WINEHOUSE ARRESTED
OVER DRUGS, screamed the Daily Star in a story that included yet more predictions
that she is ‘heading for an early grave’. Even the hotel trade media got in on the act, with
a journalist for the online Hotel Chatter saying, ‘What is shocking is that it was just weed. Doesn’t Amy do like harder Class-A type of drugs? And we also learned that Amy
doesn’t mind shacking up in Radissons but perhaps in the future Amy should check into
more drug-friendly hotels.’
Immediately there were fears that the arrest might lead Amy to cancel the
following evening’s appearance at the Bergen Live rock festival. However, as we’ve seen
often, she genuinely adores performing live and sees it as the best part of her job. Frank
Nes, head promoter of Bergen Live, said she had been quick to reassure him that her
performance would go ahead. ‘We spoke to her management this morning and there isn’t
anything that would indicate she won’t sing tonight. It’s not that dramatic, but it’s not a
pleasant situation for anyone involved.’
It also emerged that Amy was used by police as an example to a rookie officer of
how people look when they are under the influence of drugs. ‘They are very strict about
drug taking in Norway,’ said a police source.
With her past record they thought there was more than just a couple of spliffs.
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When she opened the hotel room door it was obvious she was wasted. She was mumbling and no one could understand her. Amy and Blake were put in separate cells but Amy
couldn’t be interviewed straightaway because she was totally incoherent. She was
cooperative and even let an officer in training look in her eyes so he could recognise how
a person high on drugs looks.’
She returned to the hotel and quickly recovered from the ordeal – she ordered
champagne in the hotel spa. Mitchell reflected, ‘Well, you know, I try to speak to her
every other day but, you know, every day I’m in contact with the tour. I went to Norway
last week because there was a problem out there. Again, it was in all the newspapers that
they found cannabis. It didn’t belong to her: it belonged to someone else on the tour.
They arrested Blake, Amy and the person who was responsible. And they only released
them after they signed a form, which they were told was a release form – it was in
Norwegian. It was actually a confession, so this is being dealt with now by the
Norwegian authorities and the British Consulate because the ramifications of that is that
she now can’t get into the States and she was meant to go next week.’
Amy was far from being the first pop star to get on the wrong side of
Scandinavian law in recent times. Rapper Snoop Dogg was arrested in March for
suspected drug use, and Pete Doherty was arrested and fined in Sweden the previous
year. In Doherty’s case, he was fined £1,000 after police found traces of cocaine in his
blood, following a performance by his rock band at the Hultsfred music festival. Police
detained the twenty-seven-year-old Babyshambles frontman after the concert because ‘he
showed signs of being under the influence of narcotics’, Ulf Karlsson, a police
spokesman in the city of Kalmar on Sweden’s southeastern coast, said.
Amy shrugs off her brushes with the law. ‘Life’s short,’ she says, ‘and I’ve made
a lot of mistakes. I was quite self-destructive. I was just doing one destructive thing after
the other. I always say I don’t regret things and I don’t say sorry, but I do really. I believe everything happens for a reason.’
A source close to her said, ‘This tour started pretty much as the last one ended.
Berlin was a difficult time for everyone and we thought it was going to turn into another
tour full of drunken and missed shows. But she’s now said that she will not drink before
her gigs for the rest of the tour. She stuck to it in Amsterdam, amazingly, and gave her
best show of the tour yet. Everyone just hopes she keeps it up.’
Amy told the organiser of her Amsterdam concert about her new pre-gig booze
ban. Jan Willem Luyken said, ‘She wasn’t drunk when she came in and she did not drink
backstage. I don’t think she was stoned, either. People were joking about her sober
performance. They said, “Has the wine bar been closed today?” But, no, she was sober
till after her performance. She said she won’t drink before shows any more – only
afterwards.’
So much for the European leg of her tour. Any hopes Amy had of remaining sober
once she returned home took a hit when she learned that Girls Aloud’s Sarah Harding had
bought a new pad in Camden Town. Harding has long been a mainstay in the tabloid
press’s ‘caner leagues’. She says, ‘I have a bit of a binge but I think everyone does, get
smashed, they get pie-eyed. I don’t go out as often as most girls my age, but when I do I
get persecuted for it.’
Not that she was about to deny that she liked a good bender. ‘I can drink with the
best of them and I like to be able to hold my own. But I regret it the next day when my
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head’s down the bog.’ Revealing that her home was near the Hawley Arms pub, Harding quipped, ‘I’m in walking distance of the Hawley, which is a bit scary!’
Called ‘the home of the “Camden caners”’, the Hawley Arms has long been a
regular haunt for Amy. For years the Hawley had been something of a nonentity,
certainly when compared with other Camden bars such as the Dublin Castle and the Good
Mixer. The former was where Madness launched their career and the latter was the scene
of numerous battles among the Britpop crowd during the 1990s.