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"When I was growing up, it was a bit- it was disciplined. But it's
good because, you know, I have things to write about; if [my father]
would have been a dentist I don't know what I would have written
about." - Tori on her first Leno appearance.
"After it happened, I mean, how do you find? Where do you
go and look for souls that are gone? I needed to communicate. I didn't think about what she needed. Then I thought that
maybe she didn't choose me as a mom. Then I got pissed off and thought, 'OK, go and choose Susan down the street then,
that right-wing Christian bitch'... I wasn't really healthy
when I got pregnant. I let myself go down - but there are heroin addicts who
have healthy babies, so why . . .? ... Look, it was just something I went through and then finally what I went through was surrendering. This is out of my hands. If
this spirit doesn't want to come or can't come for whatever reason, well OK. I'm here. I'll keep myself open. Although for a
while there I was so angry it was: 'No way - you don't even get a chance to
come back'." - Tori talking about her miscarried child in the April 11 UK
Times article.
"The Christian God is alive and well and I usually go out with him every six weeks. Just for a good binge.
Seriously, there are so many energies out there, and there is some kind of force . . . father, Lucifer, whatever . . . but they've
all been made into Disney rides: go on this one, try this one. Which one is
better? Obviously I believe in The Design but I don't always agree with it.
You know, the thing I hated most was when people told
me 'it's all for the best'. [back to the miscarriage] Don't tell me it's all for the best.
DON'T YOU EVER TELL ME THAT." " - Tori in that UK Times article.
"I got in the truck. An hour's drive to the hospital. I'd been at the beach and I started bleeding and I was in pain.
I drove myself because, you know, I didn't want anyone driving. I would have crawled out of my skin . . . I had to do
something. And, you know, I was asking myself 'Is there anything I can do to save this life? Stick a cork inside yourself Tori' . .
. and then we got there, into the room and the nurse broke down and cried. She put me on the table, gave me this scan. I
reached out to her and said 'I'm so sorry.' And I said, 'Let me see it,' and it was just . . .
It was just one of those things." - Tori about the miscarriage, UK Times
[Translated] from a very important Tori article from the Finnish magazine
Rumba (click for the entire article), March
13, 1998-- Do you have groupies? - "Yes, of course I do."
Is it a sexual thing like with male-stars? - "It's not sexual,
it's more about loyal [or faithful] fans. Especially in the USA -- some
people travel from town to town and visit 15 concerts in the Midwest or they
come to each concert in the West Coast. I don't call them groupies but 'ears
with feet'. It's more about interaction. They give me something and I give
them something. This is how friendship works. Somtimes there is an audience
that only takes."
Translated from the March 13, 1998, Rumba
article-- Do you feel like you are friends or competitors to other female
artists? - "When you're good at what you're doing, when you're skilled
and work all the time, then there is a place for everyone and you don't have
to feel threathened. Women are very competive -- sometimes it can be
difficult, but I like meeting other female artists. I'm like a lioness who
kills her own prey and no one else has to kill for her. But if some other
lioness comes to me and says: 'I just got a good prey, do you want a piece?',
I can say 'of course' - and the other way round. It becomes difficult if
another lioness comes along and envies me for that I can kill my own prey
and she can't and therefore wants to harm me.
The Bloody
Countess was a really weak person: She had to kill other women to drink
their blood -- Some find that kind of a person strong. I don't have to take
anything from anybody to feel strong. Some women have been pretty gross about
my having opened my heart. They have not understood the power of the heart."
About the new, different style of the upcoming From the Choirgirl Hotel
album: "It feels like Earthquakes, Pink, and Pele were
a trilogy, and now a door has closed. A certain style ended for me. But as
long as I honor wherever the music is going, whether or not radio plays it,
then I think my audience will still be there. That is the most important
thing to me." - Billboard article from March 29, 1997.
