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from "bazza" contains these words:

Last night I braved the torrential rain in Yorkshire to pop along to a
local nursery. This particular nursery is always worth a visit because
it has a "Buy for £1" section where they set aside the sorriest
looking plants and lets people take a risk, buy them for £1, and try
to revive them to glory.

Anyway, last night I found myself a new patient - an Amelanchier
lamarckii. Now it could be a bargain or just as easily be a waste of
£1, I'm not yet sure. It it about 1.5m tall with a single trunk about
2cm thick that bends all over the place up to about 1m high, where it
splits into about 5 branches that spread out in uneven directions.

Now here's my question... It seems (by browsing the web) that
amelanchiers will naturally tend to a multi-stemmed shrub rather than
the tree shape that it appears my specimen has been trained into. I'm
tempted to be brave, risk my £1, and cut the main stem at about 0.5m
from the ground. Is this a ridiculous idea?

No. It will almost certainly sucker from just below ground-level.
Most amelanchiers do, eventually.

They are very attractive hardy shrubs (good spring and autumn leaf
colour, flowers, berries). Although they sucker quite densely, the stems
are quite wayward and uneven as you've noticed, so the overall effect is
light and airy.

Janet