Original subtitles

This programme contains strong language

Said I'd never

I'd never lose my baby!

So...

I always keep a bottle near, yeah

He said I just think you're depressed

This, me, yeah, baby

And the rest...

You know, I wrote an album that I'm really proud of about a

bad situation that I got through, and that's pretty much where it

begins and ends for me.

The new album is called Back To Black because it's about when

a relationship is over and how you go back to where you were before, or

what you know best.

Amy, I'm just going to go get...

This album didn't suddenly begin

its life in a recording session in New York. We'll just find somewhere.

Amy was living and experiencing these songs for quite some

time before.

I'd say the biggest thread between Amy on album one, Frank,

and Amy on album two was her passion for music.

..call him Mister Magic.

You know, she was 19.

Her idea of success

was about the first record being heard and

her record being welcomed and respected.

My way of managing Amy in the early days was that she needed to

be stimulated, that was very much part of her personality,

she was so bright. And then humour.

I knew how to make her laugh, she knew how to make me laugh.

I always tried to make it fun and would bring out the best in her.

It was an amazing period of her life, I know that she was really,

really happy around that period.

She wanted to be a roller waitress on roller skates,

she wanted to be a journalist, she wanted to save cats.

But music, you know, she never went, "Oh, I want to be famous,

"I want to be a star." Music was just part of who she is.

She was just Amy, which was loud, funny.

She'll have you

laughing on the floor without even knowing it, that's the funny thing,

she'd come up with these little sayings and you'd just be like,

"What are you talking about?"

You know what, yesterday this seemed like

the best salad in the world. Today? Not so sure.

I was aware that she'd get

melancholic and depressed at times.

And I was as aware as you could be at that age, you know, early 20s.

There was a very obvious sadness at the end of,

really at the end of touring for Frank.

Amy hid a lot of things from me.

She never wanted to look weak in my eyes so, for example, when I saw

her cry for the first time, it was a shock to me.

And I think, you know,

romance and love and failed relationships and things that

could, when you talk about them, sound quite small,

were huge to Amy.

There was a period of time before Back To Black where for Amy wasn't

making music.

My hair's gone flat!

I felt so helpless

What could I do?

Remembering all the things...

I remember she went to America to make Back To Black.

It was about going to the best people in the best environment.

And she had to jump on the plane and go to America and be on the

ground in Miami, in New York, making that record.

She came to New York, I met her.

And she had a few of these songs,

she wrote Back To Black and Rehab within the three days that we were

at my place on Mercer Street.

It's probably the quickest out of any record that I've ever

worked on.

We did five songs in about four days.

I thought we did the tracking in two days.

I remember the whole thing being very quick. Yeah.

It was much faster than we normally do records. Five songs.

So three days. I think it was two days. Really? Wow.

Back To Black was actually

the first song I recorded with the band.

You know, the most simple thing you can say to an artist when

you're meeting them for the first time is, "What kind

"of record do you want to make?"

And, um, she played me all this

60's girl group stuff and, like, jukebox pop music and things like

The Shangri-Las and The Crystals,

and they were selling heartbreak

on this kind of, like, giant scale.

"The world is going to end if my boyfriend doesn't take me back."

He stood there and asked me why

And all I could do was cry...

I'm quite influenced by whatever I listen to.

Like, a lot of doo-wop, a lot of 60's soul, Motown, girl groups.

When I had a bit of time off, all I did was go and play pool

all day in the pub, I guess where it's all jukebox, jukebox music.

I just was inspired by her, the music she played me, what she

wanted to do, so I came up with the piano idea for Back To Black.

And then I went to the drums, and I'm really not much of a

drummer but I just did the bom-bom-bom-tss, bom-bom,

put in a whole bunch of tambourine, reverb on the tambourine

cos I thought that'd sound like the kind of stuff that she liked.

I played her that the next day, when she came to the studio at noon.

And she was instantly like, "Oh, cool, like, I love it,"

like, "let me go write something to it."

I didn't really question the lyrics,

the only thing as a producer, you're in-built to think that,

like, everything should rhyme because that's, like, pop structure.

I remember when she sung me the chorus of Back To Black, she had,

"We only said goodbye in words, I died a thousand deaths..."

I was like, "Do you think that's weird, should you change it?"

She looked at me, like, a little bit more like dumbfounded,

like, "Why would I, how, why would I change it?

"That is what came out."

This is honesty on a piece of paper.

When I sit down to write a song, I don't think...

"This'll be good," I don't think, "This sounds a bit like that.

"I should work that in and make that sound like that. I don't think I

"should have that... particular line in it," like,

I just sit down and just let it come out, you know what I mean?

