OK, here come the interviews and articles.

[Splunge]

OK, since I didn't get any complaints, I am going ahead with the Hot Press
interviews. I made it easy to print them. I just remembered that when I
was on aol more than a year ago, they did not have an 80 column window for
reading stuff. So, I apologize for the weird appearance. Hopefully, they
fixed that. The posts are configured to print easy on most any printer
that has standard courierlike font, 66 lines/page. It works fine on the HP
Laserjet IV at work.
--
--
sols...@cais.com*Splunge*Alan Salisbury*Unix Admin/MusicLover/Cyclist/Seeker
Think about it, there must be higher love
Down in the heart or hidden in the stars above
Without it, life is wasted time
Look inside your heart, I'll look inside mine

[Splunge]

TORI'S STORY

Tori Amos has rocketed to international prominence with her album
"Little Earthquakes", but behind the public success story lies the
private trauma of a young woman who was raped at the age of 22. In an
uncompromisingly honest interview with Joe Jackson, Tori talks about
that terrible experience, its lasting scars and how her music has
helped to set her free again.

For many people the process of self-denial becomes most apparent when
they speak about sex. This is particularly true of Tori Amos. At the
outset of this interview, asked about the tension between the
seemingly celebratory approach to sex which defines her public persona
and the layers of sexual guilt and revenge that fire songs like
"Precious Things" from her album "Little Earthquakes" she responds
with a strained, metaphysical explanation that lasts at least ten
minutes and has more to do with evasion than with truth.

She wouldn't deny it. The interview done, we sit talking for an hour
during which I recount the story of the 14 year-old rape victim,
originally denied the freedom to have an abortion, by the Irish state.
That grim saga strikes a chord. "Can we take a second shot at the
early part of the interview?" she asks. "I don't think we got it
right. I really do want to address that subject."

Seven hours later, after a midnight performance at Dublin's Olympia
Theatre during which she dedicated "Me and a Gun" -- a song about rape
-- to 'one particular fourteen year old Irish girl', Tori Amos spoke
for a further two hours, touching in the process at times on the same
kind of raw, unadorned truths that pulse at the heart of her best
songs.

"I do believe that we all are, fundamentally, divided creatures," she
says picking up the thread. "Emotions split from intellect, spirit
from flesh and far too often sexuality is disconnected from what we
feel, and are, as total human beings. But how, for example, can
anyone have an understanding of the virgin if they don't also have an
understanding of the prostitute, the saint and sinner in one body?
Attempting to reconcile these opposing forces in my own nature is my
goal and what I write about in songs like "Precious Things", and all
the songs on the album."

So how true to Tori Amos' early life in Washington, DC is "Precious
Things", which tells of a young girl described as "ugly", who longs to
"smash the faces of those beautiful boys/those Christian boys"?

"I was always the girl that had friends but did boys like me? *Not*
the boys I liked!" she says. "They'd say 'she's really nice and she
plays really good piano but she's also Sandy Luman's friend, can we
get *her* phone number?' (laughs). I hadn't blossomed so I was seen
as a rather nondescript nice girl, I guess."

Tori Amos' father was a Protestant minister, her grandmother a
particularly single-minded puritan. "I hated my grandmother," she
says. "She'd pound into me the idea that only evil women give away

their virginity before marriage. If you even thought about doing that
you were 'out of the kingdom of god,' she'd say.

"And so I waited a long time before giving up my virginity, because of
this feeling: 'how can I be a nice, respectable girl and want to do
this?'. And more than anything I wanted respect from men, my father
in particular. And even at that age I felt that Jesus was a real,
living presence in my life. That can be a bit of a disadvantage.
It's weird when you're giving a guy head at 15 and you're thinking
'Jesus is looking at me!'."

Did Tori ever turn that experience around and think of Jesus as a man
whom she might have seduced?

"Doing it with a priest never got me off, they wash it so often!" she
responds, laughing almost maliciously. "But doing it with Jesus, now
that is something else! Most Christian women would be trained to
think that even this thought is blasphemous. But I say that's a load
of bollix! That's how women are paralyzed, disconnected from the
source of their own power, by religion.

"I've nearly always believed that Jesus Christ really liked Mary
Magdalen and that if he was, as he claimed to be, a whole man, he had
to have sexual relations with her. So in my deepest, most private
moments I've wanted Christ to be the boyfriend I've been waiting for.
And a lot of Christian girls have a crush on Jesus. I may have felt
guilty at the thought of wanting to do it with Jesus but then I say
why not? He *was* a man."

How much is Tori Amos the slave of a patriarchal system, which begins
with the image of god the father, travels down through the image of
the father on earth and is extended through the social pressure to
take a male companion?

"You are made to believe in patriarchal systems from the start of your
life," she reflects "and then you wake up one morning and, in a rage
say 'how could you use that to withhold from me, woman, this
incomparable power?'. I think the need I had, and have, for males to
respect and accept me originally came from an overwhelming need for my
father to respond to me on that level. But he didn't respond to the
'bad girl' in me, the prostitute. So I cut her out, chopped her up
and that too adds to my being disconnected from this." She presses
clenched fists against her pelvis.

"I meet so many people who are into their heart energy yet
disconnected from their kundelini. When you're not connected to
*this* you are not whole."

On a similar theme, Tori Amos answers critics who claim that the way
in which she straddles a stool on stage, legs spread a la Jerry Lee
Lewis, may be too strong an assertion of her sexuality after a period
of denial.

"To hell with them," she says slowly unclenching her fist. "Passion.
The kundelini. Sexual energy is where I sing from. And being

reconnected to that source of energy after so long is what liberated
me on a creative level.

"I have the right to open the door, to explore and to report on what I
find, in whatever way I see fit. And I do have a real commitment to
the female, the feminine, the goddess side of my own nature. I am
Mary, the mother of god *and* the Mary Magdalen figure now."

Tori Amos pauses, glances at a copy of the last issue of _Hot Press_
which is spread across her bed then says "Let's get down to truth
here, if that's what you want. I had been denying the prostitute
side, which we all have in us. But there is a part of me that
understands Marilyn Monroe and what you wrote about her in that _Hot
Press_ article. I understand her giving it to the Mob, hot guys in
Hollywood, the cigar-smoking fat asses. *And* giving it to JFK and
Bobby Kennedy.

"And I understand Sam Giancana who wants to taste her after she's been
with Bobby and JFK because that's how those guys had relationships
with each other -- through Marilyn Monroe's pussy. It makes me angry
but it also turns me on because I've done that, I know it so well. It
was the same when I saw 'Blue Velvet' and saw that energy, a woman
being used yet having power -- false power -- in believing that she is
*wanted*, that's what asserting one's sexuality is all about. This is
how it feels to be a woman."

But how deeply liberated is Tori Amos? In "Crucify" from "Little
Earthquakes" she still sings that she's "got enough guilt to start my
own religion"?

"I have that guilt still. I'm still working through this idea of
giving myself completely to this man I'm with because he is my best
friend and someone I respect. Yet he is also someone I need to slam
me against a wall and fuck me. And love me as well. The concept of
both being part of the one relationship is still hard for me to
accept. Because I've been taught that being fucked against a wall, or
anywhere, is not love.

"Who the fuck thought up *that* idea? That notion has kept marriages
from working, people from giving to each other and both sexes under
control for centuries."

Tori Amos reveals that a large measure of the sexual guilt which
enslaved her in her mid-20's had its roots in a rape that took place
when she was 22, and which she writes about in the song "Me and a
Gun".

"I sang 'holy holy' as he buttoned down his pants/Me and a gun and a
man on my back/But I haven't seen Barbados so I must get out of
this/Yes I wore a slinky red thing/Does that mean I should spread for
you, your friends, your father, Mr. Ed?".

"I wrote that song after I saw the movie 'Thelma and Louise' which
brought back an experience I hadn't talked about for about five
years," she says. "But as I was writing the song other voices rose,
other voices that had opinions on what had happened. It was then I

realized that the biggest mistake I made was not seeking help from
people who understood. "But then nobody was there for me on the night
it happened. I had to call the East Coast and wake people up to talk.
I called 20 people. I talked about it for roughly seven days and then
just cut off the experience, not knowing that in doing that, I was
letting it take control of me inside."

How does a woman re-connect with her own body after rape and *not*
associate sex with violence?

"That's the core problem," she says. "If I'd sought help that would
have been different, I'm sure. That's what a woman should do. But
sexually what happened to me was that I couldn't respond to a guy at
all. I broke off the relationship I was having with a man, the next
day. I'd been with him for two and a half years yet I started ranting
and raving and telling him I didn't want him in my life. I then
turned to a male friend and though he wanted me to go to the police I
said 'But I'm never going to find that person again'.

"I also didn't think I had a case. I don't want to go into the
details but you've read my lyrics, you know I look at things from as
many angles as possible. So, even then I could see it from the other
side. Nothing would have happened to the guy! And he would have
known more about me than he did. Yes that means he's out there
somewhere and yes he may do it with another woman. But he'd have done
it anyway.

"It wasn't a cut and dried case. With American law as it is and the
fact that I'm an entertainer and the kind of performer I was -- like
Michelle Pfeiffer in 'The Baker Boys' -- I knew I was going to be set
up. And I was not going to be a victim of another experience. But
what happened then was that I became a victim of myself."

Did "Thelma and Louise" make Tori Amos feel she would have killed the
rapist given the chance?

"You *know* I would have killed him if I could have, yes. But I was
busier trying not to get killed," she says. "But sure, when she
killed him in 'Thelma and Louise' do you think I had remorse?
Absolutely none. And if he walked into this room now, would I kill
him? No. Because I wouldn't want to make it that easy for him. But
any man who gets killed raping someone has crossed the line."

Tori pauses, sits in silence for a while then smiles. "But I didn't
kill him. I finally wrote a song about it instead and *that* has
given me the freedom. 'Me and a Gun' is *not* about him. It's more
about me forgiving myself. That's why my music now is so therapeutic,
so cathartic for me. I made a commitment not to be a victim again, by
writing and by singing as often as I can 'Me and a Gun'.

"It's like I refuse now to be a victim of my own guilt. I refuse to
be a victim of not having a wonderful sexual experience again. And
you are a victim when you can't allow yourself to have sexual pleasure
again. I refuse to put all men in the same category, as I was doing.
When something like that happens you do want to punish men, punish the

ones that crushed the flower. But no one should choose to hold onto
that hatred. It choked me.

"Sexually, I feel I won't be able to give completely and love to the
extent, say, that I will want to have kids with him, for quite some
time yet. I couldn't even consider that for a few years. I'm only
beginning to fulfill myself now because I'm beginning to accept, and
love, the parts of me, of woman, that I was trained to hate all my
life. Particularly the bad girl I still can be."

In the meantime attempting to re-connect with the child in herself is
a primary concern for Tori Amos. It's also a motif running through
the album and a metaphor used in the video for "Silent All These
Years". Not surprisingly, in this context, she empathizes with the
recent plight of Ireland's fourteen-year-old rape victim.

"The greater rape is what the State did to that girl. She is defiled
by a man sexually and then, having suffered the original experience,
she is defiled again by the State. And you know why? Because the
Church and the State are so afraid that if they acknowledge the truth
a hundred doors will burst open and they will lose control. But they
are choking themselves to death. Because divine law is being broken
here.

"First that girl's choice was taken away in rape and then it was taken
away, to begin with, by the State. That is the sickness that cripples
women, male energy at its worst. And if we, as women, don't rebel
against the way in which the Church and State have conspired to
control our sexuality we'll never reach a point of self-evolvement.
And evolution, in any sense, has nothing to do with enforcing guilt,
with this horrific cross they have stuck between that girl's legs.

"Jesus Christ has nothing to do with that and it has nothing to do
with Jesus Christ and don't let anyone tell me that it has. The cross
has been used as a weapon, as it has been used against all women
throughout the ages. And that's the greatest evil of all."

But wouldn't the so-called Pro-Life groups suggest that the State's
original decision to block an abortion has everything to do with Jesus
Christ?

"It has nothing to do with a core concept of Christianity," argues
Tori Amos. "And it has nothing at all to do with the children, in the
broadest sense. If it does why don't those people go down to the
back-streets of Dublin where children really need their help. Or go
down to Colombia where children live in sewers? There are millions of
children who *need* help. So this is the greatest abuse of the words
'pro-life', they are *not* for life. This is about control of a
woman's sexuality because they can't stand the idea that we are saying
we are *not* just incubators anymore. And we're not even going to
pretend that we are. We're *not* breeding farms.

"Many men, even some women, might like to think we are. But their
misguided, misdirected energy is probably based more on their own
guilt. Yet when somebody tries to have that kind of control over
another person's conscience, we're talking about concentration camps

here. There's no greater enslavement. So anyone who looks at that
position closely must see it's not about the children at all, and it's
more often anti-life than pro-life."

One can tell from the cheers Tori Amos receives during her concerts
that she is undoubtedly articulating what many women are feeling on
this subject right now.

"I hope so," she says, smiling, "although a lot of the rage I
perceive, say, in some women writers often seems to stem from self-
loathing. I write from that point of view at times. It angers us all
that we were all victims for so long. But the point is that only
ourselves can claim back the power. Let's forget all this talk about
men giving it back to us. We have to give it to ourselves. And the
men that respect this will be in our lives, those that don't will be
*out*."

Tori Amos laughs. "Your first question was, in part, about my
'celebratory' approach to sexuality," she says. "Well 'Little
Earthquakes' is all about celebration. Celebrating the ability to
laugh, weep, and scream, particularly if you have been silent for
years. And so it's about celebrating sexuality in the widest sense,
including the elements of revenge. As in 'Precious Things' where I
say to the guy 'So you can make me cum/that doesn't make you Jesus'.

"Just because I'm with a man and because I'm creaming for a man
doesn't make him a master, doesn't even necessarily make him worthy of
love, of *my* love. And I now realize, maybe for the first time in my
life, that my capacity for love is incredibly deep and that for me to
give this to a man he has to fully understand, and respect what that
means.

"Too few do. They're into pillaging, rummaging around, doing a little
Viking stuff! But most women these days realize that's not enough,
boys! And if some women don't then I hope songs like 'Precious
Things' will help open their eyes. And, just as importantly, help
open the eyes of some men.

"I'd be quite happy, as an artist, if I knew that a verse, even a line
in one of my songs could do for people what 'Thelma and Louise' did
for me, liberate them in some way, particularly from a fear of the
darker side of their own nature. What is any art form worth if it
doesn't do that? Isn't that what all great art is all about?"

[Splunge]

The Hurt Inside
by Joe Jackson

Tori Amos smiles mischievously and whispers "dare me to go under that
table to get it back!" I do. And she does, without asking permission
of our fellow diners in a plush London restaurant. They smile
nervously as she resurfaces mumbling something about having lost her
bottle top. Still staring as she fastens the cap back onto the bottle
of mineral water, they are clearly thinking 'that woman is weird.'
Commentators who are prone to similarly superficial character
analysis in the world of rock'n'roll have also slapped much the same
label on Tori Amos since she first burst into the charts nearly two
years ago, singing what Vox described at the time as "loony tunes." Q
headlined its first feature on the woman "Weird Chick", a doubly
insulting concept that has since been pushed by most music papers who
persist in presenting Tori as a person who has obviously lost more
than her bottle top.
Indeed this simple-minded perception has become so predominant
that the press release accompanying Tori's latest album, Under the
Pink, opens with the quote: "I don't see myself as weird, I just see
myself as honest. That's just the way I am. I find the truth
endlessly interesting." This, too, is how I see Tori, having spent at
least ten hours in her company for this and my original Hot Press
interview with her in 1991, and having talked with her in an out-of-
interview context on the telephone many times since then. She is,
without any doubt, one of the most honest, self-analytical, truth-
seeking women I have ever known.
"Let me just talk to you at first, tell you what's really been
happening to me, then we can begin," she says, subverting the
interview process neatly at the outset. Later, she agrees that many
of those original disclosures should form part of the interview.
Equally, there are bound to be those who will still insist that Tori
Amos is a "weird" and "disturbed" woman endlessly rambling on about
all manner of taboo subjects-including masturbation, sexual fantasies
about Christ and rape-rather than endlessly seeking truth. Such
claims strike me as not only irredeemably reductive but profoundly
insulting also, reflecting a fundamental misunderstanding of the
nature of self-expression in the 20th century, particularly among
women and specifically in relation to art.
Forget the superficial, stylistic similarities between Tori's
work and that of Kate Bush: her oragnic style of self-expression can
be traced back through the post-punk rage of Patti Smith, and the
similarly "disturbed" songpoetry of Dory Previn to the kind of demons
that drove Sylvia Plath to her death.
During a time which is defined by the ways in which women are
wrenching from patriarchal power-structures the right to fully express
themselves, she is the personification of that force, and has even
written what could be an anthem for the age: "Silent All These Years",
from her second album, Little Earthquakes. Her first album was an
ill-fated, semi-heavy metal release, Y Kant Tori Read.
Tori Amos was born in North Carolina, the daughter of a Methodist
preacher, and has been playing piano since the age of two and a half.
Between the ages of five and eleven she was trained at the prestigious
Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and grew up with the music of Fats
Waller, Nat King Cole, John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix. On one of the
singles of Cornflake Girl she includes her version of Hendrix's "If

