"A Bottle of Red: Tori Amos"
from: Tea and Sympathy with Sandra A. Garcia "B-Side Magazine"
Author: Sandra A. Garcia
Date: March, 1996
Tori Amos sprawls against a beige couch on this cold winter's day.
Here's a day so cold that exposed flesh freezes into awkward crystals.
To ward off both chill and dementia Tori has ordered enough tea to
float the British navy and the hot water on the side could bathe a Few
fairies.
A gentle warning is issued: I may have to bring Tori back into the
real world since her exhaustion could induce open-eyed sleep. "Just
throw out the fishing line and reel me back in," she jests while
offering her world class smile.
If Tori fell asleep she kept talking in coherent tones. Her flowing
thoughts danced like dreams of another world, full of rich darkness,
vengeance, saving fairies and erupting volcanoes as vivid as her
flaming hair. What's going on inside that finely sculpted head this
time around? What's the key? Where's the damned door, Tori?
Boys for Pele won't easily provide any lazy answers upon the first,
second or even third listening. Trust me. Before, we had guidelines:
Little Earthquakes: revelatori. Under the Pink: inflammatori. Boys for
Pele: the operative word is exploratori, but it's very much Tori's
world, and unless you have Tori's little black book you feel there's
something's drastically wrong with your senses.
Interviews are conducted to gain understanding and the flavor of the
music's maker. This is one of the first times I've truly needed to
have an entire album explained to me. What's going on behind the newly
discovered harpsichord and vocal stretches? The vicious Pele loses me
in a wicked metaphoric voiceslide. I return to Tori's break-up with
longtime partner/producer Eric Rosse as the painful focal point to
Pele, even if she's insisted that's only part of it.
For now, under her glossy makeup and trademark sensual smile the
godesss [sic] Tori looks completely drained. Over 400 interviews
across the globe and she's still talking. Once she gets on tour she'll
go for a year. The protective earth mother in me blurts out "When are
you going to scream stop it, I won't do this anymore'?"
Tori remains curled on that beige couch and doesn't respond for what
seems like hours. With any other artist it'd be unnerving...but with
Tori I know to sit back and wait.
She finally murmurs, "Well.. if you want to have a record out every
other year, and tour for a year, and it takes a year to make a record,
that means pulling all the material together, finishing it, deciding
where to record it, what's the point view... I am not about throwing a
bunch of songs together. I can't imagine songs from Pele being on Pink
or songs from Pink being on Earthquake... they are very much a
different story. Even though I feel like they are a trilogy, they
follow a quest. This work is more a novel, Earthquakes was more a
diary, and Pink was more impressionist painting, like short stories,
thoughts, that didn't relate to each other.
"So to make these all happen, with the touring, which is so important
to what I do; it allows me to live and grow as a musician, I get a
very small amount of time to do interviews. There's a window. I spent
a lot of time in Europe as well as America. You can't do everything,
but if you want to have interviews with countries aside from America
and England, you have to make time for it. You're pumping 18
interviews a day."
I'd be pumping a fist into a face. Better her than me! Now Tori offers
a confession: even though she's tied to her art, Tori admits there are
times she wishes she'd not gotten into certain interviews.
She gives a little grin while lying back, murmuring, "There are
moments when I wish I had not gone there, train of thought-wise.
That's when you get run-down and you get a little more vulnerable and
you let something slip. Then it's out. And it's on the tape. A lot of
times, and I will be real honest here, journalists won't pick up on it
because I don't say anything. They miss it. Then there have been a
couple of times where 'I will say look, this is quite...you've brought
something up that you obviously know something inside about so this
isn't for print, this is just to clear something up.' And then I'm
just," as she grimaces. Yes, it gets into print. "But for the most
part the journalists are pretty good."
Tori mentioned other countries. What's the perception of her in more
repressed societies? This vermillion [sic] force of nature is radical
for a traditional place like Greece...
Tori gives a throaty laugh, musing, "They are beginning to get what I
am talking about, and the interviews help that, since they do not
speak English. Sometimes they give them a deeper insight, so they
aren't just going here's this mellow singer-songwriter, but what's the
context? We talk about 'Professional Widow,' 'Father Lucifer,'
'Mohammed My Friend,' and that way people get another dimension to
what the work is about. Because they're writing about it in their
native tongue. We don't translate the lyrics, since the countries
would come back and say 'we don't feel it's translatable! We don't
feel like it will read. It won't even be the same lyric anymore.'"
