Amy Winehouse on fighting her inner demons and the just-married life

Backstage at Toronto's Mod Club, it's obvious that the couple have smoothed things over. Winehouse is sitting on Blake's lap, laughing and pawing at him while they chat with her dad, Mitch, who's in from the U.K. for the weekend. She scurries over to the catering table and returns a few minutes later to present Mitch with a turkey-and-cucumber sandwich she's meticulously crafted for him. The gesture, he remarks, reminds him of a concoction he used to eat made of matzo and bananas. Blake whispers something to Winehouse and she convulses into giggles. "He asked if that's some kind of kike thing," she offers, and then asks, "What's more offensive, Dad, 'kike' or 'yid'?" Reluctant to render his own verdict, Mitch shrugs and looks at me across the table. "Ask this lady," he says, gracefully putting an end to the subject.

Winehouse is an unapologetic daddy's girl, even brandishing a tattoo with that phrase on her left shoulder. Mitch, a cab driver, and Amy's mother, Janis, a pharmacist, split up when she was nine and her older brother, Alex, was thirteen; the siblings lived mostly with their mom in Southgate -- a North London suburb that's home to celebrity rehab hospital the Priory, where Pete Doherty and the Darkness' Justin Hawkins were treated but where Winehouse refused to go, go, go.

"She was always very self-willed," Mitch tells me. "Not badly behaved, but . . . different." Though the children grew up around music ("We were always singing," says Mitch), including the old Frank Sinatra and Dinah Washington tunes she still adores, Amy's talents as a vocalist weren't immediately apparent. When she was ten, Winehouse and her best friend, Juliette Ashby, formed a rap duo modeled after Salt-n-Pepa that they called Sweet 'n Sour. (You can guess which one Amy was.) She didn't aspire to be a musician, though; instead, she fantasized about being a roller-skating waitress like the ones she'd seen in American Graffiti. She enrolled in the Sylvia Young Theatre School when she was twelve and attended classes there before being expelled for having her nose pierced and for general slackeritude. "I went to see her in a recital and I thought she'd just be acting," says Mitch. "But then she came out on the stage and started singing, and I couldn't believe it. I never knew she could sing like that."

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Though fans with refined ears might be connecting with the authenticity of the album's production and arrangements, it's clear that most of the million folks who've fallen for Back to Black are connecting with the authenticity of Winehouse's guilt, grief and heartache. From the story the songs tell, her relationship with Blake burned too hot, too quickly. There was cheating and heartbreak: He went back to his old girlfriend, and she worried she'd lost the love of her life. "The songs literally did write themselves," she tells me over dinner at Big Pink, a kitschy Fifties-style diner in Miami where the frozen drinks come in jumbo servings and the food is delectably devoid of nutritional value. Adjacent to our table, Winehouse's new husband sits an arm's length away, and she avails herself of every possible opportunity to lean over and whisper or smooch. "All the songs are about the state of my relationship at the time with Blake," she continues. "I had never felt the way I feel about him about anyone in my life. It was very cathartic, because I felt terrible about the way we treated each other. I thought we'd never see each other again. He laughs about it now. He's like, 'What do you mean, you thought we'd never see each other again? We love each other. We've always loved each other.' But I don't think it's funny. I wanted to die."

* * *

I ask her what she thinks is her worst vice. "Mainly that I'm quite reckless and always throw caution to the wind," she says. And when the conversation turns to how she'd know if it was time to get one of her vices in check, she defers to Blake. "Baby? If I've got a vice, when would I know to get it in check?"
"I'd tell her," says Blake, still grinning his cartoonish grin.
But would she do the same for him? "Never," she says. He nods yes as she shakes her head no, and it feels like one of those awkward moments on The Newlywed Game when the husband has forgotten his wife's favorite place for makin' whoopee. Then he changes his answer. "No," he quips. "You wouldn't tell me right away. You'd sit back and watch me with a needle in my eyeball, and then you'd say, 'It's gone too far now, Blake.' "
As her North American tour closed in Toronto, it was clear how generally over it Winehouse was. And in Miami, she obviously would prefer to be hanging out with her new husband than spending her wedding day talking about her life and career. I ask if she'd even shed a tear if she had to stop touring and making records tomorrow.
"Not really," she says. "I've done a record I'm really proud of. And that's about it. It's just that I'm a caretaker and I want to enjoy myself and spend time with my husband. It doesn't even feel weird saying it now. Blake and I didn't get to spend any time together for a long while. And I was with someone else, and he was with someone else, and even six months ago I'd meet up with him and I remember saying to him so many times, 'I just want to look after you.' I don't want to be ungrateful. I know I'm talented, but I wasn't put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it's not where it begins and ends."

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>>This is an excerpt from the latest issue of Rolling Stone, on stands until June 15th.