Six Were Nine", playing her piano through a Marshall amp. She also
sings Joni Mitchell's "A Case of You" and Billie Holiday's "Strange
Fruit". Why those songs?
"To show that all things are possible, and permissible, for me,
as a singer-songwriter," she explains. "They're my roots. Joni was
part of my life from the moment I heard her. And on the single I want
to move from the Keith Jarret jazz plus reggae undertones in
"Cornflake Girl" into Joni's "A Case of You" and make it a seduction,
heightening the undertone that was always there, when a woman sings to
a man "I could drink a case of you!"(laughs) And what Jimi Hendrix
represented to me was 'be all that you are'. I had idolized Jesus
Christ and then it was Hendrix. There's no difference in terms of the
force of the feeling. And "Strange Fruit" is there because that is
the South, where I was born and raised and here I directly experienced
that kind of racism myself. As a white woman in the South I
experienced many forms of racial hatred, deeply, and my grandfather
did, because of his Cherokee background. I understand the energy of
those racial tensions so well and that's what I tapped into for
"Strange Fruit" which I recorded one morning at 5:30 am, having been
called out of bed by the forces, to do so."
Tori knows that this talk about being summoned by "the forces"
will indeed seem "weird" to those who do not believe in the power of
the spirit, particularly as defined within Native American culture.
However, her allegiance to this side of her family history is so
strong that when I tell her about the Native American singer-
songwriter Bill Miller she immediately makes a note to try to get him
to support her on her forthcoming American tour (which she
subsequently does).
"It's so fitting that you should tell me that you first saw him
when he was singing "Home on the Range", in Nashville because I've
just recorded that song for release on a future single," she says
before crossing her room to play a powerful, bitterly ironic version
of that song on her hi-fi system.
"I really don't worry about people not understanding what I said
to you about being called by 'the forces'" she says, sitting back down
on her sofa. "When he'd talk about the blacks and the whites fighting
one another my papa would always paraphrase that Indian saying, by
telling me "they can't understand each other because you never have
to, until you walk in another man's moccasins'. If people can't see
things from the other side that's not my problem, it's theirs. And
that really applies to racial tensions in America still. The deepest
psychic wound in our country is the genocide perpetrated on Native
Americans. The deepest root of our country is being denied and we are
a people dislocated from ourselves, our past. We can never be whole
until there is re-integration at that level."
From James Joyce through Schoenberg and Picasso to U2 the theme
of the dislocated self in search of re-integration has been a defining
factor in art this century. This, claims Tori, is also the central
theme of her new album Under the Pink. "This record is about the
search for wholeness and clearly focuses on divisions, even in
"Cornflake Girl" which is about Cornflake girls and Raisin girls and
they represent two different ways of thinking: narrow-mindedness and
openmindedness and how narrow-minded women betray the rest of us.
That division is even there between women, which is something I've
really had to come to terms with. It is often women who say I

shouldn't express myself as I do and in that sense, women let each
other down, not men."
How does Tori respond when she sees those reviews of her new
album which dismiss her as a "weird chick" or reduce her to a sex
object?
"It's a classic case of control, don't you think?," she says. "In
the States I'm presented as a sex object and questions in interviews
usually focus on that and in Britain I'm 'weird'. Either description
is a copout and an easy way of avoiding having to face what I'm
really talking about in my songs or really want to talk about during
my interviews. And, again, it is harder for me to deal with women do
it. And they do it a lot, particularly in America, just write about
my being a 'sex symbol' whatever that is."
A sex symbol is usually a celebrity whom fans want to fuck, to
put it bluntly. How does Tori deal with it when she is confronted by
such fans?
"I understand that they don't want to fuck me, they want to fuck
themselves. Let's take it to its most naked form here. They see an
energy that they want to be a part of. Forget about the journalists,
they have another agenda. But the people in my audience really do, I
believe, want to tap into the energy force I've awakened in themselves
and they feel a oneness at that level, which is something higher than
simply sex."
"I've wanted to fuck guys who had a primitive energy on stage but
once I meet them and talk with them I realize I don't really want to
fuck them but I want to get close to where they're coming from. I
talked about this to a wise woman in the desert and she said "you want
to suck his energy, isn't that what you want?" and that's what it's
all about to me."
What would Tori say to those who might respond that fucking is
indeed just about the physical pleasure involved, particularly a fan's
fantasy of fucking her, or his, hero?
"To me that's a whole different thing, like someone needing to
own, to possess someone else's energy, to fulfill something in
themselves that is empty. Why do we have heroes in the first place?
To compensate for what we lack in ourselves. It shouldn't come down
to the act of fucking.
"To tell you the truth I can't deal with the fact that some fans
would just perceive me that way. They don't have a clue about all my
problems that are involved, in terms of my sexuality. If they did,
perhaps they'd change their minds!"

Tori Amos, like that other sex symbol Eartha Kitt, is a woman who
admits that she herself doesn't get much pleasure from her own body,
sexually. In Tori's case this is her response to being raped when she
was 22, a trauma she still is trying to deal with on a daily basis.
She reveals that her problems in this area were compounded over the
past year when she was diagnosed as having cervical cancer.
"I had a procedure done and, for a while, I thought it had spread
further than it had," she says. "But it wasn't malignant it was
benign, meaning that the cancer was stopped. Yet what also happened
to me in New Mexico, where I went to write, and record, this album,
was that at one point I was spraying Pledge polish in a cupboard and I
inhaled it and I got a lung infection which meant I couldn't speak, or
sing, for three weeks. And I really thought my voice was damaged

forever and had to do voice lessons on the phone, with this voice
teacher to try and get the natural cortisone back in the cords.
"I was thinking 'what if I never sing again?' Then I'd say "if I
can't sing what's the point in being alive, is this person worth
anything at all?" And there were moments where the only answer to that
question was 'no'. Then I'd give in to the self-pity that comes out
in the song PGY, and in the lyric "They say you were something in
those formative years".
Did Tori Amos really believe that if she is unable to sing, or
play the piano, there is no point in being alive?
"At one point I really did,Joe. And part of it was "do I want
that girl around if she can't express herself through music?" Is she
worth anything at all? You know what the song SATY is about. You can
see the irony, right? There I was, having found a voice to express
myself and suddenly I'm silenced by an accident? That was pretty
creepy, to tell you the truth."
During her time in New Mexico, Tori also had to try and come to
terms with the silencing of her own sexual energy, a question she
couldn't help but relate to the development of cervical cancer in her
body and the lingering after-shocks from being raped.
"Being in that place in north New Mexico I was forced to come to
terms with myself on every level," she explains. "And what I
definitely had to come to terms with is my violence and my
withholding, from myself, of my sexuality and how I'd withdrawn from
passion in my own life. I know I wrote about my experience of rape in
"MAAG", but it's another thing to relly go back inside myself and see
how that experience seeped into my cells, how the disease has spread.
"A part of me has been unable to open up intimately since I wrote
MAAG . After so many years I wondered what was it in me that cannot
be juicy, that is so dry, except when I play music? I can go out and
channel this energy during a show yet the moment I walk backstage
afterwards I close down, sexually. And in New Mexico I did finally
realize that I have to take responsibility for the fact that the man
who originally violated me is not stopping me now- I am. But, still,
there is a part of me that hasn't been able to open up since I came to
terms with MAAG. And without Eric(Rosse), my boyfriend, I couldn't
work my way through it right now." At this point Tori begins to cry
gently. She insists, however, on continuing.
"I never talk about this and it helps the healing process to do
so. Because people out there must be told about the self-loathing
that follows rape and how it's the greatest breakage in divine law to
mutilate themselves, as I have done. emotionally, I mutilated myself
by feeling I'm not worthy of being loved and fucked, and being able
to love and fuck at the same time. I was straining toward the
reconciliation the last time we talked but the last frontier was
crossed when I got the illness. At that point I had to deal with so
much trauma in that part of my body and psyche. I do believe
repression of that nature can cause the disease."
Tori pauses and having gathered her emotions again goes on.
"I also feel that the great frontier was crossed when I
confronted my own violence, which is also what the album UTP is all
about. Even though I had been working my way out of that violent
experience I realized that I would remain a victim of it until I
recognized the violence in myself. And my willingness to give up my
Victims Anonymous badge followed my realizing that the withholding of
passion and pleasure, from myself, was a form of self-violence.

"I told you before that seeing the movie "Thelma and Lousie",
years after the rape, finally made me feel like I wanted to kill that
man but, instead, I now realize that what I did was kill a part of
myself. I already had the hatred that women feel for themselves in
the Christian Church in terms of their sexual response: that tyranny
of believing that love is one thing and lust another, instead of being
able to join them together. That was where I first began to be
segregated, within myself."
"On top of that I took from the rape that man's hatred of women,
so much so that I couldn't access parts of myself. It's as though a
computer chip has been put in , to cut out contact with your core
self, your central energy source. And that hatred ran so deep that I
just numbed myself to survive. Even sexually, after the rape, I
became the vampire, I drank but would not let the men drink. And I
had to be a hooker to have sex. having felt I let myself, and all
women, down because of my total vulnerability the night I was raped.
I then had to continually tell myself I was in complete control, so I
had to feel like I was getting paid."
"Even in Baker, Baker, on this album, it says I'm the one who was
endlessly unavailable, to Eric, even when having sex. And now the
only way I'm getting out of all this is with him. The only way back
now having taken so much hatred from one man is to accept so much love
from another. But it's a long, slow process."
Having paused again, and sipped from that ever-present bottle of
Perrier water, Tori picks up the threads of conversation, balancing
syllables as though each one contained a central truth about her life.
"Okay, let's get to the core of it all. What this means is that
Eric has to say 'I am not the man that raped you and I will not accept
that concept.' When we make love he'll leave the lights on and say
'look at me, what's my name?' and I'll say his name. And even more
importantly, he'll say 'what am I doing? I'm fucking you, say it."
"And I'd try to say 'you're fucking me'. Then he'll hold me as
tightly as he can and say 'And I love you, I adore you, I treasure
you'. So I am healing that way. And we're healing, because as you
can imagine, I am hardly an easy woman to lie with. Or to love. But
I am finally ceasing to see myself as a victim, which is the only way
out of all this."
Is Tori suggesting that feminists such as Andrea Dworkin are,
therefore, 'victims' because they perceive all acts of intercourse
between men and women as rape?
"As women we are simply shaming men by saying 'all men are
rapists' and I don't believe in shame. That's just Christianity in
another guise, shame as a form of disease, a poison. As a woman I
refuse to buy into that any more. So when Andrea Dworkin says that
any form of intercourse between men and women is, by it's very nature,
rape she is being a victim, yes. And, by extension, she's also saying
that all women are powerless, which, of course, I don't believe.
Women have got to see beyond those easy labels too, and men. Besides
that kind of talk is just the language of violence, which is not, now,
how I choose to communicate."
Tori Amos accepts nonetheless that women these days do
increasingly perceive men in general as, if not potential rapists,
then 'the enemy'. And that the war between the sexes is escalating
day by day.
"That's another reason I wrote this record,"she explains. "This
record and LE both come from the center of that war zone! But my

position differs from a lot of the more militant feminist because all
they are concerned about is just the position of women, in the
universe, women re-defining their roles. That's fascism. And that
form of fascism is not empowerment at all. I've lost women friends
over this argument, in the past year. Because all they do is blame
men and become bitter because they are dominated, while still allowing
themselves to be dominated, in ways. But that's basically because
they haven't healed the place within themselves that remains both
masculine and feminine, is part woman, part man and needs both halves
to be in harmony."
"I just can't accept it when the blanket response of my women
friends is simply 'all men are bastards, let's just cut them out of
our lives, be rid of that male energy completely.' And it's really
disappointing on a personal level because my friends were not
cornflake girls, not closed-minded rigid creatures, but raisin girls,
who claimed to be open-minded and liberated. But they're the ones
that have turned out to be the most reactionary, the most
disappointing in terms of feminism. They are fascists. And I don't
want fascists in my life. I've had this idyllic view of the
sisterhood that has been shattered over the past year, that they would
never betray each other. But I was wrong and that's what I write
about in some songs on the new album."
Tori's recent sense of betrayal was, she says, deep enough to
connect her with an awareness of what she describes as 'women's hatred
for women.'
"The fact is that women have betrayed one another. I agree with
Alice Walker when she talks about the cellular memory that is passed
down, which all women have to come to terms with. Whether it is the
women taking the daughters to the butchers to have their genitalia
removed, or the mothers that bound the feet of the daughters, it is
often women who betray their own kind, not just men. Likewise the
mother who sells her eight year old daughter in Egypt, to the Saudi
Prince, or, as I said, women who say I shouldn't express myself as I
have chosen to.
"That's why I say CFG is about how I came to terms with the naive
notion that all women are the good guys and men are always the bad
guys. That, obviously, is not always the case. I still feel so much
love for my women friends, nothing I more sacred to me than that,
except my relationship with Eric. So when we turn on each other it
has to be devastating."
"Whenever they would seemingly instinctively attack men, or
whatever, I'd have to say, I don't automatically feel that way, I'm
trying to rise above such feelings. Hatred for men, en masse, is as
poisonous a feeling as shame. And Bells for Her is the scream of "no"
before you cut the chord and let them go. The song "Anastasia" also
has a lot of that stuff in it."

But surely Tori can empathize with women who do still feel the need to
instinctively attack men, as symptoms of the patriarchal power
structures that have oppressed women since the beginning of time.
"Fine, that may be a necessary first step in the journey but let's
hope the true goal of those women is self-fulfillment, not just a need
to see men crawl as women have been made to crawl for centuries.
"Women must understand that simply attacking or hating all men is
just another form of disempowerment. A woman has to realize that when
she makes a man crawl it doesn't give her power. All it will do is

make her puke, eventually. Rather than say 'all men are bastards'
let's say 'all men are infants, until they decide to be men'. Calling
them bastards is boring at this stage. It's kindergarten stuff, in
terms of feminism. Let's hope we've moved on from that, from name
calling, and making men crawl. That's kiddie behavior.
"But, sure, what you say is true, And let's be fair here. Women
have walked the hot coals for a long time and when there is no let up
on the oppression, men have to accept that they created Dobermans and
now they have to live with the consequences of that. If men want to
heal then they have to take responsibility for what they've created,
and are creating, which is, in ways, a race of women who are growing
more and more to despise, reject, or try to annihilate them. How many
times can men slap, and slap, and slap women down before they do turn
around and say 'wait a minute, motherfucker."
"Men have had their boots on womens' necks for centuries and now
we are going to speak, in whatever way we choose. I understand all
that but I reject any suggestion that the only way I now can talk is
to use the language of hatred and violence. Though I understand those
women who are saying 'you guys can come to the table or be dragged!"
Yet surely some women have every right to say 'we simply don't
want men at the table' or in our lives or in our beds.'
"Okay, if it's come to that, it's come to that," she says. "And
that's what probably scares most men even more, the thought that women
are saying they are a redundant species, unnecessary on every level.
But that too is a form of violence, a form of mummification, and
severing of a woman's own full potential. Those women shouldn't cut
the life force off, just to prove a point, politically. Lesbians, of
course, often make that choice anyway."
Has Tori ever considered having a lesbian relationship?
"I have a dear friend who's not diesel but she's definitely dyke
and I feel like we are very good friends and I know her girlfriend and
everything."
"And she said to me recently 'the dykes know that you love to
suck cock but that you also see the beauty in women and can sit and
talk with us about the idea of giving head to another woman and caring
about that. And she said 'the best thing is that there is no judgment
with you." And there isn't. But I have never given head to a woman
and I don't really feel the need to. I like to feel myself feeling
myself, which I sing about in Icicle, but I don't have to have
whatever chemistry is needed to be attracted to women that way.
"Having said that, when k.d. Lang looked at me over her glasses
one time I almost crawled into her arms. But I did wonder if I was a
bit of a sex object for her. though wanting to crawl into her arms in
the same as wanting to give her head, is it?! But I do imagine myself
being a man a lot. I said to my friend who's a dyke, 'if I had a cock
I'd rub you from head to toe' and she looks at me and says 'let's
pretend!' But at least she didn't say 'I've a spare one here."
In UTP's celebration of masturbation, 'Icicle', Tori sings, "when
they say 'take of his body,' I think I'll take from mine instead."
This juxtaposition of Jesus Christ and the orgasm seemed to be a
problem for at least some readers of her last interview in Hot Press.
When Tori revealed she nurtures sexual fantasies about Jesus Christ.
She also did, of course, write that sweetly subversive line which is
loved by women yet, no doubt, secretly detested by many men: "So you
can make me come/That doesn't make you Jesus." Can Tori understand

why Irish Catholics, in particular, might find such thoughts
'blasphemous'?
"I am a minister's daughter, for heaven's sake! So, of course, I
can see why some would regard sexual fantasies about Jesus Christ as
unacceptable. But that's part of what I'm saying in 'Icicle', when I
tell of how I used to masturbate at home as a teenager, while my
father and his fellow theologians were downstairs discussing the
Divine Light. I was exploring the 'divine light' within myself.
(laughs)
"As anyone who sees that as 'blasphemous' can go to hell! Like I
said to you before, that's how women are paralyzed, disconnected from
their own power by religion. Talk about patriarchal power structures.
For centuries the Church has slammed a crucifix between a woman's legs
and even masturbation obviously is a way of dislodging that cross, of
self-empowerment. And how dare anybody say that my honoring my woman-
ness in that way, my relationship with my own body and my opening to
this energy between my legs is a 'sin against God' is 'blasphemous'."
"That was my act of defiance, of asserting myself against the
oppressive force of religion which has always made women deny their
sexuality. The concept is that Jesus Christ, through the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit experienced life-the human form. Well, what I find
quite inexplicable is that he could suckle at a woman's breast yet not
soil his dinky by having sex! How's he supposed to experience life at
the level of his dick, for Christ's sake!"
"That's the Church's core denial of sexuality, right there,
alongside the idea that Mary could give birth without 'doing it'.
It's absurd. So when I say I want to 'do it' with Jesus Christ it's
not just that I want to sexualize Jesus, bring him down to our level,
I want to breathe the earth into his lungs. He came from Heaven and
we, as women, come from the earth. So it's the idea of soil beneath
the fingers, the notion of, 'If this blood is sacred, then drink it'.
That's what it's all about."
The same theme informs the song "God", from UTP, in which Tori
addresses what she describes as "the institutionalized God", the
symbol of one of the most destructive patriarchal power structures on
the planet -The Christian Church.
"The notion of God as a male force is definitely not how I see
things. because that male force is the Christian God who says "we are
Christians and we love our neighbors as ourselves as long as they
believe in our God. If you do, we won't rape your women, slaughter
your children or cut your nuts off- which was basically the culture of
Christianity, with a male figure as its God-head."
"That's why I sing "God, sometimes you just don't come through/
You need a woman to look after you." The God-force must be feminized,
perceived more as a God-Goddess. Jesus, his mother, 'his church' all
must be redefined. Especially a figure like Mary Magdalen, who I and
so many Christian women were taught to despise, because she was a
prostitute. Because of that we had great problems coming to terms
with the prostitute in ourselves, which again, is something the Church
teaches us to deny, and something my song, 'The Wrong Band' is about
when I sing. 'Ginger is always sincere/But not to one man.'
"That prostitute in woman is someone who is worthy of honor and
respect because she comes from a long line of Goddesses who understood
the balance between the sexual and the spiritual, who carried the
blood royal. But her positive energy-force has been reappropriated by
the Church and denied.

