It’s 20 years since Amy Winehouse released Back to Black, her career-defining second album.
For those who knew her, the milestone will doubtless feel bittersweet. The record was hugely successful and won countless awards, but Winehouse seemed ill-equipped to cope with the pressures of global fame, and died in 2011 at the tragically young age of 27.
Someone who knew Winehouse better than most was Dale Davis, her live bass player and musical director. He began working with the star in 2003 and, speaking to The Times, he’s been discussing the final conversation he had with her on the night before her death.
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“She rang up, she said, ‘I’ve been watching YouTube clips of myself. I can sing, can’t I?’” says Davis. “I went, ‘Yeah, of course you can sing, you’re the best.’”
Davis says that he planned to see Winehouse the next evening, when she was going to take his son to see Toy Story 4. “She said, ‘Well, I’m going now,’ and I went, ‘All right, Amy, I’ll see you tomorrow, love you.’ And she went, ‘Love you more,’ put the phone down. That was the last thing I heard from her.”
The Times also interviewed some of the other people involved in Back to Black, including songwriter Paul O’Duffy. He co-wrote Wake Up Alone, the album’s eighth track, and revealed that he bonded with Winehouse over a shared love of jazz singer Sarah Vaughan.
O’Duffy says that he played Winehouse an album that she hadn’t heard before – Sarah Vaughan with Michel LeGrand – which intrigued her. “One track, Deep in the Night, had a rhythm to it which was quite interesting,” O’Duffy remembers. “And I said, ‘well maybe we should try something that has a feel like that.’ She was quite engaged with that. I came up with a beat similar to that and then found some chords that I felt would work with it. And then she played the guitar and I’m thinking, ‘We’re going to get something. Something’s coming.’ And she said, ‘I’ve got something… just put the mic on.’”
It sounds like O’Duffy wasn’t fully prepared for what Amy did next: “She sang Wake Up Alone from beginning to end,” he says. “It was just like magic.”
To mark its anniversary, an expanded 20th anniversary edition of Back to Black was released today (23 October), and its legacy was also celebrated earlier this week at a special concert at London’s Roundhouse. The album was performed in full, with producers Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi among those joining Dale Davis and The Amy Winehouse Band on stage.
Guest singers included Baby Rose, Corinne Bailey Rae, FLO, Jessie Reyez, Jorja Smith, Lianne La Havas, Nia Smith, Sasha Keable, Skye Newman, Terri Walker and Yebba.
For those in the UK, the concert will be broadcast on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on Saturday 24 October at 9.35pm as part of a night of programming celebrating Amy Winehouse’s life and career.