And then she went and she just laid it down, the vocal.

He left no time to regret

Kept his dick wet

With his same old safe bet.

Mark, you know,

he was as excited about doing things and as enthusiastic as me.

We got on really well. Personally, as well.

You know, we're like brother and sister.

Get on without my guy...

I suppose you need to be close enough to someone to trust them.

But not so close that you can't be like,

"Piss off, that's a really bad idea."

I guess we had a similar background.

I had lived in New York a lot of my life, but we were both English.

We were both Jewish. And then there was also the humour thing.

She was just razor-sharp wit,

like, I was nowhere near her level of delivering

one-liners and stuff, but as far as making each other laugh and having

the same sense of humour, that was definitely a kindred thing there.

No, back into your chorus beat you were playing before,

before it went to the solo beat.

You don't have to drop now on that.

Working with Mark is great, because he's known as a DJ.

DJs are in a...an interesting position as far as, like, producing

records because they're used to looking at crowds and sort of,

kind of like knowing what gets people out of their seats,

what gets people going and what doesn't get them going.

And Mark had the brilliant idea of using the Dap-Kings, and they just

gave urgency and life

and movement and swagger

and depth and texture.

Putting the Dap-Kings on the record made it a world beater.

She really loved how this felt under her voice.

And then when we came here and everybody actually played it,

it came to life 1,000-fold.

You went back to what you knew

So far removed

From all that we went through

And I tread a troubled track

My odds are stacked

I go back to black.

The big things in defining the sound of this record was Tom Elmhirst.

And the mixes.

And I think because I was so infatuated with the Daptone

sound I really liked it sounding like legitimately like it

was just straight out of 1963.

And that's how we had it until it went to Tom to mix it.

I love you much..

I didn't change the vocal that much.

There was some quite hard frequencies in her voice

which I had to, sort of, manage.

And we also printed a reverb track of hers.

So, just her vocal, dry, on its own.

He left no time to regret.

And then to add in some flavour...

Kept his dick wet With his same old safe bet...

So that, sort of, immediately gives it, for me, nostalgic sort of

sound that you would have heard more in the '60s and '50s and so on.

And I remember going to the studio and realising that he'd found

another 30, 40%, in terms of, um, making the record sound

finished and giving it depth and perspective

and Amy's vocals.

With his same old safe bet...

In the beginning, I hated it.

And then I realised what he'd done was kind of amazing,

he'd really brought something that could have just sounded,

maybe a bit like a postcard to 1964 and made it sound thoroughly

modern and tough.

Get on without my guy

You went back to what you knew

So far removed

From all that we went through

And I tread a troubled track...

I write songs because I'm, like, fucked up in the head,

and I need to put it on paper and then write a song to sing it loads

to feel better about it and have something good out of something bad.

We only said goodbye with words...

Mark would say that

the songs just wrote themselves, they really did.

You go back to her

And I go back to...

Black.

If you're going to make an amazing record...

..go to the place where the amazing people are.

Send the girl from Camden, you send her to New York,

you send her to Miami.

Let her hang out with great people.

Mark, as close as he was to Amy, Salaam was her go-to,

her father figure.

Salaam's songs were the other half of Back To Black.

In between me and my man is me and Mr Jones...

Me and Mr Jones.

In 2005, I had just bought this house.

It was pretty much an empty space and the first time I saw Amy,

she walks into the room for the very first time and she walks

through the threshold and she stands up and says,

"Ahh-ahh-ahh-whoo."

She's like, "Can I record my vocals right here?"

So pretty much this became it. We took this mic,

placed it here,

and this was the recording of Back To Black in this room,

her vocals being here, then I bought a piano and put the

piano in the room, I bought a drum kit, put the drum kit in the room,

pushed the amps I had into the room and I intentionally utilised

the room as an instrument in the recording process.

I'm into old records, I'm a hip-hop producer but I also

learned the engineering aspects of getting instruments that sound

a particular way and how to capture them.

Baa-da-da, da-da, da-da.

And the way I played the piano and the bass,

it kind of kept the groove going and the fun stuff but, you know,

just experimenting with instruments that sound like break beats

and old music, ways of figuring out ways of playing to capture it,

because still we were utilising not even a full studio of equipment.

Some simple at-home tricks.

You know, there's this funny story where we're recording

Me & Mr Jones and Amy was making tea in the kitchen in the next room

and the kettle

went off halfway through the song but we didn't necessarily

hear it, then as the song's going off we just hear it run off and

then, like, what happened?

