Amy Winehouse's Ex Denies Responsibility for Her Death: 'Wasn't the Dealer'

Amy Winehouse's ex-husband Blake Fielder-Civil knows many blame him for the singer’s battle with addiction before dying at the age of 27, but in a new interview, he insists he's not solely responsible for her death.

Fielder-Civil was married to the “Rehab” singer from 2007 to 2009, with their relationship inspiring many of the songs on Winehouse’s massively successful album, Back to Black. Their marriage was a tumultuous one, however, marked with drugs, drinking, breakups, makeups, and arrests.

Appearing on the We Need to Talk podcast on Tuesday, March 17, Fielder-Civil went into detail on how the pair met, how their drug use allegedly escalated together and their conversations after their divorce, leading up to her death. In the wide-ranging interview, he said that while they both allegedly used drugs before dating, they, “for a fact,” became addicts together once they began dating.  

Blake Fielder-Civil Denies Responsibility for Winehouse's Death

Speaking with host Paul C. Brunson, Fielder-Civil explained why he doesn’t think it’s fair to put the blame solely on him for Winehouse’s passing at such a young age.

“My stance now is that I know a lot of people, especially people reading media 20 years ago, would have an idea that Amy’s passing is my responsibility,” he said. “As I’ve always said, I never shirk from any responsibility. If I’ve done something, I’ll put my hand up to it.” 

He claimed that Winehouse started doing cocaine with a previous partner, saying it “was known Amy had experience drugs and it was nothing to do with me.” He did, however, confirm she did heroin for the first time while with him.

When asked if he “encouraged” her to use heroin, he said he didn't.

“I’ve made peace with, yeah, I have a part to play...[but] Amy herself had agency,” said Fielder-Civil. “That is in no way, at all, disrespecting her by saying that. But Amy did what she wanted to do. Even though the drinking had started to hurt her, she carried on.”

He added that he never “blamed a person that gave me drugs for the first time” for his own issues. “I never understood, do these people think that I forced Amy to do drugs? That’s just not what happened,” Fielder-Civil continued.

“Our love had nothing to do with addiction and addiction had nothing to do with our love. That’s where it went,” he shared. “It wasn’t who we were.”

Blake's Message to Amy's Father

At one point in the conversation, Brunson asked whether Fielder-Civil would still like to have some kind of relationship with Winehouse’s father, Mitch Winehouse. Mitch has said, in past interviews after his daughter’s death, that he believes Fielder-Civil got her hooked on drugs.

“I would like it if he would acknowledge that I loved Amy, she loved me. I know he knows it, but I think it’s painful still for him to say it because...it opens up the possibility of, if you can’t blame that person for your daughter not being there, what does that leave you with?” Fielder-Civil said.

“I’m asking him to forgive me in a sense of I wasn’t responsible,” he continued. “Amy died of drinking, nothing to do with drugs, but still, I know that, as is common, that the idea that that's my doing, my fault.”

Winehouse was found not to have any drugs in her system at the time of her death, with accidental alcohol poisoning being the main cause.

Fielder-Civil believes the worst stage of her addiction was actually when he was behind bars, adding that, at the time, everyone—from family members to her record company—knew she had a problem. “I’m not shirking responsibility, but this idea of daily facilitating, I wasn’t the dealer,” he shared.

Fielder-Civil on Winehouse's Death

Fielder-Civil was incarcerated when Winehouse died, but claimed the two were still in contact.

“I would have done anything. I would have never, in a million years have let her just sit and get drunk all day,” he said, claiming he had received a letter from Winehouse saying “let's really give it a go as friends” right before her death.

He said he was informed of her death by a prison guard; he missed her funeral because he was still behind bars. The whole situation, he said, made him feel “worthless.”

“It took me a long time to get out of that and give my head a real good shake and look at myself. I’m never, ever here to say, ‘Amy was bad,’” he continued. “Not at all. But I know Amy wouldn’t want me to still be sat here 20 years later saying it was all my fault. She’d be saying, ‘Get it right, babe. Come on. Tell them the truth.’” 

“We were just young addicts at the time. We weren’t to start with, then we were, and it could happen to anyone,” Blake concluded.

Per Fielder-Civil, he's now sober, something he believes would make Winehouse “over the moon.”