Wearing dark suits, black dresses and the occasional beehive hairdo, friends and family said goodbye to Amy Winehouse Tuesday with prayers, tears, laughter and song at an emotional funeral ceremony.

"Amy was the greatest daughter, family member and friend you could ever have," said her father, Mitch Winehouse, in a section of the eulogy released by a family spokesman.

The singer's father, mother and brother were joined by Winehouse's close friends, band members and celebrities including producer Mark Ronson for the service at Edgwarebury Cemetery in north London. Media personality Kelly Osbourne was one of several women to wear their hair piled beehive-high in an echo of the singer's trademark style.

Fans and photographers thronged the lane outside, but the funeral was for several hundred friends and family only.

Mitch Winehouse told mourners that his late daughter had recently found love and had beaten her drug dependency three years before her death, but he admitted she was still struggling to control her drinking after several weeks of abstinence.

"She said, 'Dad I've had enough of drinking, I can't stand the look on your and the family's faces anymore.'" Mitch Winehouse said.

He said Amy had been playing her drums and singing in the home the night before her death.

"But knowing she wasn't depressed, knowing she passed away, knowing she passed away happy, it makes us all feel better," he said, adding that he hopes to set up an Amy Winehouse Foundation that would help people beat substance abuse.

The cab driver and jazz singer, who helped foster his daughter's love of music, ended his eulogy with the words "Goodnight, my angel, sleep tight. Mummy and Daddy love you ever so much."

The Jewish service was led by a rabbi and included prayers in English and Hebrew.

It ended with a rendition of Carole King's "So Far Away," one of Winehouse's favorite songs.

"Mitch was funny, he told some great stories from childhood about how headstrong she was, and clearly the family and friends recognized the stories and laughed along," said family spokesman Chris Goodman.

"He stressed so many times she was happier now than she had ever been and he spoke about her boyfriend and paid tribute to a lot of people in her life."

Family friend Alfie Ezekiel, 55, said the service had been a "joyful" celebration of the singer's life.

"Mitch gave a very good eulogy and he managed to get through it very well, considering," he said.

Close family and friends including Winehouse's recent boyfriend, Reg Traviss — moved on to Golders Green Crematorium, where the singer was cremated.

Several mourners, including Ronson who co-produced Winehouse's breakthrough album "Back to Black" looked emotional as they left the red brick structure, which has seen the cremations of thousands of ordinary Londoners and many celebrities, including psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, comedian Peter Sellers and drummer Keith Moon of The Who.

The family was then due to hold two days of shiva, a Jewish traditional period of mourning.

The soul diva, who had battled alcohol and drug addiction for years, was found dead Saturday at her London home. She was 27.

An autopsy held Monday failed to determine what caused her death. Police are awaiting the results of toxicology tests, which will take two to four weeks.

Winehouse released only two albums in her short career winning five Grammy awards for "Back to Black" and often made headlines because of drug and alcohol abuse, eating disorders, destructive relationships and abortive performances.

Since her death, her records have re-entered album charts around the world, and tributes have poured in from fans and fellow musicians.

George Michael called her "the most soulful vocalist this country has ever seen," and soul singer Adele said she "paved the way for artists like me and made people excited about British music again."

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Amy Winehouse's devastated parents formally identified her body on Monday and visited mourners outside her north London home to thank them for their support, as examiners conducted an autopsy to determine the cause of the troubled singer's death at the age of 27.

A coroner opened and adjourned an inquest into the unexplained death, leaving Winehouse's family free to plan her funeral. A private family service could be held as early as Tuesday.

The singer's father, Mitch Winehouse, thanked people for coming to lay bouquets, candles and handwritten notes, which lay in growing mounds across the road from the Victorian house where the soul diva died.

"I can't tell you what this means to us it really is making this a lot easier for us," he said.

"We're devastated and I'm speechless but thanks for coming."

The singer's mother, Janis, was in tears as she examined the flowers, candles, vodka bottles, flags, drawings and handwritten cards left by neighbors, fans and well-wishers. Many of the offerings expressed the same sentiment: "What a waste."

"I'll remember her as a troubled soul," said fan Ethna Rouse, who brought her 4-year-old son to leave a bouquet. "Like many artists in the world they are tortured souls, and that's where the talent comes from."

