Category Archives: Amy Winehouse

Guitar played by John Lennon on Help!, lost for 50 years, going up for auction

Posted on by

Guitar also played by George Harrison on Norwegian Wood could sell for millions in May auction, alongside other memorabilia including a book of Tupac Shakur’s handwritten lyrics

A guitar played by John Lennon and George Harrison in sessions for the albums Help! and Rubber Soul, which has spent the last 50 years lying in an attic, is to go up for auction alongside other memorabilia items such as a handwritten concert setlist by Kurt Cobain, a book of handwritten lyrics by Tupac Shakur and a Fendi dress worn by Amy Winehouse.

The 12-string acoustic guitar, a Hootenanny model made by Bavarian firm Framus in the early 1960s, was primarily played by Lennon and also appears in the movie Help!, used to perform You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away. The studio version of that song also features the guitar, as well as Help!’s title track, It’s Only Love and I’ve Just Seen a Face. Harrison, meanwhile, used it to play the rhythm guitar part on Norwegian Wood, and it appears on another Rubber Soul song, Girl.

Continue reading...

A decade after she died, I can finally grieve the Amy Winehouse I knew and loved

Posted on by
Coming to terms with the loss of my friend Amy Winehouse, amid the media frenzy that surrounded her death, has taken me 10 years

God knows what I must have looked like: a bedraggled 25-year-old dressed as a psychedelic game hunter with glitter smeared across my face crying hysterically in a Cambridgeshire field. It was 4pm on 23 July 2011, and a friend of mine had broken the news to me: Amy was dead. I was totally inconsolable, while around me fellow-revellers danced.

It was the Saturday of Secret Garden Party and my friends had been deliberating among themselves how best to tell me. Their hands were forced when they realised it was about to be announced on the festival stage. In the end, a guy called Jamie opted for directness: “Amy Winehouse is dead.”

Continue reading...

Mark Ronson on hope, hits and Amy Winehouse: ‘I loved being in her company. She was so funny’

Posted on by

The superstar producer nearly quit music during lockdown. Now he’s starting a ‘new phase’ with a TV show. He discusses therapy, paparazzi – and being tucked in by Robin Williams

Mark Ronson has been a DJ longer than he hasn’t: his entire adult life, sometimes working four or five nights a week, since he was 18. “What is that?” He casts his mind back and counts. “Twenty-five – no, 27 years. Jesus.”

In this time, he has been a staple of the New York scene, the studio partner of Amy Winehouse and a superproducer of artists from Ghostface Killah to Lady Gaga. He has his own instantly recognisable, vintage-leaning sound and is the invisible touch on songs that define not just years but decades.

Continue reading...

Amy Winehouse’s 20 greatest songs – ranked!

Posted on by

With the 10th anniversary of her death this week, rediscover the best of Winehouse’s discography, where heartbreak and anger are mixed up with wit and joy

After all its emotional strife, the Back to Black album concludes with a jokey paean to weed. You could construct an argument that Addicted is Winehouse once more tapping into a venerable jazz tradition – it’s easy to imagine Fats Waller singing about someone snaffling his stash in the 30s – but perhaps it’s better to just enjoy its mordant wit.

Continue reading...

‘I couldn’t talk about her for years’: my godmother, Amy Winehouse

Posted on by

She cooked, watched Countdown and was mentored by the legendary singer. Now, 10 years after her death, Dionne Bromfield has finally addressed the grief she couldn’t deal with aged 15

Dionne Bromfield is leaning into the screen as we talk on Zoom, recounting the moment 10 years ago when she received the news that would change her life for ever. On a sunny July day, the 15-year-old singer was waiting to go on stage. She was supporting the boyband The Wanted on tour in Wales, the atmosphere backstage fizzing with energy before each show. However, that day something felt off. People were unusually quiet, and no one would meet her eyes. Eventually, she was told something was wrong: “It’s Amy.”

Amy Winehouse, whose remarkable, all-too-brief career ended with her death a decade ago this month, had been the teenager’s godmother, friend and mentor. Winehouse had nurtured Bromfield’s burgeoning vocal skills and helped her break into a notoriously competitive industry. For years after her death, Bromfield couldn’t listen to Amy’s music, let alone think about her. After two albums and a stint presenting the CBBC show Friday Download, the singer who had been marked out by many as one to watch and performed on live television with Winehouse, stepped back from music.

Continue reading...

Britney Spears: another pop princess trapped in a man-made fairytale

Posted on by

One contributor is notably absent from the new film about Britney: herself. But from Rihanna to Beyoncé to Taylor Swift, female stars have always struggled to tell their stories

In the closing song of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, we are invited to ponder the question: “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” It is a powerful message about legacy and ownership, as relevant to any modern public figure as it is about one of America’s founding fathers.

I think about this lyric whenever my mind strays to Britney Spears, who has found her life back under the microscope following the release of the documentary Framing Britney Spears. The story the film chooses to tell is contextualised by what we now understand as the rampant misogyny of the mid-to-late 00s, painting an empathic portrait of a woman who had not previously found much sympathy in the mainstream.

Continue reading...

Amy Winehouse hologram tour postponed due to ‘unique sensitivities’

Posted on by

Base Hologram, which was planning a concert tour featuring the deceased singer, says ‘creativity does not necessarily follow a schedule’

The company developing an Amy Winehouse hologram tour has postponed the project. Base Hologram said in a statement that it had encountered “some unique challenges and sensitivities” on the path to “remembering Amy Winehouse and her legacy in the most celebratory and respectful way possible”.

In a further statement issued to Billboard magazine, Base chairman and CEO Brian Becker described the production as a “cross between a Broadway show and a concert spectacle which requires creative engineering”, and added: “that type of creativity does not necessarily follow a schedule.”

Continue reading...