'I was privileged to know the real Amy Winehouse': Dionne Bromfield dispels the myths about her godmother
The goddaughter of tragic singer Amy Winehouse, DIONNE BROMFIELD had a unique insight into the perks and perils of fame from an early age. As a hotly anticipated documentary about her famous mentor is released, Dionne tells Catherine O’Brien how she found her own voice
‘She (Amy Winehouse) would babysit me sometimes if Mum was working, and we’d play on her guitar and she’d cook – she was a real Jewish mamma who loved to make chicken soup,’ said Dionne Bromfield
Three days before her unutterably wretched death from alcohol poisoning in July 2011, Amy Winehouse pitched up at the Roundhouse close to her home in North London.
She was at the legendary live music venue not to perform, but to support her then 15-year-old goddaughter and singing protégé Dionne Bromfield.
‘I hadn’t been expecting her but, as I looked to the side of the stage, suddenly there she was,’ Dionne recalls.
‘I slipped off to sort out my mike, and she said she would like to come back out with me, not to sing, just to dance.
'So we went on together and did a couple of songs. Then she told the audience, “I want all of you to go and buy Dionne’s album.” And that was it – the last thing she ever said in public.’
For Dionne, however, there was one final private conversation with her mentor.
‘Once we were both backstage, she took me off to this room, and we talked for about 40 minutes – just the two of us. She kept saying, “I’m so proud of you.” And I remember thinking, “Wow, we’ve never spoken quite like this before.”’
Only with hindsight can Dionne fully appreciate what Amy was trying to convey.
‘She was such a caring person – she always wanted to make me feel good about myself.
'And I can see now that maybe she also wanted to relive a little of life through me.’
‘It’s always been me and Mum. We’re very close. She’s always there for me – even today, she’ll be texting to say, “Did you get there OK?”’ said Dionne (she wears TOP, Christian Dior, and RING, Links of London)
Amy was just 27 when she was found dead in bed by a bodyguard, with two empty vodka bottles by her side, bringing to a tragic close her battle against drug and alcohol addictions.
In the four years since, her name has barely been out of the headlines, and a fresh wave of publicity is currently swirling around the imminent release of a new film documenting her supreme talents but also her complex fragility.
Amy has been slated by her father Mitch as a distortion of her troubled life, but acclaimed by critics as a deeply sympathetic masterpiece.
Asif Kapadia, award-winning director of Senna, compiled the biopic with the help of intimate family video clips and extensive footage shot by friends on mobiles, as well as interviews with more than 100 people who lived and worked with Amy.
Like millions of Amy’s fans, Dionne will go to see it, although she decided she didn’t personally want to be involved in its making and points out,
‘No film is ever going to be able to tell me about the Amy I knew.’
It’s late morning and I’ve met Dionne in a Central London café before she catches a train to Manchester for a recording session.
At 19, she’s already working on her third album – the first two have helped pay for the three-bedroomed flat she has just bought in Hackney.
‘I’m still a teenager, but sometimes I feel like I’m 30,’ she says, rolling her eyes playfully.
In her Topshop jumper and J Brand jeans, she looks her true age, but her measured poise belies someone wise beyond her years, a consequence perhaps of having spent her childhood largely immersed in an adult world.
‘Amy called me her big sister, even though she was 12 years older than me. She would say, “You are so mature”, and I was, like, “Er, OK.” But I’m not sure I was,’ said Dionne
‘Amy called me her big sister, even though she was 12 years older than me. She would say, “You are so mature”, and I was, like, “Er, OK.” But I’m not sure I was,’ she shrugs.
Dionne’s mother Julie Din is a veteran of the music industry who has helped manage several bands, including The Libertines (whose frontman Pete Doherty was one of Amy’s exes).
Ask Dionne about her father and she’ll tell you, with a wave of her hand, that although she carries his surname, he’s played little part in her life.
‘It’s always been me and Mum. We’re very close. She’s always there for me – even today, she’ll be texting to say, “Did you get there OK?”’
Home for Dionne growing up was leafy Chislehurst in Kent, but she would frequently travel with her mum to gigs and hang out in the homes of starry friends, who seemed to have paparazzi permanently attached to their garden gates.
Kate Moss was a regular host and Dionne describes Kate’s daughter Lila, now 13, as ‘like a little sister to me’.
But the relationship with Amy was always on a different level.
‘She was massive for me – musically and in every way.’
