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VH1.com Tori Amos’ to venus and back
is definitely a case of truth in packaging. The two-disc set displays the
singer at both her earthiest and her most far out. It’s sexy and spacey,
sometimes simultaneously. Amos’ initial ambition for the project was simple:
she set out to create a valentine for her fans, recording and filming her first
concert tour with a full-fledged band for a proposed DVD release. And indeed,
she delivers some of the music from her Plugged Tour ‘98 on a CD she subtitles venus
live, still orbiting. But when Amos returned to her
secluded studio, Martian Engineering, in Cornwall, England, to sort through the
live material with her engineer husband, Mark Hawley, things didn’t turn out
quite as planned. New songs started coming to her - and, in Amos’ case, they
indeed arrive. As she often puts it, these songs are real-life female
characters who show up at her doorstep and move in. Some may call it
inspiration, but Amos sees it more as a visitation. How tangible are the tunes?
In conversation the songwriter refers to each one as “she.” On the album of new songs that
emerged from these sessions, venus orbiting, Amos ventures far afield from
her usual piano-based instrumentation. She and her Martian team constructed a
meticulously layered electronic sound that often uses her voice as a
multi-tracked special effect. Though evoking the “e” word suggests a move
toward something like Ray of Light-period Madonna, Amos isn’t simply
trying to be trendy. She’s much too idiosyncratic for that. These
machine-driven arrangements come off more like the work of tinkering craftsmen,
not nerdy programmers. But to venus and back is not
all deep and dark, which is good news for anyone yet unconverted by the cult of
Tori. “Glory of the Eighties” is a terrific bit of time-traveling; it reaches
back to that decadent decade, when Amos was prowling the Sunset Strip rather
than talking to the herbs in her quiet Cornwall garden. For the most part,
though, to venus and back is forward looking, in its promotion as well
as its contents. In August, Atlantic Records broke new major-label ground by
offering “Bliss” as a downloadable single for sale across the board through
Internet retailers. In person, Amos is soft-spoken but
she’s also intense and smart, carefully reaching for words that often build,
not surprisingly, to convoluted conclusions. She reveals a streak of humor and
mischief, and - given the many times she compares songs and situations to
bottles of fine wine - a healthy appreciation of the good life that goes along
with being a rock star. VH1.com: You were something of
an Internet pioneer with “Bliss.” How interested are you in the possibilities of
the ‘net as far as music goes? Tori Amos: I’m not an
either-or person. I’m excited about the whole MP3 thing, I think it works for
some people, but I’m really into the integrity of people showing appreciation
for the artists. Not everything is free. Good wine is not free. As a hostess,
when people come, I always serve them good wine, but I think if you’re going to
a vineyard...They give me things to drink, but there is reciprocation. I
usually buy a case. With computers, there’s a way to be generous but a way to
give respect. VH1.com: Do you ever visit the
many Web sites your fans have set up? I kind of stay away
from that. People’s opinions of what I’m doing are really none of my business. VH1.com: The “Bliss” video has
some remarkable footage of your fans. It was done at one of
the last shows. I was going to do a DVD. I don’t know where I stand on that motion
now because we put everything into the venus record. I mean everything.