"The idea that god is sexless is a brilliant form of control
because it means we can never be in the image of God unless we're
sexless too,"she elaborates. "So, from birth your sexual organs are
ripped off in terms of self-respect. The message is 'you're scum' if
you partake in sex. But we, as women and men, are not 'scum' and we
are not sexless beings. We are a blend of the spiritual and the
physical and to deny either aspect of our nature is like trying to
walk on one leg. Nor are women, in particular, simply incubators for
patriarchal power structures such as marriage, society, the Church.
Patriarchy isn't working. Any fool can see that. And, again, it all
comes back to the question of being divided within ourselves."
One suspects that Tori Amos' need to sexualize Christ, and the
life-force, is a necessary manifestation of her desire to re-sexualize
herself after rape.
"Perhaps it is,"she says. "But part of the journey back is
accepting the prostitute in myself, the kind of 'bad girl' I refer to
in "CFG". The Church depends on our sense of dislocation from
ourselves because the spiritual body is made to feel ashamed of the
physical body. That was part of my problem, even before the rape.
But now I question this concept of 'purity'. What does 'loving
purely' mean?
"To me, now, 'pure' is all things. It means the deepest,
darkest, dirtiest concept with that flashlight on it, with no judgment
being made. Whereas when I, as a 'good Christian girl', judged part
of myself to be 'bad' I cut it out, as I explained earlier. So I have
been severed from the physical side of myself in that sense too, as
have many Christian women. But now I'm trying to realign myself in a
way that reflects the true life-force from here to here(her hand moves
from her head through her heart to her vagina). People may say I'm
obsessed with sex, but what I'm really obsessed with is this idea of
realignment of making myself whole again."
It is this process which is at the center of UTP. Tori's desire
to make herself 'whole' again is finally brought into full focus when
she bravely chooses to close this interview by reflecting on the
specific circumstances that night she was raped.
"I'll never talk about it at this level again but let me ask you.
Why have I survived that king of night, when other women didn't," she
says.
"How am I alive to tell you this tale when he was ready to slice
me up? In the song I say it was 'Me and a Gun' but it wasn't a gun.
It was a knife he had. And the idea was to take me to his friends and
cut me up, and he kept telling me that, for hours. And if he hadn't
needed more drugs I would have been just one more news report, where
you see the parents grieving for their daughter."
"And I was singing hymns, as I say in the song, because he told
me to. I sang to stay alive. Yet I survived that torture, which left
me urinating all over myself and left me paralyzed for years. That's
what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violation through
sex."
"I really do feel as though I was psychological mutilated that
night and that now I'm trying to put the pieces back together again.
Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been
to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it
all, I kept alive my vulnerability."

[Splunge]

Tori Amos Interview Transcript/The Baltimore Sun

TORI: Whether it bums you out or not, the truth is, all this happened,
as much as the first record did. But there are other characters
involved a bit more. There are just other beings involved in this one.

Like "Pretty Good Year," for example, I got a letter from a guy named
Greg in England. This one got to me -- it missed getting to me for,
like, three months. But it just got passed around to different people,
and finally somebody just -- I was walking through the record label in
between the tour up in England, and somebody put it in my bag. They
just said, "You know what, Tori? This has been sitting around here.
Just take it."

And I took this letter, and I opened my bag two days later, and I read
it. It was a picture of -- he had drawn himself. It was a pencil
drawing. Greg has kind of scrawny hair and glasses, and he's very
skinny and he held this great big flower. Greg is 23, lives in the
north of England, and his life is over, in his mind.

I found this a reoccurrence in every country that I went. In that
early 20 age, with so many of the guys -- more than the girls, they
were a bit more, "Ah, things are just beginning to happen." The guys,
it was finished. The best parts of their life were done.

The tragedy of that for me, just seeing that over and over again, got
to me so much that I wrote "Pretty Good Year." You don't really know
what my role is. Am I Lucy, or am I that eight bars of grunge that
comes out near the end where I express, and then nothing, everything
else is Greg's story? I found that kind of really fun. The emotion is
coming from somebody else's story. And yet it touched me so much that
I could sing it.

SUN: I'm sure you had at least a couple moments where you wondered,
"Would there be more"?

TORI: Yeah. I related heavy. It's just, it was hard to see this so
many times over and over and over again, that at 23, it's over. There
isn't a hope that there was when, I think, maybe 15 years ago or
something. There just seems to be this -- they feel like the
generation above were liars. This whole peace/love thing. Who gives a
shit what you did when you were 18? You're a fuck now. You're 47. It's
like, who cares? I don't want to hear what you did, the march you did
when you were 19. The whole thing about, "OK, hang on a minute. You
did a march when you were 18, 19, and you're telling me that I can't
take birth control pills? I'm 15 years old. It's my fucking business."
"But you're under our roof."

It's like, they're full of shit. Because they're not dealing with,
well, hang on a minute, how would I feel if I were 15? Yeah, but I
know better now. Well, I don't think so.

SUN: I hate boomer culture.

TORI: I see the effect, the general group that comes to the shows are
the kids of them, the next down, and it's like, it's that there's so
much anger for a reason.

SUN: Maybe we're heading into a good time, where people who are tuned
in like you are taken more seriously.

TORI: Well, the good place where I'm going is, I finally understood
that I didn't understand what spirituality is. After being around
people that have done a Jungian study, the sweat lodges, the this, the
that -- and we're not talking about just a new age fanaticism. We're
talking about very educated and passionate people, whatever, again,
that you could sit down and have a conversation with.

And yet, some of these people, who I got to know very well in New
Mexico, were the most bitter, negative people that I've ever met. Now,
then had a lot of information, but that's a whole different thing than
knowledge. So it's very different. There's loads of information, and
yet the heart connection was gone. Just the acceptance of, well, this
is OK that I don't have it resolved. It's OK that I don't have an
answer to this, and it's OK that I don't really know what I'm feeling
right now. I'm a bit confused. Those things are OK. That's been a new
place where I am where I wasn't before, where I thought that there had
to be a resolve.

---
TORI: "God" is hey, buddy, I think you need a babe. Sit down. And I
just happen to be around. The whole concept of God, that our
institutions have taught us, whatever it is, it's not just
Christianity but the whole rigmarole, to me isn't what it truly is. I
don't know what it truly is. But I don't believe that what we've been
taught is what it is. Most of us don't -- that's not true. A few of us
don't. But when you're 10 years old and being taught a belief system,
you don't have the wherewithal to go, "Well, when they're putting this
dried, stale cracker in my mouth, and telling me it's all going to be
OK, it'll be OK if I put my little warm hand down on my little warm
spot. That'll make it a bit OK." That's where "Icicle" comes in.

But with "God," I think that the energy force of creation feels really
pissed off at this usurper that humankind has created is misusing that
force, you know? I think it's really pissed off.

SUN: The story you tell a 10-year-old kid, well, that's what our
notion of God is. It's a story that we tell ourselves so we can
understand this concept that's greater than our understanding. The
trouble is, people, instead of seeing the story as a means to
understanding, see the story as the end.

TORI: Again, the end. That's so free, when we can release the end,
that it's just a continuum. The idea that I'll never stop writing,
because I've been doing it, I think, before I can remember anything,
that is just part of my expression, and I understand things better
when I write something. I can see it better. But I don't think there's
an end to when people would say, "What are you going to do after
'Little Earthquakes'?" Well, I'm going to do what I did before "Little

Earthquakes," which is what I've done since I was two and a half,
which is write songs.

Now, sometimes I put on plastic snake pants and hair spray, like with
Y Kant Tori Read. I go through different phases when I'm not willing
to face things or when I am. But there isn't an end to the creative
process. Which is not what even in our industry, there's a high point,
and then there's an end to it all, instead of, I'll still be writing
in my living room if nobody shows up for biscuits or not, I'm going to
still be doing it.

SUN: Is YKTR ever be reissued? There are people paying, like, 100
bucks a copy.

TORI: Isn't that the funniest thing that you ever heard?

SUN: Particularly since I remember seeing it as a $5.98 cutout at
Tower.

TORI: They were a bit kinder. It was, like, $1.99 in other places.
It's a collector's item. It's hilarious, isn't it? It's only a
collector's item because there aren't any more. There were only 10,000
in the whole world. So that's why. When you have such a small issue,
and then people just collect things, because of all my imports, if
they have that, it makes their collection complete. That's kind of
like why they do it. I think that they could use it for, like, dog
paper, but that's a whole other thing. It's expensive dog paper. You
know, knock yourself out, whatever. I find it kind of amusing. No,
they won't put it out again. More than anything, because I'll have,
probably, eight EPs that'll come over from England on this record. I
do imports. So I'll do that.

SUN: There's this mailing list on the Internet called Really Deep
Thoughts.

TORI: Right. I've heard of them. They're good people.

SUN: They had, what did they call it, Torimas--

TORI: Hah! Oh, Oc-Tori-Fest, wasn't it? They're so funny. The thing
is, they won't bring it out, because I've moved on, and the company's
moved on. We want to make more music. That's not where I'm at, anyway.

SUN: Eventually, when you get to the box set period?

TORI: I don't think so. I think that's it.

---
SUN: I can't imagine how you'll pull off "Bells" in concert.

TORI: It's a detuned piano. It's Eric Rosse demolishing a piano.

SUN: Having that audible distance makes the whole thing work. If you
don't have the distance, the concept is not--

TORI: That moment is a moment, that song as you hear it was written as
it was recorded. I'd been feeling something in my belly all day, and I
told Eric, "I'm feeling something." He goes, "Like, when? Do I need to
set the mikes up now or what?" I said, "I don't know, but later. I've
got to eat first." It was around four o'clock, and he said, "Are you
feeling something yet?" I said, "Not quite yet." He goes, "Well, like,
feel it now, because I've been waiting for six hours and I need to
record this." And I said, "Uh." He said, "Just go into the piano. Just
go in."

So I went in, and I was listening to the sonics of the detuned
acoustic. All of a sudden, this thing has started that was [inhales
deeply] and it came in that moment. Words, music, everything. And for
one second, my head went out of it and had to come back in. It was
during the instrumental part where I was going, "I can't believe this
is happening." And when it was over, it was like, "Did you get that?"
And he goes, "I got it." He pushed Record. It's like, thank you for
pushing Record. I have to relearn that. I haven't relearned it yet.
But I gotta relearn it to play it live.

I dictated the words right after I did it to understand what was being
said, and I understood it. I felt it when it was coming through. The
words and the music are trying to translate what the feeling was. I
think it does, but the main thing about "Bells" is that there is no
resolve, and that's what that whole song was saying. "Can't stop
what's coming, can't stop what is on its way." All I can do is respond
truthfully, and the concept that we'll always be friends, or we can
always work it out, I would have bet you that I could have worked
anything out with this person. I would have bet my hand I could have
worked anything out. I'd be missing a hand right now. It'd be the one-
armed Tori tour. I couldn't have foreseen this. And I think, how many
people, in marriages or families, and they're going, "Wait a minute.
I'm a rational being. This is a rational being, so we think."

Of course, I'm a little -- I'm partial, but I would have thought, yes,
we could work it out. And when it got to in the end "blankettes," and
the spelling changed, and when I was writing it down, I did it
"blankettes" as in -- well, what it means to me is just blank women,
chicks. Yet they were making mudpies and creating and it's void now.
And if you talk to people that know her, they think she's a together,
great babe. And if you talk to people that know me, I'm a together,
great babe. And yet we just couldn't do it. So there is a triangle on
this record of the betrayal of women. It's not just that
relationship. It's many other things in the other tunes.

---
TORI: With "Past the Mission," there's hope. "Past the mission, I
smell the roses," and Trent sings on it. I wanted him to sing on it
because of his energy. I love Trent's work. "Past the Mission" wanted
him to sing on it.

SUN: Parts of "Past the Mission" reminded me of "China." There seemed
to be little bits of Elton John.

TORI: We love Elton. "Past the Mission" has -- yeah, I can see that.
George Porter Jr. from the Meters played on the whole record, and

there's a lot of him on that, as much as Carlo Nuccio from the bottom
end. I did the piano vocal first, but they played the track, which
gave it that -- especially in the verses, that New Orleans kind of
church meets Otis Redding meets, and they had a lot to do with
bringing that out of the piece itself. Trent, obviously, it's nothing
like he does in his work, which I found an interesting choice, because
it wasn't for him to sing on something that was his, why do that?

"Past the Mission" is a love story. It's kind of a strange one in that
it's me again, still trying to find pieces that I've left other
places. It kind of breaks my heart when I hear him sing with me, "I
once knew a hot girl." Where is she now? She can come back again. It's
that same thing, where in "Pretty Good Year" and "Past the Mission"
and "Space Dog," where everything is reclaimable.

SUN: It's also very easy to see the horizon as a dead end.

TORI: Yes.

SUN: I do think that there is something endemic about the way our
market-driven society works, where they want us to see the horizon as
a dead end. Otherwise, why would we stay in our little salaried
positions to pay our mortgage every month? It's not as if people just
don't see it.

TORI: Yes. That's how the whole thing's set up, isn't it?

SUN: Like Douglas Adams' idea that there are things you don't see
because you won't let yourself see them.

TORI: Yes. I think there's also a bit of the Mary Magdalene/Jesus
relationship in "Past the Mission," because I was reading "Holy Blood,
Holy Grail" at the time. It has a lot of thoughts. It's a very long
book about a historical viewpoint on everything, with the Cathars and
all that happened in the Pyrenees, and the Merevindian dynasty and the
whole nine yards. It's an interesting read. It opened my mind up a
bit. More than anything, it was the sexual relations, even if it's
just with yourself, surrounding the oppression of the church, and
that's where "Past the Mission" again -- it's really freeing to me,
that song. I've always kind of -- there's no resolve, either.

---
TORI: "Baker Baker" is kind of tragic in a way, because -- I've had to
look at how I treated men, and on this record, I think with "Baker
Baker," to deal with a man that truly loved me, but that I wasn't
emotionally available for. You know how women always say men aren't
emotionally available. Well, a lot of women aren't emotionally
available. It's like, if you're vulnerable, we say, "Look, we need you
to be sensitive." So you become sensitive, and yet we go, "You've got
no fuckin' backbone," and we kick you in the face and run off with a
ski trainer.

SUN: Needing love, wanting love, is easy for anyone to understand.
Maintaining love is much more difficult than most people realize.

TORI: Yeah. I didn't maintain it very well. But you know, I'm
learning, I'm trying.

---
TORI: You know, I played a piano bar in Washington for years, and I
used to know some hookers. They would come into the hotels. I love
hookers. I love them. It's a past life thing for me, Paris in another
time, when it was a bit more respectable. Let's think about it. You
were either a wife, or you were quote-mistress. You can call it
whatever you want, but the truth is, you're taking money for your--

SUN: You're a sex professional.

TORI: Right. But at least you have say. If you were good, you had say,
instead of Daddy marries you to some gangrene-toothed lech. You could
say, "Uh, I don't think so, Harry. No, I got enough clients." But it's
not looked upon that way anymore.

SUN: There's an interesting book that talks about how the Victorian
era turned all of that. What all anti-sex movements boil down to over
the years is using the control of sex to reinforce the position of
patriarchy. It posits that sex is only safe for men.

TORI: "The Wrong Band," that's what it's about. I don't know if you
got that. "The Wrong Band," with Heidi and Ginger and me, we're all
sex professionals in "The Wrong Band." My character, although I say
she, who's really written about a woman that I knew that had to leave
for Japan. She left to be protected, because she was involved with
somebody in the house years ago. This was years ago. She got in too
deep. She just knew too much, and she was really afraid that they were
going to kill her, they were going to set her up and kill her. She
went to Japan to be protected by another powerful man, but she didn't
have too many choices at that point, and he was powerful enough to
hide her in Japan. I never heard from her again. I don't know what
happened. And I knew her for three years.

You just get in too deep, and when the Heidi thing came out --
whatever you do to open your mouth or cause it or whatever it is, it's
just kind of a shame that, again, it's that control of the patriarchy.
That goes back to "God" again.

---
SUN: I interviewed Billy Joel, who said that the bane of his existence
is that he dreams music.

TORI: I know what that's like. The songs are so good in the dream.

SUN: You feel like such a fool trying to get them onto tape when you
wake up.

TORI: It just doesn't have -- it's so complete in the dream. I was
actually conscious when these visions happened, but it's very
intangible, because I can feel something in my belly, but I haven't
lived it yet. Like "The Waitress." I got a sense of what was coming,
but I hadn't lived it yet. So I had to go -- these experiences all did
come to me over an eight-month period, but I didn't know at the time

what it was going to be. The Pueblos have a saying that the mountain
spits you out if it doesn't like you, and the mountain was spitting me
out, like, every 30 seconds. We were in New Mexico -- that's where
this everything was written and recorded.

SUN: Why New Mexico?

TORI: Just called there, just called to it. The Wild West. There was
something about it, something really rugged and raw. Obviously it was
supposed to happen there. It's funny, because after "Little
Earthquakes," I really didn't know what I was in for. I didn't think
about it.

SUN: You were saying that you were worried, having gotten through
something with "Little Earthquakes"--

TORI: What's next?

SUN: Did you set yourself up for trauma again so you'd have something
else to work through?

TORI: What I didn't understand at the time was that "Little
Earthquakes" was an acknowledgment of things I hadn't looked at for 15
years, in some cases. There is another step that I just hadn't gone
through that after you acknowledge something, like, you tell
everybody, and other people say, "I know what that's like, too." And
there's this whole kind of energy charge you get and liberation from
doing that, and then what happens? Well, everybody goes home, and
you're sitting there, and then you have to do the work. You have to
apply it to your life. There was a deep fall kind of after that,
because I didn't have the feeling of freedom as when I first
discovered certain things, and it was just, would I still kind of have
these same feelings?

SUN: With analysis, part of it is recognizing the mistakes you make
over and over again, and part of it is learning not to make them.

TORI: That's right. That's the hard work. So what do I do the rest of
my life? I can't write "Little Earthquakes" again. The rest of my life
is devoted to not making those, putting myself in situations. Just
being present, being conscious of why I do stuff, and this record was
just about living every day.

---
"The Waitress" is the next step in "Cornflake." I don't have them in
order. It doesn't work like that. "The Waitress" is how I can't
control my violence, and in this one situation, we're both equals,
we're both waitresses in this song. I don't go into the details of
why. Why isn't the issue. The issue is that I thought I was a
peacemaker, and this violence has totally taken control of every
belief system that I have. It's a very scary thing, especially after
you talk about anti-violence.

SUN: Belief in anti-violence -- you couldn't have a belief in anti-
violence if you didn't have a sense of violence anyway. If there

weren't sin, there'd be no need for salvation. It's frightening to
feel in yourself what you despise in others.

