Question Celebrity

All this rehab mania -- with stars making halfhearted efforts to get clean in short, highly publicized stays at insanely expensive spa-like treatment centers -- almost makes one nostalgic for celebrities of yore, many of whom functioned quite nicely as public lushes. I wouldn't want to have been married to or fathered by any member of the Rat Pack, but there's a reason why those guys still have so many fans: They made drinking fun. And how about the ur-rockers and their drugs? What strikes me is that, in spite of whatever substances got us from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" (speed) to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (pot, LSD) to the "White Album" and "Abbey Road" (heroin, in John Lennon's case), rock superstars of the '60s remained diligent workers, churning out albums once a year. Which is not to say that Britney Spears would be making better music if she just skipped rehab entirely. (I need a drink just to listen.) Booze has been called "courage in a bottle" but never, to my knowledge, "talent in a bottle."

Comes now the very appealing and talented British jazz and pop singer Amy Winehouse. On her critically acclaimed second album, "Back to Black," which has caught on in the States this spring, she sings about her former managers' attempts to get her to cut back on her drinking: "Tried to make me go to rehab / I said, 'No, no, no' . . . / Cuz there's nothin', there's nothin' you can teach me . . ."

Winehouse, 23, is also interesting in public: She heckled Bono at an awards show (good for her). She stumbles, she falls, she shows up places with new bruises. Concerts sometimes get canceled. This is not a role model. And yet . . . something about it works, for the music and for her image. In interviews, Winehouse talks freely about her love of the bottle, including the "Rickstasy," her favorite cocktail, which she described to the Times of London last fall: three parts vodka, one part Southern Comfort, one part banana liqueur and one part Baileys, adding, "By the time you've had two of them, you're like, don't even try and go anywhere. Sit down, and stay down, until the birds start singing . . . I have a really good time some nights, but then I push it over the edge and ruin my boyfriend's night. I'm an ugly [expletive] drunk. I really am."

And people love her for it. Then, recently, I came across photos of her enjoying her stateside success, boozing it up at a table with . . . Paris Hilton. That's when you know someone's gone too far. Time for an intervention.

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