The Winehouse Rules
Though Amy Winehouse’s albums ‘Frank’ and ‘Back in Black’ sound like a homage to Black Francis, she’s not about to take after the Pixies man. “I feel really good, I’ve got my boobs back, I’ve been in the gym training, and if I can’t sort it out then who the fuck am I?” she tells Jeremy Allen…
“Alright love, I’m just eating, don’t mind me” are approximately Amy Winehouse’s first words to me as she sits side on ripping chicken bits apart with her fingers and shoving them in her face. She’s not the sort to stand on ceremony and that’s one of the things that’s rather likable about her from the off. Her music is polished, assured, accomplished even, yet a vulnerability comes across in the 23-year-old, and an uncompromising honesty; she’s nothing like the sour vixen she’s portrayed as in the tabloid press.
Interestingly the qualities attributed to Amy are similar to those – usually two pronged adjectives – applied to Lily: hard-faced, razor-tongued, trouble-making, gobshite. Which is curious, because I’ve interviewed them both and neither are the supposed ballsy in-yer-face-tightening-implements-
around-yer-gizzards nutcases they’re portrayed to be, they’re both actually really bloody nice. And they’re also certainly younger than you’d imagine. But that’s marketing for you.
Winehouse comes through to the room where I’ve been sent for the interview, and she looks both immaculate and wayward, her jet-black hair cascading into the air like a waterfall in Robert Smith’s garden. She’s had 20 minutes sleep, which considering the way she looks just isn’t fair. At first she’s a little indignant, and any minute I’m expecting her to retort: ‘bovvvvered’, but once on a roll she’s illuminating and perceptive.
So the record was out on Monday. Are you excited about ‘Back To Black’, because I always get the impression you had reservations about ‘Frank’?
“No, not at all, I just think I was very defensive about it because I wasn’t sure how it was going to be received, and I assumed I should write the album and the record company do everything else – which was kind of wrong. They called all the shots. This time it was much more of a team effort and I’m just really proud of it. When I did my first one I was learning. It’s been a smoother ride definitely.”
So was it that you didn’t have as much creative control with ‘Frank’ as you’d have liked?
“Well I wrote the whole album. I did the album as I wanted to do it, but when you work with your friends or if you’re close to someone sometimes they’ll persuade you to do things you otherwise wouldn’t have done and you think ‘that wasn’t my idea’”.
You won an Ivor Novella didn’t you?
“Yeah, I did.”
Was that an accolade you’re proud of?
“Yeah well, there were only two people up against me and one of them was fucking Kylie, but still it’s pretty good innit?”
I’m not sure what the value of an Ivor Novello is these days? I’ve not won one so I couldn’t say. It’s pretty cool probably.
“Yeah, it is cool, yeah.”
When did you first discover you could sing?
“Uh. Uhhh, I don’t know. I think I’ve always… I don’t remember not singing. I think I always could sing. I always could sing, I didn’t think it was special, everyone else around me could sing as well.”
Was that your family who have a jazz history, or was it because you went to the Sylvia Young Theatre School for a bit?
“Um, I did, for about a year and a half. I got a scholarship there. That was good. I just kept getting kicked out of school. I ended up getting kicked out of there as well, but I remember [from the previous school] I was on report and I’d had a bad day and the Deputy Headmaster he goes to me, ‘what do you intend to do about it?’ and I said, ‘I’m going to stage school’. I hadn’t even thought about it, I hadn’t applied or anything and then he went ‘well that’s fantasy, that’s not reality’ and I was like ‘whatever’. I was just being obnoxious. And then my mum said to me, she came home from work that day and went ‘ooh, one of the Saturday girls [from work] said she’s going up for an audition at Sylvia Young’. I was like ‘mum, can I do it?’ and she was like ‘it’s a scholarship edition so yeah’ and I’m like ‘coooool’. So I got a half scholarship which was really good.”
So in a way do you see that as a ‘fuck you’ to the people who doubted you or kicked you out of the schools before?
“Yeah I do a little bit, yeah. Nice feeling. Yeah, especially like my music teacher who gave me a D. Bastard. Then after Sylvia Young I went to a girls school and he just thought I was a prima donna because I’d been to stage school but I wasn’t, I was just a little rebellious bastard, it had nothing to do with the fact I’d been to another school. It was more to do with the fact I was openly disruptive. It was backwards, there were no boys there. I was just going out of my nut. There were only two girls there who were even remotely like me and I was just like ‘oh, come on’. And when I went to Sylvia Young they moved me up a year, and when I went [there] they moved me back down because of my age, and I was like ‘you’re going to make me repeat a year?!’ And that was another reason why I was so disruptive. And I ended up not going to the lessons anymore and just turned up at my GCSE’s at the end of the year and that was it.”
