Amy, My Daughter (12 page)

11
BIRMINGHAM 2007

Although Amy and I were very similar, we were quite different in one respect: I've always believed that the show must go on but Amy cancelled several. One show that went ahead when I wish it hadn't was at the Birmingham NIA (National Indoor Arena) on Thursday, 16 November 2007, the first gig of her UK tour.

After seeing Blake in prison the previous day, Amy was in a bit of a state: she had slept badly and looked as if she'd been crying. But she pulled herself together and insisted that she was going to do the tour. I thought long and hard when Raye asked me to go with her to the Birmingham gig. I had a feeling it was going to be bad, and I didn't want to see it – I knew it would upset me. In the end I put my feelings to one side and agreed to go.

On the tour bus, Amy was fine, except she couldn't stop talking about Blake. From her behaviour, it seemed that she hadn't taken any drugs, and she didn't have a drink while we were driving, so things started well. Raye had filled the bus with Amy's friends to boost her morale, and I noticed how different the atmosphere was without Blake.

Before the show I went into Amy's dressing room to wish her good luck and she still seemed fine, apart from her usual pre-gig nerves. Despite the triumphs of the last year, she still hadn't conquered stage fright. Half an hour later when she came out onstage it was a different story. She slurred her way through the songs and staggered around the stage. She was definitely drunk and the audience hated her for it. They booed and jeered, but instead of walking off the stage, Amy responded.

‘First of all, if you're booing, you're a mug for buying a ticket,' she told them. ‘Second, to all those booing, just wait till my husband gets out of incarceration. And I mean that.'

Standing at the side of the stage, I could hardly believe this was happening. It didn't feel like I was watching Amy. I was sobbing and there was nothing I could do.

Afterwards I told Raye the whole tour should be cancelled. He agreed with me that this had been the worst show he'd seen Amy do, but he waited until she sobered up to ask her what she wanted to do about the rest of the tour. More than fifty thousand tickets had already been sold and the tour was expected to gross more than £1.25 million. If Amy pulled out, she'd be stuck with a big bill.

When I walked into Amy's dressing room, she was giving a friend's mother a £20,000 watch as a present. Why? Because she was drunk. I cleared the dressing room, and the look on Amy's face told me everything. She was in a terrible state. With everyone out of the room she became very tearful, apologizing for her performance and for what she had said to her audience. ‘Give me a cuddle, Dad,' she said, like a small child, as if somehow I could make everything right again.

I hugged her tightly, and she said, ‘I'm the luckiest girl in the world to have my family, I really am.' I didn't know what to do, what to say. I knew that lecturing her or stating the obvious wouldn't help. I wanted to support her, so I just carried on holding her.

The next day at about four o'clock I got a call from the BBC telling me they'd heard a rumour that Amy's show in Glasgow had been cancelled. I phoned Raye and he said that the show wasn't cancelled but that Amy had been upset because of all of the paps at Glasgow airport. The show went ahead, and Raye called me as the first set ended. He held the phone so that I could hear what was going on. ‘Listen to this!'

The audience were going wild for Amy. They were chanting, ‘Amy, Amy, Amy,' over and over.

At the end Raye called me again and I could hear the crowd, still cheering Amy. It had been a great show, but what made it even better was that Amy had taken no drugs and drunk no alcohol. The more emotional songs, ‘Wake Up Alone', ‘Unholy War' and ‘Back to Black', had been dropped because Amy found them too difficult to sing while Blake was banged up, which seemed to have helped. I spoke to Amy and told her how proud of her I was, that she was a fighter. Amy's reply? ‘Aaah, thanks Dad.'

A few days later, Amy put on another great show, this time in Newcastle, with the audience again chanting her name in between songs. The best news of that day wasn't the show but what happened afterwards: Raye called me to say that Amy had told him she wanted to clean up and go to a clinic as soon as the tour was over. Raye was hoping to work something out so that she could have help during the tour.

