Fifteen years after her death on July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse remains best known for her singular voice and candid songwriting. But there’s another side to her musicianship that tends to get overlooked: Winehouse was an accomplished guitarist who used the instrument to shape her songs and develop a style that was entirely her own.
Take it from Pete Doherty, singer and guitarist for the Libertines, who once watched Winehouse play up close. As Doherty told MusicRadar in 2024, Winehouse had a distinctive approach to the instrument.
“Listen, I’ve actually sat in a room with her and a guitar,” he said, “watching those tiny hands finding all these weird jazz chords. And her strumming patterns… crazy, off-kilter timings. She made it look so effortless.”
From an early age, Winehouse made electric guitar integral to her songwriting and performing, using the instrument to pen her songs as well as perform them with a unique personal touch. She first fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster as a teenager, after her older brother acquired a used model.
“It was the most beautiful thing in the world,” Winehouse recalled during a 2004 interview. “It’s such a beautiful guitar. I mean it’s got to be probably the most attractive guitar there is.”
Winehouse wasn’t supposed to play her brother’s Stratocaster, but she would carefully sneak into his room and play it whenever she had the chance. By doing so, she slowly began to develop her chops. And when she finally acquired her own guitar — an acoustic model — the siblings amicably swapped instruments back and forth.
“I just played every day. No one said to me, ‘You’ve got to play for at least this amount of time.’ It was all I wanted to do.
“It’s so easy to teach yourself if you have love for guitar. People say to me all the time, ‘How come you taught yourself?’ And there’s things people can show you, but the truth is, if you learn how to play guitar off someone, you just kind of learn to play it like them, you know what I mean? And that’s why I can say that while I’m not even an adequate guitarist, I’m still a distinctive guitarist. I sound different.”
Inspired by the likes of Carole King, PJ Harvey and Shuggie Otis, Winehouse’s self-taught musicianship and remarkable gift for songwriting resulted in a unique playing style that perfectly complemented her voice and songwriting.
The two videos below offer a glimpse of Winehouse’s unusual relationship with the instrument.
First, in a 2003 performance of “Stronger Than Me” — from her debut album, Frank, released earlier that year — Winehouse wows the studio audience on the BBC’s live music show Later… with Jools Holland, her loose, jazz-inflected rhythm-guitar style providing the song’s harmonic foundation.
We then get to see a 20-year-old Winehouse up close as she performs with nothing more than her voice and a Stratocaster at London’s Wembley Arena. The 2004 Strat Pack concert celebrated the 50th anniversary of Fender’s iconic guitar and featured an all-star lineup that included David Gilmour, Ronnie Wood and Hank Marvin.
Finally, Winehouse discussed her love of guitar and the Stratocaster in particular in a video celebrating the model’s 50th anniversary.
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