Pop sensation Amy Winehouse was just 27 when she was found dead in her London flat, leaving her loving family and loyal fans devastated.
She was one of the biggest music stars in the world, with a huge collection of Brits and Grammies to her name.
But despite having the music world eating out of the palm of her hand, the young singer – famed for her incredible voice and her statement beehive and eyeliner – was battling crippling personal demons.
Her battle with drug and alcohol addiction was played out in the press and her turbulent relationship with ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil filled gossip columns for years.
A string of disastrous performances in the months leading up to her death from alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011, only cemented the public’s view that Amy’s life was spiralling out of control.
But a Channel 5 documentary examining the 13 reasons why one of the 21st century’s most prodigious talents died so young claims Amy’s problems started long before her life in the spotlight.
1. The moment the family breaks down
Amy was born in North London in September 1983 and she enjoyed a blissfully happy upbringing with mum, Janis, dad, Mitch, and brother, Alex.
However, this all fell apart when her parents separated when she was just nine.
The divorce clearly had a profound, and lasting, impact on the young Amy.
One of the stand out tracks, What Is It About Men, from her first album, Frank, shows the depth of pain she felt about what had happened to her family.
(Image: PA)
Lyrics include: “Understand, once he was a family man, So surely I would never, ever go through it first hand, Emulate all the shit my mother hated, I can’t help but demonstrate my Freudian fate.”
Writer and presenter, Robert Elms, said: “You can hear it in her voice and you can hear it in the lyrics.
“There’s an honesty with her, it’s almost as though she has no emotional shield.”
By 1992 Amy was trying to put her heartbreak at her parents’ divorce behind her and had won a scholarship at Sylivia Young’s Theatre School.
She had been encouraged by her grandmother, Cynthia, who could see Amy’s gifts and wanted her to put them to good use.
(Image: jewishmuseum)
2. Amy develops bad habits
Amy was an undeniable talent at school but it was also during this time that she started to develop some of the bad habits that would haunt her for the rest of her life.
At 13 she had her lip pierced and her first tattoo followed not long after.
By her mid-teens Amy had started experimenting with cannabis, an introduction to drugs that would dog her for years.
Worryingly, Amy also developed some dangerous eating habits.
Her mum, Janis, said: “When she was 15 she says ‘I’ve found this really great diet, I eat what I want then I just bring it all back up’.
“My feeling was that this would pass. I told Mitch about it and he wasn’t taking it seriously but she’s basically describing bullimia.”
It was around this time that there is now a suspicion that Amy was suffering from an undiagnosed personality disorder but she refused to seek help or a diagnosis.
Aged just 16, Amy was starting to come to the attention of record labels but her management were keen to wait until she signed a deal but just three years later, aged just 19, everything would change for the young star.
3. Amy moves to the wrong part of town
Amy signed to Island Records in 2002, aged just 19, in a reported £250,000 deal.
One of the first things she did was to move to Camden in North London.
In the mid-1990s it was the hotbed of talent during the Britpop era and was still a magnet for bands like The Libertines due to its hard drinking and hard drugs culture.
Robert Elms said: “This was the most dangerous place in the world for Amy. It fulfils her needs but also threatens her life.”
As well as working on her debut album, Amy loved to play pool and party with friends.
Pal Zoe Griffin said: “She would drink out of a pint glass but it wasn’t beer, I think it was spirits.
“And she was just as good at pool after her second pint of spirits as after her first – no one could beat her.
“Her place was known as the party place and that wasn’t good for her because she had everyone who wanted to get into trouble back at her flat.
(Image: Getty)
“There was no escape for her and she wasn’t getting much sleep.”
But Amy’s career was going from strength the strength and she bagged an Ivor Novello award following the release of Frank.
4. Amy meets the wrong man
It was in 2005 that she met her future husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, and the pair quickly became besotted with each other.
(Image: Getty)
Zoe said: “She had a new life with Blake and they were fixated with each other.
“Amy was very all or nothing and if she had a boyfriend that was the most important thing in her life.”
Blake himself has admitted it was love at first sight when he first saw Amy and before long the couple were utterly inseperable,
Just a few months after their relationship started it became clear that there was something very wrong with Amy.
5. Amy loses a summer
By the summer of 2005, Amy was noticeably thinner and looked worn out.
She had stunned the audience at the Mercury Awards in 2004 but just 12 months later she looked exhausted and skinny.
Psychologist Honey Langcaster-James said: “When fame came knocking she was confronted with her own image, often blown up, for someone already struggling with issues around her eating and weight management will have been traumatic.”
But there is a darker theory as to why Amy’s weight had suddenly dropped – drugs.
Chip Somers, addiction specialist, said: “Crack cocaine and heroin will make you look skeletal.
“Within six months she was showing all the signs of co-dependancy with Blake and they form a Bonnie and Clyde-style relationship, very much ‘it’s us against the world’.”
(Image: Getty)
6. Amy says no to rehab
Her friends, family and management are becoming increasingly worried about the young star and encourage her to go to rehab.
Initially, she refuses, a decision which spawned arguably her biggest song, Rehab.
