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ROCKRGRL magazine Few artists are more ethereal than Tori Amos, a woman whose piano virtuosity
and “really deep thoughts,” to borrow a line from her Little Earthquakes album, have won her a steadfast legion of fans.
And few modern artists with roots in classical music are as easily embraced by
the beat-driven world of modern rock. In this and many other ways, Amos is an
enigma. As the daughter of a Methodist minister, young Myra Ellen Amos questioned
God and His motives early on, a theme that often crops up in her music. A
prodigy who began playing piano at the age of two, Amos was the youngest person
ever, at six, to be accepted by and study at the prestigious Peabody
Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland. But even then, she danced to her own muse
and soon dropped out. The past year has been a year of stretching and changing for Amos. She
recently married and toured for the first time accompanied by a full band to
promote her latest release, From the
Choirgirl Hotel. In this interview, Amos talks about her name, her take on marriage, her
musical muses and her work with RAINN (the Rape, Abuse and Incest National
Network), an organization she founded in 1994. Carla: How did you pick the name
Tori? Tori: I went through a phase as
Sammy Jayye. Obviously that wasn’t me, but I was obsessed with Sue Ellen from Dallas.
Thank God I didn’t change it publicly. I was 17 or 18 and I was just noodling
around (with names) in my head until a friend’s boyfriend rescued me. She only
dated him for three days but she brought him down to a club where I was
playing. I remember telling her I was exhausted going through names. It had
been nine months and she knew about the Sammy Jayye debacle. What happened was, he just looked at me. He didn’t even know me but he said,
“Your name is Tori.” I went, “You know, you’re right.” She never saw him again.
I said, “Thank you, Linda. You’re so selfless. The only reason you dated that
beautiful hunk was to get me my name.” Carla: You just felt that it was
you? Tori: Yeah, I knew immediately. Carla: Does your family call you
Tori? Tori: Yes, they do. My mother
calls me Tori Ellen. My sister has a problem with it. She calls me Ellen but
not in public because that’s disrespectful and she knows it. Carla: How does your family react
to your music? I’m sure they must be proud, but I would guess that some of the
religious imagery makes your father wince once in a while. Tori: He runs my publishing
company so, if nothing else, sometimes he can deal with it on a subjective
level. Carla: Continuing on the topic of
family, I hear that you got married this year. Is that more settling for you or
are you still working things out musically? Tori: You always want to balance.
Hopefully you’re working things out until you’re 80, rocking in your rocking
chair and waiting to get a shag from Gramps down at the garden. I’m really into
Formula One racing and I look at marriage like we’re race car drivers. We’re
teammates. If his car is in front and somebody is trying to run him off the
road and I know they’re going after him, they’ve got to get by me first. And if
they’ve gotten by me, I’m on their butt. It doesn’t matter which one of us
wins. It’s that we’re a team and I know he’d do the same for me. If my car was
out front they’d have to get past him. So if somebody’s got to be at your back,
he’s a pretty good person to have at your back. Carla: So many of your songs seem
to be very autobiographical and confessional. Will it be as easy for you now to
pull from those things, or does marriage give you a whole new perspective? Tori: I don’t see the songs as
confessional. I’ve never thought of myself as a confessional writer because I
associate confession with religion and needing to be absolved and forgiven. I’ve
never asked or wanted to be absolved by God, my father, my President, my
nephews or anybody else. I have to be careful about who’s in the songs because people get a bit
touchy about that. Even with friends, I try to guard their identity. Sometimes
they corner me, especially a bottle of wine down. But I’m very good about that
now. I know there are certain subjects I won’t talk about no matter what. Carla: Because everything you say
can be scrutinized? Tori: Yeah. The songs have part
of my life weaving in and out of them, but there’s a lot in the songs. They’re
very independent of me and yet they’re not. There’s a dual relationship that
goes on, another force. Carla: So much of what you write
is spiritual and ripe with religious imagery. Tori: It is, but please, please,
let’s be clear. I’m not a new age person. I haven’t set up my crystal
suppository shop yet. I see a lot of people with little red strings around
their wrists, seeing their shaman and their guru and there’s nothing wrong with
that. But then you run into these people or people that know them and you hear
that they urinate on their co-workers and you just go, “here we go again, not
walking your talk.” It’s cocktail spirituality and I’m not interested in that
part of it. Carla: So how do you see your
work? Is there a phrase that sums it up? Tori: I think they’re short
stories, more like little myths. All the songs have a beginning, middle and an
end. And some of them have part twos and part threes, almost like a comic book
series. Carla: Are you less angry these
days? Tori: Yeah. Now when I’m angry,
it carries a lot more weight with people because I’m very clear about why I’m
angry. It’s not just 20 years of being pissed off at something you couldn’t put
your finger on because you had a charge on something that somebody else brought
up, where somebody can push your button on a core issue. I’m getting in touch
with some of those issues, so now if I’m angry it’s usually because somebody
did a very poor job at something and now I’m nailing their ass. Carla: Tell me a little bit about
RAINN. Tori: RAINN is a phone network.
We take the people that need to get to the counselors and pick up the bill for
that. There are over 600 rape crisis centers in America and they work
independently of us, but we are the phone line. We recently had our 200,000th call, which is good news and bad
news. Obviously the good news is that the service is there. There’s a lot of
nuts and bolts information you can get from RAINN. For example, some people,
especially if they’re under age and the perpetrator is in the home, need to
know their rights. If they run away, what rights do they have being dragged
back into the home, especially when the parent that isn’t the perpetrator doesn’t
support the child and won’t acknowledge it. Sometimes you just need legal
advice. Sometimes people need doctors. You’d be amazed, the things that come
up. It’s really quite humbling when you hear the tragic stories that come in
every day. |