|
CNN Online Tori Amos’ gods and monsters By Donna Freydkin (CNN) No one’s likely to call singer-songwriter Tori Amos’ music frivolous or
flimsy. In fact, she’d consider that a grave insult. This is a woman who, with one failed ensemble rock album under her belt,
returned to her piano roots. She used her 1991 solo debut “Little Earthquakes”
as a forum to recount the experience of being raped. In her breakthrough follow-up, the 1994 “Under the Pink,” she suggested that
perhaps God needs a woman to look after him. In the 1996 CD booklet for the
somewhat puzzling album “Boys for Pele,” she was seen appearing to breast-feed
a piglet. And on 1998’s “From the Choirgirl Hotel” - particularly in the single
“Spark” - she detailed the miscarriage of a much-wanted baby. Now, on her September release, the double-album “To Venus and Back,” this
daughter of a preacher man continues her quest for her version of musical
enlightenment. Initially, Amos went into the studio to record a few new tracks
to add to what was supposed to be a collection of B-sides and oddities.
Instead, she ended up stepping out with a behemoth of an album. Half these songs are live tunes culled from her “Plugged 98” world tour, her
first trip with a full band. The other half of the album’s tracks are new
studio material. More than a month before the album was to arrive in in stores, the single “Bliss”
was available as a digital music download. The album already has garnered a
four-star review in Rolling Stone, with Natasca Stovall writing that “Complicated
is a word for Tori Amos... ‘To Venus and Back,’ testifies to just how wide and
deep her river runs.” And on the traveling front, Amos just wrapped her “5½ Weeks Tour,” a
roadshow with fellow soul-searcher Alanis Morissette. No rest for the
road-weary: Amos and her band - guitarist Steve Caton, drummer Matt Chamberlain
and bassist Jon Evans - are back out already on a slate of headlining dates,
starting with a Wednesday date in Dallas. But while touring with Morissette, Amos - who peppers her conversations with
myriad mystical and sexual references - chatted about the muses behind her
music. She’s one of those rare conversationalists who’s willing to touch on any
subject, with the single exception of her marriage. Her husband, says Amos,
doesn’t like being discussed. CNN: You’ve been busy this year,
both with the new album and now touring. Why did you hook up with Alanis? Amos: I’ve never done a tour like
this before—with somebody. It was actually (Morissette’s) idea. She had come to
see me at Jones Beach (on Long Island, New York), and we had a cup of tea and a
giggle and got along really well. We share a lot of the same philosophies of
putting on a show, which is important. CNN: As far your end of the tour
goes, were you eager to be back on the road with a full band? Amos: Wanting to play with these
guys again was really a burning desire. I enjoyed playing with them (on the
last tour). That’s not to say there weren’t rough spots. Because I have to play
and sing at the same time, when you play alone, you cheat a lot. You can
stretch bars and stuff. But when you’re having to hit the marks as a player as
well as a singer, you try to drool, find your note, breathe and wiggle, all at
the same time. And not lose your lunch. That’s a tall order for me. CNN: Your shows are pretty
personal affairs. Was it tough adjusting to sharing a stage and losing some of
that intimacy? Amos: There are things you can’t
do with a band that you can do on your own. There’s not going to be the same
intimacy. That’s like saying an orgy is as intimate as a honeymoon. But there
is a sensuality that a band can have because there’s tension between and among
people, as opposed to tension between one person and her instrument. CNN: Is that what inspired the
studio album? Amos: Well, I’d been playing and
living with them for nine months. I think the songs started coming to me
knowing the ground I was going to plant the seed in. I know where it’s fertile
and moist. CNN: And the title? Where did “To
Venus and Back” come from? Amos: I was having a great bottle
of wine with two girlfriends, and I said, “I have to go to somewhere and back
somewhere.” So we went from everywhere to everywhere. Sonically, I was going a
bit more galactic, so one of them said, “Do you have to go to Venus?” And I
knew that’s where I was going. CNN: Where were you going
musically on the album? Were you trying for a specific sound, or just trying to
let it flow? Amos: I don’t sit down and try
for something. It just sort of happens. I just like working with different
sounds right now, instead of everything being so stripped. I’m into producing
now. I produced the last three albums. “Lust” has a really strange effect on the piano and in the voice, so it
feels like she’s in a shape she can’t get out of, but it’s a shape that’s able
to bleed in to itself. Creating sounds like that - it’s pretty intangible to
try and talk about it. CNN: When does your songwriting
muse hit you? Amos: For me, you’re always
writing, even if you’re storing. I’m always writing and storing. Aren’t there
spiders that do that? Like camels store water. You kind of have to put it in a
holding tank and save it for later. CNN: You must have a pretty
amazing memory. Mine is like a sieve. Amos: Most of it gets lost.
Sometimes it comes in two bars at a time and I bang my head against the wall, I
don’t know what I’m going to do. Then I start diving into books, reference and
mythology books. CNN: You seem to throw everything
into your songs, making them almost these glimpses into your psyche. Do you
ever regret getting so close and personal? Amos: Sometimes, but I don’t look
back. I think, “Hold it - no regrets about that one.” At the end of the day, it’s
really difficult to look back. I made decisions at the time, and I am who I am
because I made those decisions. CNN: But do you ever try to hold
back, to contain the emotion in your songs? Is that an issue for you? Amos: I didn’t really understand
that until a few years ago - how to contain the emotion that was running
through me at the time. That doesn’t mean it isn’t going out in a flash flood,
but at least there’s an attempt to control it instead of it drowning you. It
takes a lot of focus to keep an emotion revving. It’s an issue, a question: can you feel that much? Can you restrain that much?
Can you observe that well? Can you hold, can you contain? Or can you unleash it
like pain? You can start to see when you have or when you haven’t, and find
your objectivity within that. Usually what happens when you don’t hold it well
is there’s a hole in your blood. For some reason, somehow, your hand didn’t
know how to hold it. CNN: Are you ever worried about
your music being too heavy, about turning listeners off? Amos: No. That light stuff just
doesn’t hold cream, and spit, and grapes, and really good tobacco. It’s just
not fragrant. It’s safe and it’s very mannerly. I’m into good manners, but not
in art. I’m into elegance in art, but that’s a very different thing. CNN: Are you happy with how “To
Venus and Back” turned out? Amos: There’s always something on
every album that I wished had slipped through. This album has just gone to the
glass master. It’s just down the street with its lunch box, although it has a
bottle of Krug in it. I wouldn’t be releasing it if I weren’t happy with it,
but if you talk to me nine months from now, there will be other things I’ll
have discovered. |