So when I listened back to the vocal, halfway through the song,

the tea kettle starts and it's there in the record but you never actually

hear it but it's like a high frequency.

I might let you make it up to me.

Tea kettle...

Who's playing Saturday?

You know, it's very English of Amy

to be making tea and still keep the vocal take.

She made us dinner, right. All the time.

Like, the whole time she was here. Yeah. Like, giant meatballs.

I definitely remember the meatballs.

I feel like our involvement in this Back To Black album is

actually a continuation initially of

what we were doing on the

first album, Frank.

In terms of the relationship, we had fun with Amy, it's like a

conversation the whole time, more so than the production.

She made everybody feel welcome, Vince and Bruce and everything.

She met them and it was just like she knew them for years.

She was definitely one of those people,

she had that type of a spirit.

I think every time that I was with Amy or that we saw Amy and we

were with Salaam, she was always happy to be around us.

She'd come in her ballerina slippers. Right!

And just kind of like hung out and I think she just liked being here.

Or around Salaam, they had a really great relationship.

I know I'm onto a good thing with Salaam.

Salaam and I are very insular,

we work quite closely and together, we don't talk to anyone else.

A lot of producers are quite like, "How can we do that,"

or, "That's never been done before."

But they're just like, "Cool, let's do this, let's do that."

And I helped push her creativity out, it was like, "OK,

"you're pushing me. Can I say this?" "Yes, you can say that."

"I can swear?" "Yes, you can swear."

You know, she was excited about all those things.

So Me & Mr Jones pretty much started as a song Fuckery,

that, you know, in between albums Amy kept going in the studio.

She recorded a song, Fuckery,

and people in the label and management were like,

"We'll never get on radio, she's swearing again!"

You know, all they could focus on was Fuckery.

So during the sessions, I was like, "I like it,"

her kind of being influenced by West Indian culture as well,

hearing them say, "Oh, this is Fuckery, gwa'an," and this and that.

She picked it up and made a song about it.

What kind of fuckery is this

You made me miss the Slick Rig gig

Old Slick Rick

You thought I didn't love you when I did

When I did

Can't believe you played me out like that

No, you ain't worth guest list

Plus one of all them girls you kissed

All them girls

You can't keep lying to yourself like this

To yourself

Can't believe you played yourself...

Most of the songs are a dig at a past lover.

This whole song was her cussin' off an ex-boyfriend.

Say I must get to the show at Brixton next week,

and it's either you're going to let me in or not.

But in the middle of it, you know, the ending of the second verse,

"What type of fuckery are we, right now you don't mean dick to me."

Very comedic.

Me & Mr Jones is about, I used to go with this fella,

we were on and off a good six or seven years, you know,

we were really good friends.

And because he worked for a record company, whatever gigs I

couldn't get into, I'd be like, "Yeah, G, let's go."

I remember Slick Rick was playing at the Jazz and I was just like,

I rung him up, "Slick Rick, come on," and he never got back to me.

OK, in the house.

What kind of fuckery is this?

A lot of the songs that Salaam wrote with Amy that ended up

on Back To Black didn't sound how Back To Black ended up.

Salaam's songs were very mid-tempo,

and very jazz and very much like Frank.

With this first arrangement, we were still in the Frank mind-set,

we didn't know where we were going with the new record.

Wasn't the record for Back To Black at that time,

because it was still developing.

The bass has a bit of a Latin feel, but once again that was also me

hearing where the chords came from, the chords also felt like it was

a little Brazilian bossa nova-ish to me,

at the same time, so it has a jazz, Latin,

you know, Cal Tjader vibe to it.

What kind of fuckery are you

Aside from Sammy you're my best black Jew

Though I could swear that we are through

I still wonder about the things you do.

And so the transformation that Salaam had to take his songs through

and for them to actually stick and feel part of

the other half of Back To Black was just a couple of stepping stones.

Me and Mr Jones.

Between Mark and Salaam, they did a fantastic job.

What kind of fuckery is this?

You made me miss the Slick Rick gig

And thought I didn't love you when I did

When I did

Can't believe you played me out like that.

Like a new...

When I think of her and how she presented these songs to me, I

just picture her sitting in my old studio on Mercer Street with

a nylon string guitar and just like singing these songs and she

could barely sort of, she'd be barely opening her lips and

like, this...this sound was so heavy and full,

this growl or rasp or however she was singing that certain song.

# Meet you downstairs in the bar and hurt

Your rolled up sleeves and your skull T-shirt

You said what did you do with him today?

Sniffed me out like I was Tanqueray.

I had the rhythm arrangement as a sort of

Latin, like...

