far too soon. amy winehouse. nobody knew her quite like her father mitch. >> my memories of her will never fade. she was my daughter. >> mitch winehouse, his daughter's extraordinary talent -- >> obviously will be her music. there will be some more, hopefully. >> her demons. >> one addiction would follow the other. this is what happened with amy. >> a checkered love life. >> blake came back into her life at that moment when she was at her most vulnerable. ♪ i die a hundred times >> mitch winehouse, prime time exclusive in an emotional and extraordinary hour. >> we were all heartbroken, heartbroken. >> this is piers morgan tonight. ♪ you go back to her ♪ and i go back to life >> good evening. my prime time exclusive with mitch winehouse is next. also an extraordinary life and death story. this is the video that everyone is talking about. the heroes that saved a motorcyclist from sudden death in utah. i'll talk to them, tonight. mitch, thank you so much for coming to the studio for the interview. i can only imagine this has been a hideous few weeks for you. how you and the family bearing up since aem died? >> it's been very difficult, piers. very, very difficult indeed. but the good thing is we've got each other, we've got wonderful family, and extremely wonderful friends, and we've kept each other strong and, of course, we've got the foundation we're working on. so we're doing okay. under the circumstances, we're doing okay. >> obviously, you knew that amy was incredibly popular. have you been taken aback by the sheer scale of the reaction to her death? >> i have. i didn't realize how popular -- i knew she told 20 million albums, but the sheer depth of feeling that people have for her has been extraordinary. the love and the messages we're getting and how she changed people's lives, it's just wonderful. >> are your feelings ones of anger, of frustration, just a sadness? how would you describe how you've been feeling since you heard the news? >> i think all of those. all of those. very angry with amy. and if i get hold of her, i'll spank her bottom, you know. but all of those things, piers. i'm very angry, feel very guilty. it's natural. i haven't done anything to be guilty about. all of those feelings combined. >> where were you when you heard the news? >> i was in new york. i was with my cousin who -- we were on the 47th floor of a tower in manhattan. he and his wife had had twin babies and i went to see the twin babies. i was about to do a show at the blue note club in new york. and i was holding one of the babies. my cousin's english. and he found his dad to say that i was there and spoke to my uncle. he said how's amy? i said, she's doing great. as i was talking to him, my mobile rang, picks up the phone and it was amy's security guard, and he was crying. and he told me that she'd passed away. >> and just to go through her last night, tell me what happened. from everything that you now know. >> okay. she'd had a good day, as most of her days were good days. and she had -- her mom janice and richard, janice's boyfriend, went to see her earlier in the day and she was in good spirits. and she was getting close to bed, so i think it was about 1:00 at night and she's singing and she has got a drum in her room and she's playing the drum. >> she was on her own? >> she was on her own. there wasn't anybody else in the house. i think her friend tyler -- he stays with her. and he was in the room underneath hers. and it was about 1:00 and the security guard said to her, you better stop playing the drum, amy, because people next door will complain. she said, yeah, no problem. she stopped playing the drum. he heard her walking around for another half hour or so. and he thought she'd gone to sleep. he checked on her about 3:00 in the morning. and she seemed to be asleep. i think he checked her again -- you have to excuse me if i haven't got my timings right. he checked her again at about 8:00 and he saw that there was a problem, and they called the paramedics and that was it. >> what was your reaction immediately? >> i -- i had incredible clarity, and i wasn't clarity, i wasn't screaming. i was holding one of the babies. i gave the baby to my cousin, and i was comforting the security guard who -- you know, he blamed himself. there's nothing to blame himself for. again, it was quite natural. and i was comforting him and i was comforting my cousin, i was comforting my uncle. and i was obviously in shock, but as i was sitting there taking it all in, i just had thoughts coming into my mind. amy winehouse foundation, amy winehouse foundation, amy winehouse foundation, music, horses, children. these are the things that were important to her. not necessarily in that order. i don't think children were less important than horses but she loved horses, she loved music and she loved kids. this is what was in my mind immediately. amy winehouse foundation. amy winehouse foundation. she was basically guiding me and telling me what to do, that's what i believe. >> did you expect this call? >> not at all. had this happened three or four years previously, to be honest with you, i would have held my hands up and said, fair enough. her recovery, as i'm sure we'll speak about later from drug addiction, was extraordinary. i've been banging on for the last three years that she hadn't -- she'd been clean of drugs for years. >> so you believed absolutely she was clean of drugs for three years. >> she hasn't taken any drugs for three years. >> what about alcohol? >> alcohol was a different issue. unfortunately, alcohol, as you may be aware, one addiction can