"It has crossed my mind maybe that the public doesn't want my ultimate. But
I can't censor or contrive. I think I'm lucky to have skated through under
the guise of pop musician. I'm really a classical musician. If I get found
out now, if the whistle is blown...maybe that's not such a bad thing." - Tori
"I know every note I sing. Every night I know, was that note higher than
last night? But that's not the important thing. It's the listener that
concerns me. It's intake and out-take. If the listener doesn't like what
is going on, it's partly their fault." - Tori
"The B-sides, some of them are my favorite, to be honest. They just...the
songs didn't want to go on the album. They all have different places where
they want to go, and, uh, it's strange. It's like, if you were to imagine
writing a book. Chapter 7 is Chapter 7, and so it wouldn't fit in another
book." - Tori, CFNY Toronto Interview, Oct 12, 1995
"The rebellion is not about what clothes you are wearing or whether you turn
your back to the audience-- it's not about shocking for the shock's sake.
It's not about singing "Smack My Bitch Up" and pretending to be hard. All
you do is to get your name on K-Mart's black list. It easy - and boring. So
Prodigy, if you want to be hard, go to an abortion clinic and try to help
those girls who have had an abortion in a front of 20 shotguns. Try to be
rough and don't tell how you beat up your girlfriends-- if you got the balls
to do that." - Tori quoted in an article in the March 13, 1998 issue of
Rumba Magazine
"I've heard a popular movie director scoff at the idea of the 'inner
child'. This is nothing to scoff at. We are made of many different
fragments. If these fragments aren't dealt with, we'll all end up in a
looney bin." - Tori, British Press, 1996
"I guess I'd describe myself as... Atilla the Honey." - Tori, "Conversation With God"
"I wanna be burned....definitely burned, like the witches." Tori, Atilla the
Honey ("Conversation With God") Interview
"What would we do without our assholes?" - Tori responding to a rude audience
member during a 1996 Kansas City, Missouri, concert.
"Each song has a little soul, a little persona, it's own little birth
certificate and favorite shoe shops." - Tori
"Pretty is never beautiful." - Tori, Bay Area Musician, March 11, 1997
"So I'm in Virginia, and I had crabs...I keep saying that! I had crab
sickness, I had eaten bad crabs in Maryland!" - Tori
"I've played a lot of universities...they're real thinkers. They talk about
stuff, they yell things out at the concert, and we have a little chat. They
know that they're the future; I wanna play to them because they're the
future." - Tori, Westwood One Interview, 1996
"Being exposed to the gay community at 13 would change my views forever." - Tori
"What gives it to you? Does this rush, this being in love, meeting someone
that has it? You want to be close, you want to be near them? No. You can
feed off them for a while, but in the end, you're just a vampire." - Tori
"Once you get to know sad...she's got some sweet little dresses, you know?" - Tori,
Spin, 1994
"Lucifer understands love better than anybody. You know he's done a mean
tango with Greta Garbo a few times." - Tori, Keyboard, November, 1994
"Do you know what it's like to be a girl and have blood running down your
legs and think that you're dying, just because no one's told you that's
what happens? It's horrible." - Tori
"I'm the thing that fundamentalist Christians cringe over." - Tori Amos
"When you come to my shows, you think you're walking into
this really yummy lunch, and little do you know you ARE
lunch." - Tori Amos
"Truly, I was a sweetheart when I was little, like the
Honeysuckle Faery. Sweet-pea. But sweet-peas are not
popular after second grade. Sweet-peas become nerds
really fast." - Tori Amos
"What sense does it make to load yourself with drugs so much that you are
not noticing anything anymore?" - Tori Amos
"I believe that evil is seen most from those who are trying to stamp out
evil." - Tori Amos
"I'm a tomato freak, but sometimes you have to get it in ketchup form for
people to be able to open to tomatoes." - Tori Amos
"The people on the internet know more about what I am doing than I do. Like,
they will say that I am going to be in this mall on this day, and sure enough,
I am there." - Tori Amos, Dew Drop Inn Tour, June 17th, 1996
"I was in love with this boy when I was five years old and I knew we could
really make it work. I was trying to convince him and he took this hammer
and hit me with it really hard." - Tori Amos
"Almost every culture, every group, quote, unquote, has a way it wants to
perceive things. And when I write songs, the Christians feel that because
I'm not speaking the way they would like me to, that I don't believe in
God, that I'm not part of the Christian formula. But being a minister's
daughter, I know it very well." - Tori Amos
"History has recorded some pretty nasty things that have happened to
