In a post titled simply ‘For Amy’ Brand described on his website the first time he met the ‘sweet’, ‘peculiar’ and ‘vulnerable’ Jazz singer in Camden and then seeing her live for the first time alongside Paul Weller at the Roundhouse.
Initially ‘baffled’ by how this ‘jazz singer’ could achieve such mainstream attention he became awestruck finally seeing her onstage.
‘Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine.
‘So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a f**king genius.’
While police wait to confirm Amy Winehouse’s cause of death, the widespread speculation points to drugs.
Speaking from experience, Brand who himself was once a drug addict added: ‘Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre Focus12, I found recovery.’
Sadly for Winehouse though, who coincidentally was also 27 and so joins the so-called ‘27 Club’ with other late luminaries such as Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison who died at the age of 27, Amy didn’t get the help she needed.
‘We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease,’ he continued. ‘Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction.
‘We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn't even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there.’
RIP Amy.
Copyright : Comedy Central UK