Nervous. Fidgety. Alternately blasé and sulky. A healthier Amy. These were how Neil McCormick of UK’s The Telegraph described Amy Winehouse in what was to become the singer’s final interview in March 2011.

McCormick insists there was no talk about her dark life - - the drugs and alcohol, the ‘unhappy lovelife’ and the cancelled tours. Her last interview was all about music, jazz and singing and Amy Winehouse’s motivations to keep doing what she loved that made her a great artist.

Held at the Abbey Road studios, the interview was undertaken while she was recording the song, “Body and Song” with Tony Bennett for his upcoming album, Duets II. And in it Amy Winehouse was just another English gal “exhibiting the slightly insecure demeanour of a brattish teenager”, like a daughter to Bennett whom she claimed she learned her music from.

Amy claimed that Bennett and Sinatra played a big part on how her father raised her.

“I grew up listening to your records,” Amy was quoted telling Tony by The Telegraph. “You taught me how to sing.”

Discussing jazz, she traced her vocal style on some great jazz artists, noting that she was considering recording a “more purist” jazz album some day.

Amy also enumerated contemporary British jazz talents Soweto Kinch, Jazz Jamaica and Tomorrow’s Warriors as among the artists that she saw herself jamming with in the process.

Her final interview also revealed her plans to possibly study music.

“I would love to study guitar or trumpet. I can play a lot of different instruments adequately but nothing really well. If you play an instrument, it makes you a better singer. The more you play, the better you sing, the more you sing, the better you play,” she said, according to the Telegraph.UK.

Looking good and healthier in mini-dress, Amy Winehouse defined what singing was really for her and what motivated her.

“You’re just feeling it,” the “Back to Black” hitmaker told McCormick. “You don’t think about it. If you thought about it, you wouldn’t be able to sing it at all.”

It was not all job for McCormick. In between takes, he claimed he had that the invitation for that final interview has become one of his most amazing experiences and a great privilege.

“I was privileged to watch her record a duet with legendary crooner Tony Bennett in Abbey Road studios. It was a magical experience, watching these two great talents sing together, voices wrapping around each other, rising and falling, scatting and blending in jazzy cadences, as they worked up a version of the classic ’Body And Soul’, each take getting better than the last,” McCormick said as he recalled those great moments for any journalist to die for.

Be moved. Take your last look of Amy Winehouse through the images of the late singer painted in words here by Neil McCormick of The Telegraph.

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