Aural devotees receive the same intense dynamic from the music on this
album, with the music augmented by Tori's thrilling vocal inflections.
Even if the lyrics leave you baffled there's you can understand
there's something passionate going on here.
Tori grabs on and describes, "The audiences in Italy, when I play
live, they are some of the most interesting audiences that I play to.
They really seem to understand the emotions; whether they understand
the words, they understand the emotion. I think a lot of that [is due]
to their opera. They are brought up with it, the breath, the tone, the
phrasing... what's behind the vocal, not necessarily looking at it
from...." as she gestures. "Some of the countries, it's not about
hitting them over the head. They're looking for hidden meanings, and
that's why I am such a big fan of Faulkner. He weaves a tale, and
sucks you in, and there is beauty, and many things, then harshness
comes when it comes. He uses the cold bucket of water to get you to
understand what is going on. Things are very much a soft focus lens
that you are watching horror through, and that's why you aren't
reacting, because you are numb. You are sitting there surrounded by
the smell of honey suckle, surrounded by the South, and the horror...
it's hard to hit you when it's 100 degrees and you're drinking iced
tea. That's why the North, in America, always respond differently to
certain atrocities. Things get very hazy down south in the heat, and
it's easy for people... the sweat gets in their eyes," she
hypnotically whispers.
Her subtle words reminds me of visiting plantations in Louisiana. We
heard a tale regarding one lady of the manor becoming so intoxicated
on mint juleps that she careened down the front staircase and impaled
herself her bodice's metal stays. That's an incredibly SoutherEurope, and I
bought all the
gear for this record. Because the truth is you never know when it's
all going to fall apart. When it does, you don't get budgets anymore.
So I in-vest in gear. You invest in gear so no matter what happens you
can always make your records. The studio can be moved where you want,
you can rent a house. But geographically a work is so influenced by
where you are..."
Tori suddenly halts, pressing her slender fingers to her temples.
"Hold on, I want to focus my brain. I want to express something and
not be long winded." She realizes she's loosing our thread. A few
seconds pass then she takes a deep breath. "OK. I was following a lay
line. I kept going to the energy of the South when the songs were
coming. A lot of times this is not a cut and dried process. It's not
like 'OK, I am going to get the wood, now I am going to get the glass
and I am going to build this.' It becomes much more like a sculpture.
Things keep shifting, and changing, and
you bring a lot of materials, not knowing what you might add. But I
started feeling a strong pull of the South. So I said 'what is that?
What is the resonating frequency here between this work and the
South?' It started to come to me that the relationships that I've had
with men, it was very much about what was hidden. Even though it would
seem very open, the things that they wouldn't admit to and the things
that I wouldn't admit to, and everything on the surface would be one
thing... and I've been quoted on this before, I would just feel myself
reaching over for the rat poison while making oatmeal muffins," she
viciously smiles. "And there is a level of having a deep love for some
of these men, and deep resentment at the same time. And not even
knowing it, not even being able to tell you why. 'Oh, I am not feeling
that! It's just a funny time, they are under pressure, I am under
pressure....' I could blow a lot of it off, because deep down I really
liked some of the men that influenced this record. Specifically been
in love with one of them, absolutely over the moon in love. As we
separated, I pulled on other male energies to fill the void. That's
when my lessons got learned. I put myself into a lot of degrading
situations to try and fill this void. Instead of trying to fill it by
myself, I never learned. It wasn't the piano. I walked offstage from
the piano to a man. Always."
No. Oh no. I never would have expected that of you, Tori.
"Yeah, I always had a man around. Like a harem!" she laughs with a
cat-like stretch. "No, I adore them, I adore them. 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.
I am making a move: it's like Formula 1 racing. I am not content to
stay where I was," she grins before attacking a cookie. "I do not just
have flings. I have real emotional, full blown... and they are not all
physical. Some of them are, but that's not a criteria.
"But this was the end of an era for me. And so I started to dive into
why the South? What makes this energy up? Part of it was the church,
which came from the old world. Consequently I followed the lay line
back to the old world, because the Native Americans didn't bring
Christianity over here. So I went to where it came over from.
"And the reason I chose Ireland: there were many reasons. But it's
trying to break free from domination: domination from England,
domination from the Church, and the domination they impose on
themselves. That's how it's very similar. I went after that. I also
went after the idea of claiming my womanhood: I had to do that in the
church, because that's where it was really circumcised. Not just the
Christian church, but religion in general, honoring the female part of
god."
