Amy Winehouse's Best Friend Emotionally Remembers Iconic Singer 10 Years on | This Morning

[Music] now she was the music icon who became one of the best-selling artists of the century but throughout fame fortune and tragedy there was one friend who never left amy winehouse's side well after meeting at stage school when they were just 12 and 13 amy and tyler james quickly became the best of friends and remained inseparable until her tragic death in 2011. and as we approach the 10th anniversary of amy's death tyler is now sharing their story of friendship in his book uh which is called my amy good morning it's lovely to have you here there's the book that we're talking about and this really is your story and it's a story of friendship and it's one that has not been easy for you to write because i imagine it's a book that people have been asking for for a long time but it had to be at a time that felt right for you well it's taken me um it's taken about four years to write it yeah um i mean everybody knows this but grief is a very complicated process and you know at first for me i just tried to cope like without her and after about five years you know i realized i was just coping yeah i wasn't really living anymore you know and i had a day it was about four or five years ago i was in my flat and kendall rise and i woke up and i felt really angry then i had all these emotions and i started crying and i basically started writing stuff down amy always used to say to me she was meticulous at writing things down her thoughts and her emotions and she always used to say to me write stuff down and the first thing i wrote actually was the day i am you passed away which was really hard and i'd never i'd never spoken to anybody about it you know i'd never said the things that the paramedics said to me all of the the trauma of that day and you know i spent the whole day in my flat there's still a hole in the wall when i left um where i threw something at the wall it was really not to be dramatic it was a really hard day yeah um you know i went to bed and i felt awful but the next day when i got up i felt better a bit lighter i felt better and i was like you know i need to get this out and then i just kept writing and writing and writing and you know it was like 17 18 years worth of memories of the most the most amazing person i've ever known in my life you you do start the book with that tragic tragic day when you happen to to be away uh you went to your folks overnight and then come back and i don't think we need to dwell on that because there's a there's a lot of that we sort of know and you you're very honest in the book about the things we don't know however there is lots that we didn't know about her about the fact you describe her as your everything yeah um and so my sister my mother my soul mate my she was she was my world like you know it's it's really it's really hard to i never imagined i'd be without her i mean lots of people would feel like that about somebody you know and it's i do i always i feel she's the other part of me you know and i feel like she's missing i feel like she's with me too you know but when you were when you first met her i think you were sylvia youngs and you weren't i was were you 12 she was 12 you were 13. she was 12. i was 13. so two kids she was about six about six inches short of me so she actually looked about nine and yet the moment she opened that mouth yeah well i heard her sing before i heard her speak which is and she did with me we had a singing teacher a guy called ray lam and he was putting a tape together for his nan uh that have people students singing happy birthday and i walked in i did my little stevie wonder rendition and there was this little jewish girl and she basically sang like a 60 year old woman who smoked like 60 ml gold a day and she sounded like you know diana washington and i was i just the force of this person i just couldn't believe it i was absolutely blown away gobsmacked and you know it was pure you know she was so talented and we just hit it off we hit it off straight away and and through our teenage years you know i suffered with depression and anxiety um i still do now but i have a handle on it you know and she had the same thing and it just drew us close you know sometimes you meet somebody and it feels like you've met them before yeah it's like hello like there you are you know and looking at amy for me sometimes just like looking in the mirror we were so similar you know so similar in good and bad ways you were yeah and that's that's the thing because because i mean you encouraged her to to get discovered really you know sort of yeah get out there get out there people have got to know what you can do yeah yeah well i you know when she was in her late teens you know amy was smoking a lot of weed and and she was i would say you know she wasn't in a great place but she was so talented and so creative and she'd sit with a guitar and it just felt obvious to me at the time i i was already writing and stuff like that you know in the studio and i begged her i begged her to make a tape and she actually sent it eventually it took me about three months of begging her and begging her to make this tape and i played it to somebody um you know in the record industry and you know the rest is history and it's it's hard actually because when things were really bad because you know amy hated being famous she hated being famous she said you know fame is like terminal cancer i wouldn't wish it on anyone she absolutely hated it she craved normality so much so when things were bad i kind of felt guilty too you know for for bringing her into that world you know but now i feel differently about it because she did so much and you know in the time that she was here you know she really did make an impact didn't she she really yeah she really did i mean her music is iconic people still love listening to it she was unreal the person who doesn't love listening to it is is you you have hearing her voice before you