The Amy No One Knew

TWELVE YEARS AFTER AMY WINEHOUSE'S TRAGIC DEATH, THE STAR'S FAMILY SHARES INTIMATE DETAILS OF HER LIFE OFFSTAGE IN AN ILLUMINATING NEW BOOK

- MARISSA CHARLES

Long before Amy Winehouse rose to international superstardom, she was playing club gigs in London as a teen, dazzling audiences with that soulful, unearthly voice. “Annie Lennox would come in,” Amy’s dad, Mitch Winehouse, recalls. “She sat with me and said, ‘Your daughter is going to be fantastic.’ ” Within years of Lennox’s prescient declaration, Amy indeed found fame with her timeless, genre-defying style of singing that blended jazz, R&B and rock. Despite her breakneck ascent, Amy held tight to her roots. After she released her first album, Frank, at age 20, her life changed forever. “I remember driving through the city of London, and there was a big billboard with Amy on it,” Mitch says. “But through it all, all she wanted to do was to be with her family. At that time my mum was ill. She just wanted to spend as much time as she could with her.”