That's why recording this particular album in those places screamed
defiance, since both areas still repress women. I thought that might
be the case. Give me gold stars.
"Yeah, I was going after a frequency," Tori agrees. "I think you
conjure up energy, you go to the vortex. That's why certain events
happen in certain places. There are reasons why certain breakthroughs
happen in certain countries. There are reasons why certain darkness or
evil gets generated over and over again in a certain spot. And so I
don't assume to know why that is, but I trust it, and go with it.
That's why I went to Taos [for Under the Pink]. Eric made me go to
Taos, because he was drawn there, and he kept saying 'you must come,
you must come, you must feel this place.' When I went there, the
minute I was there I knew it was right for recording Under the Pink.
"Taos to me, it's a tidal waven is. But basically I went under the pink to
stay alive. I
had to go under because I wasn't ready to blow yet.
"So when I was, I went to the places that were just the blood bath.
Ireland, where it's just been..." she makes an explosive noise. "Where
the wars have been and the wounds are really open, and running. It's
much more hostile, the places I went to record this album, and at the
same time it's much more the extremes. You may have that oppression
but you also have the other extreme where you have people who are
against the oppression. It's polarizing itself. Whereas in Taos they
are trying to keep an even keel"
Yep, having been to Taos I could see how all that overly mellow
oohhmmm atmosphere contains the natural fierce energy.
Tori grins then stresses, "But that energy is intense in Taos. And you
can't hold it back. Some people try and oohhmmm their way through Taos
but you can't because it will kick your ass. The Pueblo people will
tell you that. And it kicked my butt to the point where it forced me
to go and blow."
Tori did blow on Pele, and the result is a fierce album filled with
kaleidoscopic shards of multi-hued glass quickly whizzing through the
air. For the novice Toriphile Pele is not the place to start. It even
has veteran listeners peering around in confusion. Even those short
sharp songs that lace the album speak of something jagged, jarring and
un-Tori. It's dangerous, disturbing and uncomfortable.
Before she continues Tori sits to sip that invigorating tea. Relaxing
back she describes, "I wanted to go into the hidden parts of the
feminine; the way I see it, anyway. We all have our own perspective,
men and women, about what the hidden parts of the feminine are. I went
after what in some cases have become distorted, such as 'Professional
Widow', the black widow, and when I ran into the widow..." she lets
out a sick little laugh, "I had to come to terms with the fact that I
wanted to be king. And to be this in the patriarchy... I never wanted
to be the maiden. I wanted to be the knight that got the castles. I
wanted to be the one who got the Land. But still I wanted to have
babies; I wanted to be a mother, I wanted to feel that ability to do
that. So the role of woman, to have babies and do that, you can't be a
knight too, you can't do that. And the women who were knights were
virgins, the Joan of Arcs... so you are not a sexually active being
who wants to be involved and have a baby and a love relationship and
be the brains to keep the castle running. And I do not mean the
chatelaine... I want to be Patton."
Tori pauses to allow for my sudden laughter. Oh, please, do excuse me.
Too much caffeine and chocolate cookies makes me rude.
Tori happily agrees her words are out there. "These are just
examples... it could be Newton, but the creative forces have been
predominately men. Even when the women... Mozart had a sister, but it
wasn't encouraged, it wasn't part of the arena. So when you run into a
Camille Claude, or a Jane Austen, they are few and far in-between. And
they usually didn't have the freedom that the male creative forces
had, nor were they ever really accepted into the arena.
"So this century, that happened. In the later part, the women, and not
just being the divas, but being the writers, the da Vincis, and I
think it's been very confusing. Well, who are the Mona Lisa's?" she
giggles. "And it's like you are, buddy!" He giggles well into rich
laughter. "And sometimes they have a real hard time with that.
Sometimes too I wanted to explore being the Mona Lisa while they were
the da Vincis', being able to be all things within a relationship,
because it's usually about picking a role. 'Well, if I am the da
Vinci, you have to be the muse, because I am the force.' Well, the
muse has their needs, and the creative force starts to be dominating
if it never has a chance to be vulnerable."
I do wonder how many brave women embraced sacred creativity but were
too terrified to make themselves known to the world. No one can tell
me that forceful artistic women suddenly appeared in this century.
Bullshit. I think not. Tori, dear?
"The dam has been trying to break for a long time," she stresses as
she scratches her side vigorously. Tori's in that complete exhaustive
state where you don't care what you do. "And it's just breaking... the
deluge, whether it's filmmakers or writers or... it's all over the
board. It's been there all the time but usually in secret. A lot of
women played the harpsichord but you don't hear compositions by them.