Meet you downstairs. You know, and then the

rest of the rhythm tracks we decided were so exciting I just knew

that that wasn't going to cut it any more.

And I said, "Can anyone think of anything?"

I don't think even 10 seconds went by, and you guys were just like

"How about... do-chu-do-chu-do-chu...?"

Why don't you come in,

why don't you come in when you play your first two bars?

With that first beat,

and then when the bass comes in...

I was introduced to the Dap-Kings' music and I was so blown away

by the way that they were able to recreate this sound of,

like, 1964 in this way that was like, I didn't even dream that you

could approximate that in 2006, when we were making this record.

The insight Mark really had was to really understand the value

of what we were already doing and figure out how to incorporate that

with a pop artist and certain pop sounds, you know.

Kind of put those things together.

I think a lot of people come in here, including Mark, and tend to

look around at the equipment or the gear.

You know, some people tend to fetishise things.

I once heard Mark Ronson say that we had, I think, to me, he told

me that we had magic linoleum in the back room.

And I told him, "Man, there's nothing magic here, there's just

"musicians that have a good sound and know how to play together."

When you're making records that you want people to have a sense

of what music really sounded like back when it was

really made like this...

..and analogue, as people will tell you,

is all about the warmth of the tape and the organicness,

and running the instruments through the desk and, um...

..you know, analogue is texture... and crackle...and pop.

Then I called Amy at the end of the day - she was in London -

to play it over, like, hold up the phone, and I think...

Do you remember, I think I had woken her up, she was like, "Ugh,"

I said, "Listen to this, it's so fucking good."

And I played the demo of what you guys had just tracked, 30 seconds,

I was like, "What do you think?" It was like...

What Mark and Salaam had to do to get that record out of her,

whether it was writing or whether it was making sure that she

was happy with the style of record,

and with the type of artist that Amy was, who was very forthright,

very brutal, could easily demotivate a situation,

Back To Black came together pretty easily.

Meet you downstairs in the bar

In your rolled-up sleeves

And your skull T-shirt

You say, what did you do with him today?

And snuff me out

Like I was Tanqueray

Cos you're my fella, my guy

Hand me your Stella and fly

By the time I'm out the door

You're ten men down

I want you more...

When I sit down and I have a lot of feelings that I can't deal with,

that's when I write a song.

You know, I've always written songs at points in my life where

I don't know what to do, except write a song, you know?

So I guess that's why they come out kind of traumatised.

You know that I'm no good.

I think you do have to suffer for your art, you know? I know I have.

And I know the reason it took me three years to write...

..not to write it, but to get that big chunk of my life that I could

then go back and write about - the reason it took me that long

is cos I had to, you know, have some peaks and troughs, definitely.

For you I was a flame

Love is a losing game

Five-storey fire as you came...

Her writing was very much a page in her diary,

very much her being honest about how she felt at the time.

I think the flipside of that is that you can become TOO sensitive,

and everything can become loud and painful.

The pain's all over the record.

Oh, what a mess

We made.

Amy writes from experiences,

and she writes about stories of broken...of the broken heart,

or the intenseness of the love,

and that was her relationship with Blake in Back To Black.

We just broke each other's hearts repeatedly.

And I think we were very... we sabotaged our own relationship

by trying to prove to ourselves that we weren't in love with

each other, cos we were too young to be that much in love,

it was like...

It was horrible. And, you know, I wrote a whole album about it.

And the minute I started writing about Blake,

the songs just wrote themselves.

And Amy lives our her experiences and then writes about them.

So, when you heard Love Is A Losing Game,

you kind of knew where her headspace was.

This was, like, a chapter of her life which had sort of closed and

she had moved past,

so she was able to deal with it with this kind of like removed,

like, "Oh, this guy Blake, it was great, you should have seen us,

"we used to get in these fights in the kitchen and I'd be..." da-da-da,

But it was so, like,

she had so moved past it and she was in such a good place when we met.

But there was one thing that she was really adamant over, she definitely

didn't want to put any strings on the record, cos to her,

someone did strings on her record before

and she really didn't like it,

and it was, like...it was this hammy, schlocky thing to her.

She was like, "It's just a waste of time, no strings,"

and I was like, "What if we do it and then you don't like it,

"then I'll pay for it, so you don't even lose any money.

She was like, "It's shit, I don't want fucking strings,

"leave it alone." And so I kind of did...

I didn't really do it behind her back, I just thought,

"Let me do some strings... behind her back!

"Cos maybe she'll like it."

We mixed Love Is A Losing Game.

If there was ever one that she was going to hear...