people. I think we remember. I think it's in our cells and I think it can
still hurt sometimes." - Tori Amos
"I like butter and the people who like butter." - Tori Amos, Dew Drop In
Tour, June 12, 1996
"There is room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if
you're your own person." - Tori Amos
"I remember our huge black upright. It had one of those winding stools on
it that could wind down low or wind up really high. I would wind it down to
get on it and then I would ask my brother to wind it up so I could reach
the keys. He would always wind it up for me." - Tori Amos, All These
Years Biography
"The main following is coming from the colleges. But thats because they're
into poetry...they just don't want to hear another, you know I'm not here
to bash anybody else's music, but 'Hold me tonight, make it o.k.' from
another girl, because thats not what we're all about as people. I'm a bit
more graphic." - Tori Amos
"I use innocence in my demeanor like a Venus flytrap." - Tori Amos
Apparently, there has been
some controversy, in and out of the Toriphile community, about whether
Tori was ever even raped, or whether songs like "Me and a Gun" are meant to
be about rape in general. I strongly disagree, and it's pretty obvious from
some of Tori's quotes that she indeed was raped, and that it had a
horrible effect on her. Here is the only
interview she has ever given where she gives the specifics of her rape, and
they are shocking and disgusting. It is not a very long interview, but it is
longer than most of the quotes on this page, so I made it its own very small
page. Please go to it; it loads quickly, and there's a link that will bring
you right back to this exact spot.
"I think we're all pretty much told what to think, not how to think..." - Tori
"There's a romance that's happening between her voice and his character.
Um, a lot in this film I become the voice and...as he's a little boy I'm
the voice in his head. And so as he gets older, I'm still the voice in his
head. Kind of, um, reminding him what his feelings are. And I would have
never written this piece had I not seen the picture. The pictures inspired
me, this film inspired me in a huge way. [Doug's note--In another interview,
where she and REM's Michael Stipe talk about the song they had
written for Don Juan DeMarco, it is interesting that she and Michael
both say they only watched a couple of clips of the movie and then ran off
for yogurt and a Dorthea Lange exhibit. The Don Juan song was
rejected.] I mean it gave me chills when I saw it. Real chills. And
um, touched a place in my heart and I...I knew that I wanted to be a part
of it." - Tori talking about Great Expectations on the VH1 show
Hollywood & Vinyl.
This is from Upside Down Fanzine, Issue #4, excerpt from article written
by Tori Amos, "You're Such A Lovely Audience, We'd Like To Take You Home,
We'd Love to Take You Home." - "...I start each day early in the morning packing to leave for the next
city, then I have to fly or drive there. It doesn't seem to matter which
way I travel, one way I have the driving time, and the other I have check
in, baggage pick-up, car returns or rentals, and waiting. It's usually
noon or later by the time I get to wherever I'm going. Then I have to
check in at the hotel, and eat. This is my most important meal of the day
because it has to last me until midnight or later. I can't eat four hours
prior to a show because it affects my voice, and this tour is not catered,
so I have to find nutritious food in each city. A Taco Bomb is not going to
get me through the day. Sometimes I've started the day's interviews while
I'm eating, or right after I'm done. I do about 6 interviews per day,
radio station's first, and then the journalists at the hotel. Then comes
the sound check to make sure everything is right for the show. This is
followed by exercises for my shoulder and a warm-up in general, phone calls
from management and phone interviews arranged that day, and getting dressed
for the show. After that, I'm walking on stage, and it will be 11 or
11:30 p.m. before I'm done. After a show, it takes me an hour or so to
wind-down enough to be able to sleep, and that process does not start until
I'm back in my hotel room, nestled down with my bowl of fresh fruit .
Mickey is ticking close to 2:00 a.m. when my head hits the pillow, the sun
comes up, and I start again."
"They're a ruthless lot, these songs. One thinks she's made the final cut,
but then they spray-paint her dress before she walks down the catwalk, and
she isn't allowed to go out." - Tori about her upcoming 1998 album from the
January 98 issue of Alternative Press Magazine.
During Tori's appearance at the Virgin Megastore in May 1996, she said this
is response to the inevitable piglet question,
"That's my Christmas shot, my Madonna and child. My father's been wanting
me to do Christmas cards for years."
