4/27/23
Newsletter #319
The Crack of Dawn
Another talented, albeit supremely fucked up, Jew in show business was Amy Winehouse. I certainly could be wrong about this, but her YouTube video with the most hits – 40 million – is, I believe, her audition tape. It’s one shot of her singing the song, Valarie, in a waiting room, accompanied by an off-screen acoustic guitar. I think it’s 2002 (making her 19) and she’s auditioning for Simon Fuller attempting to get on the British TV show, Pop Idols, which Fuller made into American Idol. To me, this single video, in some way, shape or form, is her whole career distilled into 3 ½ minutes. As I watched it for the 20th time last night I was thinking of Simon Fuller, if that’s who it was, watching her do that for the first time.
Before she went nuts with fame and drugs, Amy Winehouse was already a veritable text book of psychological quirks and tics. While she sings Valarie in her incredibly distinctive fashion – her timing is masterfully precise – she examines her nails, rearranges her hair ten times, seems to remember something that she either forgot or needs to do, dazes off a couple of times, and seems to be everywhere but where she is. And she completely nails the song. Her later, orchestrated version isn’t nearly as good (although it’s still really good, and very well-arranged).
Anyway, if you were Simon Fuller sitting and watching this audition, you would have to be thinking something along the lines of, “Oh my God, what a talented disaster-waiting-to-happen.” But maybe that’s hindsight on my part.
Wonderfully, and importantly, there is an outstanding documentary about her called Amy (2015, Oscar-winner for Best Documentary). The film is primarily composed of “found footage” – footage that was discovered after her death (at the standard rock & roll age of 27) – and there was a lot of it. Amy and her screwball, low-end, north London family and friends with their goofball accents, were constantly filming each other. And they laugh all the time. It’s like one of Mike Leigh’s movies, because I could see him dreaming up a character like her – this incredibly low-end, funky, tattooed, big-haired girl with an awesome voice who inexplicably loves Sarah Vaughn and Tony Bennett.
Then, once she’s famous, there’s tons of footage from TV shows, interviews, appearances, plus she was still shooting her own stuff. One aspect of the film that I found both impressive and innovative was that there were no talking heads. Many people were interviewed, but it was all used as voice-over, and each speaker was identified and pointed out in the found footage with a graphic, so you know who’s talking. I haven’t seen anyone else use this technique since, and eliminating talking heads is a great thing to do.
More and more I am coming to realize that the universe lacks subtlety. In the case of Amy Winehouse, it’s so obvious that it becomes ironic in its obviousness. As we watch this out-of-control young woman happily allow herself to be led into a squalid life of hard drugs and booze – by a stupid, untalented, parasite boyfriend, but with her unquestioning permission – and she’s obviously about to fall off a cliff, she released her five-time Grammy-winning album, Back to Black, with her one hit song, Rehab (Grammy-winner of Best Song of the Year, 2007) that goes like this:
They tried to make me go to Rehab
But I said no, no, no
Yes I've been black, but when I come back
You'll know, know, know
I ain't got the time
And if my daddy thinks I'm fine
They tried to make me go to Rehab
But I won't go, go, go
She really should have gone. Her daddy’s advice sucked, and was given entirely out of greed. As you see in the movie her daddy betrays her – bringing a camera crew to her attempted rehab vacation, and shoots her trying and failing to quit heroin, coke and booze, thus hastening her imminent fatal breakdown. It’s horrible, and it’s filmed; we get to see it.
The last footage of her is on stage in Belgrade, Serbia, on June 11, 2011. She’s so fucked up that she literally doesn’t know where she is. Wandering around lost, unsteady on her feet, she wisely decides to sit down on a speaker, then stares forlornly at the floor. She’d given everything she had, and that was it.
Amy Winehouse’s last recording was her duet with her hero, Tony Bennett, singing Body and Soul. It’s an astoundingly moving scene – once again, obviously ironic, heavily portentous, and in no way subtle – and I’m cosmically, deeply pleased that she got to do it. On the one hand you have 80-year-old Tony Bennett, perhaps the most well-adjusted, genuinely happy person in in the field of jazz; and on the other, you have 27-year-old Amy Winehouse, the most fucked up performer to recently enter the field of jazz, having to now perform up to the level of her hero. Not one of her heroes; her main hero (Sarah Vaughn had died). She of course completely panicked, which isn’t surprising, and kept fucking up the takes, which also isn’t surprising. But you can see clearly if she could just get it right, she has a strong enough, professional enough, voice and a unique approach, and is truly worthy of singing with Tony Bennett. And Tony Bennett sees it too. So Tony Bennett, being the ultimate old pro, gently guides her through the process, and gets a usable take. It’s a heartwarming, delightful scene.
My cat Ike just sneezed and I automatically said, “Gesundheit.” That is another word the English language has appropriated. It means “good health” in German.
Tally-ho!