..the alarm bells were going to go off, it was probably that.

I never played Oh, what a mess we made...

We were just worried about whether the strings were going to

worry Amy cos she mentioned not wanting strings on the record,

so I do seem to remember me and Mark being quite stressed out

about her hearing it.

She was listening to the mix for the first time,

she was kind of like with her head down on the desk like this,

the whole song, so I couldn't really even read her reaction.

And then she just turned round and she was, like, you know,

like, "I love it."

Love is a losing hand

Self-professed, profound

Till the chips were down

Know you're a gambling man

Love is a losing hand.

I like writing about dynamics between two people,

whether they're boyfriend and girlfriend or, you know,

a man and his dog, your mum and your dad, just the dynamics between,

you know, just relationships.

Over futile odds

And laughed at by the gods

And now the final frame

Love is a losing game.

This girl had something that the greats do have,

and that's the ability to, you know, to go to dungeons dark and grim,

to write those songs that sound like they're heartbreak records

or...

..but are actually uplifting moments, and, you know,

that takes a genius.

Mark created the sound,

which then I was able to kind of call Salaam and say,

"You've got the direction, they've nailed the style,

"you've got to figure out how your songs fit on the record."

And he was like, "So how are you going to make the songs we have

"already fit with those?" And I was like, "Don't worry, I got it."

That's ultimately where we ended up taking more of the record

into the '60s space more than the jazz space of the previous record.

Remembering all the things we'd been through...

The Ronettes had it all, they had the atmosphere and look.

They're my favourite girl group of all time.

She was different, you know, like the Ronettes were in the '60s,

we were different, and that's what drew people to us,

because we didn't have a hit record,

we came out there with confidence and bad girls and everything.

She took it to a whole nother level.

I just like the sentiment of that time, when you're in love...

You know, so much music nowadays is like, "You don't know me,

"I don't need you," and all the music then was kind of like,

"I don't care if you don't love me, I will lie down in the road,

"pull my heart out and show it to you." Do you know what I mean?

I don't think we bought Motown records, but we knew what they were, in different pieces,

and that kind of influenced the sonic I was going for

in the drums, the sound,

where before I was just doing things that were in jazz space, but now

I was trying to capture the sonic of those '50s and '60s records.

Tears Dry was pretty much written here at the house with her

sitting out in the back garden,

sometimes all the way out in the field, with her guitar.

And even the lyrics of the hook, "he walks away, the sun goes down,

"in this cool shade" was her sitting underneath the shade in the

back of the house.

And in your grey

In this blue shade

My tears dry on their own

All I can ever be to you is the darkness that we knew

And this regret I got accustomed to.

Tears Dry On Their Own is about...

I was with someone that I couldn't really be with...

..and, er, I knew it wouldn't last.

But I think because I knew it couldn't last, it was kind of

like saying, "I'm upset but I know I'll get over it," I guess.

And then after she was gone for the day,

I would sit down with the tracks and really arrange and find

different ways to arrange and keep it going.

And Amy trusted me with that, and that was the best part of our

relationship, that she knew that she could just write the words,

"OK, I'll sing it, and you're going to find a way to bring it home."

Salaam and Amy were close, and they were in sync musically.

They could sit and talk for hours about anything, and, you know,

that came through in the music.

He was able to interpret what she was saying with the instruments

and other stuff, and it was great.

While she was writing Tears Dry On Their Own, I just happened to

stumble across the original files of Ain't No Mountain High Enough.

As I listened to the instrumental of Ain't No Mountain High Enough,

I just heard...

So I heard similarities in the movement of the song,

but once again her song was written...different tempo,

different space, I just heard it going, "Wait a minute,

"this is playing this way, that can play that way."

And Amy could not hear it for the life of her!

So she was pissed at me.

"You know what, I'm going to try cos it's you, but, like, for real?

"This is not going to happen, like, this is way too fast.

"How can I sing at that fast?"

And through... Fuck... Fucking...

So there was a lot of...

..mad at the world. Going like, "You sing it yourself!"

I don't understand

Why do I stress the man

When there's so many bigger things at hand?

And again, we'll start from the beginning.

This isn't happening,

these were rarities as far as Amy needing to do a vocal...

Fuck this.

It was basically frustration, for the first time,

and only time, in our creative process

was there frustration with doing the vocals.

But when it finally got right,

it made all the difference in the world.

We really went all the way in,

my guys went in on the brass and on the horns.

It was nice to really go inside those Motown tracks. Definitely.

And then really understand what they were doing,

not just on the surface, but right inside. Right.

