Watch Russell Brand Tribute To Amy Winehouse - some who knew her, many who didn't -- took to Twitter to mourn her. Russell Brand, who befriended the British singer when she was an unknown talent and watched her turn into a worldwide star, wrote a tribute to Winehouse on his website to express his sadness over her passing. like Mesothelioma, Mesothelioma Symptoms, Symptoms of Mesothelioma, Mesothelioma Lawsiut, Mesothelioma Claims, Mesothelioma Research, Buy Structured Settlements, Secured Loans, Conference Calling. Brand, a recovering addict himself, knows all too well the lifestyle Winehouse lived, recalling how they first met years ago in Camden, England.
"I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction," Brand writes.
But it was later, after Winehouse rose to fame, did Brand see her perform live and he realized her immense talent.
"She wasn't just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes," he writes. "She was a f---ing genius."
Though London police have yet to determine the cause of Winehouse's death -- and have been quick to downplay any rumors of an overdose -- the singer's addiction problems were no secret and complications from drug use had left her debilitated.
"Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today," Brand writes. "We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy's incredible talent ... All we can do is adapt the way we view [addiction], not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill."
Brand, who is now eight years sober, attends AA meetings three times a week in order to keep his addiction in check.
"To me, the gravity is heroin, and then death. You know, to sleep," he told Details magazine in May, "that incremental suicide of turning your life into a dream, to make being awake as similar to sleep as possible. Drowsily, lazily, dry-mouth your way through the day's ceremonies, fumble your way back into the dew-bather you never really left, draped in brown, brown now all around, the haze!"
At the time, Brand was barely out of rehab and failed to notice that they both shared an affliction, "the disease of addiction".
On hearing her sultry voice for the first time at a Paul Weller gig Brand said: "I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal."
"My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I'd only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound."
Brand finished up his post with a plea to addicts suffering the same as Amy was.
He said: "Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease."
"Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there."
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