Amy Winehouse’s dad and mom hit out: ‘This is our daughter’s actual legacy’

Amy Winehouse would have been 40 this September, and it’s laborious to imagine it will likely be 12 years subsequent week since her loss of life aged simply 27. But even now, curiosity within the troubled singer with the highly effective jazz voice reveals little signal of waning.

As effectively because the much-heralded movie, Back To Black, being shot this 12 months with director Sam Taylor-Johnson on the helm and Marisa Abela within the starring function, there’s additionally a e-book of Amy’s musings and jottings, referred to as Amy In Her Words, due out in August. There are even plans for a Broadway musical.

And to all those that accuse the Winehouse household of cashing in, Amy’s father Mitch Winehouse retorts: “People say we are only doing it for the money – well we are! But it’s not for us, but for the Amy Winehouse Foundation, helping disadvantaged kids.”

Mitch and Janis Winehouse divorced when Amy was younger, however they’re nonetheless a hands-on group working the charity of their well-known daughter’s title. The basis, which has modest places of work in north London, has a commendable monitor document of aiding under-30-year-olds with drug and alcohol points.

Cabbie-turned-singer Mitch as soon as claimed to have suffered a nervous breakdown after being portrayed as an exploitative father who profited from Amy’s fame.

Today he’s principally at peace together with her legacy.

The new biopic, wherein he’s performed by Eddie Marsan, has his blessing, although a earlier Oscar-winning documentary, Amy, in 2015, made him swear he would by no means once more cooperate with a manufacturing.

But for Amy’s mom, Janis, the journey to acceptance has been a lot more durable.

“I don’t do grief,” she admits. “It is only now, after all this time, it has hit me. I am really feeling the loss.” Janis has been re-examining her life because it modified once more dramatically when her second husband, Richard, died a 12 months in the past aged 71.

“For the first time ever I am truly alone,” she says. “Of course, I grieved for Richard – we were childhood friends, he was always part of our extended family – but what surprised me was that it seemed to open up the wound of losing Amy; a pain somewhere deep inside me.”

“I thought I had coped with it rationally, but it was raw. Everywhere I went seemed to hold memories. I was going into shops and hearing her on the radio.”

This sudden, sudden outpouring of grief and emotion was particularly laborious for the retired pharmacist as a result of, as she admits: “I am not a sentimental person; I have a scientific brain and I’m not one to dwell on emotions.”

The polar reverse to her effusive, garrulous ex-husband Mitch, Janis is proud to be a part of the “stiff upper lip generation”, and insists her motto in life when unhealthy issues occur, is: “Get on with it.”

Back in 2003, she was recognized with a number of sclerosis.

Coupled with dropping her second husband, her bodily situation has lately deteriorated and she or he now struggles to stroll unaided.

It has all been a pressure for this fiercely proud and impartial girl, not somebody susceptible to introspection. “It’s a strange life because I get stopped in the street because of Amy,” she continues.

“People know who I am. Who would ever think they would give birth to a famous person? But when Richard died, I have been left with time – too much time to think, to mull over the past, and that’s not me. Mitch tried to help; he worries about me.”

“He took me to view a luxury retirement complex with supported living, but it was full of 90-year-olds. I’m not ready for that yet.”

When Amy died on July 23, 2011, Mitch channelled his grief into optimistic motion by establishing the Amy Winehouse Foundation. Janis, Mitch and Mitch’s present spouse, Jane, are trustees, and never simply in title.

They are hands-on – personally attending drug training schemes, fundraising and lobbying ministers for higher care.

Thanks to their sizable inheritance, the Winehouses are independently rich and Mitch is the primary to confess he might afford to retire. “But I don’t want to live it large,” he says.

“Living it large, for me, is when we go into a children’s hospice and give chimes to a blind child. There is no feeling like it in the world. If we can help one family, we have done a good job.”

Mitch remembers being in New York City when his daughter died of an unintended alcohol overdose. On the airplane again to the UK, he repeatedly heard Amy telling him to arrange the charity.

“It was like she was on the phone to me,” he remembers.

“The thing is, nobody knows how kind she was. It still hurts to remember the names she was called like ‘wino’ and ‘junkie’, but she did many good things for those suffering from neglect; she took them in, gave them money, paid for medical help.

“I want people to know the other side of Amy.”

The singer died intestate however left greater than £4million earlier than taxes, plus property. Like many posthumous superstar estates, enormous royalties proceed to return in via music gross sales and merchandising.

Janis admits she by no means has to fret about cash once more, however she lives modestly in Richard’s previous home, surrounded by Amy’s memorabilia.

“Originally, I wasn’t keen on the new film, to be honest,” she admits. “I feel women of my generation get pushed into the background. After all, it was me who gave birth to Amy.”

Janis is being performed on-screen by TV actress Juliet Cowan, well-known for her function within the Doctor Who spin-off collection, The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Despite her preliminary reservations, Janis has now, like Mitch, visited the Ealing Studio movie set and brought an curiosity within the new biopic.

But digging up recollections of the previous has been painful.

Janis admits she was devastated after Mitch left her when Amy was simply 10-years-old. He had been having an affair with a lady he labored with, ever since Amy had been a toddler. “He even brought his work wife home with him,” she remembers.

Janis definitely endured an amazing deal as a busy younger mom. One of the few occasions her emotions obtained the higher of her was when her husband Mitch began staying away from residence extra usually.

“He was pretty much living with the other woman,” she remembers. “He kept saying he was ‘away on business’. But I knew exactly where he was – in Chingford.

“One day I got the kids in the car and I drove them to Chingford, parked up outside and looked up at the flat window. ‘That’s where your dad is,’ I said. They were missing him. And I thought: ‘I’ve found you, matey!’ We didn’t have a big row, though. That’s not my style.”

Janis studied for 2 college levels whereas citing Amy and her older brother, Alex.

The youngsters had been usually left within the care of Mitch’s mom. Even now the Winehouses bicker over the supply of Amy’s psychological well being points – despair and bulimia.

“She was on Prozac as a teenager, but Mitch doesn’t accept that,” says Janis.

The Winehouses can, nonetheless, agree that Amy was all the time respectful of their presence. She by no means used medication in entrance of them and requested permission earlier than consuming a glass of wine. Now 12 years on from their daughter’s loss of life, Janis is philosophical concerning the household tragedy.

“Now that I’m getting older, I sometimes wonder if Amy could still have been here,” she says. “But I don’t do ‘should haves’ or ‘could haves’. 

“Yes, we have inherited wealth as a family, but we would rather have Amy back than all the money in the world.”