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                    Amy Winehouse’s friends reveal what her time in NYC was really like
                                        Marisa Abela as the doomed singer — opens in the US, after earning eyebrow-raising reviews in the UK. A critic for the Evening Standard called it “so bad it made me gasp in horror” and wrote that it “does not paint a nice or fair picture of [Winehouse] as a human.”Her friends and colleagues in New York City, like saxophonist Ian Hendrickson-Smith, remember her as “wonderful.” They knew a fun-loving, mischievous and incredibly talented woman prior to the tragedy that later played out before paparazzi cameras: the smeared mascara and ratty beehive and body visibly ravaged by drugs and drink and bulimia.Winehouse came to the city in March 2006 to record what would be her career-making second album, “Back to Black.” Produced by Mark Ronson, the record was made at the now defunct Chung King Studios near Sohoas well as at the stripped-down Daptone Studios in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with musical accompaniment provided by a crack local jazz/soul outfit called the Dap-Kings.“I was struck by how big her sound was, coming out of a small physique,” Ian Hendrickson-Smith, who played baritone sax with the group, recalled to The Post.