TORI: Yes, especially after the "Me and a Gun" experience, where I was
so -- it's about healing for me, that whole experience, and that's all
through this record too, with "Baker Baker" and healing in
"Anastasia," "We'll see how brave you are." But to be on the other
side of it, it's not an analogy to "Me and a Gun." It's just to feel
the feeling of rage, because I've been on the victim side before. It
was just shocking for me to have to deal with that part of myself.
First, of course, you acknowledge it, and then you go, if I don't
control it, I could end up in jail with a broomstick up my ass for the
next 30 years. That's no fun. I could, like, go to Italy and have good
fettucine. That would be a drag, and I'm sure that there are people
out there that just snap that one millimeter more. I mean, what is it
that keeps us -- there's something obviously in us that keeps us from
taking that step.

SUN: I don't think it's fear.

TORI: I think that divine law of -- there has to be a part of us
that's either in alignment or not alignment with some kind of divine
law. Now, who am I to quote divine law? It's not anything that we have
written down on the planet. But we all know that if you take another
person's choices away, we've crossed the line. That is the line. And
you know, we all know it. Anybody on the street knows it. If they take
somebody else's life, or if I slap you for no reason, I've just
crossed, I've just taken your choices away. And instinctively we know
that. Now, I think a lot of it depends on -- no matter how Viking I
can get, you know, with my battle axe and stuff, there's something
innate in my upbringing in this lifetime that was, as far down as it
may be, "Love your neighbor as yourself." The karma that that brings
you.

SUN: I think of this stuff in terms of resonance. You know that there
are notes that will go, and there are notes that won't go.

TORI: You break divine law. You go against the harmonic structure.
Well, "The Waitress," she's a real good friend now, that song. That's
not hiding in my closet anymore. That's one thing that, at least, I'm
kind of--

SUN: You've found a context for those notes.

TORI: Yes. And "Bells for Her" is the loss of a friend. From
"Cornflake" to "The Waitress" to "Bells," "Bells" is the loss of --
and it's all kind of backwards. I do the last first, and then the
first last. But "Bells" is the spirit speaking, not the ego speaking,
but the part of me that still loves a friend that for whatever reason
you can't make a resolve. You just can't do it. The big lesson in this
whole year has been that there isn't a resolve for many things. Life
isn't about, well, if I just get to this mountain peak, it's over.
There are like 5,000 peaks in the distance.

---

TORI: You've got to work on this record. This is not as petal- opening
as the last record. This record is, OK, you've got to go in your own
being to get this record. 'Cause I'm real clear what this is. I don't
have to spell things out this time. It wasn't conscious or
unconscious; it's just people that I think are into what I'm doing are
ready to take that step.

So "Cornflake," "Bells" and "Waitress" are a triangle together. Part
of this record is dealing with the betrayal of women, between women.
These three, "Cornflake" is, I've been reading "Possessing the Secret
of Joy" by Alice Walker. I don't know if you read that. It went in
depth of just women betraying women, and how the mothers really sold
the daughters to the butchers, and had their genitalia
removed, et cetera.

A lot of memory came to me. Just social memory, not necessarily
personal memory -- collective memory of how women have turned on each
other. And the concept of a sisterhood is not real. I think that hurts
me more than most concepts, because the idea that -- we've been, women
have had obviously very little say in their lives, and it's been a
difficult road. See, I believe in past lives, so I've been a man
making it hard on women also. Just if we look at it from objective
viewpoints, just the history of woman has been very lonely, and when
you think that we should support each other, understand each other,
that makes sense to me. You would think.

SUN: One thing being oppressed teaches you is how to oppress others.

TORI: Yes. It's been -- again, it's the victims become the abusers,
it's that whole -- which is explored in "Waitress," too, where I
become the one who wants to slice this person's head off. But the
thing is, it's been, it's so disappointing for me when I feel betrayed
by another woman. So "Cornflake Girl" is that disappointment. "This is
not really happening, you bet your life it is. Never was a cornflake
girl, thought that was a good solution." Cornflake being white bread,
closed. "Hanging with the raisin girls," you know, whole wheat,
multicultural, open, a little more going on. "She's gone to the other
side, giving us the yo heave ho. Things are getting kind of gross." I
think that's clear. "And I go at sleepytime, this is not really
happening. You bet your life it is."

The second verse, it just supports that whole thing. "Rabbit, where'd
you put the keys, girl?" Rabbit, in certain Indian traditions, it
represents fear. "Rabbit, where'd you put the keys, girl? And the man
with the golden gun thinks he knows so much." Well, those are my God
references again.

SUN: There seems to be a small but growing movement of young women who
realize that the trouble with feminism was that it was articulated as
politics, and it's not about politics. It's about being feminine, and
all that being feminine entails. Some of the stuff that you've dealt
with is very much of the same cloth that [singer] Liz Phair and [comic
book artist] Julie Doucet deal with ... but their most vituperative
critics tend to be women.

TORI: I know. That's "Cornflake Girl" right there. It's that
incredible -- "All the sweeteaze are gone, gone to the other side,
with my encyclopedia. They musta paid her a nice price. She's putting
on her string bean love." Anorexic. They just put it on. If you go to
their side and take up their cause, then you're a strong, independent
woman. Well, you know, I'm so tired of strong, independent woman
equals. And there's a list. Instead of -- well, hang on a minute, the
most interesting word here is vulnerability, that's getting left out,
because it's associated with weakness. You don't dress a certain way
to be a strong independent woman. It's fascist, and it's the same --
they're no different. They're just the other extreme.

I don't feel a part of any kind of sisterhood. Again, it's the most
disappointing thing, where I get criticized by women more than men on
how I play the piano. They find it offensive. They find it offensive.
I'm just going, well, this is how I choose to express myself, so if
you're truly a strong, independent woman, then how could you possibly
find me being a strong, independent woman offensive?

SUN: If you're playing the game, which they are, it threatens you to
discover there are people who realize you don't have to play the game.

TORI: That's the core issue. It's just another set of rules. They're
no different than the men that enslave the women in the first place.
They're enslaving women. That's this triangle of women enslaving
women.

If we sit down, to have a cereal is no coincidence, because cereal is
a very interesting word to me. To go to breakfast and to go to grains,
all those things, and to segregate me as a cereal, especially since I
did do a cornflake commercial, and since I do call the song "Cornflake
Girl," and I say "Never was a cornflake girl," there's a real rub
there. Because in honesty, I used to say, "I'm not violent, I'm a
peacemaker." And here I am in "The Waitress" with no problems ready to
rip her head off.

SUN: That was the best part of the song. "I believe in peace, bitch."

TORI: Yes. Well, I think that if -- it's funny, I kind of find it all
pretty clear. I can see how "Space Dog" is tricky, and I'll come
through with that one. But "Space Dog"'s a mushroom trip anyway. It is
supposed to be kind of--

SUN: I thought it was a "Ren and Stimpy" episode.

TORI: Ha, ha! Well, fine. Same thing. But the thing is, with a lot of
the language, it's not like ahead thought out, but it's kind of like a
camera, again, where I'm filming myself in these experiences. And the
best way I can describe things sometimes is like how I'm tasting. With
tangible things. Not just to say, "These girls betrayed me, and I
really feel bad now."

---
[All Tori said about "Icicle" is that it's about "masturbating to stay
alive." Oh well. I guess that's a pretty self-explanatory song
anyway.]

SUN: I found "Cloud On My Tongue" to be, again, about your sensory
self.

TORI: Yes, totally sensory self, that doesn't know -- there's a
wonderful acceptance in "Cloud On My Tongue," an acceptance of being
in circles and circles again. That's its whirlpool vat. It all leads
to that.

SUN: Why Borneo?

TORI: Because I travel a lot around the world, and I went to all sorts
of places, and I ran in to different people. Borneo had something that
I didn't have. It was a very free, hot, jungly place, and the people
that, or a person that came from there, had something that I didn't
have that I desperately wanted, which was this no rigidity. When I say
"Leave the wood outside, what, all the girls here are freezing cold,
leave me with your Borneo."

SUN: Having the wood becomes beside the point.

TORI: Yeah. Or don't leave me with your Borneo, because I've had it
before, and that's why I need the wood, because it just -- you can go
now, you're already in there, whether it's pregnant or whether it's
just infused. You don't even have to hang around and watch me
disintegrate, because you've already done your job. You've already
accomplished what you wanted, which was another scalp on your belt,
and you did it. That's not one of my more favorite men songs.

SUN: It's much truer to the way men generally are. Most of us could go
now, and the race would continue on without much difference. You could
fill this cup with semen and propagate Manhattan again.

TORI: That's so awesome. Yeah. My only problem was, I said "You can go
now" after he was already in there. I mean, it had done -- it was
already planted, so whatever it was, that's where I think "Cloud"
balances out "Baker Baker" a bit, because it's the shadow side. She's
not ignorant. She knows exactly what's happening.

SUN: You can have things happen you didn't want to have happen to you
and still be in control. Like you're driving along and make a wrong
turn; it's not as if you can't get out of the wrong turn, but you know
you've made a wrong turn.

TORI: I think she went into the wrong state. She went into Borneo.
Wrong continent.

---
TORI: As far as "Space Dog" goes, it was a drawing on a mud wall in
New Mexico. It was a shape, and it really was, if I could take a
picture and show it to you sometime, the whole record was recorded in
mud, mud walls, adobe and wood ceilings, wood floors, because Eric
really loved the sound, which is why it sounds like it has that warm
womb thing. Well, in one of the rooms, there was this -- it's Space
Dog. A feather on his head, and it's this sharp nose. It just really
is. That's how so many of these songs came, in this "Under the Pink"

world. If you rip all your skin off, we're all pink, and it's about
what's underneath that. That's how I see it, anyway.

Space Dog would come and visit me, just as my alternative deity, so to
speak. The idea that everybody puts their faith in, I don't know, this
yogi or this channel or this god or this saint or this whatever, well,
Space Dog was like, hey, it's my deity.

I was flying over Chicago. Before I got into the city, I was flying
over, and I just felt this scene happening by this 7-11 I could see
way in the distance. It was a very cold night. It was in March, and I
was going in for a signing at Rose Records. I was flying in, and I
felt this young boy, 13, 14 years old, with his family. He's eating
peas. His family is like, some of those people that show up on "Oprah
Winfrey" sometimes, that you just go, My God, if I had to go home with
them, I would contemplate, like, eating Pledge. And I just felt his
presence. I felt him just opening himself up to another possibility,
because his world was just so closed. The best thing he had near him
was the 7-11 goddess.

I was just watching from the -- I was in the window seat, and I was
just watching, like, way down. I felt "Space Dog." I've been talking
to him, and I felt Space Dog going, "Lemon pie. Coming through, lemon
pie." It was very Agent 99. I kind of felt like Agent 99 going, "Oh,
Max." And this young man responded. There is something out there.

The idea, again, with "Pretty Good Year," there's a lot of triads
in this whole record, and "Pretty Good Year" and "Space Dog" kind of
kiss each other, where -- let me focus my thought. In the bridge,
"Deck the halls," going back again, to, again, not having resolve.
"I'm young again. Somewhere, someone must know the ending. Where's
Neil when you need him?" You know, that's all in that. "Is she still
pissing in the river now?" Patti Smith. "Heard she'd gone, moved into
a trailer park." Concept being, somebody that had all of these
beliefs, and then just numbed themselves.

And Space Dog's philosophy is, well, together, when I'm hanging out
with him, it's, "So sure we were on something. Your feet are finally
on the ground, he said." That's Space Dog's philosophy. And in the
countervocal in the end goes, again, the betrayal stuff, mostly girls,
and yet, if I'm in the present, and I'm on something, which is on the
earth, on the ground, then I have total opportunity to decide what my
reaction will be. I can't decide anything else, but I can decide if
I'm going to let something totally take over my life, which it did in
"The Waitress." But by "Space Dog," I'm going, I do have a choice.
It's part of the growth.

---
TORI: When we get to "Anastasia" -- I had some visitation on this. I
was in Richmond. It was after the Washington show, and I had food
poisoning. Very ill. I was in Richmond the next night--

SUN: Which is where she died, isn't it?

TORI: Around Richmond, Charlottesville, yes, that area. And her being
visited me, and said, "You need to tell my story." And I'm like, "Oh,

come on. I'm losing crab at both ends. [Tori had eaten some bad
seafood -- S.T.] Can't we, like, negotiate this?" And it was a bit of
-- that's where my experience from the violent kidnapping that I went
through with "Me and a Gun" kind of made me able to understand the
horror that she went through, and yet, the incredible understanding
that she came to, which is the first half of "Anastasia," that whole,
"Show me the ways to get back to the garden" and "Driving on the vine
over clotheslines. But officer, I saw the sign." You're very aware of
what's happening, that you're being changed and that you're numbing
yourself, but how do you turn it around?

And that's where "We'll see how brave you are" -- when you're 18, you
know everything, and it's, yeah, I can handle anything. Well, any of
us can be brought to our knees real fast. And with "Anastasia," I
would be looking kind of down on myself through different parts of my
life, going, "We'll see how brave you are." And I get such hope from
that one.

SUN: It's sweet, not just because it's got the orchestral part. It
does have a sense, it's like, now you're in Panavision.

TORI: Yeah. We're storming the Parliament building by the end.
--
--
sols...@cais.com*Splunge*Alan Salisbury*Unix Admin/Musicphile/Cyclist/Seeker

[Splunge]

Grace, Feeling & Passion

If you review the last years, you will realize that only a few albums
were extraordinary and moving at the same time. But even here "Little
Earthquakes" takes a special position. Never before has an artist
managed to present beauty and grace, feeling and dismay nearly as
intensely as Tori Amos. And live, the American woman living in London
has proved in her March tour that concerts can be more than just
concerts. With an incredible intensity the red-haired beauty
captivated her audience, let them fall into a doze where from you were
released after the concert - into the raw reality. The environment
disappeared, you only saw a woman and her piano, you witnessed an
extraordinary event. And after the announcement was made that she
would come back to Germany for three concerts in June, this interview
took place in Frankfurt. An interview that turned three adults into
very young teenagers who let their CD be signed and who were enchanted
by an elf-like being. And we experienced those little earthquakes,
too.

Many people assumed that "Little Earthquakes" is your debut, but there
is another album, published under the band name "Y Kant Tori Read".
What about that?

"Do you know the cover? (it shows Tori as a metal amazon, comparable
to Lee Aaron's "Metal Queen" cover) I wish that the LP would sound the
way the cover looks. The record is just not heavy. It doesn't have a
clear statement. I mean, when someone plays Thrash Metal, then that
has a point of view. And even if this thrash consists of nothing but
noise, that has a point of view. That should be the point of every
publication. Take a clear position, if you want to make noise, do it,
if you only want to be cute, that's also o.k. But at the time the
album was created, I was not able to take a clear position. If I had
to take a position, I would have had to have it out with myself, but I
was much too busy to suppress things like the rape. I could not sing
about it. Only in August last year I was able to write "Me and A Gun",
before it was simply impossible. When we started to record the album
five years ago, the rape only happened one year before. The record was
published and died four years ago. By the way, the drummer of the band
was Matt Sotrum, Joe Ciccarelli (among others Pat Benatar) and I
really liked his productions, but just before the recordings the band
split up, we took studio musicians and so the songs lost their
direction. I believe that the record has its moments, but I tried too
much to be everybody's girl, because I was not able to listen to
myself. You just have to be strong and not only pretending. It is
simple to play a tough chick, but it is really boring and, above all,
it is sad, because it shows a deep uncertainty, and when you are
uncertain, you can not be strong."

In "Girl" you use the same subject. You sing about a girl that wants
to please everyone. Is the song an experience you made yourself?

"(smiling) Unfortunately the whole record is about self-experiences,
comparable to the shedding of a snake. When I was thirteen, I believed
in fairies and other spiritual things, was sunk in my own world of
imagination, believed in the unseen world, what I still do today. But
over the time I started to feel like a nitwit. I mean, when you smoke

dope, it might be normal, but like this? You sit in your English
lesson and you are talking to a fairy. The people did not want to
understand that, and when you are 13, you don't want to be faced with
a pitiful smile all the time. So I began to destroy the part in me
that is actually creative. Instead, I became very cynical, disguised
myself to become popular, to be loved by everyone. But actually that
was nothing else than a game of hide-and-seek. You can be a bigmouth
without having anything to say. At that time, I definitely only had
the wish to be an in-chick. Today I know that you should have your own
thoughts and that you have to stick to your point of view. Today I
accept that not all people like me, that's all right. Just before I
listened again to some of the songs I wrote at that time, and it was
very interesting. There were some really good ideas in the song, not
in the lyrics, after all, aged 15, I had rather different ideas. You
are thinking in a different way when you made the experience, but the
music was good. Well, with 19 I certainly had experienced so many
rejections with respect to my music that I began to doubt my music. I
thought, perhaps the people are right, look for a band for you, play
dance music, at the moment we are interested in heavy metal and so on.
In the beginning I tried to discover new things, and perhaps to learn
something, but then I let myself be infected with the virus of the
everlasting questions. "What do you think of that?". When you always
had success as a small child, you wonder why today no one is clapping
any longer? You become so addicted to the noise of applause that you
lose your self-confidence and wonder what you have done wrong. And
then you begin to convince yourself that what the people tell you is
right. Certainly it was an incredible positive experience when I sat
down again at the piano and was myself. I do not need to sell myself,
in a certain way the first LP was something like the rape of my soul,
the music lays more closely to my heart than anything else, and it
surely was a good experience to play with Matt. But I wish I would
have been stronger then and had not listened to those idiots. One day
they tell you how wonderful your record is, and when the sales figures
failed to materialize, the same thing suddenly is shit. It is quite
shocking for them to see that this album sells so well."

If you look at the reactions to your concerts, many of your spectators
are so deep in thought, others (often women) find your appearance too
offensive because of your posture and gestures (Tori Amos supports
every move with gestures, puts breathing under her singing and facing
the audience frontally).

"I am not offensive, that's just passion. I want to show my power.
Many women think that, when they are not intelligent or show their
passion, they are considered to be bitches. And to justify themselves,
they sit there, with dry, closed legs and condemn me for that. I have
a conscience, a heart, a spirit but also my sex. I am a sexual,
emotional being. When you describe that appearance with one word, I
would consider confrontation the right word. The people should be
responsible to their feelings when they leave the concert, because
what they feel and think afterwards, is not my feeling, it is their
feeling. Why are there so many men who hate me, who want to rip off my
clothes or who jerk off when I play "Me And A Gun"? When you come to
my show, you either have to ignore me or have to look into yourself,
here is nothing that can distract you, there's only me and the piano.
You can close up yourself, but when you don't do that, then things

will show up in you which you are reluctant to think about. These do
not really have to be good thoughts, but I have understood that
monsters are neither good nor bad, they are just there. There are
things in you which are good and there are other things which are bad.
Sometimes you are cruel, sometimes you are the victim, sometimes you
are passionate and sometimes not, what counts is the whole being! Some
things you simply can not exclude. You have to show responsibility for
your whole being. Try to learn as much as possible about yourself and
show responsibility."

