Old walls overgrown with ivy. The Serenadenhof in Nuremberg, covered with white tents, is slowly filling up. Most of the audience are over 40 years old. The singer shines in the black dotted dress. Bronte Shande opens the concert with the line “All I can ever be to you is a darkness that we know”. What is special: Hardly anyone knows the British singer in the spotlight of the stage. However, everyone here probably knows the song “Tears Dry” from 2006 that she sings. What starts as a shy nod of the head ends with “Back to Black” at the latest in a dance event.
If you close your eyes and just listen to the music, you could think it was October 24th, 2007. You are in the Muffathalle Munich and witness the somewhat shaky performance of a then 24-year-old Amy Winehouse. If you open your eyes, you will notice a few differences. For example, alcohol has changed consumers. The front woman drinks water from a plastic bottle exemplary, while Amy’s original band around bassist Dale Davis sips wine and beer.
On September 11, the homage concert “Forever Amy 2023” will take place in the Deutsches Theater in Munich. In just under two hours, Amy’s songs are performed as reinterpretations by singer Bronte Shande and Amy’s old band. Joining her former bassist and longtime friend Dale Davis on stage are Hawi Gondwe (guitar), Nathan Allen (drums) and Henry Collins (trumpet). Together they dedicate an entire tribute tour to the late artist.
The image revealed to those present at the “Forever Amy Show” in Nuremberg is in no way reminiscent of the actually sad occasion of the tribute tour. Twelve years ago, on July 23, 2011, Amy joined Club 27. Like Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, Amy Jade Winehouse died at the age of 27. In her case from the consequences of alcohol poisoning.
Guitarist Hawi Gondwe was already playing with Amy Winehouse.
(Photo: Alfons Postma)
After 16 years, Amy’s unforgettable music is coming back to Munich. In 2007, the artist made it to the state capital twice. Once in the Olympiahalle as part of the MTV Europe Music Awards and the other time in the course of their tour in the Muffathalle. If you read old concert reviews, the titles “Prison! But Amy is coming to Munich” or “Ruins of Greatness” already suggest the content. “Staggering” and “great” is how Amy’s condition is described.
On the one hand, the British woman has suffered from depression and an eating disorder since she was young. Global fame, alcohol and drug escapades further harmed mental health. She staggers across the stage, forgetting her own lyrics, clinging to her microphone stand, or constantly scratching her arms. On the other hand, there is her powerful music, which perhaps touches people precisely because behind her there is an approachable person with problems and not a perfect and seemingly infallible artificial figure.
The artist, who was born in a suburb of London, recorded two albums during her lifetime. After her debut album “Frank” (2003), she made her international breakthrough in 2006 with her second studio album “Back To Black”. Even today, twelve years after her death, the Briton reaches 14.8 million listeners on Spotify every month.
Unmistakable sound, unmistakable look: Amy Winehouse 2007 in Chicago.
(Photo: Jared Milgrim/imago/The Photo Access)
And Amy wasn’t the only music lover in the family: in 2010, she encouraged her father, Mitch, to record his debut album, Rush of Love. Mitch’s second album “Swinging Cole Porter” followed in 2021 – which has an amazing connection to Bavaria. It was recorded with the one from Fürth Thilo Wolf Big Band. Thilo Wolf, who was born in 1967, became aware of Mitch through the book “Amy, My Daughter”. The collaboration resulted in a 14-song album recorded in Bavaria and mastered in London, which reinterprets the works of composer Cole Porter.
Even if Amy’s desolate condition was spread in the press at the time, one looked in vain for deeper sympathy for her psychological problems – even if her bulimia, which was making her body weaker by the day, was an open secret. To counteract the lack of social understanding of mental illness, Amy’s parents Mitch and Janis founded the “Amy Winehouse Foundation” on September 14, 2011, the day Amy would have turned 28 years old.
The charitable foundation, which operates mainly in Great Britain and Wales and deals with the topics of music and addiction, takes care of various projects for children and young adults. For example, music therapy is offered to children in hospices. Young people are also helped to find ways to deal with pressure and other problems. Solutions help to avoid self-destructive behavior. Amy’s Place is a program that helps young women overcome alcohol and drug abuse. Because Amy was on the one hand the tragic heroine of her own life, but on the other hand she was also one of the most important musicians in pop history, inspiration for artists like Adele or Lady Gaga, five-time Grammy winner, friend, daughter.
“Forever Amy Tour 2023”, September 11, 2023, start at 7.30 p.m., Deutsches Theater, Schwanthalerstr. 13, 80336 Munich