Mitchell Winehouse with his daughter Amy in 2010. Photo: Getty
Mitch Winehouse, the man who gave his daughter her first singing lessons when she was a toddler, has just released a tell-all memoir, Amy, My Daughter, the profits of which will go to the Amy Winehouse foundation.
Mitch is not a man to mince words, as evidence by these three excerpts in the Hollywood Reporter.
1. He takes his anger out an ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil for Amy’s problems.
In the book, he calls Fielder-Civil, “the biggest low-life scumbag that God ever put breath into” for introducing her to drugs.” Winehouse concedes that he didn’t literally kill her but he places the majority of blame for Amy’s problem on Fielder-Civil.
2. Producer Mark Ronson came up with the idea for the hit song Rehab.
In early 2006, Amy traveled to New York to meet with producer Mark Ronson about working on an album. The first meeting was awkward but over a few days the two warmed to each other. During a walk around Greenwich Village, Amy said, “"You know they tried to make me go to rehab, and I told them, no, no, no." On hearing the line, Ronson replied, "That's quite gimmicky. It sounds hooky. You should go back to the studio and we should turn that into a song."
3. Her family tried to help but she resisted their efforts.
Mitch, Amy’s mother Janis and her brother Alex all tried to get her help for her drug problem to no avail. Promoting the book, Mitch Winehouse said, "What you want to do is lock them up for months to help them recover, but that's kidnapping. They can only quit drugs when they're ready. In the end, we did as much as we could do for Amy."
