January 27, 2022 • 33 mins
When Amy Winehouse died on July 23, 2011 at the age of 27, the world mourned. For many, the grim reality was far from surprising. What was surprising, however, was what happened next. Sordid stories were told about her last night that contradicted the accepted narrative. An autopsy was called into question. And years down the line, there was a contested attempt to bring not just her music but her likeness back to life.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Over the legal driving limit when a coroner performed an
inquest into her death. Another seven would be the number
of months that transpired after the start of that initially
in quest before a bombshell dropped, a bombshell so unbelievable
that it will call the entire death investigation and autopsy
into question. One would be the number on the UK
(00:23):
charts set back to Black Shot up to immediately after
her death, and four will be the number of years
after her death that a suit at her record label
would disclose the ultimate fate of the third definitive Amy
Winehouse album. All totally on this our last episode of
(00:43):
season four Tabloids in Quests, Bombshells, and Amy Winehouse. I'm
Jake Brennan in This is the Club h The phone
(01:38):
rang out at Scotland Yard. The call wasn't unexpected. The
detectives knew it would come eventually. They just expected it
to come closer to midnight, maybe one or two in
the morning, not around four in the afternoon. Such a
bizarre time for distress, But hell, life was unexpected like that,
(01:59):
Just when you've been old into complacency and boredom, when
you begin to think that the inevitable call isn't as
inevitable as you once thought. Boom, the phone rings, and
there it is. The hunt you carried all along, is
confirmed by a breathless voice on the other end of
the line, report of an unresponsive adult female inside the
residence at thirty Candid Square. The address was well known.
(02:22):
Detectives braced themselves for what they're going to find inside.
They imagine the worst. A body that had rejected the
hard stuff for the final time, a body crippled by
years of abuse, a withered shell of its former self.
Seven going on seventy two. They had stepped inside an
amy winehouse residence before, perhaps not this latest address. To
(02:45):
be absolutely clear, this posh pad in an even posher neighborhood.
But at the very least, they figured they'd be waiting
through a four cluttered with old bags of crisp, bawled
up pieces of foil, empty beer bottles, half smoked cigarettes,
and makeshift ash trays. Probably a air of panties or
two crumpled up her seats. Maybe a half eaten white
bread and banana sandwich on the counter. The flotsam and
(03:06):
jetsam of the high life lived far lower than one
would expect again with the expectations. Look, it didn't take
a badge from Scotland Yard to understand that Amy Winehouse
was a known commodity, revel to the bone, party girl
till last call. Anti authority, Yeah, no ship, Sherlock. She
(03:27):
was your basic codependent, alcoholic junkie. She probably thought she
was invincible. Still, the minds of the detectives raced as
they approached Camden Square. It was three pm, Saturday, July eleven.
The press had been tipped off, as was always the case,
and there was already a crowd gathering outside. Inside they
(03:50):
found Amy's body as described on her bed, but the
scene wasn't chaos. No needles, no crack pipes, no drug
paraphernalia of any kind. Aim. He was fully closed in
the laptops she had been watching the night before, sat
next to her. Two empty Vaka bottles were on the floor.
As someone from Metro Police stepped inside the bedroom to
(04:11):
say that the drug overdose rumors were already hitting the wires. Fuck,
the press was jumping the gun, tired of waiting for
a statement from Scotland Yard, continuing to chart the fastest
path the profits, the path that steered clear of the
truth in pursuit of a good story. First things first,
they needed someone outside, someone from Metro, issue a statement,
(04:32):
get the papers under control, talk down the drug rumors
without fully dismissing them. Next, they needed to contact Amy's
family immediately, and they found Amy's father, Mitch Winehouse, not
in London, but all the way across the Pond, New
York City. Mitch had only recently pumped the brakes on
(04:54):
his career as a cab driver in order to pursue
his dream to be a jazz singer in his own right.
He was the other of one of the most famous
singers on the planet, after all, and he found that
that particular piece of information opened more doors than not.
And so it was by sheer coincidence that Mitch was
in the Big Apple to play a show at the
fame Blue Note Jazz Club on the very day that
(05:16):
his daughter was found dead in her Camden Square home.
He immediately canceled the gig and frantically searched for the
next flight back to London. Before we could get back
to London, Armor Amy Street had become a makeshift shrine. Flowers, candles,
pictures and letters were clustered around the base of tree trunks.
Fans cried in the middle of the street. Strangers hugged strangers,
(05:39):
some took pictures, and the paparazzi took pictures of other
people taking pictures. And then the tabloids ran their stories.
Amy lay dead for six hours was the bold black
text that swallowed the entirety of the Sun's front page.
Did Amy kill herself? Over lover? The Daily Mirror pondered
out loud on its sational cover a proposed not saying
(06:02):
how other publications stoked the fire under the drug overdose theory,
the one that the police couldn't control and that London
fixer Tony has a party he could seemingly corroborate when
he came forward with his wild tale about Amy's supposed
late night drug run. The Sunday People's addition, for one,
was buoyed by the headline Amy dead star dies alone
(06:26):
at flat after heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and kenemine cocktail. Fellow
singers turned in a hundred and forty character eulogies on Twitter,
Lady Gaga, Katie Perry, Nicki, Minaje, Rihanna, Usher, Lean Rhymes,
Big Boy, Rick Ross, Janelle Monet, Ricky Martin, and Adele
all took to social media to grieve. Actor and fellow
(06:48):
rehabber Russell brand penda lengthier tribute on his website quote
when you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction,
you await the phone call, Russell wrote, There will will
be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the
call will be from the attic themselves, telling you they've
had enough and that they're ready to stop, ready to
try something new. You fear the other call, the sad
(07:11):
nocturnal chime from a friend or a relative telling you
it's too late. She's gone. Even fucking Bonno paid tribute
to her, because of course he did. And if Amy
Winehouse weren't stuck in a moment she couldn't get out of,
you know, like being dead, well you can bet she'd
be heckling him from dedicating an acoustic performance of you
Two Stuck in a Moment You Can't get out of
to her at a concert in Minneapolis that very night.