Let's come back to your lyrics and your songs. Many critics have
compared you to Kate Bush, but when someone visits your shows or
studies your lyrics more closely, he finds completely different
heroes. Cover versions of "Whole Lotta Love", "Angie", "Thank You",
lyric lines like 'Strawberry Fields' in "Happy Phantom", 'Even the
wind cries your name' in "Mary".

"What? You know the song? Yes, it is true, my heroes come out of the
seventies and are mainly men, though I rather [hear?, there's a word
missing in the German text] the things of Judy Garland, Barbara
Streisand and Joni Mitchell (which you could convince yourself of at
the last concert in Stuttgart, where you could hear "Somewhere Over
The Rainbow" and "Moon" as the last encore, and, as she stresses, the
first time in front of an audience). But I believe that my preference
of male musicians has to do something with the fact that I always
wanted to play the guitar. I love to play the piano, but I do not like
it, because all people are thinking that a piano has a certain sound.
I want to change this idea, so on the next record we will use an
effected piano side by side with the acoustic one, so that we will be
able to play riffs and to connect the piano to a Marshall Amp. I want
to develop myself. (And with a laugh). On the next tour I will have
two pianos and roll to and fro with the piano chair."

What also stands out is your way to breathe while singing the words.

"The voice is an instrument like every other one. The breathing takes
very much room. The breathing helps you to survive and I find the
sound of breathing very exciting."

Back to your lyrics. You often use colours to accompany your lyrics,
actually typical thoughts of someone who has just taken drugs.

"My mother is an Indian, and once there was a time when mankind did
respect the plants and the earth as a great vision, and when they
neither abused the plants nor the earth. Today that has changed
substantially. Even the Indians have started to make abuse due to
their situation. If you visit a reservation today, and I have lived in
one for many years, you will find many alcoholics there, what is very
tragic. But many think, that this is an escape, but it makes them
unable to think. It is bad to see what became of many great people.
Today drugs mostly serve as an escape from reality and you are able to
experience other levels of consciousness and to reach other
dimensions. I took drugs in a controlled way in the past to reach
other dimensions, smoked pot, while listening to Jimmy Page and hoped
that my father wouldn't catch me, but I think, that this is a part of
your teenage days, especially when you lived in the sixties and the

beginning of the seventies. That was a completely different time, the
revolution of many young people against the bourgeois normal. An
outbreak from the aims that once were given by the parents. The try to
change something. Aims like humanity, the emancipation of the woman
and also the equality of men, like it was shaped by Martin Luther
King. And today? It seems as if these people have given up, these aims
are just caricatures of themselves. The women have not reached their
aim, humanity is a foreign word in todays society and hate for blacks
and foreigners is stronger than ever. And then you see the abuse of
XTC in London and recognize that this generation has not grasped the
whole conflict. What sense does it make to load yourself with drugs so
much that you are not noticing anything anymore?"

Unfortunately many questions had to be left unanswered, we had overrun
the interview by twenty minutes, another one should follow, and the
soundcheck could not be held up. Fortunately, because the soundcheck
was nothing else than a 45 minute request concert, and what happened
on the following three evenings was unforgettable. Three concerts,
different in the choice of songs, partially very spontaneous and
always so intensive that cold showers run over your back to be
captured in the next moment by an indescribable warmth. Even at the
open air in Hamburg this intensity came over. Merely acting as a
supporting programme for Luka Bloom [who's that?], she convinced the
audience so much that the whole schedule was turned completely upside
down, she unrestrained had to play further encores and finally Luka
Bloom visibly despaired had to ask the audience to applaud to him at
least a little bit. This woman is something very special, a being you
can't capture in words, music that simply is not graspable in it's
beauty anymore. In a world of music that has lost a lot of it's
original fascination due to it's predictability, you cannot stress the
greatness of this woman enough. Tori Amos is unique.

[Splunge]

Tori Amos interview in Vox, May 1994. By Steve Malins. Photos by
Barry Marsden.

Title in huge print: "I'm very selective about what goes into my
mouth."

"The whole Christian theology is that god came down to experience
life through his son. Well, how's he experiencing life if he doesn't
get laid? Give me a break. And why would he not get laid, as he
created the apparatus in the first place? Of course he soiled his
little dinky," Grins Tori Amos, still-at 30- the impish, rebellious
daughter of a Southern Methodist Preacher.
Amos's first hand experience of sexual repression, prejudice and
violence shapes her opinions, her emotionally charged music and the
way she likes to present herself. it's her idea to stage the photo
shoot as a mock-up of Kate Moss's advertising campaign for Calvin
Klein underwear, replacing the model's waifish androgynous physique
with her own five-foot-three inches frame. "I don't want to look like
a virgin," she laughs. "I'm a grown woman. I've earned my
experiences, my scars."
Tori's willful escape from her oppressive religious background in
North Carolina is described in vivid, often disturbing detail on her
two solo albums, 1991's _Little Earthquakes_ (which has sold 1.5
million copies worldwide to date) and this year's _Under the Pink._
Both have touched a cord with women, who write to her about their own
sexual traumas, and with men who want to find out more about their
girlfriends, sisters and mothers.
Perhaps they also see in Tori a mischievous soulmate. Seated in a
cafe' in London's Kensington, she affects a laddish bravado, closer in
spirit to her infamous '80s "Rock Chick" alter-ego than the dreamy
singer-songwriter person of more recent acquaintance. '"When I'm
hanging out with the guys, a babe can walk into the room and I can
totally understand why they're in love," she drawls through a wide,
sassy grin. "I'm like:'Yea, if I had one of those things that guys
have, I'd totally be rising right now.'"
While her Labelmates Tracy Chapman and Tanita Tikaram were unable to
match the sales and impact of their respective debut albums, Tori's
recent follow-up album debuted at Number One in the UK charts. Her
continued success is partly indebted to the size and fanaticism of her
following, although her large blue-grey eyes are still fired with a
determination to reach out to new converts. on her current mammoth
world tour, she pours out over an hour and a half of her soul-baring
material to her voyeuristic audiences. Seventeen years as a working
pianist has left her with a stamina and professional guile which
belies her New Age hippy looks.

Despite the growing scale of her business operation, the songwriter
retains a potent and unusually open relationship with her devotees.
Leaning forward with a fixed stare, she explains the awkward
vulnerability she senses in fans of both sexes. "I'm the Queen f the
nerds. I love nerds- by which I mean, not a cool, bitchin' person. I
guess I was a cool nerd. I wasn't shuffling my feet in the corner of
the playground, I was the homecoming queen, but then, all the nerds
voted for me."
Among her more famous fans is Trent Reznor from Nine-Inch-Nails,
who joined her in the 150-year old Hacienda in new Mexico she rented

for the recording-to sing a duet on the new album. Reznor's armor-
plated Industrial music and self-abusing stage persona are transparent
to Tori, who can still detect the little boy inside. "There are a lot
of hidden nerds. I'm aware of the exciting man in Trent The Nine
Inch, but I can see the nerd in him, too. People who become the
frontrunners often used to be outcasts or loners." She's less sure
about the attentions of "the ones with glasses, who read their books
and pick their nose. They're a little more difficult, but I love
them, too. They're so heavy on the mental side that they're cut off
from the emotional. Usually, the hidden ones come to my shows, but
when the nerdy nerds show up, I observe them because they're so very
uncomfortable with their physical selves."
Tori's wariness of these self-absorbed figures is well rounded.
her open-legged stance at the piano on stage has attracted a few
genuine voyeurs, but most of her male fans restrict themselves to
wishful thinking, or letters tinged with adolescent pathos about their
sex lives. However, some correspondents are more threatening. "I'm
aware that I'm calling up a lot of emotional things," she says,
demurely leaving back in her chair. "I communicate obsessives.
"There are certain people whom you cannot communicate with," she says
sadly. "I"ve been face-to-face with people like that at gigs. There
was the Avon Lady in the states, and I felt horrible because I
couldn't remember her name, and she threw a tantrum. She was
screaming and we had to escort her out, because, well, what do you
say?" She adds: "It hurts me when a woman doesn't come through for
me, more than a man. I've had this ideal of women that of course we're
able to work things through and understand each-other. but alot of
_Under the Pink_ is actually about emotional violence between women,
rather than between the sexes. There's a definite pecking order,
which men usually don't see."
Nevertheless, her intimate exploration of rape ('Me And My Gun'
from _Little Earthquakes_) and sexual taboos, coupled with her rakish
good humor, has inspired more rewarding encounters. She often finds
that her own experiences are mirrored by those of her
audience:"Although I've only done eight shows so far, I've already met
several girls backstage who tell me they can't get intimate because
there's a part of them that they cut off. They can only fuck a man by
pretending to be someone else."
Tori spent years detaching herself from emotional involvement by
imagining she was being paid for sex. "if you fantasize about
yourself as a whore, that's about control. I felt judged by men. but
I've always been very selective about the men I go with. I might talk
a good game, but I'm very selective about what goes into my mouth. I
spit out food I don't like, so just imagine," she grins slyly.

Tori's fantasies were another attempt to burn away her dry
Methodist roots. As a child, she was surrounded by "women who hadn't
been wet between their legs for 20 years", and who didn't take kindly
to her dreams about being Jesus' lover. "I had a really big crush on
Jesus. I used to think I would have been a really good girlfriend for
him. I got into big trouble for that." if the had known what else the
inquisitive Myra Ellen (she changed her name to Tori later) had been
up to, they may have been even more severe. A new track, 'Icicle',
pays homage to the joys of masturbation, and includes the nostalgic
line, "Get off, get off, while they're all downstairs saying their
prayers."

Twenty years on, Tori still feels bitterness towards her
domineering grandmother, who set out to instill the fear of god in
"this young, brown haired runt." her mother was more sympathetic,
although often equally constricted by her prudish moral values.
Tori vividly recalls her distress and anger when, with blood
running down her leg, she experienced her first period in a school
playground at the age of ten. "My mother hadn't told me anything
about it. I thought I was going to die. I was like: 'give me a
break, mother, we look at _playgirl_ magazines at the weekend at
Emily's in between playing The Who and Led Zeppelin. I'm old enough
to know about this.' I got into trouble then for yelling."

These days, their relationship has improved, although it's based on
some unexpected common ground. Sometimes I feel like I'm the older
sister. My mother's a southern lady, a sweetheart. She's definitely
the minister's wife on one hand, and then, on the other, she's a
witch. She's a little wicked. She loves being with musicians. She
has no judgment when she sees the earrings and the five studs on the
tongue. When she heard Trent Reznor's vocal on my song 'Past The
Mission', she said:'Well, I do see, women are gonna be after him, he
just sounds so smooth.' And I said: 'Mother, they already are,' and
she goes: 'well, there'll be more now, I promise you that."
According to Tori, they also respect each-other's "visions" and
their dreams of past lives, a talent which she claims has been handed
down through their Cherokee blood-line. The singer gleefully
recollects exotic past lives as a "fat little cook, chopping up food
for my rough, tough knights.", and her Icelandic warrior incarnation,
Sven the Viking. "You know, if a 'gorgeous' man walks into a bar, I
look; I turn my head and check out Brutus, right," she smirks. "But if
Sven walked in, he'd get way more chicks than this idiot." She slips
into first person, as she re-lives some of her berzerker conquests.
"I think I was a good guy, you know. Maybe I flayed some nuns and
stuff and made some carpets in the old days, and that was kinda gross,
but we've had some violent times, I know that."
The media image of Tori as a "kooky" New Age singer is founded on
such offbeat, fantastical stories, but she's unrepentant. "This is a
very functional civilization that wakes up, takes a shit, goes to
work, eats, comes home, maybe gets it once or twice a week, (if
they're really lucky), shits (if they're regular), and goes to bed
again. Dull, press the eject."

As a four-year-old child prodigy, Tori discovered that the creative
freedom she experienced on the Piano was met with simple, narrow
minded resistance. At weekends, her father took her to the
prestigious Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, where her taste for
self-expression and rock music led to her expulsion at the age of 11.
"I'm an emotional player," she says. "I've never felt anything that
moves me as much as my piano. I don't really like people. I prefer my
piano to people. it's totally reliable and it's alive. I can hear
what it's saying. For the most part, pianos are female to me.
Sometimes they're dykes, and they're always good fun." she adds, with
a typical flash of humor.
Her early retirement from classical music was followed by years of
playing Gershwin standards in a gay piano bar in Washington D.C: "I
learned so much about real respectability from gay waiters. I used to
play there when I was 13, wearing my sister's polyester pants and all

made up to look older. I was happy. The men there were more
interested in my father, who was in his clerical collar at the back."
She then left home and worked as a jobbing pianist, performing to
indifferent diners at nightclubs and hotels across America. Despite
her usually inattentive audiences, her role as a "piano girl" finally
liberated her sex life. "I've never gotten a guy without the piano.
It's almost like I became justified as a person when people heard me
play. Before that, men would never talk or hang out with me.
In the 80's she attempted to turn men's heads by ditching her
favorite instrument and turning herself into a "whoring" L.A. Rock
chick. "It's hard not to notice a girl with two-foot hair and plastic
snakeskin boots up to her thighs, unfortunately. That's what my band,
Y Kant Tori Read, was all about. I left home at 21 and I was off to
the races."
She released one flop album on Atlantic Records and was described
as a "Bimbo" by Billboard. "My lowest career point," she confesses.
Hurt by the criticism, she made the decision to return to her piano to
write the songs which would eventually become _Little Earthquakes_.
Atlantic was so confused by this sudden change in direction that it
decided to pack her off to it's UK distributor, Eastwest Records, to
see what they could make of it all. In a West-London flat, Tori
performed a private candlelit set to Eastwest executive Max Hole, a
devoted Kate Bush fan. He signed her on the spot.
Aged 27, Tori was finally able express herself fully through her
music, in the process of opening the door on her darkest, most
traumatic experience as the victim of a rape in her early 20's. "It's
not something where you just go: 'Well, get over it.' Or: 'Believe in
love and peace, my child, and it'll all be over.' Well, fuck you-That
isn't the answer. It's a great thought, OK, but you can go and stick
the crystals up your butt and lets get on with it. I'm all for love
and peace, but that's not the side I work on. I work on the part
before you get into the kitchen, right, before you make a blueberry
pie, sit down and drink a herbal tea and watch the Sunset. First of
all, you've got to pass me in the basement with the rats."
For a long time after the attack, Tori avoided "any man who looked
like him. If somebody would talk about it-or worse, joke about it-I
would be ready to kill. That's not healing. It was a very long time
after that before I was with anyone again. And it has never been the
same as it was before."
After failing to work out her problems through several previous
relationships, she's found more dynamic support in the form of her
current boyfriend Eric Rosse, who co-produced _Under The Pink_. "Eric
was a big change. He's been a major thing in my life, mainly because
he's been helping me work through this violent attack. The way that
he deals with it with me has changed my whole view of men. " She also
reveals: "I'm going to throw away my pills on this tour, in some city,
I haven't decided where yet. At 30, I feel ready to have a child,
although I don't intend to stop my career. I just don't want to do
another major tour like this."
Tori's habit of leaning across the table when she's about to
confide something becomes more pronounced as she continues: "I'm a
better person when I'm around Eric. he has a little Irish maiden in
him. not a fair battle against my Sven, it's true, but he doesn't
mind being conquered. There's a bit of 'do with me what you will' in
him. He was raised by hippie Russian parents, and I sensed that he
had none of those Christian hangups, and he knew that I had them. He

was turned on by the hidden filth scene with me. You know, the
revenge of the good girl. The little librarian with a tale to tell."
VOX

[Splunge]

Keyboard Magazine
November 1994
Tori Amos: Dancing with the Vampire and the Nightingale

In the hush, Tori Amos waits behind a Bosendorfer Imperial grand.
Bathed in light from overhead spots, she wipes the keys, adjusts her
mike stand. A heavy backdrop hangs behind her, tinted light blue with
patches of white. It's a winter sky, flecked with clouds, pregnant
with snow, waiting too. At discreet distances, technicians move their
cameras, listen and talk softly over headsets.

At 11:54, Amos lifts her hands, lets them drift down onto the keys,
and begins to play. The intro to 'Icicle' takes form: the left hand
crosses over and above the right in a 6/8 pattern, gentle yet
unsettling. Like a mist, the sound rises and spreads. And now the sky
behind the piano is alive: the blues and whites deepen into turquoise
and magenta as shadows lengthen beneath the folds of the cloth.

This is soundcheck at NBC's studio A, home base for The Tonight Show,
one afternoon last August, three hours before taping. But for Amos, it
could be anywhere: She's someplace else, somewhere once forbidden but
now frozen for our scrutiny in 'Icicle'. The intimacy of her images
draws listeners in, some as voyeurs, others as sisters who sense a
kind of communion in progress. Her face shrouded behind a blaze of
hair, she weaves back and forth, hovering, leaning, riding the
delicate pauses and surges.

What we're seeing is one of the most important phenomena of modern
music: the songwriter/performer in action. These artists inhabit a
world apart from that of the Gershwins, the Bacharachs, the Diane
Warrens and Barry Manns. The latter were and are craftsmen, the
guardians of a discipline with clear forms and talents. Their goal was
to write tunes that anyone could relate to, with artful but
unambiguous lyrics, and melodies that make the whole world sing. This
tradition celebrates the theology of verse, chorus and bridge; the old
structures are adorned, highlighted, even nudged here and there, but
in the end left inviolate.

No such strictures bind the songwriter/performer. These artists are
bound not to preserve form but to tap into their own springs and let
the music flow as it will. Their craft evolves along the lines of
their own idiosyncrasies. To a degree, they strive more to confess
than to communicate. One must concentrate to decipher their lyrics,
whose poetic obscurities can make the glib wordplay of Cole Porter
seem strained and phony by comparison. There is more freedom than
formula here, but also more risk: Those who would create at this
personal a level accept the responsibility of being honest with their
public, along with the possibility that the well may run dry if their
lives devolve into a routine of studio, stage and hotel suite.

None of this escapes Tori Amos's attention. People clamor for her
time; her calendar is jammed with concerts and interviews. Yet the
same thing that brought her into songwriting as a prodigy student at
the Peabody Conservatory guides her today. Even here, hours before
three minutes of intimacy with America on the Tonight Show, she can
build a private space around herself and the piano, in which she can

keep the channels open, the channels through which experience and
reflection transform into sound, then return as memories to be pulled
out again some other time.