heard her speak normally right now we'd pepper this interview with her sound her music in the background and we're not doing that today because for you it's too hard i i just i hope one day i'll be able to but if you love someone and you know i i still miss her it still hurts and if you hear her voice she comes to life and you know i've had times where i've what you know because amy's played everywhere i'll walk into a shop and she's on and you'll burst into tears and sometimes you're okay sometimes you're not so you know it's yeah it is it's hard it's hard well you were there when she was writing the songs that we know so well i mean she's you said she loved words and she she had to get everything down first the lyrics came first yes she was playing so sitting on the kitchen floor with a glass of jack daniels by the side of her and yeah you know pen and paper you know she just sort of you know bled onto the pages that's what amy was like she she put her heart into her music she wrote about i think this is why people love her she wrote about her life you know that first album she wrote about uh breaking up with blake you know and she just literally sat on the kitchen floor she was nocturnal at the time and you know i i i would be upstairs in bed and i'd hear her write in all of these songs you know all of them you know just hearing them being created and all on this guitar and it was just her she was just naturally naturally gifted in that way you know she didn't have to think too much it just came out of her you know something that was really important of you to have shed some clarity on was the fact that a lot of people thought towards her end of her life that she was at her worst that she was in this grip of this addiction but actually she wasn't the case no and that's something that's one of the main reasons i wrote the book is i think people think with amy it was you know what happened was inevitable uh it was a car crash waiting to happen and i don't think she gets enough credit the last three years of amy's life she didn't touch drugs you know when i went out to her um we we had a time apart for three months i went to rehab and um i went to saint lucia and i could see that she'd started to replace drugs with alcohol and that was the that was the battle in the last three years but she was so close she was just about to get over that heel that same hill that i've conquered i've been sober for 13 years thank you and you know she was just about to get there she'd be she'd be sober for five weeks and then she'd relapse for three days you know and and she looked up to me because in her eyes i was the worst alcoholic in the world when i was drinking i drank two bottles of vodka a day amongst other things you know i don't miss that at all i really really don't miss that life it's horrible you know so she looked up to me and i helped her we'd go through alcohol withdrawal together and and she was so close she was running on the treadmill she was in the gym she was drinking green juice she wanted to be sober she wanted to be sober and she was in my eyes at the time just about to crack it and i was just about to crack it i didn't for the life of me expect that to happen you know and just at the very end there i in the last year i took a new tax which was whenever she relapsed i'd leave because i lived with her a whole life from the moment you know from when we're about 18. so i used to leave so that i because i was worried she'd think i was supporting her you know even though i you know said i didn't want her to drink so i would leave and every time i left within two or three days she would ring me and she would say tyler come home come home and i'd say well you know if you're going to get sober i'll come home and i would come back and the last time was just one of those times it was just one of those times i i am you know i i'd left i had a massive argument with her because by this point there were letters from the doctor saying if she drank any more then she'd die and i came in one afternoon after going out for a walk and she had a glass of wine and it's really hard and i just i just flipped the last time i saw amy i had an argument with her and then i came back two and a half days later and as i walked through the door an ambulance turned up and that's when everything that's when everything happened and it you know it's so surreal it's the worst worst day of my life you know you um you want to find something positive out of all this i do you've learned you've learned a lot from for what you've been through personally yourself yeah um and the addictions that you uh you've overcome currently so what do you want to do you want you want to you want to talk you want to help yeah i do i mean writing the book's been incredibly cathartic you know and it's it's really helped me it's it's like i've given myself therapy um i'm so pleased i've done it it's the most amazing thing and what i want to do now you know i want to use my experience as an addict and my experiences with amy to help other people with addiction that's that's what i'm really passionate about i seem to fall upon it even since amy passed away i fall upon other people like that i'm drawn to it i want to help people because addiction is an illness you know it is it is an illness you know you can want to be sober you can really want to be sober and still not be able to do it you know it's such a horrible illness and i would love to help people so people don't have to go through that you know i would love to be a speaker on addiction i would love that well what you've what you've said today we've written in here um that's certainly an amazing beginning and i bet she'd be so proud of you thank you without a doubt thank you so much thank you for having me that's a pleasure and this is um this is the book that we've been uh we've been talking about thank you tyler thank you you

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Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 09 2021