TORI AMOS by Albrecht Piltz
June '92 issue of the German KEYBOARDS  magazine
SCREAMS AND WHISPERS
"So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts What's so amazing about  really deep thoughts?"     -Tori Amos, Silent All These Years
Yes, what's so amazing about a girl with really deep thoughts? At first  nothing, except if she's called Tori Amos. The place: the lobby of the Old Opera  House in Frankfurt. The time: March 7, 1992, a sunny Saturday afternoon which  would actually hail the harbingers of Spring under a blue sky in an airy street  cafe, instead of inside with a plush background of gold stucco and thick velvet  curtains. At the dozen bistro tables grouped in a semicircle around a jet-black  Steinway perches a crowd of winter paled media types and stressed-out record  company people, all putting away pieces of strawberry cake with the same  disciplined tact. In the background is the clink and jingle of forks and  glasses, polished clean by bored waiters in penguin suits.
At precisely four the door flies open, and in a group of retainers a delicate  lady in rubbed-smooth flares (they flap up to her thighs!) with a carrot-red  mane of hair and the transparent complexion of a Botticelli angel marches  through the noble ambience, purposefully makes for the foot-high piano platform  and takes her place on the bench. Takes her place? No, she clamps herself on the  very outside edge, right leg sprawled out- a position as unorthodox as it is  uncomfortable, whose deeper meaning only comes out in concert (clack, the  freeswinging hoe cracks the rhythm out on the platform!)-and inspects the  munching circle: "Hello everybody, I'm Tori Amos."
The second look is meant for the man who has posted himself at the other end  of the piano and prepares to operate the sliders of the mixer. "Ready?" A nod,  and ten fingers rush over the black and white keys- an assault a la Rachmaninoff  and the beginning of a mini-set that makes the cake-eaters completely forget  their shoveling and chewing and after each of the four songs moves them to  stupefied applause. Even the snapper's guild, which doesn't pass up the  opportunity to immortalize the photogenic object of their visual desire in  action, is so perplexed, considering it's a free indoor concert advertised as a  "sound check",that some of its members are on the verge of letting their  objective slip through their sweaty fingers. So it is with the KEYBOARDS  photographer, who even before the halfway mark has been reached sways to the  reporter who came for the interview and shows him his bare arms: "Excuse me,  I'll continue later." What happened? "Here, look!" Yes sir, a clear case of the  goosebumps.
The reason for the abruptly-arising sense of physical well-being, which with  wonderful regularity also assails the audiences of Amos appearances is not built  alone by the technical proficiency which the whirlwind at the piano  demonstrates; the breathtaking voice of the lady weaves a spell still more than  the flying fingers, (a voice) which, when the song requires it, suddenly tumbles  from a dramatic scream to an intimate whisper and from the highest soprano to  the deepest depths- an organ of power that no witness would have guessed of this  slender musical body. Added to this is the nowadays rare originality of Amos'  songs, which has incited even the hard-boiled critics straight through the  journals to hymns of praise: "Whoever thinks after 25 years experience with  popular music there can't be anything new should listen to Tori Amos,"  recommended the reviewer from a newspaper who had followed the call of the  American from Bonn on the Rhine to Frankfurt on the Main. And the pop culture  publication Tempo, roused from its normally meticulous coolness, noted: "Tori  Amos gives pop music back the good complicated song."
We should have been warned. Before his fall tour '91, during which Tori Amos  brought the headliner utter embarrassment with her opening act, Grammy-winner  Marc Cohn indicated to the editor in an off-the-record question about  undiscovered talent, "Listen to Tori Amos, she's unbelievable!" Tori who? "Don't  worry about it," reassures Ian Thorpe, the man from London who today sits at the  mixer during these completely packed concerts, "I didn't know what to expect  either. I've worked with Tori now since December, and I wouldn't have believed  how much fun it is to be on the road with her. She really knocks the people out,  everybody loves her. It probably has something to do with the fact that everyone  notices how much she loves what she does herself, especially when she plays in  Europe. In America they mostly put a Yamaha CP-80 out on stage, but here they  have real grand pianos, Steinways and that sort of thing. She blossoms when she  has one of those classical instruments in front of her, and you can see how she  makes love to them."