The following is from a JAM!
Showbiz article. The bold stuff is what Tori said:
"I'm a musician first, a food-lover second, a dirty mouth with feet, and
a girl last time I checked." - Tori Amos
On Good Morning America, when asked how she would describe her music, she said, "Like hot chilies and vanilla yogurt."
"I've just been in Ireland, where people are fighting, desperately fighting, for women to have the right to choose if they want to have an abortion or not. I come back here, and I say, 'We've worked for thousands of years to have
some kinds of independence, and you see it slipping through your hands.' Because the truth is this is not about children, and when you strip away all the layers and you get to the seed, this is not about children. If it were, these people would go to the sewers in Columbia, they'd go to the AIDS wards, there're millions of babies. They're thrown out like trash in the streets, like cabbage. Nobody cares about the children once they're on the planet. They don't care. They walk around with guns and blow each other up. They have no food, they have nothin'. Nobody cares about that; this is not about children. This is about having control over a woman's sexuality. And some
women don't want to claim that power because they feel ashamed, they feel guilty, they're torn by love and lust. Christianity has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with that. Nothing. And it saddens me because these people, the anti-choice people, could be doing so much for the children that are on the planet. This is not about the children. And I refuse to play that game, because one has to analyze, one must look at what an issue is about. And
that's not what it's about, and it really comes down to that. And everyone's bought it." - Tori on ABC In Concert. This is a continuation of the "Me and a Gun" explanation on the Little Earthquakes video, and it explains how Tori is pro-choice without necessarily being pro-abortion.
"Healing for me is being able to sit next to the butcher and say, 'Yes, I'm sitting next to the butcher now,' instead of saying 'There is no butcher.' Well, there definitely is one!" - Tori Amos
"My father was a christian minister. I grew up in dirt-poor hillbilly country. We lived this dry-below-the-waist kind of scene. If you were a sensual woman you were in league with that which is un-Christlike. Where I come from, a cockroach is a roach, and a cockerel is a rooster because they can't bring themselves to say cock. Some of my lyrics upset my father." - Quote from the August 97 issue of Elle Magazine, The U.K. edition.
"My physical body has been divided from my spiritual body, divided from my emotional and my mental, because they're all warring in there. I'm just a little warring faction when I walk around, like Waterloo is happening in my kidneys!" - Tori Amos
"What is an angel but a ghost in drag?" -Tori Amos
"It's taken many years for me to come to terms with the fact that I experienced, um, this man had to much hate for women. And when I was raped by him, I took on all his hatred. Um, a lot of times you hate yourself, because you take, you're like a vine, you know, you're like a vine that takes on this violence. And so I didn't feel like I could open up to, um, love again and to other men again, because I equated sex and violence together." - Tori
from "Roocy Bar," which I think is an Italian TV show. The interviewer had to constantly stop and translate his questions and Tori's answers from English, and it was amazing to me to see, while Tori sang "Pretty Good Year," the way the men and women in the audience all around her were so intensely into what she was singing and the emotion and message that they could pick up without even understanding the words.
"Our generation has an incredible amount of realism, yet at the same time it loves to complain and not really change. Because, if it does change, then it won't have anything to complain about." - Tori Amos
"That's what I, what I think listening to music is. It goes
beyond 'does this logically make sense?' It's 'how does it make
me feel?' The lyric sheet, the words I think--they're there if you're really, really bored, and you have nothing to do. But I wouldn't read 'em first, because you have to experience it. That's what a journey's about, is when you can crawl inside and, just kind of be a part of it instead of trying to reason it out. Because 'reason' is...'reason' is really tricky. We're so messed up in the head. It's much better to go from the stomach." - 1994 Tori quote from Swedish TV
"It hurts me when a woman doesn't come through for me, more than a man. -Tori Amos
"There is a level of the vampire in me, which is OK." - Tori Amos
"Men have periods too, they just don't bleed..." - Tori Amos
"You don't have to justify everything. Being pissed off is just absolutely okay." - Tori Amos
"I think my mom would like to tag along and have a dance with him (Lucifer) because she's been a minister's wife for so long!" - Tori Amos
"It's not a revenge record [Boys for Pele] but a releasing record. I've been angry at myself, too, for getting into certain situations with men. Anger is healthy, but out of balance if it doesn't have compassion." - Tori Amos
"People can travel great distances on a computer, so why can't we travel that way emotionally?" - Tori Amos
"It doesn't matter where I am as long as there is a fat Italian cook near by." - Tori, "Conversation with God." I don't know where it came from, but I have it on tape, and it is so funny!