The singer died Saturday after publicly struggling with drug and alcohol abuse for years. Her body was discovered at home by a member of her security team, who called an ambulance. It arrived too late to save her.

Police have said her death is being treated as "unexplained" but not suspicious, and have said speculation that she might have suffered an overdose was inappropriate.

Police said an autopsy was being held Monday afternoon, and results would be announced later in the day or on Tuesday.

An inquest into the death was opened and adjourned at London's St. Pancras Coroner's Court. During the two-minute hearing, an official read out the name, birth date and address of Winehouse, described as "a divorced lady living at Camden Square NW1."

"She was a singer songwriter at the time of her death and was identified by her family here at St. Pancras this morning," said coroner's officer Sharon Duff.

Duff said a forensic post-mortem was being held, along with histology and toxicology tests, to determine the cause of death. She said "the scene was investigated by police and determined non-suspicious."

In Britain, inquests are held to establish the facts whenever someone dies violently or in unexplained circumstances.

Assistant Deputy Coroner Suzanne Greenaway said Winehouse's inquest would resume on Oct. 26.

The singer had battled addiction to drugs and alcohol for years, too often making headlines for erratic behavior, destructive relationships and abortive performances.

Actor Russell Brand, a former drug addict, wrote a lengthy tribute in which he urged the media and public to change the way addiction is perceived "not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill."

"Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction," he wrote. "Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death."

Last month, Winehouse canceled her European comeback tour after she swayed and slurred her way through barely recognizable songs in her first show in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Booed and jeered off stage, she flew home and her management said she would take time off to recover.

Her last public appearance came three days before her death, when she briefly joined her goddaughter, singer Dionne Bromfield, on stage at The Roundhouse in Camden, near her home.

Winehouse released only two albums in her lifetime 2003's "Frank" and the chart-topping "Back to Black" in 2006. Both shot up the music charts as fans bought them to remember her by.

Gennaro Castaldo of music chain HMV said "Back to Black" was the retailer's best-selling album.

It was also iTunes' No. 1 album in more than a dozen countries including the U.S., Britain, France, Germany and Canada.

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Amy Winehouse released only two albums in her life, one of which sold more than a million copies, won five Grammys and sparked a retro soul movement that hasn't yet stopped.

The small output, in inverse relation to her outsized talent, made her death Saturday in London all the more tragic. Fans will only be able to imagine the unrecorded singles, the never-to-be concerts and the comeback album that didn't come.

It's a sadly familiar script in pop music, the history of which is checkered with greats and would-be greats snuffed out too early in life. Almost as soon as news of Winehouse's death broke and spread across social media, fans were inducting her into the unfortunate pantheon of music talents gone too soon. Many noted that Winehouse, 27, shared the same age at death as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison.

The British singer-songwriter Billy Bragg, though, realized that a meaningful commonality was being mistaken for coincidence. "It's not age that Hendrix, Jones, Joplin, Morrison, Cobain & Amy have in common," wrote Bragg on Twitter. "It's drug abuse, sadly."

Those names were touted on the Web as the 27 Club, a ghoulish glamourizing of rock star death that makes it sound as though even in death VIPs remain behind a seductive velvet rope.
It's a term, sometimes called the Forever 27 Club, that has spawned a Wikipedia entry, an independent 2008 movie ("The 27 Club"), numerous websites and at least one book ("The 27s: The Greatest Myth of Rock & Roll").

The causes of death vary. Jones, the Rolling Stones guitarist, was found dead at the bottom of his swimming pool in 1969 and was ruled dead "by misadventure." Hendrix, having mixed sleeping pills and wine, died in 1970 in a London hotel room. Joplin, also in 1970, died at Los Angeles' Landmark Hotel, with heroin the culprit. Morrison died of heart failure in 1971 in the bathtub of his Paris apartment. Cobain killed himself in 1994.

Some have claimed Cobain was aware of the so-called 27 Club. After his death, his mother, Wendy O'Connor, was understandably fed up with the concept, saying: "I told him not to join that stupid club." The cause of Winehouse's death is not yet known. An autopsy is scheduled for Monday.
She long struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. Last month, she canceled her European comeback tour after she swayed and slurred her way through barely recognizable songs in her first show in the Serbian capital, Belgrade. She flew home, and her management said she would take time off to recover.