This love has in 28 years not only ascended clear summits, but crossed  shadowy valleys. At the tender age of two and a half the daughter of a Methodist  minister from North Carolina sits at the household piano bench for the first  time. At five the parents send the highly gifted child to conservatory at the  Peabody Institute in Baltimore, a famous brag-establishment for America's  musical elite. But nothing comes of this sought-after career ("I wanted to go  into classical music"). "They threw me out at eleven, I wasn't disciplined  enough." Two years later Tori hangs around hotel lobbies and gay bars, where she  beats out standards like Erroll Garner's "Misty" and the _Casablanca_ hit "As  Time Goes By", while father Amos makes sure that the soul of his rebellious  teenager doesn't get caught in Beelzebub's fangs. Ten years later- in the  meantime Tori has been stranded in L.A.- the Time-Warner conglomerate lures her  with a record contract. Tori siezes the opportunity and experiences a debacle,  since as frontwoman for the mediocre metal group Y Kant Tori Read? she must wipe  away all the sheen that she had achieved so far: the fine art of playing the  piano solo, the pride in her own unmistakable voice, and not least "my  self-esteem, and that was the worst." _Y Kant Tori Read?_, the 1987 album over  which today even the record company would rather lay a cloak of merciful  silence, is a document of depression, a product as artless as it is without  character.
The pains of artistic rebirth last almost four years. During this time songs  are created like "China", "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "Little  Earthquakes" (the title song of the "official" debut) and "Me And A Gun", a  description of a rape >from the point of view of the victim, which Tori Amos  sings facing forward and a cappella into the face of her live audience; during  the Frankfurt appearance the siren wail of an ambulance sounds outside as if  custom-ordered. Not that her concerts would degenerate into a public exorcism of  old demons; with independent piano versions of Stones and Led Zeppelin classics  ("Angie", "Whole Lotta Love") and lively standards ("Sentimental Journey") Tori  Amos inermittently strikes easy tones. However, her repertoire isn't exactly the  stuff from which the streamlined pop radio makes easily consumable hits. "She is  certainly not the radio thing, her stuff is too unwieldy for that," states Elfi  Kuester, press chief for the East West record label, and brings the truth about  Tori Amos to the point: "She has to come and play. Whoever sees her play is  convinced." The dates of the June tour are at the end of this interview.
KEYBOARDS: Tori, when one looks at your schedule one gets dizzy. You've been on  tour for months, in America, England, Japan, Australia, Germany, and there's no  end in sight. How do you keep this up?
TORI: (laughs) Yeah, they're really sending me all over the place. On the one  hand it's fun, but on the other I wish I had more time to play.
KEYBOARDS: But you're playing constantly, every night on a different stage.
TORI: No, I mean, I want more time to compose and to further develop my piano  playing. I can only speak for myself of course, but I think that you can only  expand your vocabulary as a pianist when you spend a lot of time at the piano  without an audience. On stage you're playing the finished songs, and you play  them maybe better and better, because you're always getting to know them better.  But new things only come up when you can try out new things. You can't do  something like that in concert, and definitely not when you're always sitting  around on airplanes and in hotels like I am. So I don't have the time for it,  and because of that at the moment I'm forgetting many ideas from which many new  things could have come.
KEYBOARDS: You don't make note of your ideas, so you can work them out later?
TORI: Only when it has to do with lyrics- I make notes for that everywhere  all the time. But I never write music down, the melodies come from improvising  at the piano. I put my boombox next to me and record them.
KEYBOARDS: Then after a while you must have a lot of tapes from which you can  work.
TORI: Yes, but there's a big difference if you try to put a song together  from little bits like that, or if you let it develop itself out of many hours at  the piano.
KEYBOARDS: Does that mean that you compose totally from the soul?
TORI: Oh, I think when I compose too. (Laughs) But a good song speaks first  to your soul, your heart, and when your heart isn't in the composing and you  only work with your brain, then what comes out of it is dead and cold. To  compose from the heart you have to give it the chance to open up and react. When  you do that, then the piano answers back. That's a dialogue you can't force. You  need time, and at the moment I wish I had a few months I could use for that.
KEYBOARDS: It sounds like a successful album and sold-out concerts aren't  enough for you to be satisfied with yourself.
