Tori Amos:

By Dave Hall

According to  Andy Warhol, evreryone gets their "fifteen minutes of fame." According to Dave  Letterman, an encounter with one of the famed ones nets the individual a "brush  with greatness." Given that singer/songwriter/pianist Tori Amos is getting her  fifteen minutes of fame in three-year doses, the following interbiew might be  considered a "fifteen-minute brush with greatness."

Thriving, sprouting, mushrooming, greatness. Tori Amos's willingness to  expose the hidden corners of her psyche has won the acclaim of an audience  apparently hungry for honesty and the anguish of heartfelt life-experience.  Amos's prodigious pianistry has earned the respect of even the most particular  musicians, and her last album, Little Earthquakes, also earned her  multi-platinum sales.

Her latest, Under The Pink, firing both engines on the strength of two hit  singles, "God" and "Cornflake Girl," is already platnum in the U.S. alone. Her  two-hundred-city-plus tour is sold out in most venues, and in the performer's  spare time, she's managed to coordinate a nationwide 1-800 Rape Crisis to aid  the hundreds of thousands of rape victims whose cries might have otherwise  remained silent.

In the outgoing quest to bright the reader up-to-the-minute, cutting- edge  music journalism, nine hundred seconds of valuable time was eked out of Amos's  restrictive schedule and thrust upon this hurried, harried writer. What follows  is our (mostly) unedited conversation.

Jam: Is there anything that gets under your skin that you get tired of hearing,  that you hear over and over again?

Tori: I know there is, but I try and forget it. I always like challenging  questions. Things that have thought behind them challenge my mind. Things that  don't have thought behind them, I know-I smell it in five seconds. Not to make  you nervous, but some people just don't want to dig and be a little  archaeologist, which I think if you're a good journalist, that's what you're  doing and you're looking at things from a different perspective...

Jam: In fifteen minutes we certainly don't have time to go through what's  already in the bio. What do you think people misconceive about you, what's the  greatest misconception about people's image of you, especially as a result of  all this press?

Tori: Um, [pause]...that I'm depressed. My crew finds me very funny. I think  if you ask them, you know...but they had that impression too, before they all  came on board. I think they were all walking on eggshells, and I'm like,  'dudes.'

Jam: ...Lighten up!

Tori: Get a sense of humor! There are days when I think my humor is one of my  better sides to myself. Even in my work, I think it comes out a lot. I think  people just don't catch it sometimes. But it's everywhere.

Jam: Does it ever bother you that so many of your songs seem to have a down  side?

Tori: I know that I'm not like, 'party music.' I don't have any illusions  about when people listen to my record. If I'm having a Fourth of July Night, we  won't be playing Under The Pink or Little Earthquakes! But somebody's gotta go  into the basement. I kinda go into the basement and tinker around with stuff -  with emotions that I hide. It gives me so much freedom and release. When I walk  offstage I feel really invigorated, maybe a bit empty sometimes. I strike a  chord that's a bit tender, but there's a feeling of freedom there because when  you're not hiding - like nobody can nail you. You know? They can't nail your  'self.'

Jam: Are you afraid that after exposing so much of yourself openly, in the  music, in the media, that there's not going to be anything left for yourself?  Are there things left that you're hiding? Are there parts of you that aren't  getting out?

Tori: I think that with each step you take...-like with Little Earthquakes I  was the chicken coming out of the egg, alright, and Under the Pink, I'm like the  little rooster walking around. You know what I mean?

Jam: More confidence...

Tori: Well, I'm getting into seeds that got dropped from the big old rooster,  and I'm stealing a little seed here and a seed there, and I'm looking at another  chicken and I'm saying, 'do you have an in-ny or an out-ty,' you know, stuff  like that with Under the Pink. And the old rooster's like, 'I have that chicken,  I wanna peck her eyes out!' With each stage, if you start discovering stuff, I  don't believe that there isn't more to discover. I really believe that. On one  hand, I know there are only twelve notes. And I know that there're only so many  emotions. Once you deal with fear, cowardice, desperation, adultation, joy, and  what all these things cause, you go, 'Well, haven't I already covered that?' And  you keep seeing emotions differently with new experiences.

