Farewell to Amy Winehouse, the Camden girl (2024)

The clocks have not stopped in Camden. Pool balls still clatter in the Good Mixer. Primal Scream's hymn to good times all the time, Loaded, blares out of the Dublin Castle while another young indie band soundchecks loudly in the next room and dreams of a record deal.

Amy Winehouse's still-marvellous hit Rehab drifts from the doorway of Out on the Floor Records while the staff enjoy an end-of-the-day pint out front on Inverness Street.

The borough doesn't feel like a sadder place since the death on Saturday of its most famous daughter.

Rather, this hectic, overwhelmingly colourful realm of dissolution has been raising a glass to a singer who raised more than a few of her own in her 27 years.

It feels strange to be walking some distance away from the action towards Camden Square, the considerably swankier area that, at the top end, is the site of the £1.8 million property where Amy Winehouse's body was found and where a three-tiered shrine has now developed.

She had only lived there since March, having spent time away in Barnet and St Lucia beforehand. It was not long enough for it to feel like home to her and surely not long enough for the space to represent her spirit to the fans who have gathered here to stare down at the flowers and upwards at the closed blinds.

Nevertheless, as shrines go, it's a pretty handy spot, with a public space directly across the road with room for plenty of fans as well as (always the case at any major event today) the significantly larger number of journalists like me and cameraphone-wielding gawkers.

After the heartbreaking visit of her father Mitch and mother Janis earlier yesterday, the mood is quiet. Some chat about other things. A family shares a Subway picnic. Any music is played on headphones. "I'm not gonna cry. Amy weren't one to cry, was she?" says one of her more vocal fans.

She couldn't have picked a more appropriate part of London to live to excess. This was the scene of almost all of those grim paparazzi pictures, the place where she met her ex-husband and drug buddy Blake Fielder-Civil. Since the mostly Irish navvies populated it in the 1800s, extreme drinking has happened here on a regular basis.

Four pubs were built - the Dublin Castle, the Edinboro Castle, the Windsor Castle and the Pembroke Castle, to give the Irish, Scottish, English and Welsh workers their own spaces and stop them from brawling.

It was soon an area that breathed music and alcohol in conjunction. Here pianos were built at Collard & Collard's factory near the Regent's Canal. The Roundhouse, where Amy made her final appearance on stage, dancing with her singer goddaughter Dionne Bromfield last Wednesday, has been both the site of Pink Floyd happenings and a Gilbey's Gin warehouse. Today the Camden Crawl festival brings top bands to the area's endless pubs.

I walk up Parkway, past the Jazz Café, where Amy first earned enthusiastic press attention with a gig in early 2004, past Albert Street, the inspiration for that hymn to drunken wastefulness, Withnail and I, to the Dublin Castle. "We had a lot of her fans in on Saturday but it's been quieter since," the barman tells me. Those who do make the trip can see, alongside framed tributes from Madness and Travis, a large photo of Amy on which she has written: "Peggy - thanks for letting me behind the bar. I need the tips! Loadsalove Amy. PS I got engaged the night this picture was taken." She looks supremely confident, striking a pose against a deep red wall.

On to the Good Mixer, where she used to try her hand as a pool hustler but had not been seen for some time, I was told. Amy was a belated addition to the small pub's legend as the Britpop hangout for Blur, Pulp, Elastica and the rest. She dominates a caricature on the wall of "The Mixer Lads", also featuring Jarvis Cocker, Pete Doherty and Morrissey.

Everyone in here looks as though they're probably in a band, apart from one cobwebby old geezer in the corner, but it's not too busy as most of Camden knows that the real scene has long since moved on elsewhere - to the Hawley Arms on Castlehaven Road, to be exact.

On Camden High Street it becomes obvious how easy it would be for anyone, never mind a fabulously wealthy musician, to find the illicit substances they require. "Smoke smokey?" I am asked. "No? You a good guy, yeah?"

Outside the Hawley one of the signs simply says "Back to Black" in chalk. Inside, the place buzzes with enough hipsters to make for a very lively Monday evening. Co-owner Doug Charles-Ridler sips a beer and tells me about the last time he saw his most famous customer. "She was on the street on her way to that Roundhouse gig last Wednesday, jumped on me and gave me a huge hug. I asked her, 'Are you OK?' and she just said 'Yeah!' and danced off like Eric Morecambe."