TORI: Well, what you just mentioned are the criteria for success. I don't  want to say that success means nothing to me, but there are things that are more  important to me, for example developing myself further. Success for success'  sake isn't the reason I'm here.
KEYBOARDS: Four years ago you made an album (_Y Kant Tori Read?_) that was  obviously out to be successful.
TORI: All I can say is that that was an album where I noticed too late that I  wanted to satisfy everyone but myself. If you look at the cover, I look like a  warrior.
KEYBOARDS: A metal queen.
TORI: Yeah, but that's not me, and thus it's not convincing, but rather a bit  ridiculous. What you want to embody has to be inside yourself, and this  Amazon... (shakes her head) Although the body was fine, wasn't it? (Laughs) But  it had nothing to do with me, it was more of a kind of cry for help: "Please  love me!" Because, you know, when I was young I was always the good buddy, boys  never asked me out, as opposed to my friends. The boys only called me to get  their phone numbers. Maybe I wanted to get even with them with this picture.  (Laughs)
KEYBOARDS: Did people at that time push you to make a metal album?
TORI: Let's just say nobody stopped me! But I'm not placing the blame on  anyone but myself. Later I swore to myself that I would never make an album  again that didn't represent me. Y Kant Tori Read was a band that already existed  before I came to it. They had huge problems, the lineup changed constantly, and  I thus recorded the album with different bandmembers. I said to myself then,  They've rejected me so many times, now I'll show them! I wanted to prove  something, but wanting to prove something to the world is no good motivation to  make music.
KEYBOARDS: Did you listen to the album later, perhaps to learn something from  it?
TORI: No, I don't need to listen to it, I know how awful it is. The only  thing it had to do with me was, back then something in me thought Tori should  wear leather. (Laughs and rolls her eyes)
KEYBOARDS: Today you occasionally come out in jeans and Birkenstocks.
TORI: It depends on how I feel. There are also days when I where a black  dress- and pumps! You should see my pumps collection! (laughs)
KEYBOARDS: To get back to your music: people who have thought for a long time  that the concept of a singer alone at the piano was worn out and nothing new  would bepossible are surprised, for example by the original structure of your  songs.
TORI: Something new is always possible. It's like if you go into the  mountains for the hundredth time. When you take the lift up, you always see the  same worn-out paths, but when you go up very slowly on foot, it suddenly seems  like unexplored territory, and you're discovering every rock and flower. You  have to take the time to look at them and discover their beauty. The piano is  such a territory. When you don't have the patience to explore it, then it's the  most boring instrument in the world, but if you spend a lot of time with it,  you'll always be discovering something new. I think it's like that with every  instrument. I mean, I sometimes listen to music by people who come out with one  album after the other, and I already know how the next one is going to sound-  predictable! But when music becomes predictable, it can't convey any more  emotion.
KEYBOARDS: Your music isn't predictable.
TORI: Not yet.
KEYBOARDS: Do you see the danger of that in yourself?
TORI: Of course, nobody is safe from it. Up until now what has kept me from  writing predictable music is that I only compose when I feel the need to. (Long  pause) It's strange, I'm noticing that I'm really having problems talking about  the songwriting process, maybe because I'm not used to it. The people from the  press always want to talk only about my father and my upbringing, but nobody  asks me about my music. I'm really grateful to you for doing that.
KEYBOARDS: So nothing more about your father?
TORI: Oh, stop it! (Laughs) I mean, I love my father, I owe him so much, he  always supported me.
KEYBOARDS: He accompanied you through the Clubs-
TORI: -and looked after me, when I needed someone to look after me. I was so  young.
KEYBOARDS: It says in your official biography that you played in gay bars at  thirteen. No one would have allowed that in Germany.
TORI: They wouldn't have allowed it anywhere but in (Washington) D.C. They  had really liberal laws back then, and since my father accompanied me and held  his hand over me, luckily it was possible.
KEYBOARDS: Were you already thinking of making an album back then?
TORI: I thought about it all the time! From the time I was thirteen I sent  tapes around with the songs I had written. I did that for five years, and then  at eighteen I stopped.
KEYBOARDS: Why?
TORI: Because of the replies I got.