At one point she does agree to seek help but only if both she and Blake can be treated in the same facility.
Chip Somers is approached by Blake but refuses to treat them both together.
He said: “I explained to Blake that it was impossible to treat them both together but that I could treat them separately, we went to speak to Amy who was outside in the car and she looked to him for what they should do.
“He said ‘we’ll find somewhere else’. I wish I could have spoken to Amy on her own.”
7. Amy loses her ‘hero’
The one woman who Amy would listen to and take advice from was her grandmother, Cynthia, who had originally encouraged her to follow her dreams and become a singer.
(Image: PA Wire)
But while Amy was recording her second album, Back to Black, in New York, Cynthia tragically died.
Amy was devastated and flew straight home.
It was then that she had one of her most famous tattoos – a 1950s-style woman – inked onto her arm as a tribute to her gran.
Blake also dumps a devastated Amy who pours her broken heart into her new album.
8. Fame takes hold
The release of Back To Black shot Amy to megastardom.
Critically acclaimed and selling millions of copies, the album was a huge hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
It bagged Amy Brit and five Grammy awards, something she clearly found overwhelming.
(Image: Redferns)
Amy appears completely oblivious to her own talent, finding it hard she’s being mentioned in the same breath as some of her musical heroes.
She’s on the front page of every newspaper and while she’s riding high on the success of the record, Blake Fielder-Civil comes back into her life.
The couple marry in Miami in 2007 but when they return to London, Amy’s problems really take hold.
9. Amy becomes public property
With the huge success of her album and her turbulent love life with Blake, Amy is the ultimate news story.
The paparazzi are permanently camped outside her front door.
Psychologist Anjula Mutanda said: “They are following her and shouting stuff to get a reaction.
“She would have been feeling like an animal, trapped in the corner and trying to get away from these people.”
Because of the bizarre situation she now found herself due to the amount of press attention, Amy and Blake’s relationship became even more co-dependant.
10. Addiction takes over
Amy is now a regular in the papers, partly due to her dramatic relationship with Blake.
And then a photo emerges of the couple, bloodied and covered with scratch marks emerges after they are reported to have rowed in a London hotel room.
Even Amy’s feet are covered in blood.
The public are well aware of the drama in Amy’s life but do not know about her battle with drugs.
Then, in 2008, a video is released online appearing to show Amy smoking crack cocaine in the grainy black and white footage.
11. Amy hits crisis point
The video of her smoking drugs has stunned her fans and not only that, the hot smoke is starting to damage her vocal chords.
Friend Zoe said: “She had lost a lot of weight and there was barely anything of her but she was still taking a lot of drugs.
“She was ageing and was having physical problems and her hair was falling out.”
A severe reaction to a sedative threatened Amy’s life and her relationship with Blake began to fall apart when police raided their Camden home and arrested him on suspicion of pervertig the course of justice.
Blake was later jailed for 27 months for assaulting a bar owner and this is when things really began to unravel for Amy, who was completely dependant on her husband.
What should have been a triumphant headline slot at Glastonbury turned into chaos when Amy began to repeatedly punch a member of the crowd.
However, things started to look up when Blake was released from prison in February 2009 and filed for divorce.
Amy’s friends and family were delighted and she even started a new relationship with film director, Reg Traviss.
One of Amy’s dreams come true when she records a duet with music legend, Tony Bennett, and is filmed finally looking healthy and happy.
12. Amy loses her voice
With Amy seemingly back on track, she is booked to play at a festival in Belgrade and embark on a European tour.
It’s her long awaited come back – but is a complete disaster.
Amy stumbles around the stage, doesn’t look at the crowd and it is clear that her glorious voice is now gone.
After the car crash gig the rest of her European tour is scrapped.
Pal Zoe Griffin says: “I don’t know why she was doing it, she didn’t need the money.
“Amy clearly didn’t want to be there so why were they making her go up on stage?”
Just three weeks after the tour is scrapped Amy takes to the stage for her final appearance before her death.
She joins her goddaughter, Dionne Bromfield, on stage at the Roundhouse in Camden.
Amy looked happy and healthy – but just hours later she returned to her old, deadly habits.
13. Amy suffers a relapse
After her appearance on stage with Dionne, Amy starts to drink and goes on a huge binge.
Showbiz journalist Hannah Fernando said: “She had nothing left, she had lost love, her army of fans and her voice – the only thing that set her apart from anyone else.
“I wonder if she thought there was anything left for her.”
Amy had one, final conversation with her body guard, Andrew Morris, before she went to bed on the evening of July 22, 2011.
He said: “She was showing me some clips on her laptop and she was singing and she said ‘boy, I can sing’ and I said ‘damn right, you can sing.
“She said ‘if I could I would give it back just to walk down the street with no hassle, I would’.”
The next morning Andrew found Amy motionless on her bed.
A coroner’s report recorded that she died of alcohol poisoning.
Pal Zoe said: “She would talk to anyone with a level of respect or care – from the cleaner, to a photographer to a record label boss and that’s how I would like to remember her, as a genuinely nice person with an amazing voice.”
