Not long ago, one melancholy evening, I went up the loft to look for a voice.

It was in a box. A tape among other tapes; the record of a conversation in the winter of 2006. On the label, two words, handwritten: ‘Amy Winehouse’.

I remember her well. We had met in Glasgow. She was up from London for a show at Òran Mór, the converted church. Strange now to think of her playing such a small venue. Back To Black had been out for a few weeks, but had not yet become ubiquitous; nor had the greatness of Winehouse’s writing (that alchemical ability to sing her wounds) properly sunk in. They just seemed like, you know, good songs.

She was 23. It was late afternoon. A few hours til showtime.

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘I’m only croaking ’cos I just woke up.’

She poured herself breakfast: a smoothie mixed with wine. The famous beehive was a little crestfallen, her eyeliner swooshes smudged, and she was tiny; but she had total presence. There was the aura of stardom, naturally; but what I also sensed, thinking back, was the gravity of artistry, an almost moral force which comes from being true to your gift. In Amy’s case that gift was the visceral candour of her writing and a voice full of blood and tears. She sang from her stomach, she said, which was the same part of her body where she felt the thrill of love and the pain of love ending.

The interview, backstage, was a little chaotic. There were a lot of people coming in and out, including her boyfriend, and members of the band in powder-blue suits. She went off for a while, reluctantly, to soundcheck (‘c’mon, just one track’, the tour manager had said), and when she returned she was still polite, but her attention was elsewhere. Rogano for dinner, that was the plan; then, the following day, a new tattoo. ‘I’m going to get a wild stallion, or a nightingale with little musical notes. Some creature that you can’t tame, to symbolise what a fucking nutjob I am.’

Where would you like to be in your life, I asked, by the time you’re 30?

‘Three kids,’ she said, ‘and five more albums.’

I do think sometimes: what if she’d lived? It’s a consoling fantasy that she would have made more great records, but even if she hadn’t, even if she’d never recorded another note, she would have been present in the world, just doing normal stuff, listening to The Shangri-Las and Donny Hathaway, eating oysters, getting ink. She would like, she told me, to open a diner. My recording is growing faint now. Time is doing what time does. But I had no problem making out her final words: ‘I believe in putting my heart on the line,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to grow old and bitter and full of what-ifs.’
Back To Black is in cinemas from Friday 12 April; main picture: 3DD Productions.