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Making Music Tori Amos, Flame Haired Chanteuse,
Agony Aunt to millions, and self-confessed vampire, talks to Rikky Rooksby about
her “Scary” new album. DH Lawrence, the Nottinghamshire torch singer...well, novelist actually,
once wrote a poem called PIANO, which began “In the dusk a woman is singing to
me.” He wrote about men, sex, power and religion. As it happens, so does Tori
Amos, who coincidentally pounds a mean joanna herself, and, just at this
moment, the dusk having fallen on Kensington High Street, is singing to me in a
dimly-lit room in her record company offices, after a whole day of interviews.
If you’ve seen her sing from row W, you’ll have an idea of how expressive she
can be. But this, in the words of St Eddie, is something else. And she knows
it. Her voice moans, teases, whispers and flutes the melody of Father Lucifer,
one of the new songs which will be leaving elegant scorch marks across the
nations hearts in the new year. Sigh. The fidelity of CD’s will never seem the
same again. PAINT HER BLACK A certain sector of the record buying millions and press will always have Tori
Amos in a box marked “Fragile. One raisin short of a fruitcake”. For them she
will remain little Miss Loopy. But for those hooked on her high-wire vocal
style, and habit of going from whisper to scream, ballad one minute, ballistic
the next, the new album will be a feast. Called Boys for Pele (Pele is a
volcano goddess), it was inspired by the break up of her 7.5-year relationship
with Eric Rosse, who co-produced her last Opus, Under the Pink. Dressed in
jeans, a black top and a wooly jumper, Tori leans back on the sofa, cradling
her tea, and with eloquent pauses, tells the story of how the split happened
mid-tour and the songs came. “It just happened. I
didn’t try to write it at all. I had to, on an emotional level. Each of the
songs became fragments. There’s a story - you’re given excerpts. When you hear
the whole record, the story will either make sense or not.” She pauses, throws back that famous red, tangled hair. “When you believe you’ve found your soul-mate and it
falls to pieces... Sometimes when you separate you’re both ready to move on.
Sometimes I think you separate still loving. You don’t know why you can’t be a
couple anymore. And a lot comes out. The record is metaphorical in that there
are places within each song where it becomes very clear, I think, what the
emotion is that’s being claimed. Its all about the intimacies of womanhood.” RUMBLINGS Her first album, Little Earthquakes immediately established her as a singer-songwriter
of originality and fire. Its success was consolidated by Under the Pink and a
punishing touring schedule. Along the way, she picked up critical plaudits,
survived the Kate Bush comparisons, duetted with childhood hero Robert Plant,
and wooed an audience to stay behind after gigs to pour out their own emotional
traumas. I suspect women feel as affectionate towards her as an earlier
generation did towards Joni Mitchell. In the early 70’s, Blue or For the Roses kept company many hurt souls whose daughters
now find solace in Little Earthquakes. In different ways, Amos, Bush and
Mitchell all report back from the civil war into which men and women’s attempts
to find love and passion descends. Tori’s audience are used to a confessionary
culture. “I had to write for my freedom. I was shattered.
I had to begin to look at myself. I tried to get energy from different men in
my life. I got my vampires license. In Talula I’m begging this concept of ideal
woman to come alive in myself, feeling afraid of losing someone. If it matters,
it must be something worth losing. Each song began to be a piece of claiming
myself.” Tori cites Professional Widow, a striking chunk of what can only be
described as baroque funk - sort of Mozart meets Funkadelic or Sly, stripped
down. “That’s my Lady Macbeth, the side of me that
wanted power. But power in a mans world. I wanted to be Indiana Jones, not the
girlfriend (Laughs). But as I began to do that
I started to alienate many men.” YOU, MAN Her energy returning, Tori is animated, sitting up and gesticulating as she talks.
