Magazine Articles with Tori interviews

The October 1999 issue of Jane Magazine contains a one page interview with Tori. 



Some of you believe that Tori Amos is a tormented prophet from Elysium. Others think she is nuts.

Q. You've said that the songs you write just sort of come out of you. What happens when the juices aren't flowing?

A. You have to be like a hunter and go out and track it. I use a bunch of different things, like visual art and books. I have a pretty extensive library, from cookery to spy novels - whatever.

Q. Do you know Kid Rock's music?

A. No, but I know his A&R guy.

Q. He and Mary J. Blige both thank God in their liner notes. What deities would you thank?

A. Well, you've gotta wonder which God they're talking about. The Christians think they're the only ones-when they say God, its their God. I don't see the divine force as these religions. I think these are all demigods.

Q. Okay. Well, Mary J. has a ton of sunglasses. Do you hoard anything?

A. Shoes and lip gloss. I get the lip gloss in shipments...And the shoes collect themselves. I just pick them up, like some people pick up nailpolish.

Q. Do you have any nasty habits?

A. I've been known to have Tourette's syndrome when I meet people in the music business. I'm intolerant of rudeness. Record company people get lazy and think they they're above the law, and artists forget that being a moron just because you're successful might get tiring quickly.

Q. I've noticed that you mention fairies a lot. Um, what exactly are they?

A. It's a broad term for the spiritual world. If you believe in the spirit world, you believe in it, if you don't, that's your arrogance,. But if you go to Ireland and talk about fairies negatively, you'll get punched out.

Q. What's something that people would be surprised to learn about you, Tori?

A. Maybe that I don't hate Christians. I just have a problem with what they haven't claimed - the dark side of Christianity...If Jesus were alive today, he certainly wouldn't be a member of the Christian church, Because, in the name of God, there's a lot of blood on the ground,. And correct me if I'm wrong, but that isn't exactly "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Q. You've said that you had childhood fantasies about Jesus Christ, What do you fantasize about now?

A. A good night's sleep.

US Magazine
October 1999

 

There is a Faces & Places Up Close article on Tori:

"TORI AMOS - Pop's Perennial Pixie Celebrates Marriage, 'Venus' and The Muse

Your new album, 'To Venus and Back,' features 22 songs - 12 new tracks and 10 live versions of old songs. You're very prolific. Do you write for a set number of hours a day?

No. I'm usually racing my little Toyota truck and ordering good wine, hanging out with my friends [in England, where Amos moved in the early 1990s]. But when the muse stalks me, I start hunting her. She forces me to go out there with my bow and arrow, and sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't.

Your work is very confessional. Your last album, 'From the Choirgirl Hotel,' dealt in part with your miscarriage in 1996 - the child you conceived with your then future husband, Mark Hawley. Will you try to get pregnant again?

I don't know. I mean, she was a real being to us, and we say hi to her sometimes when we're taking a walk at night. [Her spirit] might be in another woman's tummy by now, but I don't feel like I'm shared something that changed our life - in a good way - because we began to appreciate that we have each other, that we have another day to be together. I'm starting on this new tour [with Alanis Morissette], and I'm really enjoying being a woman, being married and seeing where that takes me.

Your work is also idiosyncratic, and you write notoriously obscure lyrics. Do you ever feel the pressure to write a mainstream hit?

I have never chased the curve. A lot of people will try to dilute you - give your music a nose job or a little bow tie: "Don't perspire now; shave under your arms." But I'm a small vineyard. And I'm not willing to sacrifice the way I make the wine to get into Safeway. You know what I mean?

- James Ireland Baker



Tori Amos Biography - Rollingstone

Myra Ellen Amos was born in North Carolina in 1963, the daughter of a Methodist minister and a homemaker. Amos' musical talent was evident from the beginning; she began playing piano at two-and-a-half, at four she was singing and performing in the church choir and by five she received an invitation to study piano at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.

"I was a freak child who had really good rhythm," Amos remembers. "I'd be invited to parties simply because I played the piano. I quickly realized that I had some kind of calling. But, just as quickly, I realized that what was most important to me was following my own path -- and not the one that was laid down by others."

Unwilling to follow the regimented "path" of classical piano study at Peabody, Amos was expelled from the conservatory at age 11. It was at this time that Amos discovered freeform rock music. She began writing her own songs and performing in local clubs and, by the time she was in her late teens, Amos (now calling herself Tori) moved to Los Angeles to follow her pop-star muse.

Atlantic Records took notice and signed the then 24-year-old singer in 1987. She released an eponymous album with her hard-rock band, Y Kan't Tori Read, the following year. The album, however, was a commercial and critical disappointment and its failure sent Amos back to the musical drawing board.

In 1992 she rebounded with her debut solo album, Little Earthquakes. The acclaimed CD contained 12 haunting, ultra-personal tracks; including the cut "Me and a Gun," on which Amos recounts the details of her own rape. The album was an international success, selling more than two million copies worldwide and establishing Amos as one of the most compelling female vocalists to emerge from the '90s.

Amos followed up with Crucify, an EP of covers that included a remake of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

In 1994 Amos released her second full-length, Under the Pink, on Atlantic. The CD, which contained the hits "God" and "Cornflake Girl," debuted at No. 2 on the British album charts and went on to sell several million copies.

Amos' ambitious third album, Boys for Pele, came out in 1996 and further solidified her extremely loyal, if somewhat frighteningly obsessive, fan base.

In early 1998 Amos contributed a couple tracks to the Great Expectations soundtrack, returning later in the spring with her fourth full-length album, Songs From the Choirgirl Hotel.

Christina Cramer

Rollingstone.ocm


 

 

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