KEYBOARDS: How did they go?
TORI: "You may perhaps have potential. Call us back in a few years." Very  encouraging! But that's the problem with the music industry, they invest hardly  any money in developing talent. They don't say, He or she has potential we can  develop. You know, if I wasn't doing what I'm doing now I'd gladly be on the  other side, in Artist Development. I'd go out and listen to people, to find out  who I could help- like what they used to do with people like Judy Garland.  Because there are so many talents who have been playing only in clubs or in  their living rooms, and people from the industry should care about them. They  shouldn't wait until someone has the idea to look for a producer, somebody who  knows how to make records and how to bring music from one medium, the piano or  guitar in some living room or a club, to another, a tape or a record. I mean,  you don't have to be a genius to know that the musicians are the backbone of the  entire thing; without them there would be no music industry at all. The  producers used to care a lot more, for example in the forties, about all the  actors and actresses and screenwriters. They went out and looked around in  places where they hung out, in the clubs and theaters, and then they brought  them to Hollywood. Not that that would have been a perfect world, since some of  these talents in the course of this process killed themselves and jumped off  (the Hollywood sign). What I want to say is, they shouldn't feed these young  talents with uppers and downers so they can make it for another ten years, but  with support instead.
KEYBOARDS: Have you met such talents yourself since you've been playing live?
TORI: Oh, in these fifteen years I've met so many who deserve to be promoted!  One doesn't feel comfortable on the stage and needs someone to maybe give him a  bit of confidence, another... you know, there are so many reasons someone can  fail! If I hadn't had my father, who always pushed me... (Laughs) No, that's not  true, what I just said; he didn't need to push me, I did everything of my own  free will. But when I was thrown out of the Peabody (Institute of Johns Hopkins  University, Baltimore) at eleven and told him I was going to only do my own  thing from that point on- which in the beginning brought a lot of turbulence  between him and me, but that's the way it is with fathers and daughters!  (laughs)- then he insisted I do it right. He said, "You have to start from the  very bottom and learn your craft." He probably imagined someone like Ginger  Rogers- a girl who can play and dance and sing and who has a mind of her own.  (Laughs) But from that point on he supported me totally. He went with me to all  the hotels and clubs and made sure I was allowed to play.
KEYBOARDS: What did these years in the clubs do for you?
TORI: Those were priceless years for me. I mean, the performances themselves  didn't necessarily help my composing, that I taught myself- trial and error, you  know? But during that time I was associated with a few people, without whom I  wouldn't be here today. One of them was a teacher at the college I went to when  I was seventeen. He was a composer and worked for the National Symphony  (Orchestra) and I had private lessons with him. I think if you were to ask him  today, he probably wouldn't believe that he had influenced me in any way- back  then I had this typical "fuck off" attitude about it! (Laughs) But in reality he  influenced me a lot, although I was only with him for a semester. We analyzed  compositions together, and I could pick out which ones.
KEYBOARDS: Which compositions were those?
TORI: Things like "Eleanor Rigby", but also classical stuff. He taught me to  pay attention to the basic pattern and structure, and not just to rely on  spontaneous ideas when composing. Sure there's something magical when you  suddenly feel totally inspired and you think, Now is the right time to compose.  But when you don't just rely on this magic it can happen that you have to wait  three years until you feel yourself struck by that flash again. This teacher  showed me how I could make something out of one tiny motif, from two measures  for example, also when I think I have just these two measures and nothing else.
KEYBOARDS: When one knows your lyrics, which are very personal, sometimes  very intimate and almost sound like modern poems, one must think that you write  the lyrics first and then set them to music.
TORI: No, I always start with the sounds, also in the words. Mostly it's just  a line or a word or also just a syllable that sounds musical, and then lyrics  come from that. It's like a sculptor who has an unsculpted block of stone and  knocks off a piece here and a piece there, and in the end the block has become a  sculpture. When I think about it... (long pause) No, the words actually always  come last and are always part of the music.
KEYBOARDS: That amazes me, because your lyrics revolve around specific  themes- sex, violence, love, religion. They awaken the impression that there may  be a message you want to convey.
TORI: No, I don't have a message as such, I simply sing about myself and my  experiences. My lyrics naturally have meaning, but I'm no journalist, I'm always  trying to find words that sound good.
