Up All Night With Amy Winehouse

But things got weird not long after Winehouse married Fielder-Civil in Miami in May 2007. In November, he was arrested for the assault of an East End bar owner in June 2006. (Fielder-Civil pleaded guilty.) With her husband gone, Winehouse slid into a despondent place. She canceled her tour at the end of 2007, saying, "I can't give it my all onstage without my Blake." And in January, after a clip of her smoking crack was released to the tabloid The Sun, she was sent to rehab by her record label again. She didn't stay long, and she happily tells me she did drugs the whole time.

This spring brought story after story in the tabloids, parading images of Winehouse wrecked and wretched, usually high and half-naked. There were rumors of extramarital affairs, and she was arrested (and later released) on drug charges and cautioned by police for assaulting a man. Her smacked-out haze of an existence went viral in May, when Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty posted videos on YouTube of the two of them in a dark room playing with just-born mice, their fingernails encrusted in black resin, using the animals as puppets to beg Winehouse's husband not to divorce her. Also in May, Mark Ronson, the DJ and producer who worked with her on her hits, canceled her recording sessions for the title song of the upcoming James Bond film. "I'm not sure Amy is ready to work on music yet," he said at the time. It is now rumored that the wholesome and beautiful young British singer Leona Lewis will replace Winehouse on the Bond song.

Winehouse says all of this is the product of heartbreak from being separated from her true love, whose name appears in a little heart pin she often wears in her hair. "To be honest, my husband's away, I'm bored, I'm young," Winehouse tells me. "I felt like there was nothing to live for. It's just been a low ebb."

Winehouse is rarely alone. Her home is on a hushed cobblestone lane off the main drag of raucous Camden, but throughout the night, musicians, dealers, masseuses, friends and fans come and go freely.

Outside, a nearly ever-present herd of paparazzi — mostly men, mostly in their early 30s — stand around, smoking cigarettes and cracking jokes that revolve around the length of their zoom lenses. Winehouse is their meal ticket, and a fun one. The paps jokingly refer to her as "the pied piper of Camden" for her powers of enchantment. Winehouse treats them like animals in her care — she makes them tea and, on several occasions, smacks them if they get too close to her. And for all that, they love her, speak of her talent and way of life with reverence.

"She's on loads of crack, but you can see through that," says Simon Gross, a freelance photographer. "I just want for her to get better. I'm hoping someday for that set of pictures of her riding her bike in the park or something healthy."

In the hours I spend with her, her main concession to health is a large upright tanning bed, which she uses every day. She often seems like she is having trouble staying awake, fighting to keep her eyes open. "I just took my nighttime medicine," she says. "I'm so tired." Winehouse seems lonely, in search of a perpetual slumber party. "Women don't try to use me," she tells me groggily. Her trust is remarkable; at one point, she even discusses her night's outfit with two female teenage fans over her door-bell intercom.