On what would have been the week Amy Winehouse celebrated her 30th birthday, Ronnie Joice, who regularly bumped into the singer around Camden, remembers Amy’s renegade spirit…

It was the summer of 2005 and I was seeing a girl who had a flat-mate called Simian who looked exactly like her. I didn’t like the girl (and she wasn’t very fond of me, either), but I walked past who I thought was Simian on Camden High Street and awkwardly tried to say ‘hello’ only for the girl to stare back at me confused – cracking a small smile, as if only to be polite when she saw my face turn red with embarrassment.

Later that day, in the evening I found myself in my regular haunt – the old Camden Palace now known as Koko. Every Friday night we’d all bundle into the small VIP balcony bar for its Club NME party. All the usual faces were regulars, including the Geldofs, Grimshaws and Fieldings now well-known around the country. I was stood quietly having a drink with my-then-bandmate Alex when the Simian look-a-like came up to me and introduced herself.

Full of boyish charm, she approached me vigorously. This was pre-beehive. She had long dark hair and I couldn’t stop staring at the piercing above her top lip. “You were on Camden High Street earlier, weren’t you?” Unaware of who she was, I naively probably thought she was trying to chat me up. “Indeed I was”, would have most likely been one of my fantastic replies. We then engaged in some average chat – but we were both happy to endure it and then, off we went, on our separate ways.

Having been a die-hard indie kid at that point (with a secret lust for hip-hop), I had no idea who this girl Amy was. Until my-then-bandmate Alex grabbed me, very excitedly, and whispered into my ear, “how do you know HER?” As with most of my interactions with those of a celebrity profile, they usually begin with me having no idea who they were, almost meeting them before they ‘hit the big time’ and then suddenly seeing their face and talent plastered everywhere.

Turns out she’d been on ‘Friday Night With Jonathon Ross’ the weekend before and Alex had a massive crush on her. In retrospect, I presume she’d been promoting her Frank record. Alex couldn’t believe my luck, but having never heard of Amy Winehouse before – and with no real interest in pop music at the point, dismissed it and carried on with my business.

Over the next few months, we found ourselves bumping into each other more and more frequently. Camden’s a small place, and if you’re DJing and playing gigs on a regular place like I was, combined with a sprinkling of late-night parties, you’ll find that you end up meeting the same old characters over and over again.

Yet even at the beginning of autumn 2006, the only reason Amy Winehouse was on my radar was due to the fact that I just kept on bumping into her and we had a good rapport, almost relying entirely on the fact that we just saw each other everywhere. Yet, strangely in London, you can know very little about a person and yet feel an immense fondness to them, just because they’re so familiar. Almost like when the actors who play soap characters are recognised in the street by fans that just cannot differentiate between real-life and television.

I remember being sat in The Hawley Arms on a Friday afternoon in October 2006 with a group of friends and Amy had walked in. This time covered in tattoos and bee-hived. She’d just released Rehab and it was beginning to be played everywhere. Yet you’d not have known it, she was still humble and as friendly as ever before. In fact, we’d ended up drinking together, and moved over to The Good Mixer where she thrashed me several times at pool. What took me by surprise was not how well she potted her balls, but more the balls she possessed herself. She was waif-like, even back then. For such a tiny girl she fronted such authentic gusto. Her chat always on the mark – this was a girl you could spar verbally with continuously.

We were never great friends, but fond acquaintances that found each other’s lives to be intertwined. I had another band-mate Ryan who’s uncle was best mates with Amy’s boyfriend and then husband and now ex-husband Blake Fielder Civil. From bumping into Amy regularly, I now found myself bumping into the two of them more regularly. I always found these occasions to be manic, full of mayhem. Blake seemed to accelerate Amy’s sense of fame and stardom, and he thrived off it. I suppose when you’re known for very little (his closest chance at stardom previously had been a cameo appearance in a Lily Allen video, handing her a rose), for him it made sense to take everything that comes your way, even if it means you’re piggy-backing off the back of your loved one.

I remember Amy came to a club night of mine once. It was called Boozin n Bandin and held at the now-defunct Cedar Room on Upper Street in Islington. It was a collection of friends who either performed acoustically, DJ’d or simply hung out – drinking cocktails and being naughty on a school night. Somehow we all ended up across town at the K West Hotel. Amy had booked out a suite and invited a few select friends upstairs to continue on the party. We’d ended up sat on a couch together and spent the night chatting about Motown – a shared love of our favourite genre, an opinion we shared and professed greatly until the guitarist from The Gossip decided to try to interrupt the conversation by asking Amy to listen to his new solo songs.

This is one my favourite memories of Amy Winehouse. She was polite enough to listen, and I’d waxed a little too lyrically about Motown anyway. But the room were all in agreement that this guy’s tunes were shit. Yet he continued to impose and enforce them on us in a way that could only be described as unexpected and unpleasant. Amy, having had enough of this break in the continuity of the evening decided it was best to ask The Gossip guitarist to leave. She basically kicked him out of her hotel room. Considering the global success of The Gossip at that time, few other celebrities or musicians would have had the bottle to do that. She just didn’t give a fuck.

Unfortunately, as time elapsed and her addictions got stronger and her demons got worse, her renegade spirit suffered. She seemed to have become a deserter from her original faith dedicated to music, her cause for entertainment, and her allegiance to performance to another. Those around her had changed from happy-go-lucky party types like myself to dark and dreadful characters that inhabit the dreary corners of Camden’s watering holes. Suddenly she was giving a new meaning to the term that ‘there’s no glamour in showbiz’.