KEYBOARDS: Have you ever tried it the other way around?
TORI: To write lyrics and then find the right music?
KEYBOARDS: Yes.
TORI: I've tried it, but I just can't do it. The music that comes to me then  is pure crap, the melodies aren't alive. Melodies develop out of themselves,  they don't let themselves be nailed to lyrics. When someone tries to separate  words and notes >from one another, and does first the one and then the other,  everything falls apart. No song results, just a lifeless something without a  center and without soul.
KEYBOARDS: Doesn't your method of working mean that you must work very long  on one song?
TORI: Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I change a lot during this process. I work  until the song has its own sound, a structure, a body. Sometimes when I sit at  the piano I have three or four little things I work with, fragments which could  become a song, but I always have an idea for that song. And then I decide step  by step in which direction I want to go, since each of these fragments goes in a  different direction. To come to these decisions is the real challenge of  songwriting, and I believe it is important to take them on, if you don't want to  write the same song over and over. Otherwise you tend to fall back on the same  old pattern. The themes of the songs may be different, but musically they all  sound the same. At this point the teacher I told you about before opened my  ears. He showed me that every song has to have its own character and that songs  are just as different from one another as people.
KEYBOARDS: But there are doubtless patterns and structures that one can use  over and over- verse, chorus, bridge, particular chord progressions, major-minor  change and so on.
TORI: Of course, and everyone who composes should know them. But at the same  time he should be aware that at each moment he has the free choice between very  different possibilities. Because there's no formula for writing songs.
KEYBOARDS: Don't you also have the impression that in pop music just this  kind of composing- by successful formulas- has gotten the upper hand?
TORI: Yes, that's true, but who wants to hear that stuff? Not me, and  certainly not you. I think even if we just write songs we can learn a lot from  classical music. Something I learned in my study of classical music is that a  composition can consist of movements.
KEYBOARDS: Allegro, andante, presto.
TORI: For example. And I think the possibilities of expression within the  medium of song in the late sixties and early seventies were bigger than today.  Many musicians then composed in movements, even if they didn't realize it.
KEYBOARDS: A few of your songs have a kind of movement-like structure,  "Flying Dutchman" for example.
TORI: Yeah, it's not the structure of your typical pop song. (Laughs)
KEYBOARDS: The song sounds almost like a little symphony. Can you think of  anyone else besides yourself who composes in movements today?
TORI: R.E.M. does it sometimes. But most of the songs I hear are woven from  the same pattern and don't go anywhere.
KEYBOARDS: In your concerts you play songs from other composers as well-  "Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin, "Angie" by the Stones. By which criteria do  you pick these songs?
TORI: It has to be a song that doesn't sound like other songs, a song with  personality. Whoever wrote that song has to have come to a decision, consciously  or unconsciously.
KEYBOARDS: Those many little decisions you talked about?
TORI: Yes, you hear immediately whether someone has composed in that way or  if they've just used another song as a model and tried to write it again.  Prince, for example, is somebody who constantly comes out with completely new  songs. Even when he uses no chord progression at all, but just one single chord  that seems to not move from the spot, he brings so much out of it! It doesn't  matter how many chords you can bring into a song, but rather it depends on what  you make out of every single chord. One of the best songs of this kind that I've  heard in the past few years and that has absolutely no predecessor is "Running  Up That Hill" (by Kate Bush).
KEYBOARDS: Many critics have compared you to Kate Bush.
TORI: Yes, but I think that has nothing to do with my songs, just my voice.  They hear these high sounds (sings) and immediately think of Kate Bush.
KEYBOARDS: But your song concepts are completely different.
TORI: Yes, she works with other structures. But her songs are very original,  and that's what matters.
KEYBOARDS: Don't you make it very hard on yourself when you expect  originality from every new song as you're composing?
TORI: I didn't say it was easy to write songs- I mean good songs. So much has  been done within this medium- take a song by Van Morrison and compare it to  something by Ice Cube! But it's exciting for me to see what all you can do  within five minutes and what different personalities can expressed themselves in  that short period of time. Because that's the deciding factor: that you express  something! There has already been much too much music that doesn't express  anything at all and is only good for dulling your senses like a bad drug. Music  should do the opposite, it should open your senses. When you compose you're  dependent on these channels bging open, and you have to learn to keep them open  and let the energy that's flowing through and filter it into something that's  your own.