With just two full-length albums to her credit - Little Earthquakes
from 1991 and this year's Under the Pink - Amos has many years of work
ahead of her. Or more precisely, many years of wrestling with the
muse, of looking out at the world and back inside for a way to respond
to it. Of course, this has already been her life for most of her life.
Her manner is that of one who has survived the ravages of creativity:
She stares challenging into her interrogator's eyes, uses candor
almost as a weapon. She can be tough and provocative, yet feelings run
like a river beneath her words and surface often as tremulant
whispers. She is completely alive, as artists of her calibre need to
be.

Her only request seemed odd - that we use no exclamation points in
writing up our interview. On reflection, though, we understood: Her
words, like her music, must be allowed to speak for themselves.

Why do you write songs?

(Long thoughtful silence) I remember walking down the hallways of
the Peabody Conservatory and hearing the same piece being played in
ten rooms, pretty much all the same. some people's chops were better
than others'; usually the kids from Asia were better, because they
were precise and incredibly disciplined. the Jewish kids from that
part of Baltimore had a little more humor in their work; you could
feel that. but you had to have such good ears to really know, because
they were all playing the same piece. I knew that I couldn't play
this piece better than any of these people. It would probably be very
different: you'd know where the redhead was, you'd figure out which
practice room I was in. But I'd never win any competitions, ever,
because nobody was interested in my take on Debussy. I never won
anything. I always got marked down. Always. I had big arguments with
these people, that these guys were pushing the limits of music at
their time, just like John Lennon in his time. To understand the
music, you have to understand the time. You have to know what's going
on around them, especially when there's no lyric, when it's all music.
Nobody, I thought, ever got the feel right. So I knew that if I was
just gonna be playing some dead guy's music for the rest of my life,
I'd probably never get a hearing, because their impression of what the
dead guys should sound like was not mine at all.

But going even further back, was there ever a time when something in
you said, "I want to make my own notes and words"?

I was seven [at Peabody]. I already knew what I was going to do. I
was over that when I was seven, a done deal. I was already writing. I

didn't know how good or not good I could be. I knew that I could
probably figure it out musically, but word-wise I was writing "The
Jackass and the Toad Song". But I've always been a bit of a romantic.
I'd be five years old, lying on my bed, with the afghan over me,
squeezing my legs together and thinking, "Something should go here one
day." I wanted to run away with all those guys, with Zeppelin and Jim
Morrison and John Lennon. I [recently] told Robert Plant that I really
wanted to pack my peanut butter and jelly and my teddy and my trolls
and come find him.

So even then the power of songs being done by the people who wrote
them was something you could feel.

Yeah, I was totally conscious of that at five. It's funny, because
I think I'm more affected by those writers than the ones who were
happening when I was in high school. I wasn't really affected by what
was going on in 1979. I had checked out; I was just listening to my
old records. Somebody played me the Sex Pistols after they had come
and gone, and I we'ed in my pants. I said, "Shit, my father never
showed me that THIS existed." I felt absolutely inadequate when I
heard the Sex Pistols and the Clash, going, "Where was I?" I mean, I
made Zeppelin and the Beatles and all those people when I was
five...Actually Zeppelin didn't happen until I was nine or ten, when I
started to bleed, so it was totally perfect; I was all ready for
Robert.

How did those sorts of influences affect your growth as a songwriter?

First of all, I cannot contrive a song. I'm not nailing people who
can. I know some very good writers who I respect a lot. They're called
to do something for a movie, and they can come up with it in two
weeks. They're not schlock writers; I'm talking about people who don't
do hack jobs. They've got two weeks, and they're watching the film,
and they're getting inspired. And I'm like, "How do you do that?" I
don't care what you offer me right now; if the fairies don't sprinkle
their little wee on my head, it's not gonna happen. I can't make it
happen. Now, say I'm walking down the street, eating a banana, and
something happens - four bars, with a sketchy lyric. If you gave me
two weeks, MAYBE I could develop it, just on my skills and craft
alone. I'm not telling you it could be great. It might be passable.
But there are certain songs I look at and say, "I would not change a
breath."

In your performance?

Not my performance. I'm talking about, "That is how the girl wants
to be. She's created. So she has seven fingers and 18 toes. She quite
likes it, thank you very much." I was having this conversation with a
friend recently, another writer, who said, "What happened to some of
those great writers?" It's very funny how a woodworker or a
cabinetmaker gets better with age. They don't forget how to make a
great table. But how come some of these songwriters can't write songs
anymore? It goes beyond being a craft. John Lennon talked about being

able to tap into the source that's always there. Nobody knows where
the freeway on-ramp is. You don't know where to get on and where to
get off. Nobody can tell you the formula, because there isn't one.
You don't write "A Day in the Life" by a formula; it's not gonna
happen.

Yet there are those who rely upon formulas as a device for writing
songs. Almost by definition, these writers tend to be prolific,
because they have a formula that they can haul out and use again and
again. Perhaps the real artists AVOID formulas in order for songs to
be real.

Well, we have to remember that hit records and good songs are not
synonymous. Maybe in the old days, a little bit. But now most hit
records are not great songs. I'm not saying that those formula writers
cannot stumble on something. But at a certain point, it's not about
formula writing. I know I'm going back to the Beatles, just because
that's a big point of reference, but how consistent can you get?
"Eleanor Rigby"? "Norwegian Wood"? How many great songs and hit songs
do you get? "Scarborough Fair" was a big blueprint for "Tear in My
Hand" [from Little Earthquakes]. I remember John Lennon talking about
listening to songs that he loved, then changing them to make them his
own versions. He would say, "God, I love this song. I wish I'd written
this song." Then it would come out totally different. You might not
even know what song it is that inspired you to do something, but there
is that ingredient. Sometimes I do think that we're really just
rewriting songs. There are only 12 bloody notes, you know. So I'll
listen to some song and say, "Why didn't *I* write that?"

Because it speaks to you...

...as if I would have written it. I could name five songs, right
off the top of my head, that I would have given my right arm to write.
[Joni Mitchell's] "Case of You": You don't get it any better. A better
song hasn't been written. I don't care what female singer/songwriter
you throw up in my face: None has done anything in the league of "Case
of You", ME INCLUDED. I sing "Case of You" almost every night in
concert because of that. For a woman to be able to say what that says,
with that kind of addiction and yet that kind of grace, is just not
done. Even Zeppelin and those guys listened to Joni. They were TOTALLY
influenced by Joni. It kills me when the metal guys or the hard
rocking guys who are more posers than anything will show up and say,
"You know, all the guys in my band are embarrassed to like you,
because they're into Zeppelin." And I'll say, "That's kind of funny,
because I just did a duet with Robert." I don't think people
understand that with songwriting, it's not about volume, you know?

When you recorded "Angie" and "Smells Like Teen Spirit", you seemed to
get more inside those songs than most people who would just do a
simple cover. It wasn't a question of adapting them to your style but
rather absorbing them into the heart of your language as a writer and
performer.

Some people see a song as the beginning of the tune to the end of
the tune, with a peak or a climax. Everything kind of builds to that,
and then it either stays and takes you out that way or you bring it
back down for contrast. But when I'm playing a song, the MEASURE
becomes this. [Spreads her hands wide apart.] Instead of this area
being the song, the measure becomes this. Within the measure, where is
our breath? The most important thing to me as a songwriter is the
breath. The most important thing I could ever say to somebody is,
"Sometimes I just breathe you in." From where I come as a writer,
breathing is sacred. The breath within the measure is sacred. If you
don't know how to use breath, then you're not using the most important
notes. The great writers really understood that.

That may be why you stretch the idea of song structure further on
Under the Pink than on Little Earthquakes. There are more extra bars
and beats, more irregular repetitions. You get more into the idea of
breath, with the songs extended to fit that concept.

Yeah, totally.

"China", from Little Earthquakes, is a beautiful tune, but perfectly
symmetrical. You don't hear a lot of that on Under the Pink.

Well, the first part of "Yes, Anastasia" [from Under the Pink] is
a good example of free form. "Anastasia" was written how you hear it.
I wrote that whole first half with a tape recorder: The second half
was written first, and then I was just noodling, just stream of
consciousness with my ghetto blaster on. It took me six weeks to learn
the first half of "Anastasia" from that tape, because it was all about
free form. I'm much better when I've never done something before,
because when I try to do it the second time, I'm recreating instead of
creating. That changes everything. I usually don't get it together
enough to finish a work like that; it's like I've got too much pesto
on my noodles. I'll only get a couple of measures, and then it gets
all jumbled. Then I start screaming and hating myself. It's just
bratty prodigy behavior, because I get in my own way a lot. Sometimes
I don't have the discipline of a more formulated person. Bridges have
always been my strength, but sometimes the rest of the song is like
pissing in the wind: The land masses on either side of the bridge
ain't so great. I've got my Coleman stove and my little jacuzzi on the
bridge, because sometimes there ain't nothin' on either side.

Does the bridge often occur to you first, before you've even got the
main theme of the song?

Believe it or not, sometimes I just write bridges. I'm writing a
piece, and it becomes a bridge.

How can you tell that a piece of music you've got is a bridge rather
than an embryonic chorus or verse?

Because it just wants to occur at that place. The great thing
about a bridge is setup and payoff. For instance, right now I know I
have a chorus for something. I've just started writing something for
the next album, and this came to me in a dream form. I pulled my own
hair to wake up and remember it: It was like Evan Dando [of the
Lemonheads] at my piano, but it looked like Anthony Kiedis [of the Red
Hot Chili Peppers] and it sounded like George Michael. When I woke up,
I wondered if I had to give 'em publishing [laughs]. Now, I know this
is a chorus. But I've set it up seven different times. I know the
chord I need to come from; it's like, I don't smell the apples baking
in the oven unless I come from this place. And yet the thing that I'd
written for this place, I've given to another song, because it isn't
right for this. You see, sometimes you can't be analytical. It's like,
"I hate that fucking bitch, and if you put me next to her, I'm gonna
mutiny." So the different parts have personalities, have souls.
They're very real to me. I'm just translating them; they already exist
somewhere.

In your Sept. '92 Keyboard interview, you explained that you got a
physical reaction, literally felt sick, when you wrote something that
wasn't as good or as appropriate for a song as it could be.

Yeah. If I could get that way with men, I'd be out of trouble
[laughs].

Here, too, you're using very un-technical language to describe how you
do your work. In analyzing their own songs, most professional writers
would say something like, "This melody leads here, so of course we
wanted to do this key change over there, because I could resolve it
with that."

That's never happened to me in my life. I'm trying to kiss a guy,
and this song is pulling my hair and going, "I hate what you've done
to me. I hate you." And I'm like, "Excuse me, I have to go deal with
my song." Everything is secondary when the songs are coming. I don't
know what kind of mother I would be; it would depend on how the songs
felt about the baby. I'm a musician before I'm a woman, no question.
I'm just beginning to kind of feel like I'm a woman and that I can do
that kind of stuff, like have a human baby. I think that would be much
less demanding than song babies, because sometimes it takes three
years to create a song baby. And they don't go away. They're always
in the back of my mind, and I'm like, "I hate singing you, already.
I'm so SICK of you." But they'll say to me, "Go listen to [Chrissy
Hynde's] 'Brass in Pocket'. Why couldn't she have created us?" A whole
relationship happens between the songs. Maybe because I've been
playing since I was two and a half, I take for granted that the
technical side will be right, because if it isn't good, it won't
happen; I'll just throw up. Someone could sit next to me and tell me
what's wrong with my song, and I would say, "But I can eat apple
strudel. That's all that matters; that means I'm right." If I wasn't
right, I couldn't eat.

You still write at the piano. How do you feel about sequencers and
samplers as writing tools?

That's not my instrument. It is some people's instrument, but
they're not piano players, not really. If they were fair, they
wouldn't tell you they are.

Many of them, in fact, come from a piano background but have moved
into new compositional techniques because they feel that the sounds
can stimulate fresh ideas.

I can buy that. A lot of these people are very rhythmic, so they
hear a sound and make it a rhythm. Then they work around that. Their
work might be a little more diverse than mine - I'm talking about the
good ones - because sonically I have one instrument while their thing
changes constantly. They manipulate sounds, and my sound stays the
same, although I change what it does. It's a choice. It's not like a
victim thing: "Why can't I have a bitchin' sound, like all those cool
cats?"

Of course, the interaction between you and the piano is central to
your work.

Well, my records wouldn't sound the same without the piano. That's
why I play piano. Without the piano, my phrasing, my breath, wouldn't
be the same. It's like the tide coming in, that pull of sand and sea.
It is a relationship. It's the exact moment where you hold that note
for that extra millisecond, and you're pulling back on the vocal, and
the sustain's riding it all, and you add something in the left hand,
and you're holding that note, and then the piano just knows when to
come. It's about doing the tango.

In terms of lyrics, commercial songwriters can be like caricaturists
who scale complex emotions and issues down to bite size. You and other
more personal writers, on the other hand, are more like abstract
painters.

You're right, but my intentions for writing have changed. There's
a time when you want people to sing your songs with you. If you
didn't, you'd keep them in your living room. Let's not lie to
ourselves; that's the truth. Even though I could tell you I'm writing
because it's my form of expression, there is a need - that is a fair
word, I think - to have them shared. Sometimes I'll listen to work
that I've done, and I'll go, "I'm not in that place anymore. I
couldn't write like that if my life depended on it. But I do
understand an element of it that I would like to have in, say, this
next piece." I do like that approach of, like, peeling your skin off.
Although the whole concept of Under the Pink is about peeling the skin
off, that's more of an abstract work, whereas Little Earthquakes is
more like a diary. That was a conscious choice. I didn't want to write
the same record again.

Thus the more flexible structures on Under the Pink.

Yeah, but sometimes it's a little more lyrically detached. They
[the listeners] can really crawl into the painting. I wanted Under the
Pink to be more abstract, for many reasons. I was really into certain
poets at the time, like e. e. cummings, and painters like Dali. I had
this whole thing going where I liked codes and going with your senses.
It was a bit of a maze, and you as a listener had to work to find out
where we were going. Little Earthquakes was a bit more voyeuristic.
You could sit back and watch this girl go through this stuff. You
can't on Under the Pink; you have to go through it to understand it.

But isn't there a line you have to draw, not just as a songwriter but
as a human being? There must be a limit to how much you are willing to
reveal in your lyrics.

Funny you should say that. Since before I wrote Little
Earthquakes, I've had a pact with myself of no censorship. See, if
you're a songwriter and people don't really know who you are, that's
one thing. But if you're singing your own songs, it's a little
different in this respect. I've found that the more known a writer
gets, the less powerful and exposing their work gets, because the more
they get known, the less they want to expose. I've caught myself
trying to censor recently, going, "Oh, my God, they're gonna know who
THAT is. And they're DEFINITELY gonna know who he is." But this is not
about putting names next to things. That's irrelevant. If people want
to speculate, they've missed the point.

But most people don't know who you're referring to in your songs. They
don't know the people who affect your life and work.

Yeah, but some of those people might know who I'm writing about,
just because the more you get known, the more people know about who's
in your life. So sometimes there's a thing about, "DO I really want
people to know what I think this?"

I doubt that Ira Gershwin ever worried about that kind of thing.

Well, he didn't say anything that anybody needed to worry about.

Unlike Ira Gershwin, or folks like Barry Mann and Diane Warren, you
and your songs are inseparable. Not many pop singers are going to
cover your tunes.

No, although I wish Metallica would do one [laughs].

Your songs specifically reflect your experiences. Whether listening
from, as you put it, a voyeuristic standpoint or working through the
abstractions, would people ever be able to get as fully into your work
as, say, "Someone to Watch Over Me"?

Look, "Someone to Watch Over Me" ain't gonna keep a girl from
jumping off a bridge like "Me and a Gun". Maybe if the person was on
Quaaludes and had some weird sick sense of Nelson Riddle and Linda
Rondstadt, and she was in love with some guy and heard it because of
that, but give me a fucking break. Everybody understands basic
emotions: feeling like a coward, wanting to kill some cunt and have no
remorse about it. It's like, "No, I don't feel guilty about this. What
I feel bad about is that I don't feel bad about this." That's what I
have to look at. I try and crawl into my unconscious, and it's not
that different from what's inside any of us. All of us have a bit of
the vampire and a bit of the nightingale. But don't tell me that the
hardest cats rockin' out there aren't afraid of pain. I'm just saying,
whatever your lifestyle, whether you bring me one of the hardest
rockin' dudes in the business or Bambi, they're all bummed out that
Mom's gone.

The paradox is that the more you personalize, or Tori Amosize, your
songs, the more universal they become to those who work to get them.

But I don't ever think that these are Tori Amos songs. I translate
them in such a way because of Tori's experiences that would be
different from so and so's experiences. But, as I've told you, these
songs already exist. I'm writing a song right now about, no matter
what I try to do, this person doesn't want what I want. Now, anybody
can understand that. I mean, how can you not want to sip from a yummy
chocolate soda or touch feet together? EVEN IF YOU'RE THE PERSON WHO
DOESN'T WANT IT. It doesn't matter what side of the fence you're on.
The rapist knows "Me and a Gun". The boyfriend of the girl who was
raped knows it, because he's had to live through it in a different
way. The parents of the girl...We could go on and on. But on this new
song, they're so afraid of getting hurt that they won't open their
heard. They KNOW.
Emotions are very simple. I don't find them complex at all, to be
quite honest. The girl who got laughed at, or the girl who was
laughing at the girl: You're one or the other, my friend. Or there is
one other option: You're the girl who's trying to divert attention so
you don't get laughed at, and you're trying to stay friends with the
girl who's laughing at the other girl. That's where I was; I think
that's where most girls are. You're trying to stay friends with the
girl who's laughing at the other girl so you won't become the girl
getting laughed at. That's cowardice. But that's what a lot of people
understand. So I write about being in those shoes, because it calls up
those things in us.
I can't imagine writing if I'm not experiencing a life. If you
have no life, if you're not being open to things, whatever they are,
then all you're doing is repeating yourself, because all you can do is
write from this one thing that happened to you when you were 16.
You're writing the same song over and over again; all you're doing is
changing the scenes. There's a disease in the writer's community that
says, if you grow and you start to develop yourself, if you don't keep
a detached existence, where you're always victimized or whatever, then
you have nothing to write about. A lot of songwriters get into this
mode if they're successful from the point of view of everything going
wrong in their life and being in pain, although you never really
experience pain until you start looking at it. That's when you're

gonna know what your pain is, when you start healing; otherwise,
you're just part of the quagmire. John Lennon is a perfect example of
somebody who was always having different adventures, growing,
experimenting. But I do see a lot of writers not experiencing their
life because they don't want to let go of their success.

In his last work, Lennon even turned domesticity, the antithesis of
debauchery, into art.

