Living her life in the glare of the spotlight, almost everything Amy Winehouse did was documented and scrutinised. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s new biopic BACK TO BLACK, though, looks for the real woman underneath it all

WORDS CATHERINE BRAY

 

“I told you I was trouble,”

sang Amy Winehouse. Which was a bit of an understatement. Throughout her devastatingly short career, she tore through the world, always without compromise, always on her own terms. With her new film, Sam Taylor-Johnson wanted to pay tribute to that spirit. “What we didn’t want to do was a traditional biopic, which Back To Black is definitely not,” says the director.

Winehouse was hardly a traditional 2000s pop star, and was famously frustrated by lazy attempts to bracket her work alongside the likes of other turn-of-the-millennium female singers like Katie Melua or Dido. And rightly so — Winehouse was the real deal, writing raw poetry which she sang with a remarkable contralto voice that seemed to belong to someone not only older than she was, but a timeless talent who could go toe-to-toe with any of the greats. She was just 20 when she released debut album Frank, which would be nominated for the Mercury Prize, with debut single ‘Stronger Than Me’ winning an Ivor Novello award. At 24, she won five Grammys for her follow-up masterpiece album Back To Black, but a little over three years later, she died.

The much-chronicled nature of her life and success, particularly in Asif Kapadia’s 2015 documentary Amy and the relative recency of her tragic death from alcohol poisoning, have prompted hot takes suggesting that Taylor-Johnson’s biopic would be both too soon and surplus to requirements. What could we possibly learn? How could Winehouse’s story be approached in a way that honoured her? These were questions that, inevitably, the filmmakers wrestled with, as they attempted to honour the soul of a rock-and-roll livewire.

WHEN TAYLOR-JOHNSON was first approached about a planned Amy biopic, she knew that if she took it on, she’d make it personal. She was a fan of Winehouse in the early days. “I was at [London jazz club] Ronnie Scott’s, and it was a new talent night,” she remembers of her first encounter. “She was just singing, without looking up and engaging, and she just looked so pure. It was an expression of a pure soul.” She felt a connection, too, with Winehouse’s world in Camden, having worked as the girl at the door at the Camden Palace and frequented the same bars and pubs.