Julie knew Amy and her father Mitch through contacts in the music business and, for Dionne, Amy was a presence for as far back as she can remember.
‘She would babysit me sometimes if Mum was working, and we’d play on her guitar and she’d cook – she was a real Jewish mamma who loved to make chicken soup.
'And I don’t recall it happening, but one day, she said to Mum, “Can I be Dionne’s godmother?” and Mum said, “Yes, of course.”’
‘I’m still a teenager, but sometimes I feel like I’m 30,' said Dionne (she wears JACKET and SKIRT, both Burberry. Crop top , Topshop. SHOES, Alejandro Ingelmo)
As baptisms go, it may sound rather rock ’n’ roll, but Amy took her godmotherly duties seriously. Dionne was ten when she started having singing lessons, encouraged by Amy, who by then had won several awards for her first album Frank.
‘I’d grown up listening to Mum’s Motown vinyl – artists such as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – so I was a huge soul fan, just as Amy was.
'We’d make music when we got together and having her say that I was good was a great compliment, but I was too young then to really appreciate what it meant.’
The rest of Dionne’s tweenage years coincided with Amy’s descent into chaos.
In 2005, Amy started seeing music video assistant and drug addict Blake Fielder-Civil and as their relationship developed, she became notorious for drunken appearances on stage.
They married in May 2007 and later that year he was involved in a fracas with an East End publican that resulted in a prison sentence in 2008.
When they divorced in 2009, Amy sank into a depression. By then, her success had been sealed with her second album Back to Black, a collection of heartbroken songs, several of them about Blake, which won her a clutch of Grammy awards and became an international bestseller.
The stark contrast between Amy’s astonishing success and ongoing turmoil was evident to everyone – and that included Dionne.
‘I am not stupid. I knew what was going on,’ she says. ‘But Amy never showed me the bad side of her life.
'Even if she was unhappy, she could always smile for me. Maybe that is why she had this thing about me being her big sister.
There is no boyfriend on the scene and Dionne lives alone with cats Misty and Luna, though she speaks to her mum every day (she wears JACKET, McQ. RING, Leivankash)
'She had this little signal she would make, pointing at her eyes and then mine, and saying, “I know you know.”
'She would say she could talk to me, and that I would give her advice when she should have been giving it to me. But she gave me heaps of advice.
'She would encourage me to write my own songs, just as she wrote hers. She said the secret was to pour out my heart.
'And I would tell her that nothing much was happening in my life – I had been to school and come home on the bus and it was all pretty boring.
'But she said there was always something – maybe somebody who had annoyed me at school – and that a song could be created out of anything if you learned to express yourself.’
In early 2009, Amy launched her own record label, Lioness, and announced Dionne, then only 12, as her debut recording artist.
'She would say she could talk to me,' said Dionne leaving the Q Awards with Amy in October 2009
‘She told me that she wanted to sign me, and I said, “Sign me to what?” I didn’t understand. But it was all good and a few weeks later we went to a lawyer’s office to sort the contract.
'I remember sitting there thinking, “But I don’t even have a signature.” So I had to make one up quick.’
Within months, Dionne had recorded Introducing Dionne Bromfield, a collection of soul covers.
The album launch received a huge boost when Dionne appeared as the guest singer on Strictly Come Dancing with Amy in the backing vocals line-up – a remarkable gesture from a star of her magnitude.
‘She was basically saying, “Regardless of who I am, I’m here to give you this leg up,”’ says Dionne.
‘I was the most amazing gift, and the older I get, the more thankful I am for it.’
None of us can know exactly what was behind Amy’s determination to secure Dionne’s success, but a poignant video on YouTube of the two of them singing together in Pete Doherty’s home back in 2008 gives us a clue.
Instantly recognisable with her stacked beehive hairdo, kohl-encrusted eyes and tattooed arms, Amy strums on a guitar as Dionne, wearing a pure white shirt and with a face that is the epitome of dimple-cheeked innocence, sings Alicia Keys’s ‘If I Ain’t Got You’.
In Dionne, I suspect, Amy saw the same raw talent she herself possessed, but she also saw a girl unsullied by her own demons.
Amy’s bulimia, self-harming, drinking and drug abuse stemmed from a painful childhood.
The father on whom she doted left the family home when she was nine, precipitating deep-rooted low self-esteem (even though Mitch remained part of her life and today runs the Amy Winehouse Foundation in her memory).
Dionne hardly came from a conventional family set-up herself, but somehow, she flourished.