"I love fascinating men. But I am very much a one man woman. I am
monogamous. I always have been. When I think about getting ready to cheat I know it's over." - Tori, "Tea and Sympathy for the Goddess," B-Side Magazine, May/June, 1996
"I've been taking tea with Lucifer. I mean I've truly spent time with Lucifer, the energy of Lucifer. So when I sing, 'Father Lucifer, you never looked so sane', I truly went to those places. I'm talking about the shadow side, the secrets of the unconscious. It's about claiming in ourselves what we hate in other people." - Tori Amos
"Feminism is limited. Listen, I can drag a man's balls across the country better than a man can. I run my own publishing company. I run my own label. I was the youngest student ever at the Peabody Conservatory. I was a musician first. I held my own with the bad boys that can play their asses off. I wasn't just the girl singer. But I don't want to have to play it better than a man. That's what makes me puke. I just want to play it like it is." - Tori Amos, "Talks of the Devil," Dazed and Confused Magazine (UK)
"I gave up trying to please others and started playing for myself, and because I love music, things naturally happened then. Funny how that works." - Tori Amos, Chicago Tribune, June 25, 1996
"Being a minister's daughter, I had theology for breakfast, lunch and dinner." - Tori Amos, The Orland Sentinel, February 11, 1994
"The biggest myth about fame is that it's gonna take away the pain." - Tori, Q Magazine, March 1996
"I don't hate men. I give equal time in my hate. It's acts of people that I hate. Whether they be men or women, it's their behavior that I hate." -Tori, Really Deep Thoughts Fanzine, Winter 1993
"I think it's good that I played clubs for so long because it makes you appreciate when people are pouring their martinis all over your piano." - Tori, VH1 Crossroads
"I believe in eating. I think women especially have this fear of eating, and I think there is a whole euphoric plane you can rise to when you have a good meal. You sit down and with every bite you honestly just say thank you." - Tori Amos
"I don't write when I've used too much of any kind of substance. You have to be quite conscious to go into your unconscious. Every song is the Holy Grail for me." - Tori, Rolling Stone, Nov 13, 1997
"'Kay, you guys, we've gotta have a chat. Now look, you paid money to come here, okay? Now some of you want to listen, and some of you don't. If you don't wanna listen, you need to get your money back at the door and leave. Because I'm serious. Y'know, now, this is the thing: if you were up here, which some of you might be at some point, some of you might not, but it
would be really good karma if you had to be with you as an audience. So now you can rise to the occasion 'cause you're the worst one I've had so far. Okay? Fair is fair. Now let's do this again. I'm always honest." - Tori reprimanding the audience during a concert in Columbus, Ohio on August 7, 1992. People at concerts who scream and yell might want to keep this quote in mind for the next tour.
"All I want to do is take a bath in Guinness with [Patrick Doyle]. I mean, I just adore Patrick. He brings a whole new integrity to music and film." - Tori talking about Patrick Doyle, whom she worked on the Great Expectations soundtrack with.