When I finally spoke to Amy, she sounded absolutely fine and lucid. It seemed that the good shows had turned her around and given her a new focus. Still she couldn't stop talking about Blake and her belief that he was going to be let out on bail. I humoured her as best I could, but I thought she was deluding herself about his immediate future regarding prison. It didn't seem to me like he was going anywhere.

Part of what made it so difficult to be around Amy at this time was how quickly everything changed. She told me she'd stopped taking Subutex as it was making her throw up. Two days later the lucidity in her voice was gone. She called me from her flat, either high or drunk, saying she needed ‘kisses and cuddles', a phrase from her childhood.

 

*   *   *

 

Amy's performances were improving, but the police remained interested in what she knew about the possible attempted bribe. They went to our accountants and took bank statements. They were pressing to interview her, and we were advised again to go and see them voluntarily. They also wanted to interview me to find out if it was possible for large sums of money to be taken out of Amy's account without my knowledge, but I wasn't worried about that: I knew it couldn't happen.

I was still driving my cab when I could, and throughout this time, whenever punters recognized me as Amy's dad, I'd be asked, ‘How're you doing? How's your daughter?'

I answered as I always did, ‘She's fine, thank you, and thanks for asking.'

But the truth was she wasn't fine, and neither was I. Every day was like a ride on a rollercoaster, turning us upside-down and inside-out, so we didn't know where we were from one minute to the next. Amy had never been chaotic before but she was now.

On Friday, 23 November, Blake was refused bail, and Amy was devastated. We were back on board the rollercoaster.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that Amy's show the following night at the Hammersmith Apollo in west London was a bit of a mess. Whenever I could, I would see Amy before a show, to gee her up and make sure she was okay. Before that one I went to see her in her hotel and the singer Pete Doherty was there. They were both sitting on the bed strumming guitars. Doherty was always in the news over drink and drugs binges so I didn't want Amy anywhere near him. I threw him out. Later, some people said I'd hit him over the head with his guitar. I have no further comment to make on that point, but he did leave the room with his head in his hands.

Amy was half an hour late going onstage that night and there was some booing from the audience. On the whole, she sang very well, but there were a few moments when she looked a bit wobbly. I thought the show was a bit of a shambles, but from what I heard, most people loved it.

Ultimately it didn't matter. A day or two later, Amy called me, saying she wanted to cancel the rest of the tour: she just wasn't up to it emotionally. I spoke to Raye and we concluded that cancelling was the best thing to do. Amy's health was far more important than any tour but cancelling was pointless unless Amy went into rehab. I decided that a gentle approach was called for and went round to see her.

I told her that Raye and I had spoken, and she seemed relieved when I told her that the tour had been cancelled. ‘You know why we're doing this, don't you Amy?' I asked. ‘It's because we all love you and want you to get better. Your health is more important than any tour. But the only way you're going to get better is with proper help.'

‘You mean rehab, Dad,' she said. ‘I want to get better but I ain't doing rehab.' She wasn't obstinate, just resigned.

‘I understand,' I said. ‘I'm going to look at some options for you. There must be other ways of doing this.' If she could get back to writing again it would help, I thought. Once she threw herself into something there was no stopping my Amy. We hugged each other for a while before I left.

As I got into my taxi I received the first of what would be a series of anonymous texts. It said: ‘You're a real prick for the things you've said about Georgette. Sort your daughter out you c***.'

I decided not to mention it to Amy.

 

*   *   *

 

I went to the police station and showed them that there was no way a large payment could have been made from Amy's bank account. I'd been a bit nervous going in, but I knew we were innocent of any wrongdoing so I explained how the accounting worked and the measures we had in place to protect Amy. Walking out of there, I felt relieved that neither Amy nor I was implicated.

Feeling optimistic about the outcome, I went to see Amy at her flat in Bow to discuss the rehab options, but she was in bed and I couldn't get her up as she was suffering from the after-effects of drink and/or drugs. Would every day be like this? Although Blake was in prison – and Amy wanted to get clean – she was horribly addicted and might remain so. I resolved to ask the professionals what else I and the rest of her family should be doing to help.