Amy liked to be in her own room at the Hawley, or behind the bar, and could sometimes be seen standing on a chair to change the music on the stereo. In October last year she played a surprise gig there for the Nordoff Robbins music therapy charity. When the pub closed after a fire in the nearby market in 2008, Amy shouted: "Camden Town ain't burning down!" to confused Americans while accepting one of her five Grammy Awards.

On Saturday, most of the Hawley's regulars were at the music festival The Secret Garden Party.

"Otherwise it could have turned into a bit of a wake. Now it's just getting more and more surreal," says Charles-Ridler. He takes me into the pub's kitchen and shows me a huge black and white painting of Amy with the lyrics of Back to Black in the background. A few hours earlier, Amy's manager Raye Cosbert had come straight from identifying her body with her family to give the picture to the Hawley. "What am I supposed to do with that?" he asks me. You don't like the idea of this place becoming a shrine too? He shakes his head.

Outside, over the road on the wall of Starbucks at Camden Lock, more candles are burning. Overnight, a piece of stencilled graffiti has appeared, similar to but not a real Banksy, showing Amy with hair piled high and angel wings. The tattooed girl who lived and breathed Camden has now been tattooed on Camden. And even if the picture vanishes, the mark she has left on this wild inspiring place is indelible.

'Camden always looked out for her. I personally would ensure non-locals didn't annoy her, as she could flip'

By Alex Proud

I first noticed Amy because she was one of the first people to "discover" Proud Gallery's famous old terrace when it opened in summer 2006. She and a bunch of the cool new Camden kids like Steve Wright's son, Tom, spent that entire summer lying on the loungers outside, drinking Pimm's and smoking too much. But they were always polite and always smiling.

It was an odd time, I was working 100 hours a week to learn how to run a bar. Carl Barat played the opening night, Nick Grimshaw DJ'd the infamous Another Music Another Kitchen Thursdays and Coldplay and Chris Moyles would turn up and hang out. Time Out called it the best-kept secret in London.

Amy wasn't famous at this point but I always noticed her - she was striking with her beehive, her dress sense, and she had that extra something.

Eventually I had to ask someone what she did and I checked her record out. Suffice to say I got on the phone and told the bar manager to book her that weekend.

That summer I don't think the darkness was there.

She drank a bit heavily, but so does all of Camden. It was part of the image and it was the summer of Camden. It felt special to be there, the Hawley, Lock Tavern, Enterprise and Proud created a hell of a buzz and Amy was a massive part of that.

Even when she turned up in later years Camden always looked out for her. I personally would ensure non-locals didn't annoy her, as she could flip. Indeed, the first time she played Proud she did just that. It was probably her last gig as an unknown. She sang a great set and came over to say hello when it was over. But then she rowed with her man at the time and bopped him. That was Amy: beautiful, fragile and pretty damn raw.

The perfect year or two on that old terrace ended and Proud moved on to its new premises in the Horse Hospital and Amy became a star. But she always loved Camden.

There was a huge fire in Camden Canal Market in 2008, and while the TV news did its best to put us out of business with over-the-top coverage, Amy - who was by then a big star in the US - still found time to shout out for Camden on international TV.

It might sound corny, but it made us all feel pretty special.

One moment I'll always recall was our wonderful second birthday. Amy told us she would come to help out, and out of nowhere she jumped up to join Professor Green for an impromptu performance of Just be Good to Green. The place went crazy.

Yes, there were darker times when you saw another side of both her and Camden but recently she was much more relaxed and seemed to have put the worst behind her. She felt loved and at home in Camden and was in a much more sensible set-up. I loved that she was back and I was happy not to be getting too many worrying reports about her.

It seems odd that Proud Galleries held the photographic show Forever 27 just last year. It was a big hit in the press and with the public. I had not really been aware of the "myth" of rock stars dying at that age. I personally, and all of Camden, will feel deep sadness that she is not part of us and our lives. We wish her family well and hope Camden's continued position as the greatest place on earth to hear rock 'n' roll and hang out with rock 'n' rollers will honour her memory.

Alex Proud is the founder of Proud Galleries, The Horse Hospital, Stables Market, NW1 (020 7482 3867, proud.co.uk

Farewell to Amy Winehouse, the Camden girl (2024)
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