How do you deter a time-bomb from ticking to explosion? There are actually two things to do. One; you find the detonator and figure out how the wires were fixed together, then you defuse it.Two; you don't stop it but you run away so that it explodes in your absence. Amy Winehouse was such a time-bomb. She has been ticking since she came into the music scene as a disturbed, vulnerable yet talented young girl who wanted to have fun. Fun for Amy meant activities which some of us who have only gone to the point of the herb call psychedelic stuff.In writing their eulogies of the genius who joined Club 27 on Saturday (July 23) friends and journalists testified about her drug binges, her hatred -not fear of rehab and her lost soul attitude to life. She apparently failed to understand that Janis Joplin was full of life when she overdosed and died at the peak of her career. To her, and some of us who loved the Woodstock bunch Joplin was the closest thing to David playing his harp for King Saul. Yes, Joplin was brilliant, full of life, wanting to change to world but got high and fell to the ground. She died.
Amy just failed to draw a parallel between the Joplin years and hers. The 1960s were characterised by hippies, gypsies, love and peace movement and a psychedelic lifestyle that sufficed because almost the whole world was at war. So, the rebels could bonk, drink wine and smoke as many joints, valium, heroin, cocaine and bhudda all they wanted while politicians were focused on hating one another. The law enforcers were spooks trying to sniff KGB spies in the West. Anyone could have been anything.
But Amy lives now; the age of HIV, drug enforcement that sees specialised mercenaries deployed to bring down cartels and a technologically savvy world that one can have fun without leaving their room. Then her obsession with Jimi Hendrix. We, who were born earlier loved Jimmy with all our hears and felt bad when he - like fellow Wooodstocker overdosed and died. But you can bet your last dime that Jimmy didn't die to follow Janis. In the same breath you can bet that Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain died to follow the two geniuses.
And now we have Amy who followed the three. Amy cried in her music and the world chose to ululate. She asked for help but we chose to relegate her fears of rehab as a gimmick. Damn it sold copies of records and made her a megastar. A megastar that died leaving all those millions. But Amy wanted to die and people should understand and accept that. She probably had a dangerous God-complex that misinformed her that she can live and die at her own whim.
Well, she lived and died at her own whim. And that is how we should all remember the genius that was Amy Winehouse. 'Fly away lil bird see I aint' shedding no tears'. Hope in her own weeded brain she joins Club 27 - the Orchestra Beyond and continues to make beautiful music.
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