Amy Winehouse Delights Booing U.K. Audience With Drunk, Tear-Filled Performance

Amy Winehouse made her triumphant return to the stage last night at the NIA in Birmingham, U.K. By triumphant, we mean piss-drunk, pissed-off, volatile and in need of a teleprompter. In short, it was everything you've come to grow and love about an Amy Winehouse performance. The show started off well, with Amy showing up onstage only an hour late. From that point on, it was all uphill, as Winehouse spat, slurred and stammered her way into her fans' heart. As one happy concertgoer commented, "Amy has a fantastic voice. It was a huge disappointment to see her perform so unprofessionally. It was the worst gig I have ever attended." Another supporter posted "I was cringing with embarrassment for her." Always leave them wanting more.

By getting onstage last night, Winehouse managed to overcome the incarceration of her husband Blake Fielder-Civil, who sits in a jail cell somewhere thanks to criminal charges that translate into obstruction of justice here. Amy dedicated "Wake Up Alone" to her boy in the pen. "This is for my husband," Winehouse announced, before singing the lyric, "This face in my dreams seizes my guts. He floods me with dread." That's sweet. Needless to say, there was lots of crying onstage, as Winehouse dedicated many a songs to her husband, going as far as renaming her song "Me and Mr. Jones" to "Me and Mr. Blakey." To close out the show, Winehouse wowed fans by performing the Zutons' "Valerie" before abruptly leaving the stage mid-verse. Barring a complete train wreck or cancellation, Winehouse is expected to play Friday night in Glasgow.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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