Back in the '50s and 60's, there were hundreds of small labels that would discover and develop incredible artists whose work will outlive all of us. By the time Nirvana was signed there were six. Now there are basically two, both of whom are owned by multinational corporations whose primary business isn't music.
The guys who sell you music - which is supposed to feed your fucking soul - would be just as happy selling shoes or cheeseburgers. And you know what? The music reflects that. The days of a Ahmet Ertegun or Jerry Wexler bringing you Ray Charles are well and truly over. There isn't going to be a next Sam Philips. Ever. And that means that there's never going to be an Elvis or Roy Orbison or Johnny Cash, ever again. You'll get whatever some goddamn aspiring hedge fund manager gives you and he'll expect you to fucking well thank him for it.
But accidents do sometimes happen, which is where Amy Winehouse enters our little narrative. She was possessed of a fantastic voice, an uncanny sense of music history and the good sense to market something that should be unsellable in these most dastardly of modern musical times.
That made her brilliant, and it tells me that if some corporate A&R hack wasn't asleep at the switch or drunk to the point of derangement, she never should've been signed in the first place. If her signing was intentional, it was because the hacks figured that they had the next Celine Dion or Whitney Houston - girls who sell zillions of records to people who don't buy that many records.
Yet something incredible happened. Amy Winehouse was allowed to make records that Amy Winehouse wanted to make. And her sensibility made them unreally good records. I paid attention to Frank and Back to Black, which is a pretty impressive achievement, given my general disgust with anything with a beat these days. Amy was the industry's happiest accident in at least two decades. But make no mistake, it was an accident.
The only complicating factor is that she didn't enjoy living very much. I never got a sense that she felt the joy from her unmistakable gifts that everybody else did. It's been pretty clear for three years now that there would never be a fantastic follow up to Back to Black, if there was going to be a follow-up at all. Who knows that she even could recreate that magic? Micheal Jackson spent thirty years trying and couldn't pull it off.
After her disastrous gig in Belgrade last month, I listened to Kevin Smith spend nearly an hour on a podcast go on about how she never should've been allowed on stage. I think that he missed the point. If her people wouldn't put her out there, there's every reason that she'd fire them and find someone that would. The funny thing about delusionally suicidal addicts is that they're delusionally suicidal addicts and not all that prone to reason.
And no, drugs aren't likely what killed Amy Winehouse today. From what I understand, she was rather fond of opiates, which in and of themselves, aren't especially bad for you. The lifestyle doesn't do you any favors, and the illegality of it causes all manner of overdoses and toxic poisoning, but the drug itself is among the most physiologically harmless that you can take. Heroin, in controlled settings, is much better for you than cocaine, alcohol or tobacco could ever be.
This was a girl that lusted after her own demise. There's absolutely no indication that she was one of those moronic "life is for the living types."
After all is said and done, the signs were all there for Amy. And I have to assume that she was bright enough to recognize them. When no less an authority on the matter than Keith Richards calls you out and you don't listen, you just have to assume the presence of a death wish.
That little girl has been playing chicken with death for years now. And today, she won.
Amy Winehouse was, in the perfect rock star cliche, 27 years old. I hope that this she finally finds peace.
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