(07:36):
On the Monday following Amy's staff, an official inquest was
open to determine exactly what happened. The London police scanned
more than a dozen hours of CCTV footage from outside
Amy's residence to determine whether or not she had left
her house on that Saturday evening, they grilled Tony has
a party, and they collected evidence from the scene, not
(07:57):
just two empty bottles of vodka, as hers thought, but three,
two large and one small. The toxicology report found no
illegal drugs in her system, but it did find that
she had four hundred and sixteen milligrams of alcohol per
one hundred millilaters of blood. That's five times the legal
drunk driving them it in Britain. According to the pathologist
(08:19):
in charge of the postmortem, three d and fifty milligrams
per one hundred millilaters of blood was considered fatal, and
though Amy's vital organs looked fine, the huge amount of
alcohol in her small body was enough to stop her
breathing and send her straight into a coma. Especially considering
the fact that she had been trying to quit drinking
cold turkey in the weeks before, her body's tolerance for
(08:42):
alcohol would have been greatly reduced, and that night she
simply overwhelmed herself. Amy Winehouse had clawed her way out
of addiction to hard drugs only to quite literally drink
herself to death while trying to escape the clutches of
alcohol dependency. The finding of the inquest were put into
a report Death by Misadventure. It appeared to be open
(09:05):
and shut, a tidy end to a messy life, but
in the end it wasn't so tidy. In fact, it
wasn't even the end. Two strange things happened shortly after
the coroner and the inquest came to its conclusion. First,
the inquest's official report was supposed to have been sent
(09:25):
to Amy's family, and true it was sent in the mail,
but her family never received it because it was sent
to the wrong address. How had that happened and who
received it? And how did that compromise the investigation? And
there were so many questions, a lot of them unanswered
by the London Police, but not as many questions as
would be asked just a few months later. The second
(09:49):
strange thing happened in February of two thousand twelve, and
it was a bombshell. It was reported that Assistant Deputy
Coroner Suzanne Greenaway, the coroner who had overseen the initial inquest,
had abruptly resigned back in November, just one month after
Amy's death, at had been ruled a death by misadventure.
(10:10):
The resignation had been kept under wraps for months before
finally being leaked to the press. But why had Assistant
Deputy Coroner Suzanne Greenaway resigned? It was discovered that she
had not been a registered lawyer in the UK for
at least five years, the requisite amount of time to
hold such a position. To complicate matters, Greenaway had originally
(10:32):
been appointed by her husband, who happened to be a
London coroner himself. Greenaway did have tenure as a registered
lawyer in her native Australia, which her husband assumed was adequate.
He chalked it up to an honest mistake. Others chalked
it up as he had another odd twist and what
was supposed to be a quote unquote opened and shut case.
(10:53):
Honest mistake or not. The fact that Greenaway was technically
not qualified to do the job of a UK corner
cast suspicion over the entire inquest. Something definitely did not
feel right. The press sharpened their knives, conspiracy theorists hone
their narratives, and in December of two twelve, the inquest
(11:14):
into the death of Amy Winehouse was reopened to see
what else had been missed the first time around. Jimmy
(11:45):
Brown never forgot where he came from. Just a kid
from Council Estates, that's public housing in London who managed
to infiltrate the upper class, first by winning a scholarship
to a fancy boarding school and then by becoming an
sational fencing champion. He had that fight, you know, a
fight he took all the way to the English Army
(12:06):
as a young adult. A little too much fight, apparently,
seeing as he was booted from the army after getting
into an actual fight in Germany. Ship man. If he
could get into a fight in Germany while serving in
the army, then what was the world even coming to?
What was the point of being in the army. But
after the army, Jimmy needed money. He didn't have any
He didn't like not having any money. He reminded him
(12:27):
of growing up poor, So he thought about how he
could get some money fast. So he knocked over a
security van, and then he knocked over a bank, and
then another van, and then some more banks. Jimmy didn't
want to hurt anybody, so he used costumes, props, instead
of weapons. He just wanted to get that fast money
and he wanted to feel rush when he got his
(12:48):
hands on it. And this went on for a few
years until the robbery he staged in Belsize Park in
a Lead neighborhood and Camden. This time it wasn't another
prop he was carrying under his clothes, a tennis I
could or some ship. This time it was a sawed
off shotgun. He didn't want to kill the security guard,
he didn't even want to shoot him. But there was
(13:09):
smoke pouring out from the barrel of the shotgun, a
security guard writhing on the ground, and Jimmy couldn't even
remember the details of what went down. The court helped
him remember. The judge said it was manslaughter, sentenced Jimmy
to eighteen years. How he got out after only serving
twelve was anyone's gas, especially since he helped plot that
(13:31):
daring prison break, the one where an inmate, not Jimmy,
but this other guy escaped on a fucking helicopter and
that took some balls, a guy with real fight, you know,
And Jimmy was thrown in solitary for that. Despite that,
they still let him out after really twelve years, but
that was a long time ago, an entire lifetime ago.
(13:52):
Ditto to the time Jimmy spent working for Amy Winehouse
as one of her quote unquote minders, as the press
like to refer to the men who served in that
ticular role. And that was good money too, sometimes up
to a grand a day, but with less risk than
robbing banks, and the Americans just cut the bullshit and
called guys like him a bodyguard, though Jimmy did more
than just use muscle to protect Amy from crazy people
(14:15):
like those filthy palparazzi. He could play bodyguard if that's
what the day called for, but his role wasn't that
one dimensional. He had to be Amy's eyes and her ears.
He had to be here GPS, her radar, and her
mouthpiece all at once. These days in the summer of
two thousand fourteen, the role of Namy Winehouse's minder was
just something else from Jimmy Brown's past. But Jimmy never
(14:38):
forgot where he came from, and he never forgot the
lessons of us passed and informed his present and shaped
his future. It did have been more than a decade
since Jimmy's arrest, and three years since Ammy's tragic death,
and Jimmy didn't fence anymore. He wasn't an army man,
or a bank robber or a jailbreak mastermind. He was, however,
a bit of a renaissance man, which is why it
(14:59):
didn't seem strange to start fresh under the moniker Jimmy
the Poet. He was set to read some of his
original poems in September at Proud Camden, a venue in
art gallery that Amy herself had performed at just a
few years before, and Jimmy the Poet had prepared a
new piece called an Ode to Amy Winehouse, especially for
the occasion. It was written with the benefit of hindsight
(15:21):
and in the fading shadow of closure over a year prior.
In January of two thousand thirteen, Jimmy the Poet, Camden Town,
and the entire world received long awaited closure in the
case of Amy Winehouse's death. It was a long time coming,
but that long time between Amy's death and the conclusion
of in Quest number two was not without a steady
(15:44):
stream of Amy Winehouse news. Amy's parents inherited her estate
worth an estimated four point six six million dollars. Her
father published a memoir cherry Wine and unheard collaboration between
Amy and Nas produced by long time collaborators salam Remy
surfaced on the rappers Life Is Good LP, a posthumous
(16:05):
Christmas cash and released lyoness Hidden Treasures rewarded fans with
a so so set of covers and a few lackluster originals.
