Leslie Jordan Recalls Hearing Amy Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’ for the First Time After Sobriety: ‘It Made Me So Nervous’

Starr Bowenbank
·3 min read
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Consider Leslie Jordan an Amy Winehouse fan.

While the 67-year-old actor-musician initially did not know how to feel about the late singer after hearing her hit song “Rehab,” he revealed during an appearance on Apple Music Country’s Southern Accents Radio on Monday (July 11) that the track and its underlying message really started to grow on him when he considered his own journey to sobriety.

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“I was sober and I had been sober a really long time. And when I heard that song, it made me nervous because I thought, ‘Oh gosh, now people aren’t going to go to rehab that need to go to rehab.’ It made me so nervous. I thought she shouldn’t be doing that. Who is this, this Amy Winehouse? I got to look her up. And then I started thinking more about it,” Jordan told host Dave Cobb. “If you listen close to it, it’s a plea, just kind of I’m going to listen to my daddy, I’m going to listen to this, I’m not quite ready to go. And I thought, you know what? That’s the real essence of recovery right there. That’s the essence of recovery. You can lead a horse to water. You can’t make them drink. You could take Amy Winehouse and put her in rehab, and if she’s not ready… So, but I just loved everything about that.”

Jordan explained that he couldn’t stop thinking about Winehouse’s music after hearing “Rehab” because “it resonates. It’s something from the past with her.” The actor also added that he and the gay community adored the late singer’s taste in fashion. “The gay boys loved her because of her style, that big old black beehive, like something from Ronnie Spector or something. I couldn’t figure it out. She just had all kinds of stuff going, that eyeliner and everything. So she was doing her thing. I love that.”

The actor also took a brief moment to discuss his forthcoming gospel album, Company’s Coming, and how he asked Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam to appear on the LP.

Discussing how the collaboration came to be, Jordan said, “I have a friend that may have a place in Hawaii, and through their neighbors over there are the Vedders. So I went to Hawaii to visit my friend and he said, ‘Would you like to have dinner with Jill and Eddie?’ And I said, ‘Vedder?’ ‘Yes!’ … [Vedder] he was on my album.”

After asking Vedder to lend his talents to the record, Jordan said, “we sent him a song that Danny Myrick and Travis Howard wrote for him, which turned out to be one of my favorites on the album. And then when he sent us his track of ‘Above Me’… he can kind of do whatever he does and it’s … oh, I just sobbed. I just sobbed. I count him as a friend. I count him as a good friend.”

Listen to Jordan’s appearance on Southern Accents Radio here.

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