KEYBOARDS: How can one open these channels and keep them open?
TORI: By not pushing yourself and doing things only for others, not for  yourself. Maybe pressure isn't the right word, maybe I should say angst. When  you're afraid- afraid of yourself, afraid of being rejected- you can't express  yourself in what you're doing. That awful album I made back then opened my eyes,  that there are lots of people in the music business who either only reject you  or fawn over you, that it's personally embarrassing to me. I've gotten to know  both extremes, and both of them are just as damaging. They prevent you from  finding yourself and create something that comes from here (lays her hand on her  heart). Today I see it very clearly: What the music industry thinks is what it  thinks, and what I think is what I think. When we're lucky we're thinking the  same thing, but it's only important what I think. I needed a long time to come  to this understanding. Because, you know, when you're coddled for many years as  a so called prodigy, sometime you become addicted to "You really did that well!"  Not necessarily from your parents, they're only a small part of the system, but  also from friends and teachers and producers. When you figure out for the first  time at eleven that everybody around you isn't as impressed by you as they used  to be, then you start to fight for that appreciation and finally you only do  what others expect of you. You have to free yourself >from that, and I hope  no kid needs as long to do it as I did. (Laugh) I can already hear the voices  saying Hey, what is she blabbing about, it can't have hurt her, she got what she  wanted! But I'm surprised at it myself, that I came out of it and today do my  own thing. At eighteen I was almost ready to give up songwriting, because I  thought Maybe they're right, maybe I need a band, maybe I should make dance  music. Which was of course absolute shit! But I did it! I made piles of demos  with dance music that were so bad, you'd lose your lunch if you had to hear  them. Somehow I survived that crap, but I don't know myself where the tenacity  that I seem to have comes from.
KEYBOARDS: Don't you feel you learned something from these ill fated  attempts?
TORI: Oh, sure I did. Even if the dance music I wrote was crap, I learned  something, namely to work with my left hand. My left hand is much better today,  more rhythmic.
KEYBOARDS: One notices it when you play a rhythm opposite to your vocal  melody- that gives many keyboardists problems.
TORI: But if you listen carefully you'll discover that the melody isn't  always in the vocals.
KEYBOARDS: You don't make a strict separation between your singing and your  piano playing. Sometimes you accompany your vocal melody on the piano, and  sometimes you accompany the melody you play on the piano with your voice.
TORI: Yes, and the melody also wanders back and forth between my right and  left hand.
KEYBOARDS: It was a giant step from your first album to _Little Earthquakes_.  How did your record company react when you played these totally different new  songs for them?
TORI: They were a bit shocked! (Laughs) Mostly because I'd never played the  songs for anyone before. I mean, my boyfriend Eric (Rosse, co-producer of  _Little Earthquakes_), who met me five years ago, when I was working on  you-know-which album, thus under false pretenses- he was one of the first to  encourage me. One time I sat at the piano and started to play, and he listened  and then said, "I can't believe it! Why haven't you ever played this stuff? When  will you show it to somebody?" But that I came back to the piano at all is due  to one of my best friends; today she lives in a log cabin in Montana, but at  that time she played in a band in L.A. It was during the time when I still  earned my money in the hotel lobbies. One night I was at her house, and she had  an old piano sitting in the corner, and I sat down and played for five or six  hours, nothing but improvisation. When I was stopped she came in and said,  "Tori, you have to make an album, but with this stuff!" I said, "Impossible!  Nobody wants to hear it." And she said, "What are you waiting for? Do you want  go on wasting your talent?" I almost howled when she said that, I was so  discouraged. (Long pause) I owe her a lot.
KEYBOARDS: When one sees you play live, one notices immediately how  "physical" you act, beginning with your singing. Your breathing technique is  astounding, you last through very extreme curves of melody, and one sometimes  asks oneself, where you get the breath. Have you taken singing lessons?