follow another. and this is what happened with amy. we found that when she had conquered the drug addiction, she then went on to a very positive addiction. she was exercising every day. she was so fit, incredibly fit. she had ra gym at home. she was exercises for three or four hours a day if not more. >> did you have any way of controlling any of these addictions that she had? >> how do you control somebody else's addictions? at the time people were saying to me, well, what you should do -- people who should know better. what you should do is hire a big house in the country so that nobody can hear her scream, take her there, lock the doors, lock the windows and just leave her there. put some food under. how can you do that to somebody? that's imprisonment. you can't do that to somebody. if somebody is an addict, they have to deal with it in their own way. the only way that the family can help is to be there to love them and support them. sometimes it's tough love that's needed, sometimes it's soft love. whatever it is, the answer comes from the addict, not from the family of the addict. so in terms of doing anything about her addictions, whatever they were, it's not really an awful lot that any family can do. >> in the last few weeks, have you had any regrets? you say you feel guilty. but that's a kind of different thing like any parent in that situation. but do you have any concrete regrets, things you wish you'd done? >> no, i really don't. our family was or is an incredibly strong family. and, you know, great example set by -- how far do you want me to go back, from my grandparents and my mother and father who are both gone now. and we took that forward. and as a family, we are a loving family. amy was an integral part of that family. >> every time i've seen you in public since amy died, you've shown remarkable self-control. people were struck by that given that you were so close to her. have you had moments in private where you've really lost it about this or have you been able to keep things together? >> i mean, i have moments when i just can't believe what's happened. it's just incredible. even now i -- if she walked in here right now, i wouldn't be surprised. it's just incredible that a force, her force, her nature has gone, but it hasn't really gone because, you know, i'm a firm -- as all my family, we're firm believers in life after death. and she's right here with us all the time. there's been some fantastic stuff going on as far as that's concerned, butterflies, birds and butterflies the ay s thiesi and messages we're getting. in answer to your question, in answer to your question, it's not a question of losing it. i think that crying is an integral part of the grieving process. and i think that everybody -- not everybody. i can't tell everybody how they should grieve, but the way that i grieve -- i lost my mother and my father is to cry. i'm a crier. and i'm glad. i hope that means i'm not storing my grief up for something else because amy wouldn't want me to have -- you know, to suffer from depression or anything like that because i just have too much to do. there's so much work that we have to do for the foundation, i can't afford to get depressed. if it means i'm going to cry, i'll cry. if it means i'll cry here, i'll cry. i'm not ashamed to cry. >> when we come back, i want to talk to you about the early days of amy, what she's like when she was a little girl. then the dark days when you watch your daughter self-imploding. 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i said, i think you're fine. they tried to make me go to rehab, i said no, no, no. but she did go there. so she went to rehab for two hours, and then she came back. i said, so she's been away from my house for three hours. you've been to rehab and you come back already. she said, the guy she went to see, all he wanted to do was speak about himself. it's all in the song "rehab," but my daddy thinks i'm fine. out of that someone situation, she managed to write "rehab". >> one of the great songs of the last 20 years. >> of the last 20 years. >> there's a poignancy about the title of that song and an irony, i guess, that rehab was something that kind of bedeviled amy for years. she flirted with it. do you ever think she fully committed to rehab or not? >> no. >> when was the first time that you thought okay wow, this is interesting? >> well, there's so many stories. the story that i tell over and over is that we -- she got a scholarship for sylvia young as an actress and as a dancer. >> that's like an acting school. >> it's an acting school. they do music too. but we went to the first show that she did, my wife and i. not janice. jane. we went to see her. and whether the song she was sing was in the wrong key. i remember saying to my wife, thank god she can act. she had acting jobs and was doing okay. the following year she said, dad, i'm singing again. i said to my wife, oh, my god, she's singing again. this time we went to see her, and she can sing. that's probably from about the age of 14. i heard her singing before, but i wasn't in house from the age of 10. i saw her three or four times a week, but janice and i got divorced when she was 10. so i wasn't there all the time. and she was singing all the time and didn't sound anything out of the ordinary to me until we saw her that show. >> and the irony was that she actually left the sylvia young school because she wasn't, in their eyes, performing academically well enough, right? >> sylvia will say she wasn't expelled but she was actually expelled. >> when she left sylvia, what was the