Sometime in the mid-Eighties, Keith Richards ruined it all for us. For someone with twenty-plus years of drug abuse behind him (and more to come), Keef looked remarkably healthy. Somehow, the post-rock generation were left with the impression that drugs, while very, very bad, would not kill you after all.
Sure, there were exceptions over the years. Andrew Wood. Shannon Hoon. Layne Staley. For some reason, the grunge generation seemed to be hit the hardest. Yet, more and more junkies survived, even thrived: Dave Gahan’s “little thing”, as it was known among band members, took away his awkward boyishness and gave him the gaunt, hungry look that millions of fans lusted after. If anything, heroin seemed to make you look better. Kurt Cobain had to put a bullet through his brain to finally reach oblivion, and he remained angelic and beautiful to the very end. Drugs did not kill him, they did not kill his widow and they have not killed Pete Doherty, either.
Five years ago, no one could have predicted that Amy Winehouse would beat her occasional drug buddy to the final destination. Doherty was a known mess. His heroin habit had got him kicked off planes and out of hotels and TV studios. Plus, he looked like shit. No beautifying effect for him, who looked increasingly less like a rock star and more and more like your average street addict, all pasty, bad skin and vacuous eyes. But beat him she did, hopefully by a long shot too.
What is really sad about Amy Winehouse’s death is not that she brought it upon herself in the kind of slow, deliberate suicide that people are more or less powerless to prevent. It is that we did not think it would be possible for her to die of her addiction. There were still one or two rehabs to go. We wanted to see her put on some weight and possibly fall off the wagon just a little and pull herself together again. Maybe find God and go Christian singer on us. Most of all, we really thought that at some point she would simply snap out of it, like so many of her famous contemporaries, put out a bad record, then go into rehab some more, go to therapy, get herself together and emerge a better, happier, wiser and less Keef-like Amy.
We wanted to see her make it. She was everybody’s deranged cousin, the one who is nothing but trouble until she suddenly grows out of it and starts acting like an adult. She didn’t. May her heaven be full of perfectly coiffed bouffants and fuck-me pumps.