TORI: Yes, when I was twelve, with three different teachers from whom I  learned different things. But I only looked for what I needed, I didn't want to  be an opera singer. Because whether you're dealing with piano playing or singing  or writing songs, technique alone isn't enough, you have to develop your own  style and discover your own personality. It's easy to sing perfectly and to play  perfectly and to write perfect songs. The real challenge is expressing your  personality. I'm afraid teachers aren't aware of that themselves.
KEYBOARDS: Your piano playing is also emphasized by your body, you don't sit  on the bench but perch on the edge and climb on with your entire body. Bernhard,  who took the photos during the soundcheck before, finally said, "Sometimes I  thought she was about to crawl into her piano!"
TORI: (Laughs) Well, I'm not ashamed of my body, for me it's a medium for  talking to my instrument. Because a grand piano is a very special instrument.  But, I mean, who am I telling this to? We're talking for KEYBOARDS here, right?  I'm not in some Woody Allen film where people discuss their problems. (Laughs)  When I sit at the piano my instincts rule. (The press spokeswoman for the record  company appears in the door and signals that the interview time is over.) Hey,  we're just talking about music. Ten minutes more, it's important, okay? Okay,  where were we? Well, some people have pets, I have a piano. (Laughs) Because for  me, the piano is a living thing. This thing they call the piano has an energy  that... how should I say it? It's more than just three-dimensional matter, it's  something four-dimensional. It has a body that surrounds it and at the same time  it has its own life that transcends the material plane. Sometimes it's male,  sometimes it's female, sometimes it's both. Sometimes when I play it has  something sexual, sometimes not, and sometimes the relationship between us is so  close, that... (long pause) Well, sometimes I think it's courting me and wants  me in bed. And then there are moments when I really have the feeling it fucks  with me in bed. But we respect each other. It's like that with the fairies.
KEYBOARDS: Fairies?
TORI: (Laughs) Yeah, I believe in fairies and that they exist. I mean, they  talk to me.
KEYBOARDS: But not in this world.
TORI: (Smiles) Our world is just as real as theirs, do you know what I mean?
KEYBOARDS: I'm trying. Many of your lyrics have a kind of dreamy quality,  they seem to touch associations similar to that which they call in literature  "stream of consciousness". It's another level of awareness. Is that what you  mean?
TORI: (Laughs) Yeah, some lyrics have to do with dreams. I see the dream and  I see the nightmare, and I believe you can't have the dream without the  nightmare. I'm talking in riddles for you, aren't I? (Laughs)
KEYBOARDS: Maybe you can explain it to me in the context of your songs.
TORI: Well, in most of my songs there are moments you have to get through  like in a nightmare. It's like an initiation you have to pass before you can  find the key.
KEYBOARDS: There's a song by you that is like a nightmare from beginning to  end.
TORI: "Me And A Gun."
KEYBOARDS: Yes. A rape from the perspective of the victim. But in this song  the nightmare isn't just a moment, it's the whole story.
TORI: A moment in my life. (Pause) People react very differently to it.
KEYBOARDS: I played it for a (male) friend who thought rape too serious a  subject to make into a song.
TORI: Could it be that your friend simply felt uncomfortable? In my  experience women react very differently to this song. But it's interesting what  you're saying, because my father loves this song- although my parents are very  victorian and very religious. My father found it was simply necessary to say  what rape means. It's a frontal assault- not only on your body, but on your  soul.
KEYBOARDS: Can you imagine a subject where you would say, That's too serious  or difficult for me to write a song about it?
TORI: No, I think you can write about everything. It depends on the  perspective you write it from.
KEYBOARDS: You sing "Me And A Gun" a cappella. Was there ever an instrumental  arrangement?
TORI: No, I composed it a cappella and it's stayed that way.
KEYBOARDS: You only rarely work with electronics. "Sugar" (on the CD-single  "China", see discography) has an electronic arrangement.
TORI: Yes, but it's centered around the electric piano.
KEYBOARDS: Why are you so hesitant toward electronic instruments?
TORI: Because they don't have the soul a piano has. Now I don't want to say  that electronic instruments are anything bad. For example: the electronic  arrangement for "Girl" (on _Little Earthquakes_) is mine. Eric made the sounds  on the Kurzweil and programmed everything, since I don't have a clue.