What's particular about Winehouse's style of rock 'n' roll excess is that it was chronicled thoroughly by the tabloids and news media and was eagerly consumed by readers.
High-quality photographs captured her poor health, the scabs on her face and marks on her arms. Videos of her landed on the Internet, like one that showed her and Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty playing with newborn mice. Another showed her singing a racist ditty to the tune of a children's song. One, published by a tabloid newspaper, appeared to show her smoking crack cocaine.

Her run-ins with the law she was cautioned by the police in 2008 for assault and in 2010 pleaded guilty to assaulting a theater manager who asked her to leave a family Christmas show because she'd had too much to drink found headlines. So did her romances, such as her brief marriage in 2007 to music industry hanger-on Blake Fielder-Civil.

Rarely, though, were Winehouse's troubles romantic or appealing. Though a thoroughly captivating presence all beehive and tattoos and candor Winehouse always cut a desperate figure. Her struggles with substances and bipolar disorder (she said she declined to take medication for it) were painfully evident.

In death, her famous boast of "no, no, no" to rehab only sounds empty. The hard truths of addiction don't fit neatly into pop tunes or morbid 27 Clubs but play out over years of toil.
Early death typically mythologizes pop stars, inflating their reputation. Pop culture writer Chuck Klosterman, in his book "Killing Yourself to Live," wondered why "the greatest career move any musician can make is to stop breathing."

The posthumous releases from Winehouse will surely follow, and her legacy will grow. But hopefully mythologizing will be resisted.
Winehouse's death, an unfortunate but unsurprising end to a long, public decline, might be best remembered not just as another tragic loss but as a modern portrait of how untrue those rock myths really are.

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Amy Winehouse hadn't released an album in four years, hadn't had a hit in just as long, and when she performed on stage, the headlines she usually drew were for atrocious performances. She was an addict who, like so many performers before her, let her talents fall prey to a drugged-up lifestyle. Still, she transfixed.

Tabloids chronicled her many tribulations, and fans patiently waited for a third album, knowing that with that amazing voice, along with her bitterly honest lyrics, she could eventually return to form and be that riveting singer-songwriter who captured the world's attention with the self-revelatory "Rehab."

But on Saturday, as Winehouse's body was removed from her London apartment, it became clear that that much-anticipated rebirth from the depths of ruin would not occur.
With Winehouse's death at age 27 joining the ranks of drug-addled rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison, who died at the same age she is in danger of being remembered as a caricature, a life embodied one signature song, "Rehab."
But perhaps now, we can appreciate her for what she was a dazzling, versatile singer blessed with a mind that produced lyrics that were coarse, hilarious, heartbreaking and revelatory, and always spellbinding.

Just as Winehouse was so much more than a drug addict, her music was so much more and richer than "Rehab." Certainly, it was the song that made her a worldwide sensation it also captured her record and song of the year at the Grammys in 2008. But the former teen celebrity came into her own as an artist a few years before, with the 2003 album "Frank." Whereas "Black to Black" relied heavily on a retro, 1960s soul groove, "Frank" harkened to an even earlier time. On the album, she enveloped a world inhabited by jazz greats like Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington, yet decidedly modern: One song was titled "(Expletive) Me Pumps."
Her malleable voice had great range, and expertly embodied the emotion of the moment from sassy defiance to lovelorn longing.

The album made her a hit in her native Britain, and also made the spotlight white-hot on the singer, and her apparent demons.
Tabloids chronicled her drunken behavior, drug use, dramatic weight loss, and troubled love life was around this time she became involved with Blake Fielder-Civil, who would later become her husband, as well as her drug partner.

Though Winehouse would remain a fixture in the press, it would more than three years for "Back to Black," her next album, to come out. A triumph when it debuted in Britain in late 2006, its release in the United States was highly anticipated: At one intimate showcase before its release, VIPs like Jay-Z showed up to get a listen to the much-heralded performer.
Musically, Winehouse delivered. The album was considered one of the best of that year, and will likely be considered as one of the best of her generation. Delving into her own warped mindset, the album chronicled her troubled romantic life and the despair over it with sultry brilliance: Her drug troubles only took center stage once, on "Rehab" (A song "Addicted," about her love of marijuana, was left off the album's American edition).

