Russell Brand has written a touching tribute to soul singer Amy Winehouse, who was found dead over the weekend. British comedian and actor Brand took to his blog on Sunday to share his thoughts on Winehouse's passing.In a post titled For Amy, Brand says he first met Winehouse on the Camden pub scene, and admits that at first he thought she was "just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars". He says that only later, after Winehouse rose to fame, did he realise her undeniable talent.
"I've known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma," Brand writes.
Brand adds: "I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction."
Describing her as "sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable", Brand recalls watching Winehouse perform with Paul Weller at the Roundhouse in Camden. "I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal," he recalls.
"Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness," Brand writes. "A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine.
"My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager...the lips that I'd only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn't just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a f**king genius."
Brand also describes how Winehouse "became defined by her addiction", and blamed the media for being "more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall."
The Arthur star, who detailed in his memoir, My Booky Wook: A Memoir of Sex, Drugs, and Stand-Up, how he struggled with heroin addiction for many years, says he was also 27 when he sought treatment to kick the habit.
"Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death...Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease.
Not all addicts have Amy's incredible talent. Or Kurt's or Jimi's or Janis's, some people just get the affliction." He concludes: "Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call."