Amy's ex blake Fielder Sibyl, was placed into a medically
induced coma after a drunken alcohol binge left him choking
on his own vomit. Amy's wedding dress was stolen out
of her Camden Square home, and just one month before
(16:28):
the conclusion of the second inquest, that very home was
sold at auction for three point two million dollars. And
the most surprising thing about the second inquest was just
how unsurprising its findings were. It was a carbon copy
of the first report. Amy had voluntarily consumed alcohol. She
(16:48):
was not suicidal, evidence by her unguarded confession to Dr
Christina Romata at her routine home visit. I don't want
to die, Amy told Dr Romata just hours before she
did die. And when the ink dried on the inquest
of report, it told the same story about a blood
alcohol reading that was five times Britain's legal drunk driving limit.
(17:10):
And there was no conspiracy, and there was no cover up,
not even any drugs, no suicide, just the cold, hard,
logical conclusion of years of hard addiction. Fans the world
over continued to mourn the loss of Amy Winehouse, but
at least their questions about how it happened had been
answered once and for all. Urban bards like Jimmy the
(17:32):
Poet immortalized her in verse, but the world would never
forget her, not for a minute. In fact, the world
kept talking about her. But by two thousand and fifteen,
talking turn from the details of her tragic death to
the details of her long, justest stating third album. And
we're talking about a real album here, not the halfass
(17:53):
Lioness compilation or the Amy Winehouse at the BBC collection
which strung together her live takes for British Radio, the
fabled third record, the follow ups, and the now canon
Back to Black. Did any recordings exist? Did Amy have
another Back to Black in her back pocket? Could a
posthumous album be in the cards, something similar to Janis
(18:14):
Joplin's masterpiece Pearl, which was famously released after Janice died.
The answer to the questions surrounding the third album turned
out to be the most surprising of all and the
most complicated, because the recordings did exist, but no one
would ever get to hear them. We'll be right back
(18:35):
after this word were were David Joseph, Chairman and CEO
of Universal Music UK kept emotion out of it. It
was just business, and in business sometimes you had to
make the unpopular decision, the decision that others couldn't see
as good good for business, that is, because they were
(18:57):
too emotionally wrapped up in it. Emotion that was the
mind killer, not fear. Emotion. Emotion blurred your vision, It
compromised your ability to make decisions, the right decisions, and
it controlled you unwittingly, like a drug. Emotion made things
seem better or worse than they usually were. Emotion made
(19:17):
you giddy with excitement one moment and blubbering with doubt
the next. Fans couldn't take emotion out of it. They
never could, and that was part of fandom. David Joseph,
on the other hand, he could, and if he couldn't,
well then he had no business being in the business.
The fans wanted to hear Amy Winehouse is now legendary
(19:38):
third album, the ones she had been working on where
her go to producers Sonam Remy and Mark Ronson, and
so far they had heard nothing, not even a tease.
The fans desire to hear something, anything from the vaults
with Maybe's voice on it was driven purely by an
emotional need and the subsequent emotional response. But David Joseph
(19:58):
could think clearly where others could not. He knew exactly
where the demo tapes were from Amy's unreleased third album.
He had the demo tapes, they were property of Universal Music,
and he knew exactly what he was going to do
with them. Fans were emotionally attached to a dearly departed
Amy Winehouse in a way that bordered on evangelical, even
(20:20):
if half of the fans who obsessed over her and
death were the same ones who tore her down in life.
They had spent years pawing over tabloid reports until her
fingers were stained with ink. They clicked on links at
all hours until their eyes were bloodshot. They came to
Amy Winehouse for the music, but they stayed for the
perpetual drama, and that drama didn't end when Amy died.
(20:42):
When word of her death broke on that July weekend
in two thousand eleven, Twitter became ground zero for grief. Reportedly,
twenty million people posted about the tragedy in the span
of twenty four hours. A tweet from George Michael's account read,
It's a tragedy on two levels, the waste of such
a young life and the pain of those who loved her.
(21:02):
But it's also a tragedy that we won't be hearing
the exquisite music she would have given us. In the
absence of exquisite new music, fans went after any music
they could get their hands on. Stores couldn't keep Amy
c d s on the shelves. In the eight days
following your death, Amy sold a hundred and ten thousand
albums in the United States alone. That's eight thousand more
(21:24):
than she's sold in the entire year and a half prior.
Back to Black immediately rocketed to the top of the
UK charts, were it knocked the Dell's twenty one, the
best selling UK record by a female artist, down a peg.
In the year following Your death, Amy's albums continue to
sell in numbers that far transcended the figures she sold
(21:44):
when she was alive. From the summer of two thousand
eleven to the summer of two thousand twelve, eight hundred
and fifty five thousand physical copies at one point one
five million digital downloads in the US. Another one point
two million albums and five hundred thousand singles were sold
in the UK during that same time period. Back in
(22:04):
Camden Square, the first few days without Amy Winos in
this world were felt intensely by the crowds that continued
to gather. People Multiplied shrines were beacons in the dead
of night. Some makeshift memorials were thoughtful and multi colored.
Others were drained of all color, like the empty bottles
of vodka that sprung up next to roses and poems
(22:26):
knowingly jaded winks at the Whole Ordeal. A graffiti image
of Amy with wings, rumored to be from the spray
paint can of Incognito UK street artist Banksy, appeared on
a Camden wall overnight. Just days later. On Tuesday, July eleven,
two hundred friends and family members gathered at Edgewordbury Cemetery
(22:46):
in North London for Amy's funeral. Though attendance was strong,
that day. One person was conspicuously absent. Blake Fielder, civil
sat in a prison cell some two hundred miles away
in Leads, doing time for urglory with a fake firearm.
He'd have two more in Amy's passing some other time.
During Mitch Winehouse's twenty minute eulogy, a black butterfly fluttered
(23:10):
around him. It landed on Kelly Osborne in the crowd.
Everyone took it as a sign. The truly mystical mourners
knew about the significance of a black butterfly. It was
extremely rare. It symbolized transformation, death and rebirth, freedom of body,
mind and soul. And the paparazzi they didn't care, not
(23:31):
about mysticism anyway, not about signs, not about butterflies, and
certainly not about basic human decency and privacy. Following the service,
Amy's ashes were buried near were black and pink headstone
commemorating Amy and her grandmother. The paparazzi lay in wait,
and they were up in the trees, legs wrapped around
(23:52):
limbs while their upper bodies angles for the best shot,
and didn't matter how much their joints burned as they
contorted into strange positions of pain no gain. They stood
on cars, perched just so for a bird's eye view, glance,
had all the morning on display, and they captured grief
in a flash. They fed off the shock with each
fall of the shutter, and they zoomed in on tears,
(24:13):
focused on faces scrunched up and ugly. No qualms. Amy
Winehouse was dead, so what do they care about some
landmark legal victory ordering them to stay away? All bets
were off, and so were the kid gloves. Years later,
in two thousand and fifteen, David Joseph, sequestered in the
offices of Universal Music UK. Didn't have paparazzi to worry about. Luckily,
(24:38):
they didn't follow him around. He was just a suit,
all business. No one knew him from a hole in
the wall. But he did have the fans to contend with,
the ones who asked, some politely and some less so,
about Amy's third album what happened to it? When would
they hear something? And they didn't want to let her go,
and they didn't want to give up hope that there
(24:58):
was new music exquisite on the horizon. David Joseph was
ready to let go. It's a hard decision, but it
was just business, no emotion. He admitted that Amy's demos
for a third album did exist, did being the operative word,
They didn't exist anymore because they had all been destroyed.
