This interview with Amy Winehouse has been kept unpublished since 2004 – right at the beginning of her volatile and brilliant career. When journalist John Marrs met the young singer it was pre-drugs, pre-Blake drama, and pre-several tattoos. Her thoughts and clarity at the time is astounding.

These are a few excerpts from that early interview – recently published by the UK’s Huffington Post:

You trained at Sylvia Young Theatre School from the age of 13 but you don’t strike me as being your typical stage school brat…

“When I was a little kid it was my dream to go to drama school, but it was never something I thought would happen to me. I was a Jewish girl from North London and things like that don’t happen to Jewish girls from North London called Amy Winehouse.

“I was doing drama classes and thought I’d go to normal school with my friends and it would be cool. I was half way through the year at secondary school, and I’d been on report for about six months when I told my headmaster I was gonna go to stage school. It was just me being rude and my plan had no basis. I saw those Sylvia Young stage school kids in their track suits and I was like ‘fucking bastards;’ I hated them because they were always the kids that got the jobs on auditions – well turned-out and precocious kids but some of them were very polite. For every little wanker there was a kid next to them telling them that they were a wanker.

Amy Winehouse had just released ‘Frank’ which would make her name“People think stage school is a little star factory but the truth is kids like me learned about being in a team situation and going out to work earlier than a lot of kids did. I don’t know anyone from drama school who’s now sitting on their arse doing nothing.”

Is that when music became important to you?

“Music was my ultimate ambition but I liked all of it. I wanted to discipline myself in dance and acting too and I’d done all three since I was 9-years-old. I could sing, but I didn’t become a great singer. I probably didn’t become any good until I was about 15 and I left Sylvia Young. I still wouldn’t say I’m a great singer now, but I’m a good singer. And growing up I was never like, ‘I wanna be a singer, I wanna be a singer.’”

Who inspired you?

“My dad always had music playing around us and he was always a happy chirpy man with a beautiful voice. I was always singing around the house and I assumed that’s what all families did. It wasn’t until I went through that nasty teenage stage that I started to realise that wasn’t the case. I’ve always written poetry but I didn’t realise it was a therapy for me until I was maybe 15. That’s when my singing started to come together as well because I was listening to so much jazz. What I love I will always embrace. When I was at Sylvia Young I had a real stage school voice and I could do loud things, but it’s not about being loud, it’s about sensitivity and subtlety in music. You can do so much more with a quiet voice than with a belter.”

Who did you share a class with?

“In my history group it was me, Matt Jay (now Willis) from Busted, and Billie Piper. We were all clever and in the second from the top set but we didn’t push ourselves or we’d end up in the top group and have to work harder. It was rowdy school. I don’t like Busted’s music but Matt’s a sound, sound boy. Billie was such a pretty girl and all the boys liked her and she knew how pretty she was but none of the girls hated her for it because she was the sweetest. But she was never a musical girl. We were in a music class together and it would get to her turn to do a solo and everyone would just look at the floor.”

Growing up, who were your idols?

“I wanted to be Snoopy’s girlfriend and when I got older I wanted to be Bart Simpson’s girlfriend. Then I couldn’t decide whether I wanted marry Snoopy or Michael Jackson – because he was God to me – or to just be them. When I got older it was Salt-n-Pepa and Madonna. I wanted to be in Salt-n-Pepa so much that my friend Juliet and I started our own band, Sweet-n-Sour when we were nine. I was Sour. We had some funny songs. We had two little boys to be our little bitches who would dance for us. We wrote a song called Boys Who Needs Them? and in the middle of the song they’d come on and list girls names while we dissed them. We performed our songs at school assemblies and had a dance routine where we’d be grinding. The tiny kids in reception would be like ‘yuk, what are they doing?’ But we were too short to see if the older boys at the back could see us.”

Were you a rebellious kid?

“I wasn’t a tearaway but I definitely wouldn’t conform to anything. I was bad with authority and didn’t want to be told what to do. I’ve never been an idiot – I was a smart girl but I’d do stupid things like go around Asda and nick stuff because my friends told me to. I was a good girl as a teenager.”

Are you enjoying the fame success is bringing you?

“Yes and no. The fact I did get the Brit nomination (Amy was nominated for Best Female Solo Artist in 2004) was cool but the media thing will die down now which is good because I need to write and to be in my own headspace as much as possible. The upside is that as many people as I can possibly reach can hear my music and that’s what matters to me. I’m not trying to stay away from being a celebrity, I’m not saying, ‘I’m sooo not famous,’ I’m trying to continue being a musician in a time when everyone is very celebrity-led. I’m not Amy the star, I’m Amy the girl with the guitar.”

We wonder how many people remember “Amy the girl with the guitar”. It seems sad that she is such a distant memory compared to the unhealthy, drug-abusing Amy Winehouse many people remember.

You can read the full interview here.