KEYBOARDS: Did you arrange other songs yourself? I'm thinking of "Precious  Things".
TORI: Yes. "Precious Things" is mine. And "Leather".
KEYBOARDS: When you compose, do you already have the arrangement in your  head, or do you only orchestrate a song once it's done?
TORI: When a song is done, that also means that I know what it's going to  sound like. The arrangement is part of the composition. But it's great to work  with sampled strings, you hear the orchestra right away.
KEYBOARDS: You occasionally also use real strings, for instance in "Silent  All These Years" (arranged by Nick DeCaro).
TORI: Yeah, that's a great arrangement. But still...
KEYBOARDS: Your love still belongs to the acoustic piano.
TORI: (Laughs) Yes, for different reasons. It's made from wood by human  hands, and it doesn't need a plug. I mean, if the entire world was left without  electricity tomorrow- I could still play my piano. Besides that, the forte pedal  is very important for what I do; it's how you let the piano breathe.
(Long pause) My dream is to bring the piano up to the next level. I would  love to equip it with contact mikes and send the sound through the Marshalls and  maybe attach a second piano to it and then compose with the effects.
KEYBOARDS: That's no problem with MIDI.
TORI: But it still has to sound like a real piano. Because I think you have  to stay true to your medium and try to develop it further. I'm only just  beginning, and I don't think I'm really a good pianist. Maybe I'm a clever  pianist, but my technique isn't _that_ amazing. When I listen to some guys from  the jazz and blues world, I sit there with an open mouth. Maybe that way of  playing would seep into me if I had more to do with people from that area. I  think you have to have the music you make in your blood. So far there are other  things in my blood. When I sit at the piano and the fifths start coming images  from the highlands and the moors go through my head, and I feel like I've gone  back a thousand years. Because I understand the message that lies in these  sounds.
You know, all music contains a code, in every sound and in every sequence of  notes there's a DNA, genes, specific memories of our own lifetime. That's why  music talks to people on the subconscious level. Things resonate there that come  from early cultures, from the original music of the North American Indians or  from the folklore of the Celts. A lot of what I play goes back to these  traditions. I mean, even if the musicians from these clutures played it on  different instruments, say on drums, I can still take it over for my piano.
It's another medium, but the DNA is the same.
KEYBOARDS: In some of your songs you play really like it was percussion, in  the intro to "Precious Things" and in "Little Earthquakes".
TORI: Yeah, some of my stuff has Celtic roots. But it all comes from my  heart, not from my head. When I play something like this for example... (jumps  up and sits at the piano)- you see? That's the music that talks to me more than  any other- the low notes are static, and the movement is in the higher notes.  They're ancient structures that speak to something in me, that are connected to  those old cultures. When you're aware that you're creating from such a source,  then you can also write music that has a soul and a balance and that isn't just  functional. Whoever doesn't just write functional music has to realize that  source in himself, and there are people in all areas, whether it be Rap or Heavy  Metal or Folk or Dance, that do that.
KEYBOARDS: So what you want most out of music is the spritual quality?
TORI: Yes, music without spirituality doesn't deserve its name. That is, I'm  not talking about the people who just write their songs to help sell some  product in a commercial. What do those people know about music? They tore out  their hearts a long time ago. I'm talking about music that isn't written out of  Angst or on a "What are they thinking?" basis. I know what I'm talking about, I  worked that way once. What I want to say is, It's the intention behind the music  that counts. When you compose just for the people out there, for people who have  only sales figures on their minds and theories about what people want to hear,  then you're lost. These people have no respect for music, and also no respect  for themselves. They don't know the power music can have.
The greater part of the music that's coming out today is made for the wrong  reasons. But you can win back the right reasons, not only in my genre, but in  all of them! Punk had it in the beginning and also Rap, and Jane's Addiction and  Nirvana and Soundgarden and Metallica have their moments. I don't want to  preach, but I would like to say one thing to those who make music: Don't try to  please the idiots in the record companies who decide what's worthy to be put out  and what isn't. Those people live in fear- will it sell? We musicians shouldn't  be afraid, we should remember why we're on this earth, and make it clear to  ourselves what responsibilty we have, toward music, toward the people who  listen, and toward ourselves. No one is going to take that responsibility away  from us.
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