(25:20):
There was a moral thing, Joseph told Billboard Magazine, taking
a stem or a vocal. It's not something that would
ever happen on my watch that now can't happen on
anyone else's. Nothing new would ever be heard from Amy Winehouse. Again.
(26:01):
The actress was intrigued, to say the least. The opportunity
was too good to pass up. In fact, it seemed
too good to be true. But there it was posted
online a casting call for quote unquote untitled Amy Winehouse biopic.
The producers were looking for someone to be their Amy,
who was a dream roll, and the actress loved Amy Winehouse,
(26:24):
who didn't. She possessed a once in a lifetime voice
envisioned to burn. She was defiant, brazen, funny as funk,
a true force of nature, and his story was to attended.
The casting director sat her down and they just talked.
She wasn't asked to read any lines. The crew did, however,
note her exact height and weight. Then they took photographs
(26:44):
of her face from what seemed to be an excessive
number of angles. She figured it was all part of
the game for such a high profile project, and they
must really want their Amy to bear more than a
striking resemblance to the real deal. The second audition was
just as odd. Once again, the actress wasn't sent to
script with lines to learn. Instead, she was sent links
(27:06):
to YouTube videos of Amy Winehouse performing Rehab and Valerie
and Concert and asked to arrive at audition number two
with Amy's on stage moves down pat which she did.
But as she left the audition room, after having stood
there in front of a room full of men and
mimic Damy Winehouses every subtly to a t while music
played in a camera rolled, she felt something was off.
(27:28):
This was the strangest audition process she had ever taken
part in. Didn't they want to hear the North London
accent she had been working on, and who was being
considered to play Blake opposite her Amy? Should they, you know,
at least run a few lines together? And she thought
again about the role itself, how she had originally thought
it was too good to be true, and you know what,
they say about things. It seemed to be too good
(27:49):
to be true. Something smelled reeked. The actress opened her
laptop and googled the names of the men who had
been present at the auditions. What she discovered shocked her.
The man who claimed to be the casting director was
actually an actor. But that wasn't the strangest revelation. The
man who had been introduced to her as the projects
(28:11):
director was, in actuality, the CEO of a company called
Basse Hologram. The actress was familiar with the name of
that company because it was all over the news that
bass Hologram was working on resurrecting Amy Winehouse via cutting
edge technology, which would digitally project her image on stage
next to a live backing band for a three year
(28:32):
world tour. The actress blew the whistle at audition number three.
She knew what this was. It wasn't a movie. She
wasn't being considered to play the part of Emy Winehouse.
She had been lied to, deceived. Did they think she
was stupid? This so called movie production team? Had they
just been using her all along, surreptitiously creating an Amy
Winehouse hologram from the actress's own body the room clammed up,
(28:56):
and nobody said anything. No admission of guilt, and no
Nile either. They thanked the actress for her time and
said they would be in touch. They never called her
again in two thousand eighteen. The concept of a hologram
tour wasn't exactly new. Tupac made his bow from the
Great Beyond a Cochella in two thousand twelve, but the
(29:18):
artists who had their digital likeness left from state to
state and stage to stage, like Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly
and Maria Callis, tended to be icons from older generations.
Amy Winehouse hadn't even been gone for one decade. Into
many fans, the supposed tribute felt more like an exploitation
than the celebration. Amy's parents disagreed the project had their
(29:40):
unconditional support, but even though the proceeds of the tour
were set to benefit the Amy Winehouse Foundation, or registered
charity established to eight young people in need of substance
abuse and mental health assistance, many accused Amy's family of exploitation.
The backlash came fast and furious. Amy's ex husband, Blake Fielder,
(30:01):
civil second into fans emotion. In the press. He accused
Amy's family of cashing in on her legacy. On the
Good Morning Britain television show, host Piers Morgan was quick
to point out that Blake was himself already guilty of
cashing in on the Amy's legacy, having sold details of
her life to the tabloids, the very people who had
(30:22):
made her life a living how in the first place,
to shape heers. Facing negative publicity and scandal, the Amy
Winehouse Hologram Tour was postponed, but not for long. Just
a few years later, in the summer of two thousand
twenty one, Base Hologram announced that they were once again
(30:42):
moving forward with the plan to digitally replicate the experience
of seeing Amy Winehouse performed live, which, of course was ridiculous.
There was no replicating Amy Winehouse. Didn't matter if it
was a good Night on stage or a veritable ship
show that they were using as their base. A holic
ram tour was created around the concept of taking something
(31:03):
out of the past for the benefit of the present. Sure,
but the execution was a mere fact simile Amy Winehouse.
Her voice was something that came out of the past.
It leapt out from the white noise static in between
radio frequencies and it possessed her. It was a vibe
from decades before that was reanimated within a new vibe
(31:23):
that was being built for tomorrow. It was magic. It
was voodoo. No one would ever be able to control it,
not record executives, not record producers, not ex husbands, and
certainly not hologram companies. Trying to control it was a
losing game, and at the end of each show, the
projective controlling the hologram would go dark and the image
(31:45):
of Amy Winehouse would fade back the black, And that
might have been the most realistic part of the whole
damn show. I'm Jake Brennan in this is they call
(32:11):
The Club is hosted and produced by me Jake Brennan
for Double Elvis in partnership with I Heart Radio. Zeth
Lundie is the lead writer and co producer. This episode
was mixed by Joel Edinburgh. Additional music and score elements
by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Luneta. This episode was written
by Ted Omo, story and copy of being by Pat Healy.
(32:33):
Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page. Talk to
me on social at disgrace Sland pod and hang out
with me live on my Twitch channel disgrace Land Talks.
For more news on your favorite podcast, follow at double
Elvis on Instagram Rock Rolla. What is hey, everybody? It's Jake,
(32:56):
just popping in to say I hope you enjoyed Season
four of seven Club all about Amy Winehouse. Now that
you're all caught up on Amy's backstory in Final Days,
I wanted to share a story about another queen of
the pop realm, Taylor Swift. You can hear all about
Taylor's disgraceful fans and interstate stalkers in the season nine
premiere of disgrace Land, my other music and true crime podcast.