moment for you that you realized this little girl of yours was going to be an international star? >> we were -- at sylvia young she met a guy called tyler james who was a great friend. he was in the house with her that night. and he introduced her to his management company, a company called 19. and they asked me to come down because she was under 18 and i had to sign the forms for her. your daughter is absolutely fantastic. they sent us some tracks. i've never heard her sing on a cd before. and i send some of the tracks that she'd done. and they were just brilliant. at that point i remember saying to my wife, this sis incredible. but really it was a question of when did this happen? >> you hadn't seen it coming? >> not really, no. not really. i heard her sing, but there's lots of kids that can sing. >> the thing about amy wasn't just the singing. she wrote some of this stuff. she wrote some of the great songs of the last 25 years. where do you think she'd like to get that from? >> i'd like to say me, of course. but the truth is that janice, my ex-wife's family, they were professional musicians on that side, too. we're all singers on our side and they're the musicians on janice's side. so pretty good gene pool there one way or another. >> amy obviously propelled into the stratosphere of music superstardom. the first album did april yantly, the second one exploded. i want to talk to you about the effect of fame and fortune in her life and, in particular, the effect of her quite troubled love life in that period as well. 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[ female announcer ] only from aveeno. ♪ since i've come home >> long before amy and i met, i know she's been shooting up that stuff for 3 1/2 years and stuff like that. you know, she had said -- which i knew, you know. that just wasn't part of her life. you know? it wasn't our world, you know? so it was long in the past. it was gone. and she wasn't into it. she wasn't into that scene or that kind of thing, you know? she wasn't into drugs at all. so no. >> that was amy winehouse's boyfriend at the time of her death, reg travis. amy had finally seemed, mitch it seemed, found love with a guy. >> an incredible source for good in her life. i don't know where she found him at. he's like a throwback to the '50s or old fashioned values. dresses in a very retro, in a modern old-fashioned way, if you know what i mean. he's just a terrific guy. he had a great influence on amy. >> many people say that amy's almost inevitable downfall came after she met this guy blake who became her husband. he's now serving a prison sentence in britain for assaulting someone. when she first got together with this guy, as her father, what was your immediate reaction when you saw the kind of person that he was? >> my immediate reaction was that he was a very charming guy. i saw him at one of amy's shows. and i knew that she'd been seeing this guy called blake and he'd been in and out of her life, but i thought that she'd done with him because it seemed to me he only wanted to come back into her life, once it started to do well. >> when she was successful. >> when she was successful. >> you were suspicious of his motivation, really? >> i was suspicious of his motivation, yes, i was. and my suspicions proved to be well founded. >> people close to amy believe that it was blake who got her from soft drugs and marijuana which she admitted to taking as a teenager, on to hard drugs, cocaine, ecstasy and heroin? >> i don't know about ecstasy, but cocaine and heroin, yes, i do. >> and as her father, how did that make you feel when you thought this guy that she's in love with, hooked up to, is driving her to this kind of thing? >> i was sickened, and i did everything in my power to stop the relationship, but again, what can you do? she loved -- she really loved blake. >> did you ever confront him? >> oh, frequently. and his family. >> what would you say? >> leave my daughter alone, leave us alone. you're killing my daughter. he would say, well, i'm not killing her. he would admit to nothing. and his family were in denial, which made it even more difficult because we had them to deal with as well, was very, very painful and very difficult. >> did they not believe that he got amy into these hard drugs? >> no. they believed at one point that it was amy that had got him on to the hard drugs. >> when she began taking cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, all this other stuff, did you notice a change in her? >> did i notice a change in her? that's a very, very good question. in terms of her relationship with her family, she was still the loving girl that she'd always been. i must add that my mother di died -- i nearly said at the wrong time. it's never the right time for your mother to die. but blake came back on the scene literally weeks after my mother passed away thncht is amy's grandmother. >> amy's grandmother and her grandmother, my mother, they were just so close. they were as close as mother and daughter. >> that had a traumatic effect on her. >> an incredibly traumatic effect on all of us but on amy and my son alex as well. it was devastating for them. and it was just the timing of everything was just incredible. blake came back into her life at that moment when she was at her most vulnerable. and the results speak for themselves. >> there were periods through there just from what we read in the media at the time, just it seemed to be spiraling out of control, her life. is that how you saw it? do you fear that you were going to wake up one day with the terrible news that y