy’s music,” Ronson tells Blender. “A lot of people sing about heartbreak and strike a rebellious pose. But Amy lives it.”

In early 2003, Winehouse met Blake Fielder-Civil at a local bar. At 19, Fielder-Civil was handsome, charismatic and, like Winehouse, a self-styled rebel: tattooed, foulmouthed, a heavy drinker and — as an occasional gopher on music-video shoots — only marginally employed. The couple fell in love and embarked on a stormy affair replete with fights, betrayals and torrid reconciliations. Most of the songs that would later emerge on Back to Black — sexually frank, doom-laden depictions of lost love — date from a hiatus in the relationship, when Fielder-Civil left Winehouse and went back to an old girlfriend. “He left no time to regret/Kept his dick wet/With his same old safe bet,” Winehouse wrote in the lyrics of the album’s bruising title track.

Released in the U.S. in February 2007, Back to Black entered the Billboard album chart at No. 7, the highest debut ever by a British woman. At a time of fractured musical taste and niche marketing, it has shown remarkably broad appeal: Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah have recorded Winehouse remixes, while the album’s retro stylings and traditional songcraft have made it a big hit with baby boomers. Meanwhile, with celebrity rehab becoming a media obsession, Winehouse inadvertently captured the zeitgeist with the first single from Back to Black.

“Rehab” was inspired by a 2003 incident in which she refused to heed the pleas of her management to seek treatment for alcoholism. The track name-drops two of Winehouse’s musical godheads, Ray Charles and Donny Hathaway — soul legends who famously battled drug dependency and depression, respectively. In recent months, it’s become apparent that Winehouse is following in her heroes’ footsteps, musical and otherwise.

Back at La Musicale, Winehouse takes the stage for the first of her pair of two-song sets, backed by her nine-piece group. They make an impressive tableau — Winehouse in a vintage cocktail dress, the all-male band in natty black suits and ties — and they sound great, too, sliding into crisp, crackling versions of “Back to Black” and “Rehab.” Winehouse is in fine voice — but she stands nearly stone still at the mic, wearing a vacant expression. Her eyes roll back in her head as she sings.

When she finishes, La Musicale’s perky host mounts the stage and attempts to conduct an interview. But Winehouse can barely muster a syllable in response. She is hustled offstage, with two songs still to perform. Outside of Winehouse’s dressing room, her manager, Raye Cosbert, pulls Naomi the stylist aside and hisses: “Go back in there and get rid of that wine.” Then Blender is ushered inside for another audience with the singer. Winehouse is back on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. She looks like she could use a nap.