Nobody slept; we were on a high. You have to imagine, we were at Martian
Engineering, making the venus record. Venus [the planet, that is] was in the sky in that part of the world, in spring and
summer. And there are no lights where we are. It’s really in the middle of the
fields and there was some elixir... and it wasn’t just the wine, because we
never partook until we were done. “Bliss” hadn’t been
written [when we shot the
footage] so it was put together by the guy who shot
it, and he also shot all the photographs [for the cover of venus]. I had no idea these photographs were going to be for
this album cover; these photographs were just taken. He had shot the
photographs for the cover of Spin years ago, my first cover, and I got
on with him very well. I had him come along and do some shots while we were on
the road, to try and capture this moment because I knew we were taping
everything. Sometimes you’re creating something not knowing when you’re going
to use it. VH1.com: The subject of your
fans’ devotion also came up in your recent Spin cover story. The Spin article
was an opportunity to capture the people that are in that video, there are
thousands of them. And they chose to write about a professional doll maker. She’s
very talented, but she’s a professional. That’s fine, but that’s not the story
they say they were telling, to follow some of those shadowy creatures that go
from one gig to another, who’ve left school. They’ve left college, they’ve
taken their tuition, they’re gone. I’m not advocating that
or not, but as a writer that’s wonderful. This isn’t fabricated. Some of them
were being tracked down, some of them were hiding in cars with other people
because they had to go to college and do a degree they didn’t want to do. They’re
very much out of control and in control at the same time. It’s a very dangerous
line they’re walking and yet the one thing they say - and I love the ballsiness
of it - is “What I’m doing now has absolutely no passion, so I come to the show
to remind myself that I’m going to do something with a lot of passion. I don’t
know what it is yet, so I’m buying time” and that’s a huge element that comes
out. VH1.com: With any luck, perhaps
these fans will come to have a more mature appreciation of you once they’ve
dealt with their own issues. Some of them don’t
stick with me and some of them do. I’ve had women come up to me and say, “I
want to thank you for getting me through a difficult patch in my life and I can’t
go to any of the shows or listen to the music now because it throws me back to
that patch.” VH1.com: The video for “Thousand
Oceans” has some equally intense characters, although they’re actors this time.
It’s a gorgeous song, too. In the song there is
this ferocious commitment to finding this person. I don’t know who the song is
singing about - it’s different for different people when they hear it. She has
this depth of love for a daughter or whoever it is. I think some of the other
songs look to her sometimes for that kind of resilience. “Juarez” [based on a true story of unsolved murders
of women on the Mexican border] is the other
extreme, when you’re so cut off and severed from any kind of humanity that you
can mutilate another person. You’ve got to be pretty close to soul death, to
lose your own soul, to do that to another person. And that’s happening right
now, it’s been going on for the last ten years. There was a place where
the [album] title came to me, inspired by a great bottle of wine with
my girlfriends. [My friend] Natalie was the one who looked at me and said, “You’d
go to Venus if you could.” And I said “Wherever that is.” Of course, we know
the planet - and we’re all looking galactic because of where we’re going - but
there’s also the mythology of Venus, which is the feminine. So it just came to
me. When the title was in
place, the songs just seemed to storm through the door and say, “sit down.” It
was an onslaught. A few of them came at the same time. We had “Lust” on the
boards and “Spring Haze” on the boards, and I’m trying to figure out who’s
living in what camp. I’m getting limbs of women and I’m trying to figure out
what goes where. This nipple doesn’t belong with that woman. I was a sculptor.
You get confused and drunk with it at a certain point. VH1.com: “Glory of the Eighties”
is a great evocation of a particular place and time. The decadence of the ‘80s
in L.A. brings out a smile. I wasn’t into the L.A. [hard] rock scene
even though I had big hair and I had thigh-high plastic boots. I think I was
more into the gothic witch thing. Pirates. It was that whole dressing-up
moment, Adam Ant with tits, but not really - his were much cuter than mine or
my friends’. We used to wake up and go to Retail Slut and pick up a few pieces
for the week. There was a balance of thigh-high plastic boots and going to see
your shaman. I liked that. It was all happening at the same time. Everything
was so much on the outside, pleasing things on the outside, but there was a lot
of camaraderie that I really adored. A lot of us were friends, going to see
different bands. It wasn’t competitive in the way it became in the nineties. In the ‘90s...well, you’re
doing your yoga thing, you’re eating the right foods, your friends at PETA aren’t
giving you too much shit - and I like my friends at PETA. [In the ‘80s] people
were calling in to the Live Aid charity and doing blow at the same time. And I
found that very honest. There was a shadow aspect that people weren’t hiding as
much. VH1.com: Was it difficult to
balance all the music - the new material, in which you take such a different
approach, and the live songs? No. The engineers are
really theoretical, they come from that place. I come from a real emotional
place. Things have to add up geometrically for the engineers. I mean, they’re
not just guys who play with buttons. Engineering is their life passion. A lot
of things were designed - effects were designed - by hand. We were playing with
eq’s and compression, using compression as an instrument, taking it to new
levels for me. It was not just about any cheesy programs. That wasn’t
acceptable. If we were using a program, it had to be right for the character. VH1.com: The music rewards
headphone listening. The engineers planned
that. That is the gift from the Martian. |