‘Dionne is the one – I love her to bits,’ Amy once told an interviewer.
And as she strove to place her protégé in the spotlight, it was as if she was giving Dionne the second chance that she could never have for herself.
Dionne released her second album Good for the Soul just two weeks before Amy died. The night the news broke that her body had been found, Dionne was performing at a festival in Wales.
‘Nobody said anything, but the whole atmosphere changed. I got hold of an iPad and looked on Google and even then I was thinking, “It’s not true.”
'I was numb and stayed that way until the funeral. People would ask if I was OK and I would say, “Yeah”. But really you’re not – you just feel like you have to act as though you are.’
Dionne appeared as the guest singer on Strictly Come Dancing in 2009 with Amy in the backing vocals line-up – a remarkable gesture from a star of her magnitude
One of the best things that could have happened to Dionne around that time was the career break that led to her becoming a regular presenter on Friday Download – the must-watch series for the CBBC generation.
The job enabled her to take a sideways step while the shock of Amy’s death sank in and also to diversify her talents.
Having been a singing star herself, she was supremely qualified to interview others, such as Justin Bieber and Katy Perry.
She looked the part thanks to her swishy hair and fresh-faced smile (unlike Amy, she was never tempted to cover her limbs in large tattoos – ‘My mum would have gone crazy – she calls them tramp stamps’).
The role also gave her stability and routine while she finished her education at the Sylvia Young Theatre School – and taught her how to work as part of a team.
Dionne with Amy's father Mitch
‘As an artist, you are always in a bubble, but Friday Download was a collaborative effort. It gave me an amazing insight into what goes into pulling together a TV show,’ she says.
‘Presenting is not as easy as you might think – I’d do a lot of research on guests and I had to think on my feet when I was talking to children in the audience because kids can be brutally honest.
'But I had a great time and felt as though I did a lot of my growing up there.’
Last autumn, she spent a month working on Up All Night, a spooky but fun film spin-off from the TV series in which the presenters go on a road trip and end up in a haunted house.
As well as her acting role, she wrote ‘Say it to my Face’, the headline track for the movie, which went on general release last month. It served as her on-screen farewell – for now. She has since left Friday Download to re-focus on her music.
‘The film was a great way to say goodbye to that phase of my life,’ she says.
For Dionne, a new chapter beckons. There is no boyfriend on the scene and she lives alone with cats Misty and Luna, though she speaks to her mum every day.
‘I’m still at that stage where I have to call to ask how to change the setting on the washing machine,’ she confesses.
She also admits to being silly when she gets together with friends – ‘We’ll sit for hours doing selfies or get Boris Bikes and ride around the park.’
But no one should underestimate Dionne’s focus and determination. She’s well underway with tracks for her new album, one of which will be a tribute to her godmother.
‘As an artist, you are always in a bubble, but Friday Download was a collaborative effort. It gave me an amazing insight into what goes into pulling together a TV show,’ said Dionne
'It’s called “Black Butterfly,”’ she says.
‘There was a black butterfly that flew in at Amy’s funeral and it landed on Kelly Osbourne’s shoulder.
'It stayed there for the whole service then flew away. The song is probably the best I’ve ever written and I was crying when I recorded it.’
Dionne is writing from the heart, as her mentor taught her.
‘I always ask myself, “Would Amy like this?”’ she says. ‘She’s always there.’
But the rest of Dionne’s material is unlikely to contain the harrowing lyrics that defined so much of Amy’s opus.
And as compelling as Amy’s music was, no one would wish her protégé to pay the same tormented price for her fame.
Listen to ‘Black Butterfly’, Dionne’s tribute to Amy, at officialdionnebromfield.com
DIONNE'S HOT LIST
READING
The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes – a great book with fantastic characters. I can’t put it down!
LISTENING TO
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. This was Lauryn’s debut album and I was only two years old when it was released, but her songwriting is incredible and inspires me daily.
WATCHING
Sherlock on Netflix. I have a bit of a crush on Benedict Cumberbatch.
WEARING
A mix of high street and high end – Topshop, Alexander McQueen and Burberry is my dream wardrobe combination.
EXERCISE ROUTINE
I work out at the gym most days really early at 6.30am. It starts my brain working and keeps me feeling great all day.
MAKE-UP MUST-HAVE
I would be lost without Nivea moisturiser. I have a little pot in every bag.
WHAT WOULD YOU SAVE FROM A BURNING BUILDING?
My cats – I love them so much.
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