In shops on Wednesday with Enya looking out majestically from the cover, the bumper 2016 Hot Press Annual includes an in-depth interview with Amy Winehouse’s friend and first manager, Nick Shymansky.
One of the contributors to our Music Documentary of the Year, Amy, Shymansky pulls no punches in his assessment of her father Mitch.
“I don’t think he’s as malicious as he is stupid,” Nick tells us. “Everyone has an element of greed and he’s a failed double-glazing salesman. He’s a cabbie that packed in his job as soon as Back To Black blew up under the guise of needing to be there for his daughter. I think that he got carried away. He loved her, but had always wanted a singing career. She definitely loved him.”
Adding that “she had all the classic hallmarks of a young person testing her father and testing men”, he goes on to run the rule over her former boyfriend, Blake Fielder-Civil.
“He was clearly a really bad influence on Amy, but she was looking for a bad influence. If it wasn’t him she’d have found another idiot from Camden. Although to me he 100% introduced her to crack and heroin, I don’t blame him. He was an addict, he was ill.”
Nick also points an accusing finger at the people who were guiding her career when she died.
“She played and played and played. She toured and toured and toured. The irony being that she was one of the few artists that didn’t need to. If you look at Adele, you’ll see how little she actually works per million records she sells and per million pounds she makes. And why? Because she's the best. The same thing as Sade and Kate Bush. It's not a job, it's a repercussion of their genius. Unfortunately, Amy was treated like a work horse.”
And that’s just for starters! Stay tuned to hotpress.com for your chance to win copies of Amy, which also recently got an Oscar nod.