"I want to bite people's butts when they hear my record, and I want people to want to bite other people's butts when they hear it." Quote from Tori about her upcoming 1998 album from the January 1998 issue of Alternative Press Magazine
"When all young people would start listening to their own voice instead of saying what adults say or whatever MTV dicatates, this would be a whole different planet." - Tori Amos
"You can't change what happened. And nobody's asking you to forgive. But you can't associate all men with violence." - Tori Amos, National Public Radio
"I couldn't become the concert pianist the teachers and parents wanted me to become. I couldn't sit playing somebody else's music for 12 hours and be told that my interpretation was wrong and be OK with it. How do you know how Debussy would feel about my interpretation of his music?" - Tori Amos, LA Times, Jan 30, 1994
"My concept of the great spirit is not the controlling force that is in institutional religion. When I say God, I'm talking about judgments over thousands of years that are horrific - love your neighbor but do what we say or we'll rape your women." - Tori Amos, National Public Radio
"I have good days. Like if I get really good coffee ice cream with just the right amount of chocolate syrup." - Tori Amos
"The term [feminist] has been linked selfishly with women's rights. If men and children are dishonored, we are dishonored too. Feminine energy, the principle of fertility and nurturing, is absent in our culture, but matriarchy isn't the answer, either. It's about balance." - Tori Amos, National Public Radio
"I have an audience now, my core audience, and we have made a silent pact. If I'm true and keep challenging myself, then they are interested." - Tori Amos, Rolling Stone, Nov 13, 1997
From the May 1997 issue of Musician Magazine. It has a section on The
Greatest Songs Of All Time, with top songwriters choosing their
favorites. In an article called "Airs For The Ages," Tori chose "A
Day In The Life" by John Lennon & Paul McCartney. This is what she said:
"Lennon and McCartney were the greatest songwriters who ever lived, and
you're just a ding-brain if you don't think so. There were so many great
songs that it's hard to say, 'Okay, where do we go?' But 'A Day in the
Life' stands out because it's a marriage of the two of them. Where do you
go from where Lennon went? How do you take that further? Well, ... you go
to a collegiate boy who gets his books and eats his Wheaties. At a certain
point, you've got to get off the battlefield. Where do you go from Belfast?
You go to suburbia. It's one of the few songs that is not just one
experience. When I hear that song, I take an around-the-world trip. I don't
just stop off in Bombay for a day, or under a bridge in San Francisco with a
needle, or in the cotton fields in Georgia. It's not a one-culture experience.
'A Day in the Life' draws from so many different music styles. It's an epic,
but that's dangerous territory. There are so many epics where you go, 'Uh,
why didn't this get sunk with the Titanic?' You know that saying, 'As above,
so below'? That song is completely an example of that, because of the
whole drug thing of going on a journey, however it's
induced. Yet at the same time, there's such a lullabye
happening with that melody.It's quite classic, and
that's why that song is so radical."
"My work doesn't relate to the masses.
My work is really for the elite. And when I say elite, I mean the mental elite...
if you don't think, and you have no wit, and you have so
many hangups that you can't look beyond your cup of
coffee, then you're never going to understand what I'm
really saying. Because you know what? You're going to
shut down and close off before you hear me. If I'm
threatening you, you're going to see it the way you need to
see it so you can dismiss me."- Quote from Illinois Entertainer
Magazine, August 1994
Tori is mentioned in chapter 11 of the new (1997) book about Trent
Reznor called nine inch nails: self destruct. Here is an
abridged version of the unsuccessful chicken story, as well as Trent's
opinion of Tori: Another visitor to the [Tate Mansion] was L.A.-based singer/songwriter Tori
Amos... On one occasion,...Tori attempted to cook him a chicken dinner but
apparently the house's restless spirts had other ideas. Trent claims that
even after six hours in the oven the chicken was still bloody and raw...
"We met on a friendship level; it was not like some mutual ass-kissing thing,"
he told Axcess. "I really liked her first album, which is not the kind of
thing I'd normally listen to. Someone had given it to me and said it sounded
like Sinead O'Conner, so I ignored it. Then I saw the video for 'Silent All
These Years' and it struck me in a way where I wasn't sure if I liked it
or not. But it was interesting. I was pleasantly surprised to find someone
who was taking chances. Not playing it safe, and also writing good songs,
melodies and really good lyrics....I relate to her work a lot, on some
level... She approaches things with a totally different aesthetic than I do,
but it's good."
"The [Kate] Bush comparisons are inevitable, but there is an edge, an
unpredictability, to Amos that is not apparent in Bush. Tori Amos is what
Kate Bush would become if the latter were under a full moon." - Stephen
Knight, JAM! Showbiz
Tori is discussed in the Rolling Stone Book of Women in Rock (edited
by Barbara O'Dair). They have this to say about her: "Yet if Robert Plant
were in the market for a divine consort -- or adversary -- today, there'd be
only one choice: Tori Amos. Not only does this one-time piano prodigy
regularly riff on Led Zep's "Whole Lotta Love" in concert, she has also made
it her project to recharge the feminine paradigm with a heavy dose of sexual
drive and superstar charisma. This minister's daughter is a princess with a
difference; instead of cultivating a separate space where her femininity can
thrive, Amos mizes it up with that tomboy streak and puts it right out there.