(33:18):
You can hear that episode on January eighteenth wherever you
listen to podcasts, or you can hear it along with
every other disgrace Land episode right now exclusively at Amazon
dot Com, Slash, disgrace Land, Rock Corolla,
Over the legal driving limit when a coroner performed an
inquest into her death. Another seven would be the number
of months that transpired after the start of that initially
in quest before a bombshell dropped, a bombshell so unbelievable
that it will call the entire death investigation and autopsy
into question. One would be the number on the UK
(00:23):
charts set back to Black Shot up to immediately after
her death, and four will be the number of years
after her death that a suit at her record label
would disclose the ultimate fate of the third definitive Amy
Winehouse album. All totally on this our last episode of
(00:43):
season four Tabloids in Quests, Bombshells, and Amy Winehouse. I'm
Jake Brennan in This is the Club h The phone
(01:38):
rang out at Scotland Yard. The call wasn't unexpected. The
detectives knew it would come eventually. They just expected it
to come closer to midnight, maybe one or two in
the morning, not around four in the afternoon. Such a
bizarre time for distress, But hell, life was unexpected like that,
(01:59):
Just when you've been old into complacency and boredom, when
you begin to think that the inevitable call isn't as
inevitable as you once thought. Boom, the phone rings, and
there it is. The hunt you carried all along, is
confirmed by a breathless voice on the other end of
the line, report of an unresponsive adult female inside the
residence at thirty Candid Square. The address was well known.
(02:22):
Detectives braced themselves for what they're going to find inside.
They imagine the worst. A body that had rejected the
hard stuff for the final time, a body crippled by
years of abuse, a withered shell of its former self.
Seven going on seventy two. They had stepped inside an
amy winehouse residence before, perhaps not this latest address. To
(02:45):
be absolutely clear, this posh pad in an even posher neighborhood.
But at the very least, they figured they'd be waiting
through a four cluttered with old bags of crisp, bawled
up pieces of foil, empty beer bottles, half smoked cigarettes,
and makeshift ash trays. Probably a air of panties or
two crumpled up her seats. Maybe a half eaten white
bread and banana sandwich on the counter. The flotsam and
(03:06):
jetsam of the high life lived far lower than one
would expect again with the expectations. Look, it didn't take
a badge from Scotland Yard to understand that Amy Winehouse
was a known commodity, revel to the bone, party girl
till last call. Anti authority, Yeah, no ship, Sherlock. She
(03:27):
was your basic codependent, alcoholic junkie. She probably thought she
was invincible. Still, the minds of the detectives raced as
they approached Camden Square. It was three pm, Saturday, July eleven.
The press had been tipped off, as was always the case,
and there was already a crowd gathering outside. Inside they
(03:50):
found Amy's body as described on her bed, but the
scene wasn't chaos. No needles, no crack pipes, no drug
paraphernalia of any kind. Aim. He was fully closed in
the laptops she had been watching the night before, sat
next to her. Two empty Vaka bottles were on the floor.
As someone from Metro Police stepped inside the bedroom to
(04:11):
say that the drug overdose rumors were already hitting the wires. Fuck,
the press was jumping the gun, tired of waiting for
a statement from Scotland Yard, continuing to chart the fastest
path the profits, the path that steered clear of the
truth in pursuit of a good story. First things first,
they needed someone outside, someone from Metro, issue a statement,
(04:32):
get the papers under control, talk down the drug rumors
without fully dismissing them. Next, they needed to contact Amy's
family immediately, and they found Amy's father, Mitch Winehouse, not
in London, but all the way across the Pond, New
York City. Mitch had only recently pumped the brakes on
(04:54):
his career as a cab driver in order to pursue
his dream to be a jazz singer in his own right.
He was the other of one of the most famous
singers on the planet, after all, and he found that
that particular piece of information opened more doors than not.
And so it was by sheer coincidence that Mitch was
in the Big Apple to play a show at the
fame Blue Note Jazz Club on the very day that
(05:16):
his daughter was found dead in her Camden Square home.
He immediately canceled the gig and frantically searched for the
next flight back to London. Before we could get back
to London, Armor Amy Street had become a makeshift shrine. Flowers, candles,
pictures and letters were clustered around the base of tree trunks.
Fans cried in the middle of the street. Strangers hugged strangers,
(05:39):
some took pictures, and the paparazzi took pictures of other
people taking pictures. And then the tabloids ran their stories.
Amy lay dead for six hours was the bold black
text that swallowed the entirety of the Sun's front page.
Did Amy kill herself? Over lover? The Daily Mirror pondered
out loud on its sational cover a proposed not saying
(06:02):
how other publications stoked the fire under the drug overdose theory,
the one that the police couldn't control and that London
fixer Tony has a party he could seemingly corroborate when
he came forward with his wild tale about Amy's supposed
late night drug run. The Sunday People's addition, for one,
was buoyed by the headline Amy dead star dies alone
(06:26):
at flat after heroin, cocaine, ecstasy and kenemine cocktail. Fellow
singers turned in a hundred and forty character eulogies on Twitter,
Lady Gaga, Katie Perry, Nicki, Minaje, Rihanna, Usher, Lean Rhymes,
Big Boy, Rick Ross, Janelle Monet, Ricky Martin, and Adele
all took to social media to grieve. Actor and fellow
(06:48):
rehabber Russell brand penda lengthier tribute on his website quote
when you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction,
you await the phone call, Russell wrote, There will will
be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the
call will be from the attic themselves, telling you they've
had enough and that they're ready to stop, ready to
try something new. You fear the other call, the sad
(07:11):
nocturnal chime from a friend or a relative telling you
it's too late. She's gone. Even fucking Bonno paid tribute
to her, because of course he did. And if Amy
Winehouse weren't stuck in a moment she couldn't get out of,
you know, like being dead, well you can bet she'd
be heckling him from dedicating an acoustic performance of you
Two Stuck in a Moment You Can't get out of
to her at a concert in Minneapolis that very night.