And then what she wrote to it...

Because even, like, the term, "tears dry on their own".

Yeah, like a vulnerability but coupled with fearlessness. You know?

She went straight into the fire.

He walks away, the sun goes down

He takes the day but I'm grown

And in your way

In this blue shade

My tears dry on their own.

Her confidence in being able to write a song the way she felt it

and not being forced to use some type of formula was there,

so whether it was short or long, was it good.

Salaam was one of the few people that could speak to Amy and

communicate with her, and her listen.

He was very good at coaxing stuff out of her if she was having

a writer's block or if she wasn't getting it.

And even though Mark was central to Back To Black coming together, so

was Salaam, and I don't think

you could have had one without the other.

He walks away, the sun goes down

He takes the day but I'm grown

And on your way, my deep shade

My tears dry.

When I write a song, I don't think, "Verse, chorus, verse, chorus,"

it's important for me to get a whole thought out, a complete thought.

And that's why I push myself on the chords,

I push myself on the melody, and the lyrics are probably the

hardest things, you know... You have to challenge yourself.

I have to challenge myself.

I could never sing a lyric that I wasn't quite sure about.

No, I am not ashamed.

But the guilt will kill you

If she don't first...

Messing with a married man.

I'll never love you like her.

I really started to feel the soul in where she was going with this,

and that she was taking a dig because she was hurt,

and it was like, "The guilt will kill you if she don't first."

You know, "I'll never love you like her."

Basically, "Your wife is really who you should be with,

"so where are we going with this?

"We don't even have time to make this work,

"when will we get the time to just be friends?" And that's where

the Just Friends title took over from "I've been drinking".

Cos it's almost like the drunk truth came out.

It's never safe for us

Not even in the evening

Cos I've been drinking

Not in the morning when your shit works...

Every song on that album, with those producers she had,

they captured her sound, they captured her look all in one,

and that's what was so amazing to me about Amy.

She had a style of her own, a voice of her own, it was so soulful.

For a white Jewish girl in the UK, it was like, "What?!"

Though we need to find the time to just do this shit together...

I was amazed when I first saw her on television,

and I saw the beehive and the eye make-up.

I was like, "Wow."

I knew that little lost-girl look, and I saw it but nobody else

probably could see it, because I went through it myself.

I'm quite an insecure person, I'm very insecure about the way I look,

so, I mean, I'm a musician, I'm not a model.

So I just remember turning up at the BBC or places like that,

and the more insecure I felt, the more I'd drink and...

And Tracey Trash, who does my hair, I'd be like, "Bigger, bigger!"

And the more insecure I feel, the bigger my hair has to be...

..I suppose.

When will we get to be just friends

Just friends?

Something about each song in her album Back To Black

including a little Motown I heard in there, from the horns in there,

those producers were amazing.

My records on Back To Black compared to the songs that Mark did

are kind of in a different type of hang-out,

it's a little bit more seedy, it's a different neighbourhood,

but it's still the same energy, and I feel like the overall album,

it stands up, but that's what made it -

it made it because it was an album,

it wasn't just a collection of singles.

Salaam was hearing what Mark was doing from the off,

so he was very much able to kind of run alongside and make sure

what he was doing was in sync with what Mark was doing.

And egos could have easily got in the way.

Egos could have easily got in the way,

but Salaam is not egotistical, and nor is Mark.

Amy is.

When someone would look at the records, they would go,

"How is this going to all come together?"

It's Amy. Amy's the group.

This is all her. This is all her thoughts.

She wrote 95% of that album on guitar herself,

she's the main writer on the whole album, and people would listen to it

and think she's just the voice - no, she was the creator.

They tried to make me go to rehab I said no, no, no...

I was in New York, walking down the street with my friend, Mark Ronson,

who produced half the album, and...

..I said, as a joke, purely as a joke, I sang the hook,

and he was laughing, and he goes to me,

"Who's that?" He's like, "Who IS that? That's funny."

And I was like, "I just made it up, it's nothing, it's stupid."

She was telling a story, like, "Oh, man, I used to be crazy,"

you know, she was telling me,

just with this period of looking back, like a closed chapter, like,

"I used to be a little crazy, I remember one time

"my family came over." I was like, "What happened?"

"My dad tried to get me to go to rehab or something.

"And I was like, 'No, no, no.'"

And I just couldn't help think that that sounded like a great

hook for a song, you know?

And so I was like, "Do you want to go back to the studio

"and work on something like that?"

It's a novelty song, I'm used to writing songs that take me a year

to write about horrible, you know... about getting your heart stamped on.