Well, who says that just because you fall in love and you open
your heart to somebody that you're not gonna have more passion, more
angst, more to look at than you ever had? The more you expose yourself
to different feelings, the more you have to draw on. Obviously, if
you're in a complacent relationship, your work might sound that way.
But why does growing have to be synonymous with complacency? There's
so much self-destruction on the artist's side. Not necessarily on the
hack's side. Hacks aren't self-destructive, because they've got a
business to run. But the artist will do anything to keep the machine
going. We're so afraid to write things that won't be accepted. Well, I
believe that audiences get bored very quickly.

Bored with someone's output over a period of years?

Yeah, at a certain point. Maybe you know it even before they do,
because you feel it.

As your world becomes more infected by fame, how do you keep in touch
with the reality of life?

Look, if my whole life was...

Not your whole life.

Wait. If most of my life was about going into the studio, making
the record, doing the video, doing the tour, living and breathing only
that, at a certain point, what would I fucking write about? I KNOW
that. Now, there are some very good ones out there whose work is still
about one kind of energy. Say it's anger: That's ALL it is. Well,
guys, hello? Can we have maybe a different angle on your anger today?
All the angry boys out there talk about how they can't have this
stuff. Now, I adore angry boys. I'd make 'em all apple pie with
cinnamon ice cream. But they all talk about they can't have this and
they can't have that. They've got this whole movement based on what
they can't have. And I say to them, wrong. It's a choice. They've
chosen not to have certain things. And none of them takes any
responsibility for that. Those boys are gonna get interesting when
they start to go, "I CHOSE not to have love." Come on, boys. Let's say
something interesting for a change, instead of, "I can never have this
or that." THAT'S YOUR CHOICE, because you think you're shit. There's
very little responsibility for their part in it. They don't own up
to, "The reason I can't have love is because I think I'm gonna shrivel
when I'm with this woman, because I don't think I deserve her." Let's

go into the WHY. To go into that, you have to LIVE. You have to open
up to these things. You're not gonna get to these answers by I-IV-V-
fucking-I.
And it's not just the boys. Some of the girls do it too. Ay-yi-yi,
can we stop blaming the guys here? We can blame them for what they've
done, but then we have to balance in what we've done. The work isn't
interesting when people aren't constantly discovering. We're stopping
our lives as writers because we think we won't make great art. Who has
put this thought out there? It's like a virus.

You're saying that there's a loss with respect to the talented writers
who could have said so much before getting stuck on a single riff.

Totally that's what I'm saying. It is such a sense of loss. I'm
not gonna mention names, but I'll watch something and go, "I know that
this is very calculated." Once you've been on the other side, you know
what it is and what it isn't. You just smell it. You're like, "This
person is too much. They could go further than they ever thought they
could go in their pain and darkness." I've always said that Lucifer
understands love better than anybody. You know he's done a mean tango
with Greta Garbo a few times. Really understanding love is the only
way you get to that side of things. Otherwise, you're just renting
videos. It's HBO. These guys and girls who write about one more
torture device over and over again? That doesn't scare them. It's not
a challenge. And that's not challenging those kids who really are
screaming. Talk about pain; if they want to experience pain, they
should go hold hands with the little mermaid. Then they'll get scared
shitless because they'll have to be real.

The pain industry that you're describing...

That's a great term for it. I guess I'm part of it too, in a
sense.

...strips real pain of its validity. When people tire of hearing songs
that tell them how miserable they should be, they're stripped of the
opportunity to feel misery.

And they become parodies of themselves. It's so theatrical.
Where's the REAL experience, so that when you take it to theatrics the
foundation is still strong? But when it's just about anger for anger's
sake...

...you're describing the fashion rather than the guts.

It IS a fashion, and it isn't really that deep. We can all be a
bit seduced by it. There's a masochist in me too, but my masochist is
getting a little bit bored. It's not getting satisfied by those guys
anymore. It's like, "You think THAT'S painful?" My God, Baudelaire and
Rimbaud were talking about and experiencing the HEART. But it's so
easy to contrive something. You know, "We're marketing dismemberment
this week. That seems to be what kids want so, no problem, we'll do

it." The whole point is that dismemberment isn't darkness, is it? It's
just dismemberment. It's like, that's why God created video, so that
you don't have to do any work on yourself. It's just a good
distraction, an alternative to getting to what darkness is. The music
business is packaging darkness, but for the most part, I think it's
just a parody of darkness.
Look, I'm just saying that the writer's community has been given a
drug. "Tori takes another step in her life, so she won't be able to
write songs like 'Silent All Those Years' anymore." Guess what? You're
right. She'll never be able to write that again. So why is that a bad
thing?

** end

[Splunge]

SCREAMS AND WHISPERS
by Albrecht Piltz

"So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts What's so amazing
about really deep thoughts?"
-Tori Amos, Silent All These Years

Yes, what's so amazing about a girl with really deep thoughts? At
first nothing, except if she's called Tori Amos. The place: the
lobby of the Old Opera House in Frankfurt. The time: March 7, 1992, a
sunny Saturday afternoon which would actually hail the harbingers of
Spring under a blue sky in an airy street cafe, instead of inside with
a plush background of gold stucco and thick velvet curtains. At the
dozen bistro tables grouped in a semicircle around a jet-black
Steinway perches a crowd of winter paled media types and stressed-out
record company people, all putting away pieces of strawberry cake with
the same disciplined tact. In the background is the clink and jingle
of forks and glasses, polished clean by bored waiters in penguin
suits.

At precisely four the door flies open, and in a group of retainers a
delicate lady in rubbed-smooth flares (they flap up to her thighs!)
with a carrot-red mane of hair and the transparent complexion of a
Botticelli angel marches through the noble ambiance, purposefully
makes for the foot-high piano platform and takes her place on the
bench. Takes her place? No, she clamps herself on the very outside
edge, right leg sprawled out- a position as unorthodox as it is
uncomfortable, whose deeper meaning only comes out in concert (clack,
the freeswinging hoe cracks the rhythm out on the platform!)-and
inspects the munching circle: "Hello everybody, I'm Tori Amos."

The second look is meant for the man who has posted himself at the
other end of the piano and prepares to operate the sliders of the
mixer. "Ready?" A nod, and ten fingers rush over the black and white
keys- an assault a la Rachmaninoff and the beginning of a mini-set
that makes the cake-eaters completely forget their shoveling and
chewing and after each of the four songs moves them to stupefied
applause. Even the snapper's guild, which doesn't pass up the
opportunity to immortalize the photogenic object of their visual
desire in action, is so perplexed, considering it's a free indoor
concert advertised as a "sound check",that some of its members are on
the verge of letting their objective slip through their sweaty
fingers. So it is with the KEYBOARDS photographer, who even before
the halfway mark has been reached sways to the reporter who came for
the interview and shows him his bare arms: "Excuse me, I'll continue
later." What happened? "Here, look!" Yes sir, a clear case of the
goosebumps.

The reason for the abruptly-arising sense of physical well-being,
which with wonderful regularity also assails the audiences of Amos
appearances is not built alone by the technical proficiency which the
whirlwind at the piano demonstrates; the breathtaking voice of the
lady weaves a spell still more than the flying fingers, (a voice)
which, when the song requires it, suddenly tumbles from a dramatic
scream to an intimate whisper and from the highest soprano to the
deepest depths- an organ of power that no witness would have guessed

of this slender musical body. Added to this is the nowadays rare
originality of Amos' songs, which has incited even the hard-boiled
critics straight through the journals to hymns of praise: "Whoever
thinks after 25 years experience with popular music there can't be
anything new should listen to Tori Amos," recommended the reviewer
from a newspaper who had followed the call of the American from Bonn
on the Rhine to Frankfurt on the Main. And the pop culture
publication Tempo, roused from its normally meticulous coolness,
noted: "Tori Amos gives pop music back the good complicated song."

We should have been warned. Before his fall tour '91, during which
Tori Amos brought the headliner utter embarrassment with Marc Cohn
indicated to the editor in an off-the-record question about
undiscovered talent, "Listen to Tori Amos, she's unbelievable!" Tori
who? "Don't worry about it," reassures Ian Thorpe, the man from
London who today sits at the mixer during these completely packed
concerts, "I didn't know what to expect either. I've worked with Tori
now since December, and I wouldn't have believed how much fun it is to
be on the road with her. She really knocks the people out, everybody
loves her. It probably has something to do with the fact that
everyone notices how much she loves what she does herself, especially
when she plays in Europe. In America they mostly put a Yamaha CP-80
out on stage, but here they have real grand pianos, Steinways and that
sort of thing. She blossoms when she has one of those classical
instruments in front of her, and you can see how she makes love to
them."

This love has in 28 years not only ascended clear summits, but crossed
shadowy valleys. At the tender age of two and a half the daughter of
a Methodist minister from North Carolina sits at the household piano
bench for the first time. At five the parents send the highly gifted
child to conservatory at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, a famous
brag-establishment for America's musical elite. But nothing comes of
this sought-after career ("I wanted to go into classical music").
"They threw me out at eleven, I wasn't disciplined enough." Two years
later Tori hangs around hotel lobbies and gay bars, where she beats
out standards like Erroll Garner's "Misty" and the _Casablanca_ hit
"As Time Goes By", while father Amos makes sure that the soul of his
rebellious teenager doesn't get caught in Beelzebub's fangs. Ten
years later- in the meantime Tori has been stranded in L.A.- the Time-
Warner conglomerate lures her with a record contract. Tori siezes the
opportunity and experiences a debacle, since as frontwoman for the
mediocre metal group Y Kant Tori Read? she must wipe away all the
sheen that she had achieved so far: the fine art of playing the piano
solo, the pride in her own unmistakable voice, and not least "my self-
esteem, and that was the worst." _Y Kant Tori Read?_, the 1987 album
over which today even the record company would rather lay a cloak of
merciful silence, is a document of depression, a product as artless as
it is without character.

The pains of artistic rebirth last almost four years. During this
time songs are created like "China", "Crucify", "Silent All These
Years", "Little Earthquakes" (the title song of the "official" debut)
and "Me And A Gun", a description of a rape from the point of view of
the victim, which Tori Amos sings facing forward and a cappella into
the face of her live audience; during the Frankfurt appearance the

siren wail of an ambulance sounds outside as if custom-ordered. Not
that her concerts would degenerate into a public exorcism of old
demons; with independent piano versions of Stones and Led Zeppelin
classics ("Angie", "Whole Lotta Love") and lively standards
("Sentimental Journey") Tori Amos intermittently strikes easy tones.
However, her repertoire isn't exactly the stuff from which the
streamlined pop radio makes easily consumable hits. "She is certainly
not the radio thing, her stuff is too unwieldy for that," states Elfi
Kuester, press chief for the East West record label, and brings the
truth about Tori Amos to the point: "She has to come and play.
Whoever sees her play is convinced." The dates of the June tour are
at the end of this interview.
============
KEYBOARDS: Tori, when one looks at your schedule one gets dizzy.
You've been on tour for months, in America, England, Japan, Australia,
Germany, and there's no end in sight. How do you keep this up?

TORI: (laughs) Yeah, they're really sending me all over the place. On
the one hand it's fun, but on the other I wish I had more time to
play.

KEYBOARDS: But you're playing constantly, every night on a different
stage.

TORI: No, I mean, I want more time to compose and to further develop
my piano playing. I can only speak for myself of course, but I think
that you can only expand your vocabulary as a pianist when you spend a
lot of time at the piano without an audience. On stage you're playing
the finished songs, and you play them maybe better and better, because
you're always getting to know them better. But new things only come
up when you can try out new things. You can't do something like that
in concert, and definitely not when you're always sitting around on
airplanes and in hotels like I am. So I don't have the time for it,
and because of that at the moment I'm forgetting many ideas from which
many new things could have come.

KEYBOARDS: You don't make note of your ideas, so you can work them out
later?

TORI: Only when it has to do with lyrics- I make notes for that
everywhere all the time. But I never write music down, the melodies
come from improvising at the piano. I put my boombox next to me and
record them.

KEYBOARDS: Then after a while you must have a lot of tapes from which
you can work.

TORI: Yes, but there's a big difference if you try to put a song
together from little bits like that, or if you let it develop itself
out of many hours at the piano.

KEYBOARDS: Does that mean that you compose totally from the soul?

TORI: Oh, I think when I compose too. (Laughs) But a good song speaks
first to your soul, your heart, and when your heart isn't in the
composing and you only work with your brain, then what comes out of it

is dead and cold. To compose from the heart you have to give it the
chance to open up and react. When you do that, then the piano answers
back. That's a dialogue you can't force. You need time, and at the
moment I wish I had a few months I could use for that.

KEYBOARDS: It sounds like a successful album and sold-out concerts
aren't enough for you to be satisfied with yourself.

TORI: Well, what you just mentioned are the criteria for success. I
don't want to say that success means nothing to me, but there are
things that are more important to me, for example developing myself
further. Success for success' sake isn't the reason I'm here.

KEYBOARDS: Four years ago you made an album (_Y Kant Tori Read?_) that
was obviously out to be successful.

TORI: All I can say is that that was an album where I noticed too late
that I wanted to satisfy everyone but myself. If you look at the
cover, I look like a warrior.

KEYBOARDS: A metal queen.

TORI: Yeah, but that's not me, and thus it's not convincing, but
rather a bit ridiculous. What you want to embody has to be inside
yourself, and this Amazon... (shakes her head) Although the body was
fine, wasn't it? (Laughs) But it had nothing to do with me, it was
more of a kind of cry for help: "Please love me!" Because, you know,
when I was young I was always the good buddy, boys never asked me out,
as opposed to my friends. The boys only called me to get their phone
numbers. Maybe I wanted to get even with them with this picture.
(Laughs)

KEYBOARDS: Did people at that time push you to make a metal album?

TORI: Let's just say nobody stopped me! But I'm not placing the blame
on anyone but myself. Later I swore to myself that I would never make
an album again that didn't represent me. Y Kant Tori Read was a band
that already existed before I came to it. They had huge problems, the
lineup changed constantly, and I thus recorded the album with
different bandmembers. I said to myself then, They've rejected me so
many times, now I'll show them! I wanted to prove something, but
wanting to prove something to the world is no good motivation to make
music.

KEYBOARDS: Did you listen to the album later, perhaps to learn
something from it?

TORI: No, I don't need to listen to it, I know how awful it is. The
only thing it had to do with me was, back then something in me thought
Tori should wear leather. (Laughs and rolls her eyes)

KEYBOARDS: Today you occasionally come out in jeans and Birkenstocks.

TORI: It depends on how I feel. There are also days when I where a
black dress- and pumps! You should see my pumps collection! (laughs)
============

KEYBOARDS: To get back to your music: people who have thought for a
long time that the concept of a singer alone at the piano was worn out
and nothing new would be possible are surprised, for example by the
original structure of your songs.

TORI: Something new is always possible. It's like if you go into the
mountains for the hundredth time. When you take the lift up, you
always see the same worn-out paths, but when you go up very slowly on
foot, it suddenly seems like unexplored territory, and you're
discovering every rock and flower. You have to take the time to look
at them and discover their beauty. The piano is such a territory.
When you don't have the patience to explore it, then it's the most
boring instrument in the world, but if you spend a lot of time with
it, you'll always be discovering something new. I think it's like
that with every instrument. I mean, I sometimes listen to music by
people who come out with one album after the other, and I already know
how the next one is going to sound- predictable! But when music
becomes predictable, it can't convey any more emotion.

KEYBOARDS: Your music isn't predictable.

TORI: Not yet.

KEYBOARDS: Do you see the danger of that in yourself?

TORI: Of course, nobody is safe from it. Up until now what has kept
me from writing predictable music is that I only compose when I feel
the need to. (Long pause) It's strange, I'm noticing that I'm really
having problems talking about the songwriting process, maybe because
I'm not used to it. The people from the press always want to talk
only about my father and my upbringing, but nobody asks me about my
music. I'm really grateful to you for doing that.

KEYBOARDS: So nothing more about your father?

TORI: Oh, stop it! (Laughs) I mean, I love my father, I owe him so
much, he always supported me.

KEYBOARDS: He accompanied you through the Clubs-

TORI: -and looked after me, when I needed someone to look after me. I
was so young.

KEYBOARDS: It says in your official biography that you played in gay
bars at thirteen. No one would have allowed that in Germany.

TORI: They wouldn't have allowed it anywhere but in (Washington) D.C.
They had really liberal laws back then, and since my father
accompanied me and held his hand over me, luckily it was possible.

KEYBOARDS: Were you already thinking of making an album back then?

TORI: I thought about it all the time! From the time I was thirteen I
sent tapes around with the songs I had written. I did that for five
years, and then at eighteen I stopped.

KEYBOARDS: Why?

TORI: Because of the replies I got.

KEYBOARDS: How did they go?

TORI: "You may perhaps have potential. Call us back in a few years."
Very encouraging! But that's the problem with the music industry,
they invest hardly any money in developing talent. They don't say,
He or she has potential we can develop. You know, if I wasn't doing
what I'm doing now I'd gladly be on the other side, in Artist
Development. I'd go out and listen to people, to find out who I could
help- like what they used to do with people like Judy Garland.
Because there are so many talents who have been playing only in clubs
or in their living rooms, and people from the industry should care
about them. They shouldn't wait until someone has the idea to look
for a producer, somebody who knows how to make records and how to
bring music from one medium, the piano or guitar in some living room
or a club, to another, a tape or a record. I mean, you don't have to
be a genius to know that the musicians are the backbone of the entire
thing; without them there would be no music industry at all. The
producers used to care a lot more, for example in the forties, about
all the actors and actresses and screenwriters. They went out and
looked around in places where they hung out, in the clubs and
theaters, and then they brought them to Hollywood. Not that that
would have been a perfect world, since some of these talents in the
course of this process killed themselves and jumped off (the Hollywood
sign). What I want to say is, they shouldn't feed these young talents
with uppers and downers so they can make it for another ten years, but
with support instead.

KEYBOARDS: Have you met such talents yourself since you've been
playing live?

TORI: Oh, in these fifteen years I've met so many who deserve to be
promoted! One doesn't feel comfortable on the stage and needs someone
to maybe give him a bit of confidence, another... you know, there are
so many reasons someone can fail! If I hadn't had my father, who
always pushed me... (Laughs) No, that's not true, what I just said; he
didn't need to push me, I did everything of my own free will. But
when I was thrown out of the Peabody (Institute of Johns Hopkins
University, Baltimore) at eleven and told him I was going to only do
my own thing from that point on- which in the beginning brought a lot
of turbulence between him and me, but that's the way it is with
fathers and daughters! (laughs)- then he insisted I do it right. He
said, "You have to start from the very bottom and learn your craft."
He probably imagined someone like Ginger Rogers- a girl who can play
and dance and sing and who has a mind of her own. (Laughs) But from
that point on he supported me totally. He went with me to all the
hotels and clubs and made sure I was allowed to play.

