Gourley also suggested that with today's greater awareness of mental health issues and addiction, Winehouse would not face such mockery in tabloids and gossip magazines.
Winehouse's friend Gourley told BBC Radio 4, the reality was different: "Janis and Mitch were there, all the time," she insisted, listing "the countless times she (Amy) was taken to rehab facilities or there was an intervention". "I still get it now: 'You were complicit in your daughter's death, you killed your daughter'," her father says in the documentary. This was the main thrust of Amy, an Oscar-winning British documentary from 2015, which was particularly damning about Mitch and Winehouse's ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil. The documentary also seeks to counter accusations that her family relished her success and did not do enough to help her overcome addiction.
"You think you know my daughter - the drugs, the addiction, the destructive relationships - but there was so much more," her mother says in the voiceover. Narrated by her mother Janis Winehouse-Collins and titled Reclaiming Amy, the documentary to air on BBC2 features interviews with long-standing friends, including one, Catriona Gourley, who reveals she had a romantic relationship with Winehouse. She died from alcohol poisoning on 23 July 2011. The singer put her own experiences into original songs, such as Back to Black and Rehab, infused with jazz and soul influences and developed a distinctive personal style with a towering beehive hairdo and tattoos.īut her performances grew more erratic due to drug and alcohol use while tabloids published stories calling her "Amy Decline-house" or "wino". Winehouse's parents have cooperated with a BBC documentary to air on the anniversary of her death on Friday, which her father Mitchell, known as Mitch, says gives a "more rounded image of Amy". But I said no, no, no."īut 10 years after the British singer's death at 27, her family and friends say it is time to stop defining her by her well-documented struggles with addiction and destructive relationships. LONDON – Amy Winehouse may still be best known for her line: "They tried to make me go to rehab.