She projects an androgyny that's far more down-to-earth than most that have
graced rock's arenas, one that mixes ultragirl looks (the cascading hair,
the leotards) with a physical confidence that's still too rare in most women
(she sits wide-legged in ripped jeans at he piano, and growls as often as
she trills). Her compositions follow the pattern of her body language.
Sometimes Amos' self-importance grates, and she can be impossibly adorable,
spouting verses in a lily-white whisper. But she can also turn those phrases
dark or deadly with the bat of an eye. Singing about teenage clumsiness
isn't risky, but singing about teenage orgasm is, and Amos does it. She's
sung about the fear of pregnancy, female competitiveness and the memory of
her own rape -- that song, "Me and a Gun," was honored by the D.C. Rape
Crisis Center in 1994, and inspired her to co-found RAIN (sic) (Rape, Abuse,
and Incest National Network), a hotline for victims of abuse or violence. And
on 1996's Boys for Pele, she exhibited a musical courage as striking
as her lyrical intensity, blending genres ranging from classical to musical
comedy, postpunk to soft rock, in songs that defy standard structure,
suggesting a whole new way of approaching the role of singer-songwriter."
"You Tori Amos fans are way out ahead of us in that there are things that you all understand, like the faeries, that we don't get! We don't get the faeries!" - Kevin & Bean
"When I met Tori, it was as if I'd known her all my life," Doyle recalls. "She's so accessible as a person, so grounded. She's clearly very talented, gifted, in fact. I was just knocked out by her personality and the energy of the lady. Within twenty minutes, she was at the keyboard and I gave her an idea and said 'What about this? Would you collaborate here?' The next thing, she was playing, I was playing, and it was like these two total strangers just playing together. It was really exciting. Her improvisational sense is extraordinary. You give her an idea and she's off." - Quote from classicalesque composer Patrick Doyle, with whom Tori worked on the Great Expectations soundtrack, from
Atlantic Records' GE website.
"I have the red button on all the time, even when she is just going to
'dust' the piano. Inevitably she'll write something when she thinks no
one is listening." - Eric Rosse explaining how "Bells for Her" was
written spontaneously one day, Tori making it up as she went. Later,
they had to play the recording back in order to write the words down.
Again, the page is too big to even be uploaded. So,
try page 3!
TORI FROM TV APPEARANCES
"Um, you know, I'm a, I'm a minister's daugther...and my father, um-
it was, it was a real Christian home that I was brought up in. So, um,
it was a bit repressed...to move my hips, I kinda had to wiggle on the
piano stool; that was the only thing that was okay to do." - Tori on
her first appearance on Jay Leno after Jay commented on her tendency to
move a lot while she plays ("It works for me!" he said, and she
replied, "Well, it works for me, too.")
TORI TALKS ABOUT STUFF - FROM BOOKS, MAGAZINES, INTERVIEWS, ETC.
"I would play my body in the shower and then start singing around it. I was writing songs completely around playing my
flesh, knowing a drummer would later take it to the tenth power." - Tori explaining
how she got into the new rhythm-oriented style of from the choirgirl hotel,
article in the U.K. Times, April 11, 1998.
Tori Amos has some frank, been-there, survived that advice for Alanis
Morrissette. Stick to your guns and ignore the critics. Amos at the age of
22 was called "a bimbo" by Billboard while she was fronting the big-haired,
hard rock L.A. band, Y Kan't Tori Read. "My only problem is I can't fit into
those snake pants anymore," she said yesterday. She has since re-invented
herself as a London-based, multi-million selling, confessional
singer-songwriter and piano-bench straddling diva. Morrissette, on the other
hand, has come under fire at the age of 21 for becoming a chart-topping,
alterna-rocker after spending her childhood in Canada as a disco teen
sensation. "My God, you guys, she's 21. Let her fit into tight pants," said
Amos, her voice starting to rise as we talk at the Four Seasons Hotel. "Let
her explore and grow. I did. What is this you're not allowed to explore?