KEYBOARDS: What did these years in the clubs do for you?

TORI: Those were priceless years for me. I mean, the performances
themselves didn't necessarily help my composing, that I taught myself-
trial and error, you know? But during that time I was associated with

a few people, without whom I wouldn't be here today. One of them was
a teacher at the college I went to when I was seventeen. He was a
composer and worked for the National Symphony (Orchestra) and I had
private lessons with him. I think if you were to ask him today, he
probably wouldn't believe that he had influenced me in any way- back
then I had this typical "fuck off" attitude about it! (Laughs) But in
reality he influenced me a lot, although I was only with him for a
semester. We analyzed compositions together, and I could pick out
which ones.

KEYBOARDS: Which compositions were those?

TORI: Things like "Eleanor Rigby", but also classical stuff. He
taught me to pay attention to the basic pattern and structure, and not
just to rely on spontaneous ideas when composing. Sure there's
something magical when you suddenly feel totally inspired and you
think, Now is the right time to compose. But when you don't just rely
on this magic it can happen that you have to wait three years until
you feel yourself struck by that flash again. This teacher showed me
how I could make something out of one tiny motif, from two measures
for example, also when I think I have just these two measures and
nothing else.

KEYBOARDS: When one knows your lyrics, which are very personal,
sometimes very intimate and almost sound like modern poems, one must
think that you write the lyrics first and then set them to music.

TORI: No, I always start with the sounds, also in the words. Mostly
it's just a line or a word or also just a syllable that sounds
musical, and then lyrics come from that. It's like a sculptor who has
an unsculpted block of stone and knocks off a piece here and a piece
there, and in the end the block has become a sculpture. When I think
about it... (long pause) No, the words actually always come last and
are always part of the music.

KEYBOARDS: That amazes me, because your lyrics revolve around
specific themes- sex, violence, love, religion. They awaken the
impression that there may be a message you want to convey.

TORI: No, I don't have a message as such, I simply sing about myself
and my experiences. My lyrics naturally have meaning, but I'm no
journalist, I'm always trying to find words that sound good.

KEYBOARDS: Have you ever tried it the other way around?

TORI: To write lyrics and then find the right music?

KEYBOARDS: Yes.

TORI: I've tried it, but I just can't do it. The music that comes to
me then is pure crap, the melodies aren't alive. Melodies develop out
of themselves, they don't let themselves be nailed to lyrics. When
someone tries to separate words and notes from one another, and does
first the one and then the other, everything falls apart. No song
results, just a lifeless something without a center and without soul.

KEYBOARDS: Doesn't your method of working mean that you must work very
long on one song?

TORI: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I change a lot during this
process. I work until the song has its own sound, a structure, a
body. Sometimes when I sit at the piano I have three or four little
things I work with, fragments which could become a song, but I always
have an idea for that song. And then I decide step by step in which
direction I want to go, since each of these fragments goes in a
different direction. To come to these decisions is the real challenge
of songwriting, and I believe it is important to take them on, if you
don't want to write the same song over and over. Otherwise you tend
to fall back on the same old pattern. The themes of the songs may be
different, but musically they all sound the same. At this point the
teacher I told you about before opened my ears. He showed me that
every song has to have its own character and that songs are just as
different from one another as people.

KEYBOARDS: But there are doubtless patterns and structures that one
can use over and over- verse, chorus, bridge, particular chord
progressions, major-minor change and so on.

TORI: Of course, and everyone who composes should know them. But at
the same time he should be aware that at each moment he has the free
choice between very different possibilities. Because there's no
formula for writing songs.

KEYBOARDS: Don't you also have the impression that in pop music just
this kind of composing- by successful formulas- has gotten the upper
hand?

TORI: Yes, that's true, but who wants to hear that stuff? Not me, and
certainly not you. I think even if we just write songs we can learn a
lot from classical music. Something I learned in my study of
classical music is that a composition can consist of movements.

KEYBOARDS: Allegro, andante, presto.

TORI: For example. And I think the possibilities of expression within
the medium of song in the late sixties and early seventies were bigger
than today. Many musicians then composed in movements, even if they
didn't realize it.

KEYBOARDS: A few of your songs have a kind of movement-like structure,
"Flying Dutchman" for example.

TORI: Yeah, it's not the structure of your typical pop song. (Laughs)

KEYBOARDS: The song sounds almost like a little symphony. Can you
think of anyone else besides yourself who composes in movements today?

TORI: R.E.M. does it sometimes. But most of the songs I hear are
woven from the same pattern and don't go anywhere.
============

KEYBOARDS: In your concerts you play songs from other composers as
well- "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin, "Angie" by the Stones. By
which criteria do you pick these songs?

TORI: It has to be a song that doesn't sound like other songs, a song
with personality. Whoever wrote that song has to have come to a
decision, consciously or unconsciously.

KEYBOARDS: Those many little decisions you talked about?

TORI: Yes, you hear immediately whether someone has composed in that
way or if they've just used another song as a model and tried to write
it again. Prince, for example, is somebody who constantly comes out
with completely new songs. Even when he uses no chord progression at
all, but just one single chord that seems to not move from the spot,
he brings so much out of it! It doesn't matter how many chords you
can bring into a song, but rather it depends on what you make out of
every single chord. One of the best songs of this kind that I've
heard in the past few years and that has absolutely no predecessor is
"Running Up That Hill" (by Kate Bush).

KEYBOARDS: Many critics have compared you to Kate Bush.

TORI: Yes, but I think that has nothing to do with my songs, just my
voice. They hear these high sounds (sings) and immediately think of
Kate Bush.

KEYBOARDS: But your song concepts are completely different.

TORI: Yes, she works with other structures. But her songs are very
original, and that's what matters.

KEYBOARDS: Don't you make it very hard on yourself when you expect
originality from every new song as you're composing?

TORI: I didn't say it was easy to write songs- I mean good songs. So
much has been done within this medium- take a song by Van Morrison and
compare it to something by Ice Cube! But it's exciting for me to see
what all you can do within five minutes and what different
personalities can expressed themselves in that short period of time.
Because that's the deciding factor: that you express something! There
has already been much too much music that doesn't express anything at
all and is only good for dulling your senses like a bad drug. Music
should do the opposite, it should open your senses. When you compose
you're dependent on these channels being open, and you have to learn
to keep them open and let the energy that's flowing through and filter
it into something that's your own.

KEYBOARDS: How can one open these channels and keep them open?

TORI: By not pushing yourself and doing things only for others, not
for yourself. Maybe pressure isn't the right word, maybe I should say
angst. When you're afraid- afraid of yourself, afraid of being
rejected- you can't express yourself in what you're doing. That awful
album I made back then opened my eyes, that there are lots of people
in the music business who either only reject you or fawn over you,

that it's personally embarrassing to me. I've gotten to know both
extremes, and both of them are just as damaging. They prevent you
from finding yourself and create something that comes from here (lays
her hand on her heart). Today I see it very clearly: What the music
industry thinks is what it thinks, and what I think is what I think.
When we're lucky we're thinking the same thing, but it's only
important what I think. I needed a long time to come to this
understanding. Because, you know, when you're coddled for many years
as a so called prodigy, sometime you become addicted to "You really
did that well!" Not necessarily from your parents, they're only a
small part of the system, but also from friends and teachers and
producers. When you figure out for the first time at eleven that
everybody around you isn't as impressed by you as they used to be,
then you start to fight for that appreciation and finally you only do
what others expect of you. You have to free yourself from that, and I
hope no kid needs as long to do it as I did. (Laugh) I can already
hear the voices saying Hey, what is she blabbing about, it can't have
hurt her, she got what she wanted! But I'm surprised at it myself,
that I came out of it and today do my own thing. At eighteen I was
almost ready to give up songwriting, because I thought Maybe they're
right, maybe I need a band, maybe I should make dance music. Which
was of course absolute shit! But I did it! I made piles of demos
with dance music that were so bad, you'd lose your lunch if you had to
hear them. Somehow I survived that crap, but I don't know myself
where the tenacity that I seem to have comes from.

KEYBOARDS: Don't you feel you learned something from these ill fated
attempts?

TORI: Oh, sure I did. Even if the dance music I wrote was crap, I
learned something, namely to work with my left hand. My left hand is
much better today, more rhythmic.

KEYBOARDS: One notices it when you play a rhythm opposite to your
vocal melody- that gives many keyboardists problems.

TORI: But if you listen carefully you'll discover that the melody
isn't always in the vocals.

KEYBOARDS: You don't make a strict separation between your singing and
your piano playing. Sometimes you accompany your vocal melody on the
piano, and sometimes you accompany the melody you play on the piano
with your voice.

TORI: Yes, and the melody also wanders back and forth between my right
and left hand.

KEYBOARDS: It was a giant step from your first album to _Little
Earthquakes_. How did your record company react when you played these
totally different new songs for them?

TORI: They were a bit shocked! (Laughs) Mostly because I'd never
played the songs for anyone before. I mean, my boyfriend Eric (Rosse,
co-producer of _Little Earthquakes_), who met me five years ago, when
I was working on you-know-which album, thus under false pretenses- he
was one of the first to encourage me. One time I sat at the piano and

started to play, and he listened and then said, "I can't believe it!
Why haven't you ever played this stuff? When will you show it to
somebody?" But that I came back to the piano at all is due to one of
my best friends; today she lives in a log cabin in Montana, but at
that time she played in a band in L.A. It was during the time when I
still earned my money in the hotel lobbies. One night I was at her
house, and she had an old piano sitting in the corner, and I sat down
and played for five or six hours, nothing but improvisation. When I
was stopped she came in and said, "Tori, you have to make an album,
but with this stuff!" I said, "Impossible! Nobody wants to hear it."
And she said, "What are you waiting for? Do you want go on wasting
your talent?" I almost howled when she said that, I was so
discouraged. (Long pause) I owe her a lot.
============
KEYBOARDS: When one sees you play live, one notices immediately how
"physical" you act, beginning with your singing. Your breathing
technique is astounding, you last through very extreme curves of
melody, and one sometimes asks oneself, where you get the breath.
Have you taken singing lessons?

TORI: Yes, when I was twelve, with three different teachers from whom
I learned different things. But I only looked for what I needed, I
didn't want to be an opera singer. Because whether you're dealing
with piano playing or singing or writing songs, technique alone isn't
enough, you have to develop your own style and discover your own
personality. It's easy to sing perfectly and to play perfectly and to
write perfect songs. The real challenge is expressing your
personality. I'm afraid teachers aren't aware of that themselves.

KEYBOARDS: Your piano playing is also emphasized by your body, you
don't sit on the bench but perch on the edge and climb on with your
entire body. Bernhard, who took the photos during the soundcheck
before, finally said, "Sometimes I thought she was about to crawl into
her piano!"

TORI: (Laughs) Well, I'm not ashamed of my body, for me it's a medium
for talking to my instrument. Because a grand piano is a very special
instrument. But, I mean, who am I telling this to? We're talking for
KEYBOARDS here, right? I'm not in some Woody Allen film where people
discuss their problems. (Laughs) When I sit at the piano my instincts
rule. (The press spokeswoman for the record company appears in the
door and signals that the interview time is over.) Hey, we're just
talking about music. Ten minutes more, it's important, okay? Okay,
where were we? Well, some people have pets, I have a piano. (Laughs)
Because for me, the piano is a living thing. This thing they call the
piano has an energy that... how should I say it? It's more than just
three-dimensional matter, it's something four-dimensional. It has a
body that surrounds it and at the same time it has its own life that
transcends the material plane. Sometimes it's male, sometimes it's
female, sometimes it's both. Sometimes when I play it has something
sexual, sometimes not, and sometimes the relationship between us is so
close, that... (long pause) Well, sometimes I think it's courting me
and wants me in bed. And then there are moments when I really have
the feeling it fucks with me in bed. But we respect each other. It's
like that with the fairies.

KEYBOARDS: Fairies?

TORI: (Laughs) Yeah, I believe in fairies and that they exist. I
mean, they talk to me.

KEYBOARDS: But not in this world.

TORI: (Smiles) Our world is just as real as theirs, do you know what I
mean?

KEYBOARDS: I'm trying. Many of your lyrics have a kind of dreamy
quality, they seem to touch associations similar to that which they
call in literature "stream of consciousness". It's another level of
awareness. Is that what you mean?

TORI: (Laughs) Yeah, some lyrics have to do with dreams. I see the
dream and I see the nightmare, and I believe you can't have the dream
without the nightmare. I'm talking in riddles for you, aren't I?
(Laughs)

KEYBOARDS: Maybe you can explain it to me in the context of your
songs.

TORI: Well, in most of my songs there are moments you have to get
through like in a nightmare. It's like an initiation you have to pass
before you can find the key.

KEYBOARDS: There's a song by you that is like a nightmare from
beginning to end.

TORI: "Me And A Gun."

KEYBOARDS: Yes. A rape from the perspective of the victim. But in
this song the nightmare isn't just a moment, it's the whole story.

TORI: A moment in my life. (Pause) People react very differently to
it.

KEYBOARDS: I played it for a (male) friend who thought rape too
serious a subject to make into a song.

TORI: Could it be that your friend simply felt uncomfortable? In my
experience women react very differently to this song. But it's
interesting what you're saying, because my father loves this song-
although my parents are very Victorian and very religious. My father
found it was simply necessary to say what rape means. It's a frontal
assault- not only on your body, but on your soul.

KEYBOARDS: Can you imagine a subject where you would say, That's too
serious or difficult for me to write a song about it?

TORI: No, I think you can write about everything. It depends on the
perspective you write it from.

KEYBOARDS: You sing "Me And A Gun" a cappella. Was there ever an
instrumental arrangement?

TORI: No, I composed it a cappella and it's stayed that way.

KEYBOARDS: You only rarely work with electronics. "Sugar" has an
electronic arrangement.

TORI: Yes, but it's centered around the electric piano.

KEYBOARDS: Why are you so hesitant toward electronic instruments?

TORI: Because they don't have the soul a piano has. Now I don't want
to say that electronic instruments are anything bad. For example: the
electronic arrangement for "Girl" (on _Little Earthquakes_) is mine.
Eric made the sounds on the Kurzweil and programmed everything, since
I don't have a clue.

KEYBOARDS: Did you arrange other songs yourself? I'm thinking of
"Precious Things".

TORI: Yes. "Precious Things" is mine. And "Leather".

KEYBOARDS: When you compose, do you already have the arrangement in
your head, or do you only orchestrate a song once it's done?

TORI: When a song is done, that also means that I know what it's going
to sound like. The arrangement is part of the composition. But it's
great to work with sampled strings, you hear the orchestra right away.

KEYBOARDS: You occasionally also use real strings, for instance in
"Silent All These Years" (arranged by Nick DeCaro).

TORI: Yeah, that's a great arrangement. But still...

KEYBOARDS: Your love still belongs to the acoustic piano.

TORI: (Laughs) Yes, for different reasons. It's made from wood by
human hands, and it doesn't need a plug. I mean, if the entire world
was left without electricity tomorrow- I could still play my piano.
Besides that, the forte pedal is very important for what I do; it's
how you let the piano breathe.

(Long pause) My dream is to bring the piano up to the next level. I
would love to equip it with contact mikes and send the sound through
the Marshalls and maybe attach a second piano to it and then compose
with the effects.

KEYBOARDS: That's no problem with MIDI.

TORI: But it still has to sound like a real piano. Because I think
you have to stay true to your medium and try to develop it further.
I'm only just beginning, and I don't think I'm really a good pianist.
Maybe I'm a clever pianist, but my technique isn't _that_ amazing.
When I listen to some guys from the jazz and blues world, I sit there
with an open mouth. Maybe that way of playing would seep into me if I
had more to do with people from that area. I think you have to have
the music you make in your blood. So far there are other things in my

blood. When I sit at the piano and the fifths start coming images
from the highlands and the moors go through my head, and I feel like
I've gone back a thousand years. Because I understand the message
that lies in these sounds.

You know, all music contains a code, in every sound and in every
sequence of notes there's a DNA, genes, specific memories of our own
lifetime. That's why music talks to people on the subconscious level.
Things resonate there that come from early cultures, from the original
music of the North American Indians or from the folklore of the Celts.
A lot of what I play goes back to these traditions. I mean, even if
the musicians from these cultures played it on different instruments,
say on drums, I can still take it over for my piano.

It's another medium, but the DNA is the same.

KEYBOARDS: In some of your songs you play really like it was
percussion, in the intro to "Precious Things" and in "Little
Earthquakes".

TORI: Yeah, some of my stuff has Celtic roots. But it all comes from
my heart, not from my head. When I play something like this for
example... (jumps up and sits at the piano)- you see? That's the
music that talks to me more than any other- the low notes are static,
and the movement is in the higher notes. They're ancient structures
that speak to something in me, that are connected to those old
cultures. When you're aware that you're creating from such a source,
then you can also write music that has a soul and a balance and that
isn't just functional. Whoever doesn't just write functional music
has to realize that source in himself, and there are people in all
areas, whether it be Rap or Heavy Metal or Folk or Dance, that do
that.

KEYBOARDS: So what you want most out of music is the spiritual
quality?

TORI: Yes, music without spirituality doesn't deserve its name. That
is, I'm not talking about the people who just write their songs to
help sell some product in a commercial. What do those people know
about music? They tore out their hearts a long time ago. I'm talking
about music that isn't written out of Angst or on a "What are they
thinking?" basis. I know what I'm talking about, I worked that way
once. What I want to say is, It's the intention behind the music that
counts. When you compose just for the people out there, for people
who have only sales figures on their minds and theories about what
people want to hear, then you're lost. These people have no respect
for music, and also no respect for themselves. They don't know the
power music can have.

The greater part of the music that's coming out today is made for the
wrong reasons. But you can win back the right reasons, not only in my
genre, but in all of them! Punk had it in the beginning and also Rap,
and Jane's Addiction and Nirvana and Soundgarden and Metallica have
their moments. I don't want to preach, but I would like to say one
thing to those who make music: Don't try to please the idiots in the
record companies who decide what's worthy to be put out and what

isn't. Those people live in fear- will it sell? We musicians
shouldn't be afraid, we should remember why we're on this earth, and
make it clear to ourselves what responsibility we have, toward music,
toward the people who listen, and toward ourselves. No one is going
to take that responsibility away from us.