I spent the next hour or so walking around aimlessly, trying to make sense of everything and planning my next move to help Amy. The first step was to book her an appointment with Dr Ettlinger for eleven o'clock the next day.

Raye took Amy to the appointment, but she wasn't particularly communicative and couldn't wait to leave. I phoned Dr Ettlinger and arranged another appointment for the following day. I would be bringing her, I told him, and would like to sit in on the consultation. I also made an appointment for Amy with Dr Pierides, the clinical psychologist; we would see him first, then go on to Dr Ettlinger. She went to both, but neither appointment proved very productive. While she was receptive to Dr Pierides, she shut down when Dr Ettlinger began to talk to her about the harm she was doing to her body. She refused to hear what he had to say.

A few days later, I called Amy's flat in the afternoon. Alex Foden was with her and told me she'd been sleeping all day. While that wasn't particularly unusual at the time, I decided to drive over to make sure she was okay. By the time I got there, Amy was awake, but not very coherent. After a while she came round a bit and we talked more about looking for a rehab place where she would feel comfortable.

It seemed that we were going round in circles. When Amy wasn't high, she wanted to get clean. Then she would get high and forget she wanted to get clean. I felt that the people going in and out of the Bow flat were a bad influence on her as, quite clearly, a lot of drug-taking was going on there.

And there were constant stories in the media. I'd had a call from Alex Foden to say that Georgette had sold a story to the
Daily Mail
for three thousand pounds. I was furious – Amy had enough problems without getting upset about press coverage – but I later found out the story was about Blake and hardly mentioned Amy. Then, in the first week of December, there were pictures of Amy, supposedly running through the streets near her flat dressed only in a red bra and jeans. I was fuming: as usual, there was a big gap between what the pictures implied and the truth.

What had happened was that at about four a.m. Amy had wanted a cup of tea and one of her friends had gone to the all-night garage at the top of the road to buy some milk. The flat was inside a gated community, and when Amy's friend went out he left the front gate open by mistake. There were paps outside it day and night and they wasted no time in taking advantage of the open gate. They banged on Amy's front door and Amy, thinking it was her friend coming back, opened it. Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash – they had pictures of Amy in her bra. So, she was not running through the streets in her underwear, simply opening her front door.

Tuesday, 4 December, was my birthday. My son Alex called me but I didn't hear from Amy and I was too fed up to be upset. Over the next couple of days there were more pictures of Amy in the newspapers, this time with Pete Doherty. One was of them standing outside the flat in Bow, supposedly at four a.m. Just hours later Amy was meant to be visiting Blake in Pentonville; she missed the visit because she overslept. Blake might have been bad, but Doherty wasn't much better – this time I felt sorry for Blake.

When I talked to Amy about the missed visit, she offered no excuses. I was disgusted with her and told her so. ‘You can't let someone down like that. I was glad to walk out of there after just half an hour when we went to see him, so what must it be like being stuck in there twenty-four hours a day? You'd want your own wife to understand that and make sure she stuck to her visits.' I couldn't be bothered to tell her I was upset that she'd forgotten my birthday.

Later she phoned and asked me to meet her in the West End. I told her I didn't want to see her because I was still fed up with her. The truth was I now felt that the situation was hopeless and I didn't want to see her when I might end up saying the wrong thing.

Two days later Amy had a VO to see Blake. She made the trip this time, but got there too late and wasn't allowed in. I had a meeting with the Outside Organization, Amy's PR company, to discuss how we could get more positive press for her. Looking back now, it seems we didn't do very well.

Not long after that meeting an open letter to Amy from Janis was published in the
News of the World
. Janis didn't write it, but she approved its contents. In it she virtually begged Amy to get clean. I understood why she said everything she did and it wasn't entirely her fault – she'd been told the day before, possibly erroneously, that the
News of the World
would be publishing an open letter to Amy from Georgette – but it really upset Amy. Janis had Amy's best interests at heart, but this was another reminder that we had to be really careful how we handled the press. It showed how manipulative they could be.