Look at me now. I'm breast feeding pigs."
the picture from Boys for Pele in which she is nursing a pig. On a radio interview with talk show host Michael Jackson, she says, "The picture represents that which is hidden, that which we're ashamed of, the non-kosher. To bring it back home, to nurse it, to nurture it. There's so much that's hidden about our feelings that makes us crazy, that makes us do things to ourselves and other people which causes all this pain. So this is about freeing that and acknowledging it." At her Virgin megastore in-store appearance in May 1996, she basically ties this idea to Christian upbringing, "You hid what you were
really thinking, it was shameful, it was wrong ." In another interview on CFNY radio in January 1996, Tori elaborates on
this point, "being a minister's daughter..there's so many things that weren't discussed...so much about sensuality and passion and
woman's bodies..and woman's stuff.. and you know.. I remember a
woman breast feeding a baby..and..my father was like putting his
hands over my eyes..."
"[Under the Pink is] definitely an
abstract piece of work. It was a conscious choice not to write another
diary like Little Earthquakes.
I'd revealed so much I truly believed anything I revealed in that manner
so soon after Little Earthquakes wouldn't be enough, and I couldn't put
myself under the microscope again so soon. It's like when you're
falling in love for the first time- the newness, the getting to know
each other- even if they eat onions everything is O.K. I mean, peeing
is romantic. The surprise is the romance, the vulnerability. Little
Earthquakes was the romance phase between me and the listeners. I knew
I had to change direction because it was like, 'Yeah, we've already seen
you naked; now what do you have? Skinless?' So with Under the Pink, I
put some clothes on." - Tori in her biography All These Years by
Kaleen Rogers. (It is interesting to note that Tori said that the name
"Under the Pink" refers to what we would find if we took our skin off-
both the inner being we all hide and the fact that we are all the same
underneath. Since pink is a girl color, "Under the Pink" explores
beneath the surface of the concept of "girl.")
"I happen to adore red lipstick. It just gets on everything, so I
usually only wear it when I do laundry bare-a$$ed." - Tori Amos
OTHER PEOPLE TALK ABOUT TORI
In the Akron Beacon Journal on March 6, 1998, critic Kevin Johnson wrote
an article ("Newer music does have the potential to live through ages") that
basically clarifies ("backpedals") an earlier article he wrote called
"Today's Music Just Isn't the Same -- Some Say Modern Tunes Can't Compare to
Messages of Yesterday.'" This is from the clarifying article:
"Sure, some of today's music is disposable and forgettable, but so was lots
of yesterday's music.
"The fact is, it takes years for a classic to build its reputation and work
its way into the public's consciousness. That wasn't properly
acknowledged.
"There has been plenty of music released during the '90s that has the
"makings of classics. That point wasn't made strongly enough.
"Lest we forget, songs such as Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, Tori
Amos' Me and a Gun, Pearl Jam's Jeremy, 2Pac's Dear Mama, and
just about anything by Public Enemy will likely live through the ages
and might even find their places in music history next to those older
favorites."
Tori is in Kevyn Aucoin's first book The Art of Makeup. There is a
gorgeous photo of Tori that was taken by Raymond Meier for Rolling Stone and
a paragraph Kevyn wrote about Tori. Here's what it says: "Tori Amos possesses
a beauty of a very unconventional sort. Her curled, vivid-red hair, darkened
and contrasting eyebrows framing such penetrating blue, blue eyes, and
Chesire cat grin are highly unusual features. Tori definitely deviates from
what is ordinarily considered to be beautiful. She reminds me of a cross
between Andie MacDowell, Demi Moore, and Fievel the Mouse. But her looks are
only part of what I find compelling about Tori. You need only listen to her
music once or glance at her videos to realize that she stretches the
boundaries. Her quirkiness (a quality I admire!) and what some might consider
shocking lyrics are definitely meant to challenge pop culture's mainstream.
I wanted to keep Tori as fresh and natural as possible. I liked the contrast
between the color of her hair and that of her eyebrows, so I left them alone.
I used a small amount of light foundation followed by loose powder. On her
eyes, I used only mascara and on her lips, a very sheer pinky lip gloss."
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