Most entertainers prepare for a concert tour with rehearsals. For Amy Winehouse, it was rehab.
Just before her disastrous European tour last month, the infamously addicted singer entered a rehabilitation center on doctor's orders, ostensibly to ensure that she would be ready to perform. She left a week later, with her publicist announcing she was "raring to go."
She clearly wasn't. At the concert's kickoff June 18 in Belgrade, Serbia, Winehouse struggled to remember the words to her songs, stumbled around the stage and even tried to get one of her background singers to warble for her.
Her tour was soon canceled. A little over a month later, she was dead.
There's a long history, to be sure, of performers who wither away due to addiction while the world watches, but Winehouse's death Saturday at age 27 has rekindled questions about the role the music industry should play in helping stars kick self-destructive habits.
Why, for example, was Winehouse still being booked for concerts even though she was battling a devastating addiction? Could the entertainment community have done more to save one of its most gifted young artists?
A former heroin addict herself, Cole was critical of the industry after Winehouse won five Grammys in 2008, including record and song of the year for "Rehab," the song where Winehouse rebuffed help for addiction.
Winehouse performed triumphantly during the Grammy telecast that year — but did so via satellite from London, in part because she couldn't get a visa to come to the United States, and also because she was in rehab at the time.
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