Amy Page #4

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so we've gone round there."

It looked like people had been

squatting in her house.

It stank, it was dirty.

And she was lying on the bed

and she had this golf ball

coming out of her head.

So we worked till, like,

3 in the morning

and we cleaned

the whole house up.

And I called her dad

and we called Nick.

We all met there

and it was, like,

this is getting out of control.

We need to get her some help.

I've tried speaking

to the parents

and they really wanna

kinda take it on.

And so, technically,

I sort of kidnapped her.

I picked her up and I thought,

"I'm driving you

"to the middle of nowhere

and we're gonna sit there

until you acknowledge

what's going on."

I drove her

to Black Park in Iver.

And it started off

with her sort of laughing,

"You're such an idiot."

And then it turned into,

"Don't be a prick."

And she kicked my car.

And then she just broke down,

eventually.

Opened up about everything.

She said she thinks

she's got a problem,

she was lost

and out of her depth.

Horrible.

She agreed to go rehab.

I took her to see the rehab guy.

She was, like,

"I don't wanna talk about it.

I'll go if my dad

thinks I should go."

We'd spoken to Mitch.

We'd set it all up

and she turned

into a seven-year-old child.

Sat on her father's lap

and put her arm around him.

I said to the managers,

"She doesn't need to go

to rehab. She's fine."

My dad did actually go,

"You're alright, no need to go."

I said, "Alright, Dad,

I'll go and meet him"

and we'll back out."

Which I did.

She didn't need

to go to rehab.

I think

that was the moment

we lost a very key opportunity.

I'm not saying

it would've worked.

Very often, you have to go

two or three times.

But she wasn't a star.

She wasn't swarmed by paparazzi.

We could've just f***ed

Back to Black off,

and Back To Black

might have never happened,

but she'd have had a chance

to have been dealt with

by professionals

before the world

wanted a piece of her.

I never wanted you

To be my man

I just wanted to see

what you can do

Yeah

No.

Yo yo yeah

The label were

considering letting her go.

She ends up

coming back to Miami.

Guy Moot calls me up,

"Hey, sure you wanna do this?"

I was, like, "Listen,

even if you dropped her",

"I would pay her to come

to my house and sing

'cause this sh*t

f***ing moves me."

Many times when I tried

to set you right

It's just too hard

I never wanted you

To be my man

And she totally didn't drink

the whole time she was here.

And she sat out

in my back garden

for, I don't know, four days.

She'd just take her little

notebook and just keep writing.

A.

All I can ever be to you

Is the darkness that we know

And this regret

I got accustomed to

Once it was so right

when we were at our height

Waiting for you

in the hotel at night

I knew I hadn't met my match

With every moment

we could snatch

I don't know

why I got so attached

Took me a while to get my head

around a lot of things.

The actual turning point,

when I was alright with it,

was when I started

writing the album.

I write songs because

I'm f***ed up in the head

and I need to put it on paper

and then write a song to it

and to feel better about it.

Have something good

out of something bad.

He walks away

The sun goes down

He takes the day

but I'm grown

And in your way

My deep shade

My tears dry

The ideas were there.

Four or five songs were there.

You can feel something

creatively starting to happen.

But I was still very worried

about her health.

She's really vulnerable

and not in a good place.

And then she said, "So, listen",

are you leaving 19

to manage me?"

And I said, "D'you know what?"

"Unless you let me help you

sort yourself out,

"I'm not doing this sh*t

for you.

I can't watch you

do yourself in like this."

I remember she came to see me

to talk about wanting

to change management.

I said, "Look,

that's entirely your decision."

We will support you

whatever you wanna do."

Then she said she wanted

to be managed by Raye Cosbert.

All I thought is, "Why on earth

are you gonna be managed"

by your promoter?"

I remember at the time thinking,

"We're now gonna deal

with a promoter

whose main interest will be

to get her out on the road."

And we knew she was very

vulnerable on the road.

When I first met Amy,

I was her concert promoter.

We got talking and she said

that her contract was up with 19

and she wanted

to explore other possibilities.

She said,

"Would you like to do it?"

And I was, like, "Well, yeah,

let's talk about it."

We got on quite well, you know.

I'd be the guy that'd turn up

after the gig and say,

"Well done,

have a glass of bubbly."

And I thought,

"Well, sometimes

someone just wants a change

because they feel

it's right for them to change."

It's like switching

bank accounts.

I was way too close to Amy.

I shouldn't have ever been

that close.

It should've been business.

But when you're 19,

you meet a 16-year-old

and you go through that,

you don't understand that.

We'd spent

all these years together.

And all of a sudden,

out of nowhere, I wasn't there.

When I started writing

the first song about Blake,

the other songs

just wrote themselves.

I was really was on a roll.

Because I had these feelings,

had these words

floating around in me.

When you write a song, you have

to remember how you felt,

what the weather was like,

what his neck smelt like.

You have to remember all of it.

She would tell me stories

about Blake

and this tempestuous,

extreme relationship.

That first day,

she wrote Back to Black,

all the lyrics and the melody,

in two or three hours.

Black

Black

Black

Oh, it's a bit upsetting

at the end, isn't it?

Rrrr... Boom, boom, boom.

I love that. Yes, Amy.

Yeah!

It was just one of those

serendipitous things.

Like, I just caught her

at that magic moment, you know,

and she was just ready

to get it going.

That's why I couldn't understand

what everyone else was saying

about this procrastinating,

troubled artist.

I went out to New York to

kinda hear what they were doing.

And the day I was flying out,

I got a call from management

saying that Amy's nan

had fallen ill

and she wanted to get

straight back to her nan.

Cynthia used to look after Amy.

She was like the mother

that I didn't have.

My own mother

was not really motherly to me.

So Amy and Cynthia

were very, very close.

My mum died

May 5th, 2006.

She had lung cancer.

Cynthia was a very strong

person in her life

and used to tell her how it is.

So it was horrible for her.

That killed her inside.

Well, hang on,

I'm not playing this track now.

Not playing this track now.

I'm not playing this track now.

I spoke to them and they said

it's just unnecessary.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

We were making

the back end of the record

and we were

at Metropolis Studios

and Amy had bits of vocal

to finish.

Have I got any drink?

Did they bring up that drink?

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