"Rehab" was the album's biggest single, becoming a top 10 hit in the United States. While the album didn't spawn any follow-up hits, it was a cohesive gem that transfixed the music world.
Although she was a musical triumph, she became better known to the masses worldwide for her precipitous decline into the depths of drug addiction. When she put out "Back to Black," she declared herself sober: by the end of 2007, she was dealing with troubles with the law, failed attempts at rehab, erratic behavior, and canceled concerts.
Still, she was the belle of the Grammys in 2008 as she captured five trophies, including two of the night's most prestigious trophies for "Rehab." The fact that she could not attend the Los Angeles ceremony because she was in rehab and performed from London after getting a brief reprieve from her facility only crystallized her reputation as an extremely fragile, self-destructive persona.

The night, during which she won five trophies, was the highlight of her life, and a moment she could never recapture.
Instead of taking the path toward sobriety, Winehouse descended into more drug-induced madness. She appeared at concerts sporadically, and when she did, often gave incoherent, disheveled performances that angered the crowds. At times, she also flaunted her drug use in the media.
Musically, with the exception of an occasional recording here and there, she faded into the background, as other new talentsAdele, Lady Gaga took her place as the sensation of the moment.

Still, many music fans were still waiting for her comeback. But with each moment that passed, it seemed unlikely that she would be able to get herself together for such an undertaking. Though a new album was teased for 2011, she clearly wasn't in any shape to sing; In June, she checked into a clinic that treats drug problems. Later that month, she canceled her European tour after embarrassing herself yet again with another disjointed mess of a performance in Serbia.
So, like so many deeply disturbed performers, Winehouse's life ends with no chance for another act: She becomes yet another cautionary tale that some will follow, and others choose to ignore.
But like Hendrix, Joplin, Michael Jackson, Judy Garland and other celebrities with tragic downfalls, her musical legacy though ever so brief will provide that comeback, for her musical legacy.

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Amy Winehouse canceled part of her European tour on Sunday, a day after the British singer was heavily booed for being late and displaying erratic behavior on stage during a concert in Serbia.

The concert late Saturday in the Serbian capital of Belgrade kicked off what was to be a 12-date tour of Europe. But Winehouse decided to cancel appearances in Istanbul on Monday and in Athens on Wednesday, according to a statement from publicity company Outside Organization.

Her representatives said it would be "worked out as soon as possible" whether she would attend the rest of her European tour. The next scheduled concert date after Athens is July 8 in Bilbao, Spain. The tour was to end in Bucharest, Romania, on Aug. 15.

Winehouse would like to say sorry to fans expecting to see her in Turkey and Greece, but "feels that this is the right thing to do," the statement said.

"Despite feeling sure that she wanted to fulfill these commitments, she has agreed with management that she cannot perform to the best of her ability and will return home," it added.

There was no further explanation for exactly why Winehouse was canceling.

But Winehouse, who has publicly struggled for years with drug and alcohol issues, was jeered as she performed in Belgrade. She arrived almost an hour late before stumbling to the stage and appearing unable to remember the lyrics to her songs. She dropped the microphone, mumbled through her songs and occasionally disappeared, leaving her band to keep on playing.

A video posted on YouTube shows Winehouse wildly staggering around while trying to sing and stopping several times in mid-verse, looking over to her bandmates for help. At one point, she calls over a backup singer to fill in for her.

Serbian media described the concert before 20,000 fans as a "scandal" and a "disaster." The Blic daily said the concert was "the worst in the history of Belgrade."

The crowd at Belgrade's Kalemegdan Park could hardly tell which song Winehouse was singing and responded angrily. Many walked out in disappointment.

"It was horrible," said Ivana Bilic. "She should have canceled the whole thing, rather than appear at all like this."

The Daily Blic posted a clip from the concert on its website, commenting, "Listen if you dare."

Tickets cost about euro 40 ($57) very expensive in the country where average salaries are about euro 300 ($428) a month.

Winehouse recently spent a week at a rehab program in London. Her 2006 breakthrough album "Back to Black" won five Grammy Awards, but her music in recent years has been overshadowed by her drug use and run-ins with the law.

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