Cos it's such a silly little song, I was like,

"We could do it in five minutes, come on."

She just comes back with an acoustic guitar and it's on her knee,

and she's just, like...it was sort of a bit more like a 12-bar blues,

like a slow...

They tried to make me go to rehab...

I said no

Yes, I've been black

When I come back, you'll know

I ain't got the time

And if my daddy thinks I'm fine

Tried to make me go to rehab

I won't go, go, go.

You know, kind of like the producer inside me, thinking a little

bit in a pop sense, like, "That's cool,

"but how about if we put a bit of a beat behind it, sped it up,"

and she was really into, like, that girl group pop stuff,

so we took the idea of going like...

Seemed pretty obvious to me.

Oh, I'm going to lose my baby

So I always keep a bottle near...

This vocal, this was the first one that she ever sang,

this is the demo one, so some of the words are different.

He said I just think you're depressed

This, me, yeah, baby, and the rest...

And that was it, and then I came and wrote the Dap-Kings arrangement of

the song, and it sort of brought it to life.

They tried to make me go to rehab

I said no, no, no

Yes, I've been black but when I come back

You'll know, know, know

I ain't got the time

And if my daddy thinks I'm fine

He's tried to make me go to rehab

I won't go, go, go

I'd rather be

At home with Ray...

That story actually happened, and I remember it happening,

and I remember her coming back from holiday and I remember her managers

taking her to the middle of nowhere and telling her that

she needs to go to rehab, and I remember all of that,

and I remember turning up in New York and Mark playing me that,

and thinking, "Oh, God, she didn't just write a song about that!"

Certain songs definitely stick out more than others,

and on this one, this record, You Know I'm No Good

and Rehab, and Back To Black was sort of more...

They have a traditional song structure, if you like,

and the hook is really strong and so on.

But it wasn't obvious that all this would get on the radio.

And I was panicking cos I knew it was amazing and I just

didn't want to miss the boat.

The way she told it was...genius.

Something that has a dark underbelly,

she actually made people smile.

The man said, why

You think you here?

I said

I got no idea

I'm gonna

I'm gonna lose my baby

So I always keep

A bottle near here...

Sometimes I'd even go to her shows and I found it a little

maddening cos I was like,

"We worked so hard and these are the songs and people want to

"hear it this way," but everything is slightly improvisational.

They tried to make me go to rehab...

She would never sing a melody the same way twice because it's

almost like, "Why would you do that? I already did it that way."

Ooh, ooh, I just need a friend...

I think some of the really great singers, you see them live,

they'll never sing it the same way they do on the record because,

like, it's almost like they're too smart to do that,

it's like they need to constantly be challenging and making it

interesting for themselves to be able to play shows.

Hey, hey, my daddy thinks I'm fine

Trying to make me go to rehab I won't go, go, go.

Very quickly that song blew up,

and it was being played everywhere,

but Amy really did need to go to rehab, and maybe if she did,

that song may have never come about, and who knows,

fate may have been very different.

She told me that a few of the songs were about this relationship

she had with this guy Blake,

and obviously speaking to her about it more in-depth,

as I got to know her, gave me a window into that time

that I obviously didn't know that much about.

It's easy sometimes to forget, like, how deep a place of sadness

and suffering and break-up that it was, and knowing how intense their

relationship was, I imagine that the break-up was insane.

Just hearing the song Wake Up Alone, I was like,

"Oh, great. I'm sorry that was...

"..probably pretty tough, but you got this thing out of it."

This is Wake Up Alone.

This one only took a few takes cos it really was pretty basic.

I mean, that's just three tracks, that's pretty much the whole song.

It's OK in the day I'm staying busy...

You would never hear something like that on the radio today.

People would just think that you're crazy for doing something like that.

The arrangements in her melodies really became a sort of

Trojan horse that slipped in all the sadness through it, but you

don't sort of really notice.

I guess, just the little things like these turns of phrases

that zip along, like, "I stay up, clean the house,

"at least I'm not drinking.

"Run around, just so I don't have to think about thinking,"

like, they just had such a good metre to them.

I stay up, clean the house

At least I'm not drinking

Run around just so I don't have to think about thinking...

I've been through times where I have been so fucked up about situations

that I've had to just write everything down,

even feelings that I don't want to acknowledge,

especially feelings that I don't want to acknowledge,

and things that I wish were not true, when they are.

Just good because someone else might hear that and be like,

"I'm not an idiot for feeling them things, or I'm not weak for feeling

"them things, or I'm not a mug for feeling them things about this man."

By the bed

Pour myself over him

Moon spilling in

And I wake up alone...