(07:36):
On the Monday following Amy's staff, an official inquest was
open to determine exactly what happened. The London police scanned
more than a dozen hours of CCTV footage from outside
Amy's residence to determine whether or not she had left
her house on that Saturday evening, they grilled Tony has
a party, and they collected evidence from the scene, not
(07:57):
just two empty bottles of vodka, as hers thought, but three,
two large and one small. The toxicology report found no
illegal drugs in her system, but it did find that
she had four hundred and sixteen milligrams of alcohol per
one hundred millilaters of blood. That's five times the legal
drunk driving them it in Britain. According to the pathologist
(08:19):
in charge of the postmortem, three d and fifty milligrams
per one hundred millilaters of blood was considered fatal, and
though Amy's vital organs looked fine, the huge amount of
alcohol in her small body was enough to stop her
breathing and send her straight into a coma. Especially considering
the fact that she had been trying to quit drinking
cold turkey in the weeks before, her body's tolerance for
(08:42):
alcohol would have been greatly reduced, and that night she
simply overwhelmed herself. Amy Winehouse had clawed her way out
of addiction to hard drugs only to quite literally drink
herself to death while trying to escape the clutches of
alcohol dependency. The finding of the inquest were put into
a report Death by Misadventure. It appeared to be open
(09:05):
and shut, a tidy end to a messy life, but
in the end it wasn't so tidy. In fact, it
wasn't even the end. Two strange things happened shortly after
the coroner and the inquest came to its conclusion. First,
the inquest's official report was supposed to have been sent
(09:25):
to Amy's family, and true it was sent in the mail,
but her family never received it because it was sent
to the wrong address. How had that happened and who
received it? And how did that compromise the investigation? And
there were so many questions, a lot of them unanswered
by the London Police, but not as many questions as
would be asked just a few months later. The second
(09:49):
strange thing happened in February of two thousand twelve, and
it was a bombshell. It was reported that Assistant Deputy
Coroner Suzanne Greenaway, the coroner who had overseen the initial inquest,
had abruptly resigned back in November, just one month after
Amy's death, at had been ruled a death by misadventure.
(10:10):
The resignation had been kept under wraps for months before
finally being leaked to the press. But why had Assistant
Deputy Coroner Suzanne Greenaway resigned? It was discovered that she
had not been a registered lawyer in the UK for
at least five years, the requisite amount of time to
hold such a position. To complicate matters, Greenaway had originally
(10:32):
been appointed by her husband, who happened to be a
London coroner himself. Greenaway did have tenure as a registered
lawyer in her native Australia, which her husband assumed was adequate.
He chalked it up to an honest mistake. Others chalked
it up as he had another odd twist and what
was supposed to be a quote unquote opened and shut case.
(10:53):
Honest mistake or not. The fact that Greenaway was technically
not qualified to do the job of a UK corner
cast suspicion over the entire inquest. Something definitely did not
feel right. The press sharpened their knives, conspiracy theorists hone
their narratives, and in December of two twelve, the inquest
(11:14):
into the death of Amy Winehouse was reopened to see
what else had been missed the first time around. Jimmy
(11:45):
Brown never forgot where he came from. Just a kid
from Council Estates, that's public housing in London who managed
to infiltrate the upper class, first by winning a scholarship
to a fancy boarding school and then by becoming an
sational fencing champion. He had that fight, you know, a
fight he took all the way to the English Army
(12:06):
as a young adult. A little too much fight, apparently,
seeing as he was booted from the army after getting
into an actual fight in Germany. Ship man. If he
could get into a fight in Germany while serving in
the army, then what was the world even coming to?
What was the point of being in the army. But
after the army, Jimmy needed money. He didn't have any
He didn't like not having any money. He reminded him
(12:27):
of growing up poor, So he thought about how he
could get some money fast. So he knocked over a
security van, and then he knocked over a bank, and
then another van, and then some more banks. Jimmy didn't
want to hurt anybody, so he used costumes, props, instead
of weapons. He just wanted to get that fast money
and he wanted to feel rush when he got his
(12:48):
hands on it. And this went on for a few
years until the robbery he staged in Belsize Park in
a Lead neighborhood and Camden. This time it wasn't another
prop he was carrying under his clothes, a tennis I
could or some ship. This time it was a sawed
off shotgun. He didn't want to kill the security guard,
he didn't even want to shoot him. But there was
(13:09):
smoke pouring out from the barrel of the shotgun, a
security guard writhing on the ground, and Jimmy couldn't even
remember the details of what went down. The court helped
him remember. The judge said it was manslaughter, sentenced Jimmy
to eighteen years. How he got out after only serving
twelve was anyone's gas, especially since he helped plot that
(13:31):
daring prison break, the one where an inmate, not Jimmy,
but this other guy escaped on a fucking helicopter and
that took some balls, a guy with real fight, you know,
And Jimmy was thrown in solitary for that. Despite that,
they still let him out after really twelve years, but
that was a long time ago, an entire lifetime ago.
(13:52):
Ditto to the time Jimmy spent working for Amy Winehouse
as one of her quote unquote minders, as the press
like to refer to the men who served in that
ticular role. And that was good money too, sometimes up
to a grand a day, but with less risk than
robbing banks, and the Americans just cut the bullshit and
called guys like him a bodyguard, though Jimmy did more
than just use muscle to protect Amy from crazy people
(14:15):
like those filthy palparazzi. He could play bodyguard if that's
what the day called for, but his role wasn't that
one dimensional. He had to be Amy's eyes and her ears.
He had to be here GPS, her radar, and her
mouthpiece all at once. These days in the summer of
two thousand fourteen, the role of Namy Winehouse's minder was
just something else from Jimmy Brown's past. But Jimmy never
(14:38):
forgot where he came from, and he never forgot the
lessons of us passed and informed his present and shaped
his future. It did have been more than a decade
since Jimmy's arrest, and three years since Ammy's tragic death,
and Jimmy didn't fence anymore. He wasn't an army man,
or a bank robber or a jailbreak mastermind. He was, however,
a bit of a renaissance man, which is why it
(14:59):
didn't seem strange to start fresh under the moniker Jimmy
the Poet. He was set to read some of his
original poems in September at Proud Camden, a venue in
art gallery that Amy herself had performed at just a
few years before, and Jimmy the Poet had prepared a
new piece called an Ode to Amy Winehouse, especially for
the occasion. It was written with the benefit of hindsight
(15:21):
and in the fading shadow of closure over a year prior.
In January of two thousand thirteen, Jimmy the Poet, Camden Town,
and the entire world received long awaited closure in the
case of Amy Winehouse's death. It was a long time coming,
but that long time between Amy's death and the conclusion
of in Quest number two was not without a steady
(15:44):
stream of Amy Winehouse news. Amy's parents inherited her estate
worth an estimated four point six six million dollars. Her
father published a memoir cherry Wine and unheard collaboration between
Amy and Nas produced by long time collaborators salam Remy
surfaced on the rappers Life Is Good LP, a posthumous
(16:05):
Christmas cash and released lyoness Hidden Treasures rewarded fans with
a so so set of covers and a few lackluster originals.
Amy's ex blake Fielder Sibyl, was placed into a medically
induced coma after a drunken alcohol binge left him choking
on his own vomit. Amy's wedding dress was stolen out
of her Camden Square home, and just one month before
(16:28):
the conclusion of the second inquest, that very home was
sold at auction for three point two million dollars. And
the most surprising thing about the second inquest was just
how unsurprising its findings were. It was a carbon copy
of the first report. Amy had voluntarily consumed alcohol. She
(16:48):
was not suicidal, evidence by her unguarded confession to Dr
Christina Romata at her routine home visit. I don't want
to die, Amy told Dr Romata just hours before she
did die. And when the ink dried on the inquest
of report, it told the same story about a blood
alcohol reading that was five times Britain's legal drunk driving limit.