You don't hear what they were up to! Again, there was not an
acceptance that women could be the creative forces..."
We touch on author George Sands taking on the male role to the point
of dressing like a man. She even acted like man (for that century) in
her blatant pursuit of women and everybody else."
We pour more tea and ponder this. Tori, people are going to think
you're quite a calculating gal and you had this ultimate destination,
this raging capstone, planned before you started recording.
She shakes her head and offers, "It was actually suggested to me, when
it was finished, by Neil Gaiman, who does the Sandman comic books
(which features a Tori-like character), he talked to me about it and
made me come to realize, this was before I went to master, and he said
'this is how it affects me', because he listened to it back to back,
he had an advance before anybody. When I got on that plane, it hit
home that it was the end of a story. It doesn't mean that those
characters don't move on and become something else, but it was the end
of a chapter."
The first two albums were personal, but the universality drew the
searchers in. This album is so personal that it's difficult to
decipher, and much harder to get involved in.
Tori gives me her famous steady stare then smiles. "Well, I've
suggested a bottle of red with this one, because it's the heart
record. I don't feel like the jokes and the pain are on the inside,
it's so worn on the sleeve. Sometimes, it being a metaphorical work,
you have to get your head out of it. But you know, when she says 'I
think you're a queer, well, I think you're a queer and I've shaved
every place where you've been, boy, God knows I know I've thrown away
those graces'... it's very clear that the war has begun. You've just
walked into the record and the war has begun. The blades are out. And
she's become a piece of meat in her mind, she's willing to cut out her
voice, she's willing to 'cut out the flute from the throat of the
loon, at least when you cry now he can't even hear you.'"
We've hit the rapids: Tori is quoting lyrics. The priestess is
launching into her lesson, and her hapless listener goes along to push
past the large rocks that pop up before us. Lifejackets, everyone?
Good.
Tori insists, "It doesn't matter who the people are, you know, and if
you resonate with letting yourself go that far to be needed or to keep
something going, well, do you need another pound of flesh? What do you
need, what more do you want'? And that's the point when I say 'he
likes killing you after you're dead.' So from the beginning of the
record on it's really obvious that you're walking into not what is
going on on top of the table, the conversation with the rose at the
dinner of the couple, but what's really going on in the couple.
Sometimes the man changes, but it's her story. It's her, who she pulls
in to work this out with, and the men that defecate, the men who can't
be enough, the men who aren't ready to embrace themselves so no matter
how much you like them you can't go there because ..."
They are not really human beings. The bastards are not yet whole.
"Yeah," Tori agrees, leaning forward to fix another cup of tea. You
can tell she needs another jolt of English Breakfast when her soothing
voice grows slightly haggard and very soft. "The wholeness. The record
starts off with the horses from 'Winter' taking us and we ride. Going
into that program of the beauty queen. She's a beauty queen, and
that's not enough because it never is. The idea that beauty is our
answer when we are four years old, 'oh, isn't she pretty...' that's
the first thing that you hear. So it's going after those programs of
the feminine, going after them, going after them," she stresses. "To
visit 'Father Lucifer,' to have a moment to dance... to go down in the
dark, to visit with the dude! Not these Little prince of darkness
wannabes... some of them are cute, but to visit the real energy force
that has held the darkness: you go there with honor. And that takes a
very big heart to hold the place of shadow. When I went to Lucifer I
learned many things. But that whole thing of, 'he didn't see me
watching from the airplane, he wiped a tear and threw away our
appleseed'... there's so much religious reference and metaphor coming
back full circle from the myths. A part of her loved Lucifer, a part
of her tried to find him in so many men that couldn't carry his
energy."
She suddenly leans closer to declare, "And I am not talking about
Satanism... that's the distortion of those who can't really claim the
dark so they become evil because they are not really claiming their
shadow. So we claim our shadow, then we go and meet the 'Widow.' Then
we pick up pieces as we go. In 'Mr. Zebra' we pick up Ratatouille
Strychnine, who we love because she's our little double agent who can
poison people and get us out of trouble when they're hurting us!" she
grins. "But she's tired, she's tired of the poisoning."
We've been relying on her too much.
"Yeah! And she is tired of it! And part of you ha's
with the boys, we both know 'it was a girl back in Bethlehem...' what
am I doing? You are beginning to remember the blueprint, you are
beginning to remember that this is not just because boys laughed at
you when you were 13, this is a program that is going back very far.