And really the artists that most people connect with at the

end of the day are the ones like Amy and Kurt Cobain -

the people that almost become these martyr-like figures -

is really more because of the pain that they expressed helps so

many people get through pain.

And I wake up alone

And I wake up alone.

The emotions that inspired a lot of Amy's songs in Back To Black

had evolved over quite a long period of time, maybe a couple of years.

This was before she was really in a bad place,

but there were signs that things weren't looking great.

The radio was on and it was at the time when there was a lot

going on in Afghanistan.

..Taliban and Al-Qaeda units.

One of the sort of buzz words

that was almost thrown around was "holy war".

She was clever,

she flipped what was happening at the time into her conflict, her war.

Oh-lo-lo, oh-ohh...

Still figuring out the lyrics.

Oh-oh, ohh-ohh

Oh-oh-oh, ohh, ohh-ohh

Oh-oh-oh, ohh, ohh-ohh

Put it in writing

But who you writing for?

Just us on the kitchen floor

Justice done reciting

My stomach standing still

Like you're reading my will...

That song really resonates, there's something about it,

it's a little dark, but there is something about it that just

kind of holds you in the moment when you listen to it.

I think also very metaphoric. A lot of metaphor. A lot of metaphors.

Triple entendres - beyond double.

Yeah, she would say something and it wasn't blatant,

but it was very clear.

I never got the idea like she was looking at ever having a hit record

or anything like that -

she was just trying to express herself and tell her story.

There was a mission that she was on,

with this music.

Yeah.

You know, "If my man was fighting an unholy war,

"I would be right beside him."

This is a Blake record, this is watching a guy go through something

and not knowing how to, you know,

really figure out what to do to save him.

There's something haunting about it.

I love the horns, and I was...

They almost sounded like funny bugles,

they just sounded like a sad bugle trumpet,

like, "We're not marching anywhere, we're actually losing this war."

It brought something else out of it.

Even the...

It's like a marching band that's going the wrong way,

so it's like the record really captures something.

My man is fighting some kind of holy war

I will stand beside you...

When I say I wrote Back To Black, I went back to tunnels and

drinking too much and just...

..you know, just being a massive depressive.

In spite of what his scars say...

You have to see through people and see through the world,

and you have to like yourself and be able to spend time on your own,

be your own best friend as well as your own worst enemy.

Just me

My dignity

And this guitar case...

The slower version of the song, in what she was saying,

it got into her emotionally.

So, often, when Amy performed this, she would perform the slow version

to start, and then go on to the up-tempo.

My man is fighting some unholy war

And I'll stand beside him

But who are you dying for?

I would have died too I'd have liked to

If my man was fighting

Some unholy war

If my man was fighting...

When I saw her at one of her shows,

I knew she was slipping cos I knew it from my own life,

I knew she was addicted to the drugs and the alcohol.

And I could tell, I said, "Please don't, I almost went there,

"don't go there."

It was the attention that that record brought onto her that

was incredibly unhealthy for her.

Amy! Amy! Amy!

But I think it's the record that completely turned her from

being a respected artist into

an international global-selling superstar.

The beauty of it is that it reached out to so many people.

Unfortunately with so many people comes...a whole circus of madness.

Fans who don't know what's going on behind,

go and see the shows and go, "I was blown away by Amy tonight,"

but where I can read between the lines and I'm then on tenterhooks,

that I was never able to relax.

Even when she performed on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury,

and it was one of the biggest audiences ever,

I think she was already on the slippery slope.

Fame in that moment wasn't a great thing for her.

But Amy got nominated for...five Grammys.

Said I never

I never lose my baby...

But at that time, she was obviously deep into the drugs,

and America took a very tough stance

and didn't want to let her into the country.

We then had to figure out what we were going to do.

And it was the first time the Grammys had ever had

a satellite performance beamed in.

I said no, no, no...

That's how important Amy was and what she was doing at the time.

You'll know, know, know

I ain't got the time

Hey, hey, my daddy thinks I'm fine

He's trying to make me go to rehab...

..to present the Grammy for Record Of The Year.

And the Grammy goes to Amy Winehouse!

I wrote an album I'm proud of

but, in all honesty, you don't think that if you write some songs that

get you over a bad situation that that kind of thing,

like, awards and stuff like that,

you don't think that will come out of it, ever.

So it's, it's...

..it is a nice surprise, it's not, you know, something you expect.

It was lovely, though.

I'll go back to

I go back to

We always said goodbye in words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I'll go back to

We only said goodbye with words

I died a hundred times

You go back to her

And I go back to black.