(17:10):
And there was no conspiracy, and there was no cover up,
not even any drugs, no suicide, just the cold, hard,
logical conclusion of years of hard addiction. Fans the world
over continued to mourn the loss of Amy Winehouse, but
at least their questions about how it happened had been
answered once and for all. Urban bards like Jimmy the
(17:32):
Poet immortalized her in verse, but the world would never
forget her, not for a minute. In fact, the world
kept talking about her. But by two thousand and fifteen,
talking turn from the details of her tragic death to
the details of her long, justest stating third album. And
we're talking about a real album here, not the halfass
(17:53):
Lioness compilation or the Amy Winehouse at the BBC collection
which strung together her live takes for British Radio, the
fabled third record, the follow ups, and the now canon
Back to Black. Did any recordings exist? Did Amy have
another Back to Black in her back pocket? Could a
posthumous album be in the cards, something similar to Janis
(18:14):
Joplin's masterpiece Pearl, which was famously released after Janice died.
The answer to the questions surrounding the third album turned
out to be the most surprising of all and the
most complicated, because the recordings did exist, but no one
would ever get to hear them. We'll be right back
(18:35):
after this word were were David Joseph, Chairman and CEO
of Universal Music UK kept emotion out of it. It
was just business, and in business sometimes you had to
make the unpopular decision, the decision that others couldn't see
as good good for business, that is, because they were
(18:57):
too emotionally wrapped up in it. Emotion that was the
mind killer, not fear. Emotion. Emotion blurred your vision, It
compromised your ability to make decisions, the right decisions, and
it controlled you unwittingly, like a drug. Emotion made things
seem better or worse than they usually were. Emotion made
(19:17):
you giddy with excitement one moment and blubbering with doubt
the next. Fans couldn't take emotion out of it. They
never could, and that was part of fandom. David Joseph,
on the other hand, he could, and if he couldn't,
well then he had no business being in the business.
The fans wanted to hear Amy Winehouse is now legendary
(19:38):
third album, the ones she had been working on where
her go to producers Sonam Remy and Mark Ronson, and
so far they had heard nothing, not even a tease.
The fans desire to hear something, anything from the vaults
with Maybe's voice on it was driven purely by an
emotional need and the subsequent emotional response. But David Joseph
(19:58):
could think clearly where others could not. He knew exactly
where the demo tapes were from Amy's unreleased third album.
He had the demo tapes, they were property of Universal Music,
and he knew exactly what he was going to do
with them. Fans were emotionally attached to a dearly departed
Amy Winehouse in a way that bordered on evangelical, even
(20:20):
if half of the fans who obsessed over her and
death were the same ones who tore her down in life.
They had spent years pawing over tabloid reports until her
fingers were stained with ink. They clicked on links at
all hours until their eyes were bloodshot. They came to
Amy Winehouse for the music, but they stayed for the
perpetual drama, and that drama didn't end when Amy died.
(20:42):
When word of her death broke on that July weekend
in two thousand eleven, Twitter became ground zero for grief. Reportedly,
twenty million people posted about the tragedy in the span
of twenty four hours. A tweet from George Michael's account read,
It's a tragedy on two levels, the waste of such
a young life and the pain of those who loved her.
(21:02):
But it's also a tragedy that we won't be hearing
the exquisite music she would have given us. In the
absence of exquisite new music, fans went after any music
they could get their hands on. Stores couldn't keep Amy
c d s on the shelves. In the eight days
following your death, Amy sold a hundred and ten thousand
albums in the United States alone. That's eight thousand more
(21:24):
than she's sold in the entire year and a half prior.
Back to Black immediately rocketed to the top of the
UK charts, were it knocked the Dell's twenty one, the
best selling UK record by a female artist, down a peg.
In the year following Your death, Amy's albums continue to
sell in numbers that far transcended the figures she sold
(21:44):
when she was alive. From the summer of two thousand
eleven to the summer of two thousand twelve, eight hundred
and fifty five thousand physical copies at one point one
five million digital downloads in the US. Another one point
two million albums and five hundred thousand singles were sold
in the UK during that same time period. Back in
(22:04):
Camden Square, the first few days without Amy Winos in
this world were felt intensely by the crowds that continued
to gather. People Multiplied shrines were beacons in the dead
of night. Some makeshift memorials were thoughtful and multi colored.
Others were drained of all color, like the empty bottles
of vodka that sprung up next to roses and poems
(22:26):
knowingly jaded winks at the Whole Ordeal. A graffiti image
of Amy with wings, rumored to be from the spray
paint can of Incognito UK street artist Banksy, appeared on
a Camden wall overnight. Just days later. On Tuesday, July eleven,
two hundred friends and family members gathered at Edgewordbury Cemetery
(22:46):
in North London for Amy's funeral. Though attendance was strong,
that day. One person was conspicuously absent. Blake Fielder, civil
sat in a prison cell some two hundred miles away
in Leads, doing time for urglory with a fake firearm.
He'd have two more in Amy's passing some other time.
During Mitch Winehouse's twenty minute eulogy, a black butterfly fluttered
(23:10):
around him. It landed on Kelly Osborne in the crowd.
Everyone took it as a sign. The truly mystical mourners
knew about the significance of a black butterfly. It was
extremely rare. It symbolized transformation, death and rebirth, freedom of body,
mind and soul. And the paparazzi they didn't care, not
(23:31):
about mysticism anyway, not about signs, not about butterflies, and
certainly not about basic human decency and privacy. Following the service,
Amy's ashes were buried near were black and pink headstone
commemorating Amy and her grandmother. The paparazzi lay in wait,
and they were up in the trees, legs wrapped around
(23:52):
limbs while their upper bodies angles for the best shot,
and didn't matter how much their joints burned as they
contorted into strange positions of pain no gain. They stood
on cars, perched just so for a bird's eye view, glance,
had all the morning on display, and they captured grief
in a flash. They fed off the shock with each
fall of the shutter, and they zoomed in on tears,
(24:13):
focused on faces scrunched up and ugly. No qualms. Amy
Winehouse was dead, so what do they care about some
landmark legal victory ordering them to stay away? All bets
were off, and so were the kid gloves. Years later,
in two thousand and fifteen, David Joseph, sequestered in the
offices of Universal Music UK. Didn't have paparazzi to worry about. Luckily,
(24:38):
they didn't follow him around. He was just a suit,
all business. No one knew him from a hole in
the wall. But he did have the fans to contend with,
the ones who asked, some politely and some less so,
about Amy's third album what happened to it? When would
they hear something? And they didn't want to let her go,
and they didn't want to give up hope that there
(24:58):
was new music exquisite on the horizon. David Joseph was
ready to let go. It's a hard decision, but it
was just business, no emotion. He admitted that Amy's demos
for a third album did exist, did being the operative word,
They didn't exist anymore because they had all been destroyed.
