THE bad news about Amy Winehouse arrived around lunchtime Thursday. Inside of 30 minutes, it had spread via iPhone, BlackBerry and urgent whispers throughout Staples Center, where rehearsals for the 50th annual Grammy Awards were in full swing.
Winehouse, the hard-partying, multiplatinum-selling British retro-soul diva responsible for the international smash hit "Rehab," had been denied a visa by officials at the U.S. Embassy in London, dashing her hopes of personally accepting any of the six Grammys she's up for -- best new artist, album and record of the year among them. No rationale for the decision was announced, although it comes just weeks after a video of Winehouse purportedly smoking crack cocaine surfaced online, necessitating a real-life stint in a rehabilitation clinic for the singer, who also faces drug possession charges in Norway.
But the Grammys must go on, even when the event's leading female nominee and one of its most exciting scheduled presences can't. And despite word late Friday that the visa had been granted after all, Winehouse's representatives said logistical problems precluded her from traveling to the U.S. so late in the game.
Luckily, the broadcast's veteran producer, Ken Ehrlich, had put a contingency plan in place less than 24 hours earlier. The extravagantly beehived and tattooed Winehouse will perform at the Grammys and be allowed to accept any award she wins from London via satellite -- the equivalent of a papal clemency that has been granted to exceedingly few artists over the last half-century of the record industry's top award show.
"We don't do this," Ehrlich said, explaining Grammy policy toward video feeds. "And as long as there was a chance that she could still play out here live, we weren't going to. But in this case, because of the number of things she's nominated for, we didn't want her to miss being part of the Grammys.
"Am I disappointed?" he continued, throwing his hands up in front of a bank of video monitors on the arena floor. "Doesn't matter. The fact is, she'll be on the show."
The more pressing fact is that preparations for this landmark award year have been tough, producers admit, and it's been as difficult a year for the Grammys as any. Sticking point A had been the writers strike that has ensnared Hollywood since November; the threat of picketers -- and, moreover, the resounding absence of sympathetic celebrities -- sucked the glamour and vitality out of the Golden Globes and the People's Choice Awards, turning their ceremonies into empty media gestures.
Grammy President Neil Portnow is credited with brokering an interim agreement with the Writers Guild of America a little less than two weeks ago that ultimately will allow the show, set to air on West Coast tape delay Sunday at 8 p.m., to go on unpicketed.
"This was shuttle diplomacy at the highest level," Portnow said. "It's challenging every year just to get the regular business done. When you add all the elements of having to deal with a totally outside, unexpected issue with very significant magnitude, it certainly took a lot of energy. But I was not going to allow that to in any way rain on our parade, especially in this milestone year."
He added: "I haven't slept in probably four weeks."
On Thursday, Grammy producers were hardly alone in having to adapt to last-minute surprises. Performers from Cirque du Soleil's Grammy-nominated Fab Four homage, "Love," were doing their best to scale down a high-flying stage act, normally performed at the Mirage in Las Vegas, to fit the comparatively narrow confines of a circular stage at Staples Center.
Heroically gripping a pair of aerial straps that sent her catapulting, somersaulting and gyrating into the air, Alya Titarenko ran through a number set to the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" that will open the Grammys. At one point, the muscular aerial acrobat tiptoed over to a replica of a vintage Volkswagen Beetle only to have it fly apart in a low-tech approximation of an explosion that blasted her nearly 20 feet into the air (with the help of the aerial straps, of course). From there, she perambulated above the stage while performers holding aloft pieces of the fragmented car danced below.
With little more than two hours of rehearsal time that morning, the Cirque team was justifiably concerned Titarenko might crash into the set's walls. But after running through "A Day in the Life" three times, the troupe of actors, dancers and acrobats had to cede the stage to a two dozen member, multiethnic gospel choir from the Julie Taymor-directed Beatles-based movie musical "Across the Universe." They were on hand to sing a soaring, mostly a cappella version of "Let It Be" -- another of three Beatles numbers during the 3 1/2 -hour ceremony.
The Fab Four cast a long shadow at the Grammys this year, the group's music inspiring a combined eight nominations for "Love" (the remixed mash-up soundtrack to the Cirque show), "Across the Universe" (featuring cover versions of the band's songs), Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full" album and "Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur," the benefit project featuring various artists covering John Lennon's solo material.
"I don't think the question is whether we should be having more contemporary stuff at the Grammys this year or not," said Giles Martin, co-producer of "Love" with his father, longtime Beatles producer George Martin, both up for two awards. "I don't think you can morally judge it. The fact that the kids still like the Beatles is more of an indictment of the Beatles' talent than a negative mark on the people today."
Speculation has raged for weeks around whether Winehouse would show up or if hip-hop superstar Kanye West, this year's leading Grammy nominee with eight possible awards, would come out of self-imposed exile after the death of his mother to attend. (It was announced Friday that he will, in fact, perform on the show with a surprise guest.) Yet the show's producers seemed most conspicuously excited by a nod to music past.
Classical piano phenom Lang Lang and jazz piano great Herbie Hancock -- nominated for instrumental soloist performance with orchestra and album of the year, respectively -- met on the arena floor late one afternoon this week, hugging and mugging like a pair of old fraternity brothers. They soon took the stage to perform a duet of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," accompanied by a full orchestra.
Around the third run-through, Ehrlich became animated discussing how the piece fit into the milestone anniversary of an award meant to acknowledge prestigious pop.
"Gershwin represents so much of what is great about American music," he said. "We wanted to acknowledge that music didn't begin with us. It won't end with us. Here's this man acknowledged as one of the great American composers. . . . "
Seeming both overjoyed and exhausted, he trailed off. "I can't even finish this sentence."
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