Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has said he believes the conduct of the UK’s tabloid press, a subject of close scrutiny during recent months, played a part in the death of Amy Winehouse last summer.
“Amy Winehouse passed away this year and it was all ‘drugs killed Amy Winehouse’,” Cocker told The Guardian newspaper. “I think that the press killed Amy Winehouse as much as drugs did, because it sends people into that place where they’ve got no peace, and so they just try to escape. And sometimes you use drugs and drink to do that.”
“That atmosphere of fear that tabloids cause – and I experienced that a bit, back in the bad old days – it makes you not want to go out, and it makes you act more weirdly because it makes you more self-conscious, and it makes you want to get more off your head because you block it out.”
At the conclusion of an inquest last month, a coroner ruled that Amy Winehouse had died from excessive alcohol consumption.