(25:20):
There was a moral thing, Joseph told Billboard Magazine, taking
a stem or a vocal. It's not something that would
ever happen on my watch that now can't happen on
anyone else's. Nothing new would ever be heard from Amy Winehouse. Again.
(26:01):
The actress was intrigued, to say the least. The opportunity
was too good to pass up. In fact, it seemed
too good to be true. But there it was posted
online a casting call for quote unquote untitled Amy Winehouse biopic.
The producers were looking for someone to be their Amy,
who was a dream roll, and the actress loved Amy Winehouse,
(26:24):
who didn't. She possessed a once in a lifetime voice
envisioned to burn. She was defiant, brazen, funny as funk,
a true force of nature, and his story was to attended.
The casting director sat her down and they just talked.
She wasn't asked to read any lines. The crew did, however,
note her exact height and weight. Then they took photographs
(26:44):
of her face from what seemed to be an excessive
number of angles. She figured it was all part of
the game for such a high profile project, and they
must really want their Amy to bear more than a
striking resemblance to the real deal. The second audition was
just as odd. Once again, the actress wasn't sent to
script with lines to learn. Instead, she was sent links
(27:06):
to YouTube videos of Amy Winehouse performing Rehab and Valerie
and Concert and asked to arrive at audition number two
with Amy's on stage moves down pat which she did.
But as she left the audition room, after having stood
there in front of a room full of men and
mimic Damy Winehouses every subtly to a t while music
played in a camera rolled, she felt something was off.
(27:28):
This was the strangest audition process she had ever taken
part in. Didn't they want to hear the North London
accent she had been working on, and who was being
considered to play Blake opposite her Amy? Should they, you know,
at least run a few lines together? And she thought
again about the role itself, how she had originally thought
it was too good to be true, and you know what,
they say about things. It seemed to be too good
(27:49):
to be true. Something smelled reeked. The actress opened her
laptop and googled the names of the men who had
been present at the auditions. What she discovered shocked her.
The man who claimed to be the casting director was
actually an actor. But that wasn't the strangest revelation. The
man who had been introduced to her as the projects
(28:11):
director was, in actuality, the CEO of a company called
Basse Hologram. The actress was familiar with the name of
that company because it was all over the news that
bass Hologram was working on resurrecting Amy Winehouse via cutting
edge technology, which would digitally project her image on stage
next to a live backing band for a three year
(28:32):
world tour. The actress blew the whistle at audition number three.
She knew what this was. It wasn't a movie. She
wasn't being considered to play the part of Emy Winehouse.
She had been lied to, deceived. Did they think she
was stupid? This so called movie production team? Had they
just been using her all along, surreptitiously creating an Amy
Winehouse hologram from the actress's own body the room clammed up,
(28:56):
and nobody said anything. No admission of guilt, and no
Nile either. They thanked the actress for her time and
said they would be in touch. They never called her
again in two thousand eighteen. The concept of a hologram
tour wasn't exactly new. Tupac made his bow from the
Great Beyond a Cochella in two thousand twelve, but the
(29:18):
artists who had their digital likeness left from state to
state and stage to stage, like Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly
and Maria Callis, tended to be icons from older generations.
Amy Winehouse hadn't even been gone for one decade. Into
many fans, the supposed tribute felt more like an exploitation
than the celebration. Amy's parents disagreed the project had their
(29:40):
unconditional support, but even though the proceeds of the tour
were set to benefit the Amy Winehouse Foundation, or registered
charity established to eight young people in need of substance
abuse and mental health assistance, many accused Amy's family of exploitation.
The backlash came fast and furious. Amy's ex husband, Blake Fielder,
(30:01):
civil second into fans emotion. In the press. He accused
Amy's family of cashing in on her legacy. On the
Good Morning Britain television show, host Piers Morgan was quick
to point out that Blake was himself already guilty of
cashing in on the Amy's legacy, having sold details of
her life to the tabloids, the very people who had
(30:22):
made her life a living how in the first place,
to shape heers. Facing negative publicity and scandal, the Amy
Winehouse Hologram Tour was postponed, but not for long. Just
a few years later, in the summer of two thousand
twenty one, Base Hologram announced that they were once again
(30:42):
moving forward with the plan to digitally replicate the experience
of seeing Amy Winehouse performed live, which, of course was ridiculous.
There was no replicating Amy Winehouse. Didn't matter if it
was a good Night on stage or a veritable ship
show that they were using as their base. A holic
ram tour was created around the concept of taking something
(31:03):
out of the past for the benefit of the present. Sure,
but the execution was a mere fact simile Amy Winehouse.
Her voice was something that came out of the past.
It leapt out from the white noise static in between
radio frequencies and it possessed her. It was a vibe
from decades before that was reanimated within a new vibe
(31:23):
that was being built for tomorrow. It was magic. It
was voodoo. No one would ever be able to control it,
not record executives, not record producers, not ex husbands, and
certainly not hologram companies. Trying to control it was a
losing game, and at the end of each show, the
projective controlling the hologram would go dark and the image
(31:45):
of Amy Winehouse would fade back the black, And that
might have been the most realistic part of the whole
damn show. I'm Jake Brennan in this is they call
(32:11):
The Club is hosted and produced by me Jake Brennan
for Double Elvis in partnership with I Heart Radio. Zeth
Lundie is the lead writer and co producer. This episode
was mixed by Joel Edinburgh. Additional music and score elements
by Ryan Spraaker and Henry Luneta. This episode was written
by Ted Omo, story and copy of being by Pat Healy.
(32:33):
Sources for this episode are available at Double Elvis dot
com on the twenty seven Club series page. Talk to
me on social at disgrace Sland pod and hang out
with me live on my Twitch channel disgrace Land Talks.
For more news on your favorite podcast, follow at double
Elvis on Instagram Rock Rolla. What is hey, everybody? It's Jake,
(32:56):
just popping in to say I hope you enjoyed Season
four of seven Club all about Amy Winehouse. Now that
you're all caught up on Amy's backstory in Final Days,
I wanted to share a story about another queen of
the pop realm, Taylor Swift. You can hear all about
Taylor's disgraceful fans and interstate stalkers in the season nine
premiere of disgrace Land, my other music and true crime podcast.
(33:18):
You can hear that episode on January eighteenth wherever you
listen to podcasts, or you can hear it along with
every other disgrace Land episode right now exclusively at Amazon
dot Com, Slash, disgrace Land, Rock Corolla,
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