Does she think that she would have had this problem with men even if she were
not a famous recording artist? “I’ve talked to a
lot of women about this and those that have heard this album understand it as
exposing the female part of the game in the relationship, in humour of fury, vulnerability
and rage, and women who are becoming their own force felt very akin to it,
understood this person. But I don’t think men really know the extent women have
looked to them for support, acknowledgement... passion and yet compassionate
love. I don’t know if men really know what happens on the other end of the
phone-line when they hang up; when its getting uncomfortable yet when its time
to communicate. It’s just that I found it so hard to get into their heart
sometimes, to get to the place of openness. At that point, maybe they just didn’t
trust me. I don’t know of I was really trustworthy then. It’s really difficult
to have a relationship when you need something from a person. When you want to
share, that’s different. I didn’t see it when I was doing it until everything
began to fall to pieces and it wasn’t there anymore” DEVIL YOU KNOW Mythology serves as a useful shorthand for Tori. It lets her dramatise herself
and her life, which is artistically productive, plus it cloaks the intimate
details of her private self when she’s talking in public. Looking back at the
tour, she says, “There were high spots, like my
chat with Lucifer...You begin to face your fears – that’s what it’s really all
about. Being alone forces you to do that. There’s nobody can make it go away. There’s
this incredible strength you can pull from a great love. So being alone is
hard, but it was time to claim my woman. Its what I’ve begun to do.” “I made a choice with this record that I wouldn’t
censor it. I think when you hears for a minute and it goes ‘Right on Time’ (singing)
and then right on time our rhythm comes back.” Her
songs are often deeply moving, even when it’s not clear what they’re about. “Great. That was the intention. When they were coming,
it wasn’t me sitting around going ‘What am I going to write about?’ Under the
Pink was more like an impressionistic painting, stepping back, looking at a
subject and sculpting a painting. Boys for Pele was drinking a little blood and
having to write, needing blood, can’t get it, needing to write.” GODDESS RISING Tori is the daughter of a Methodist minister from the Southern States but has
been in flight from the church for many years. When she draws on the imagery of
Christianity, it’s usually for subversive purposes, to challenge patriarchal
religion. The new album has the usual quota of references which will have the
bible belt foaming at the mouth - like claiming Jesus was a girl... “As a writer you need to jump off cliffs. I was
sitting there with my parents last Christmas Eve, hearing all these songs about
Jesus. I began to see how the world has viewed his birth - with that came the
death of the Goddess. To me, he was part of the Goddess - peace, love.
Christian mythology is so rich. Before they changed the catholic ceremony there
was much more metaphor, but the whole idea of the ‘son’ of God came and there was
no place for the Goddess. Yet with what Jesus taught, there was a complete
balance of male and female in his being.” UNDER THE MIKE The first of the new songs was Blood Roses in May 1994. Tori describes the song
as “Baroque gone askew,” to capture the
disillusionment of the loss of romance. The recording started in June 1995, in
a church at Delgany, County Wicklow, and a “wonderfully
damp Georgian house in County Cork, Ireland,” and was completed in
studios in Louisiana. “I went back to the house to
speak some of my most private thoughts, but I did it with honour. I reclaimed something
for myself. These relationships were reflecting in me because of the way things
became hidden, which reminded me of the South.” Tori relates a memory of
sitting at dinner, the smell of sweet fried potatoes on the table, but having
someone whisper that she really shouldn’t be showing any interest in that
little black boy up the road. “It’s a very
confusing place...” “The record begins with the horses from Winter (an
outstanding track from Little Earthquakes) coming
back to take me on this journey and we ride and go find the demons. The music
keeps broadening out - whether it’s Father Lucifer, which is tongue in cheek
style, or something else.” MAD MRS MOZARTS REVENGE Ditching the traditional rock backing band, “On
tour there’ll be the Black Dykes Mills Brass Band, and I’ll bring along the
harpsichord. If I bring in musicians it’s got to be something interesting; it
can’t be a band. That choice doesn’t excite me. So we’re starting with the
brass band, which will be fun.” Several of the tracks feature Tori’s
inspired harpsichord playing. She sees it as following “the
bloodline of the piano. I got a harpsichord, I played it and my guys miked it
up. Very simple. I was trying to become a woman and the musician in me said, ‘Well
fuck you, you know, lets get a new wardrobe, let’s expand, honey girl.’ So I
got the harpsichord and the harmonium.” “I’ve heard a lot of women say that when they
separate from a long term relationship, they go out and buy a new wardrobe.
Well, I didn’t do that. Instead, I decided on something inner, because a make
over isn’t going to do this. There were so many things that I didn’t allow
myself to do when I was in this relationship, and I think Eric would tell you
the same. All sorts of things you see which you can be finally honest about. “Like Doughnut Song the last I worked on. There’s
a bitter sweet quality about it... (She sings) There’s
a sweetness to becoming a woman that the virgins don’t have. They have a
physical sweetness, but once you claim the woman... Yes I want to wring their
[men’s] necks sometimes - those I fall in love with - yet there’s much more of
an understanding.” ON THE EDGE How does she feel about her audience being very intense and off-loading onto
her? “I’m trusting that they’re intense (She
laughs) It’s a big responsibility. When I turned in
this record, somebody in the States commented, ‘This is very intense, its not
comfortable - aren’t you worried about whether they are ready for this?’ I’m
ready to jump off a cliff, and if they’re ready to jump with me, we jump
together, and its another journey. The woman’s journey. Little Earthquakes was
the girl finding her voice, Under the Pink was testing those waters and looking
primarily at women’s relationships with women. This is a little volatile. About
the men and what they gave me. Sometimes they gave me nothing and that was the gift.
Sometimes they stood there and didn’t come save me, didn’t come make it OK,
because at that point in a relationship when you’re going your separate ways,
you’re on your own. It is a gift, being forced to claim your fire, but scary
sometimes.” |