I remember walking into Pete Doherty’s dressing room at V Festival in Chelmsford in August 2009. I was trying to find my friend Adam who was his drummer at the time, but instead found Amy pottering around the place. She was due to perform with The Specials that afternoon, a dream come true for her, I’m sure. I should have known back then that tragedy surely was only around the corner as she wasted the opportunity thanks to being completely wasted on-stage. The worst thing was, no-one really minded.

Then there was Mark Ronson’s debut The Business International gig at the 100 Club on the 6th July in 2010. Her arrival in the venue caused excitement amongst the selection of competition winners and guests that had been invited to watch Mark showcase his new album. She was spotted lurking around the side of the stage, and automatically stole the limelight from Ronson – the entire crowd ruffled.

The audience got their wish – she walked onto stage, absolutely unannounced and started hugging various band members. This was a completely impromptu stage invasion, which translated into an evasion of Ronson’s privacy as she stood behind Mark’s keyboard trying to press random buttons and distract him from the performance he was trying to concentrate on. Everyone stood with their mouths hitting the ground.

Mark finally bite the bullet and acknowledged her attendance. He’d been completely upstaged, and despite a brief intervention – where Amy had been coerced off the stage by a member of Mark’s management team – she had re-appeared, relentlessly. Mark asked if she wanted to perform their hit ‘Valerie’. She showed very little interest, but the crowd and band goaded her into it. If ever there was a karaoke-rendition of the song that needed to have never been performed, this was it.

I was invited to the after-show party at Bungalow 8. I saw Mark, who had clearly been shaken by the evening’s events. I remember being sat next to Amy and trying to ask her how she was. Her words were inaudible; she had no idea where she was. She almost had no idea who she was. Most car-crash celebrities still manage to maintain a sense of arrogance and their behaviour becomes insolent in an attempt to try to hide their problems. With Amy, she was the complete opposite. Everyone in that room at the 100 Club that evening knew something was wrong.

Like I said, I saw Amy on random occasions and was always delighted to bump into her. I remember seeing her run towards me at a great pace on Chalk Farm Road the day before Glastonbury 2010… she ran so fast and jumped on me, I actually didn’t have a chance to work out who it was until she was hanging off the front of me shouting out my name. She was full of her usual authentic, typical swagger. We’d just left a party at Proud Galleries where Professor Green was in the process of performing. “I’m off to wind up Pro”, she told me. “He hates it. So we’re off to wind him up.” And she did. Getting on-stage with him and performing a song together. She seemed fine then – I bet that’s what all of her regular acquaintances thought from time-to-time.

A few months later, again I bumped into her. This time she’d persuaded me to come to a house party in Camden after an evening’s drinking at The Hawley Arms (where she’d been pulling the pints behind the bar much to the delight of the punters for most of the evening, a regular occurrence and haunt of hers). She’d introduced me to her personal security guard, and told him I was ‘alright’. With her best friend and stylist Naomi, we jumped in a cab and headed around the corner. I was drunk, and went with the ride, almost enjoying the madness of it. I witnessed another train of destruction that evening and I feel guilty for watching the night pass by without saying anything.

Yet I can completely understand why no-one was ever successful with an intervention of Amy Winehouse. On that night, rushing into a taxi to avoid the paparazzi and whizzing off to a secret party around the corner, you are sucked into and compelled by the scuttlebutt of it all. Here was a woman who was in the newspaper every day, proclaimed around the universe as a modern-day genius – both musically and lyrically, with a cabinet full of awards, who had also found herself to become very, very rich at an incredibly young age. She didn’t need to let anyone tell her what to do – she was a made woman.

It’s a massive, massive shame that I’ll never get to bump into Amy again randomly on Camden High Street. She was the real deal.

Ronnie Joice

You may have noticed the beautiful portrait of Amy that accompanies this piece. This is a one off portrait painted by artist and The Specials bass player, Horace Panter, The portrait is due to be auctioned for the Amy Winehouse Foundation.

Horace gave us a few words about the piece:

I did some work with Fred Perry earlier this year, embellishing a shirt for their 60th anniversary. The embellished shirt was auctioned with proceeds going to the Amy Winehouse Foundation, so that is where the connection started. I was subsequently invited to paint a portrait of Amy for her 30th birthday exhibition at Proud Camden.

Obviously, Amy makes a fantastic subject for an icon painting and I have tried to portray her as such, with respect. She was a big fan of The Specials and, likewise, we were fans of her … she appeared on stage with us at V Festival 2009 to sing ‘You’re Wondering Now’ which, looked at now, seems very poignant given the tragic events that were to follow. Anyway, the original portrait will be exhibited and then auctioned with all proceeds going to the Amy Winehouse Foundation. In my opinion, this foundation is worth supporting as it does tremendous work in helping young people who have problems with addiction. Enough said.

Horace Panter

Prints, posters and cards of the image will also be available.  All proceeds of posters and cards and 25% of sales on prints will also go to the foundation for the duration of the exhibition.  There will be a limited edition of 30 full size prints retailing at £275 and an open edition of smaller prints retailing at £80. For more information, please contact Horace

hello@horacepanterart.com

www.horacetanterart.com

@horacepanterart

@AmysFoundation

@ProudCamden