And the album going into 'Hey Jupiter' and that is the point where she
knows it's over with this particular relationship, or ships, and it's
not ever gonna be what it was again. It is never going back. That's
where the whole record turns on its axis.
"As soon as she knows that, then you do the whole way down thing. Go
further into the place of the South, the place of the hidden, with
'Little Amsterdam,' which is all metaphorical, about wanting to kill
people, being angry at people that you feel have done something... the
whole domination thing, the whole hierarchy, patriarchy... and her way
to fight back and they are blaming her but 'it wasn't her bullet' but
she still believes it would have been fine if..." She makes a soft
gunshot noise. "They lost him.
"And it keeps moving into the dance of 'Talula,' and her desperately
trying to dance, desperately trying to figure out the whole idea of
loss: it must be worth loosing if it's worth something. So if I feel
like I am loosing something, at lease I valued something enough to
loose it in the first place... it's going back into that train of
thought. 'Talula' is very much a riddle. "
We just cleared a very large rock and I have to speak up. You can
delude yourself into worrying about was it really worth loosing? Was
it really worth anything or did I just want it to be?
Tori narrows her eyes in thought. She murmurs, "The sense of loss is
such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth is tied up
into stuff that we have, not that our worth can grow with things we
are willing to loose. So there's a real letting go: 'Talula' is about
letting go and getting the dance. I do not want to loose him."
She abruptly pulls the tiller back to her own personal experience.
"The loss of Eric in my life was... it felt like half of me walked out
the door. And 'Talula' came as a nursery rhyme, my little dance that I
would do when things were so sad. Because I started thinking but 'God,
I have these feelings, which means...' we shared so many moments that
I value, I really valued that, so what a gift that I can feel this
loss, that I am not so numb, that I haven't cut myself off so much,
and once I could feel the loss then I started to feel free. I want to
dance and go 'yeah, I want to be with 'Talula." I want to be able to
dance through the people that come in and go out of your life. I want
to learn how to dance with the gifts when they come and the gifts when
they need to take a different route.
"Then of course in the record we move into a whole other moment. 'Not
the Red Baron' is the moment of compassion for all the men on the
record. It's where I could see their planes crashing, I could see that
they have a side too. And if their planes would crash I stared to gain
compassion for their side of it. But I'm still acknowledging the war
with 'Agent Orange,' the idea of the war.
"'Doughnut,' that's so much to me the ache of... I think one of the
most important lines in the entire record for me was 'you told me last
night you were a sun now with your very own devoted satellite, happy
for you and I am sure that I hate you, too sons too many too many able
fires...' there's the Cain and Abel reference, there's the idea that
you can't have two whole beings together. And I couldn't live like
that, and it made me really sad, that whether it's a female
relationship or a male relationship, we're not supporting each other
to make a whole. When I am not happy when you are taking you as far as
you can. I can't support that or I withhold from you because the truth
is I am afraid you aren't going to need me anymore.
"Which leads us into 'Voodoo,'... the key for me here is he was going
to show me spring. Going to... and so much of my life has been about
going to. Instead of what is happening now, [it's] what are we going
to? Not what are we really giving to each other now. What am I
promising him?
"That whole idea of looking to this, the idea that somebody else
carries the voodoo, instead of becoming part of the voodoo and
accessing it yourself. That's runs through the whole thing.
"And of course 'Damage' speaks for itself. The song, being herself
damaged, it's trying to teach myself about graciousness, and I have
such a hard time with that. I have a very hard time. 'Damage' was so
essential for me to sing, it's one of the most difficult ones for me.
I can look and have love and feelings for some of these people but..."
Tori lies back on the couch and takes a blessed moment to stare at the
beige ceiling before returnit level of the flame, feeding the flame,
because after all the stars, the fire, I had to go into that place of
becoming that instead of trying to find it again," she whispers,
hoisting herself up to touch my knee. A winter shock star-ties us.
Whew. The priestess has jingled those forbidden keys at me. She's even
graciously pointed out the doors they belong to. We take a break to
push the tea consumption to new heights. There's going to be a race
for the bathroom...
After going through Boys for Pele's intense emotions, Tori bravely
chose to take herself back and oversee the final production. Of course
she needed to do it this way.
"It was freeing," Tori nods. "I refused to ask anybody something I
knew. When I didn't know, I would eventually ask. There were plenty of
people around, there were 65 musicians that worked on this record: if
you needed an opinion it was five seconds away, believe me!"
E-mail:underpaid@redfacil.com.uy
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