So you were a troublesome type eh… But your music taste is quite, um, refined. Was it jazz you’ve always been into? The new album is a lot more girl group / motown.
“Yeah, I haven’t been listening to any jazz this time around. That’s pretty much all I’ve been listening to. Girl groups and Motown and a lot of ska, the Specials, the Shangri-Las. That’s what I’ve been listening to.”
So jazz was your main influence, but you grew up in North London and you’re a guitarist. Was there never a temptation to join a crap indie band?
“No. Nononono. I wasn’t ever [sings a Motorhead type riff] DANNANANANA. I was more into folky stuff sort of thing you know. I used to like some guitar bands – I still like guitar bands. Old ones like The Who and The Specials… though they’re not really a guitar band. The Velvet Underground, they wrote some beautiful songs.”
What do you like that’s around at the moment?
“I like the Zutons, I really like the Coral because they’ve got a really warm sound. That’s about it really. I like Kings of Leon, actually, I like some of their stuff, a couple of their songs. I liked all the Libertines stuff and Dirty Pretty Things, and some of Babyshambles. But I’m not like ‘I love that band’, I don’t own any of those CDs I just mentioned, but if you live in Camden it’s around you all the time and if you go out in Camden it gets played all night.”
Do you like Lily Allen at all?
“Yes! Lovely girl. Lovely girl. I met her, we sang together (well not together) – we both sang with Mark Ronson at Bestival. Then she did her set the next day but I’d gone by then, but I would have liked to have seen it. She played G.A.Y. wearing bunny ears or something. She’s like the female Gnarls Barkley or something.”
I interviewed her recently and she was cool.
“She’s a really cool girl isn’t she?”
Probably in the same way as you, people often think she’s outspoken and agro and out to cause some sort of controversy, and I didn’t find that.
“I mean, I’m outspoken. Does Lily slag people off?”
A bit.
“She does a bit, yeah. I mean I did a bit but I learned my lesson from that because it goes against you more than it does for you.”
It’s a shame when people can’t say what they think though. When they have to toe the PR line.
“I have ways of getting around it now. People go on about an artist they think are shit and I’ll just go ‘I don’t get it’. [Usually] I’m like an old man, but now I’ll be like ‘I know the kids like it, I don’t get it! It’s just kind of like whaaaaat?’. There’s a way of saying it without saying ‘they’re shit,’ do you know what I mean? You don’t really have to do that.”
It’s more entertaining to read though. It’s more entertaining for me to write about. You say something and there’s your headlines.
“I think I learnt my lesson though, you know. Because I came out with the Katie Melua stuff and that lot, and when I said whatever ‘It’s bland! It’s bland!’ people’d go ’she’s bitter, oooh’. My nana always used to say that to me. She’d say ‘please don’t go on about other bands, please?’ I’d be like ‘nan, they’re just dicks’ and she’d be like ‘yeah, but it makes you sound like a bitch and you’re not like that at all.’ And I was like okay, fair enough.”
Justin from the Darkness was always slagging people off and I think that was one of the reasons people wanted to see him fail.
“I don’t think it was that. I think it was because he was so flamboyant and cocky. I don’t think it was about calling people shit. I mean Thom Yorke could say the whole world is shit but because he’s unassuming and polite they’re like ‘go on Thom’.”
Speaking of Justin, he went into rehab recently, and that guy from Keane…
“Do you know what he was addicted to? Port. Desert wine. Why? Why?!”
If he was on a real bender he probably hit the Pimms.
“(Laughs) My boyfriend said ‘he looks like he’s fucking addicted to desert as well.’ Now that’s not nice.”
You see, you didn’t say it, your boyfriend said it. Is ‘Rehab’ about that or is it more personal?
“No, it’s completely about that. I didn’t really have a problem, I mean… I did have a problem – I was drinking too much. I was so depressed that I just wanted to block it out, you know. It wasn’t just alcohol, it was painkillers and stuff, but I knew I could control it. And I wasn’t eating and everyone goes ’she’s too thin, she’s too thin’ but I’ve put on three quarters of a stone since then, I feel really good, I’ve got my boobs back, I’ve been in the gym training, eating right, so the reason I don’t go do these things is because I think, if I can’t sort it out then who the fuck am I? If I can’t do it myself then I can’t do anything.”
Jeremy Allen for Playlouder
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