Jam: Fame causes you to see things differntly.

Tori: Fame...[fame, followed by a long sigh] Nobody teaches you to be famous,  that's for sure. There's no courses, no 'Fame 101.' Some people don't deal it  well, they can end up very...[trails off]

Jam: I imagine that people approach you with questions on two angles, on Kurt  Cobain's tragedy, and also because of your outspokeness about female abuse - the  O.J. Simpson thing.

Tori: A lot of questions about Kurt. Peiple haven't brought O.J. up yo me -  much. Mainly because I haven't done a lot of interviews since his arrest. Umm,  but you know we're doing the 800-number, which I feel very stong about. I feel  like, hopefully, wherever you're calling from, you call this 800-number and it  connects you with the closest Rape Crisis Center, and there's a trained person  there 24 hours a day. People who have been through it-most of them have been  through it-and they're compassionate but not debilitating. You need somebody to  say, "Tori, you've gotta look at this side of it. You've gotta look at where  you're not making choices in your life that are healty. Yes, this happened to  you, this expirence happened to you-you can't change that-but we've got to look  at what this expirence has done. How you haven't looked at your anger, and now  the choices that you're making. Why are your relationships still abusive? Let's  look at that" So there's a lot of it, I call it. "Wonderfully yummy though  truth." You need that, you really need that, or you're never going to heal. And  I feel that you're way more willing to take tough truth from a stranger than you  are from a friend.

Jam: Strangers are more objective, more able to be tough when they have to  be, whereas friends tend to be flowery, more mushy, or...

Tori: Well, they're so afraid to lose your friendship that they don't wanna  thouch a sore spot. But hey, if your sore spots aren't being touched, no work is  getting done! So you either wanna get to the point where you don't want to jump  off that bridge, or you want to jumped offmthat bridge! There's no middle  ground!

Jam: I noticed this in your clippings - does it concern you much of your  recent press deals with sex and abuse? Do you wish people would concentrate more  on the music? Do you care, or how do you feel?

Tori: Well, right now, whatever it takes to get this 800 number out to people  where they feel they can turn somewhere... If they don't talk about the music  for awhile, that's okay. I get enough press. People have been talking about the  music, and they for three years, to where we have a sold-out tour, two hundred  shows. So, at a certain level, I've gotta go, "Really Tori. If people don't  mention the music, sometimes you just have to understand that the focus is  somewhere else." And it's important right now. I mean, sometimes you just a  little bit - you know- hard to get away from, from my point of view. But that's  the commitment I made.

Jam: Of all these accomplishments, of your work, of your social activism, of  what accomplishments do you take the most pride in personally?

Tori: My live shows. Because that's a place where people come and I would  like to think, walk out feeling like they've had the "Auywasca journey of life,"  that Brazilian vine that was in the Emerald forest, that gave that boy vision...

Jam: You've got me. Tell me more.

Tori: "Auywasca" is a vine in Brazil in the Amazon - I've had it freezed  dried a few times-but the point is that it gives the medicine men vision down  there, and I'd like to think that my concerts are like a journey you get from  Auywasca; that you go through an emotional journey. Some people - not everyone-  leave differently than when they walked it, and they leave inspired. That's why  I do it, because I don't think of mu concerts as something for you do to because  you have nothing else to do. But if that's so, then whatever. But if you can  clean your house and do the Lemon Pledge scene on your furniture during Under  the Pink well, hey, I've served my purpose. But for the most part, I think that  when people leave my concert they walk away seeing things a bit differently.  "Cause they get emotionally charged, like they just put their fingers in the  220. I'd like to think that anyway.

Jam: Sounds kind of dabgerous for the audience. For you as an individual, you  have to continue setting goals for yourself. Your next set of goals - where are  you now?

Tori: You know, I've been a musician for 28 years. I'm always trying to  challenge myself musically, and sometimes I don't. I'm not always achieving  that, but I'm always writing. So I want to spend time before I put out the next  work and explore things. There are things I've always wanted to explore, and it  takes time. It's like being an archaelogist. I have to go in there musically and  explore things. I hope I'm always doing that for the rest of my life. That's  what I live to do, just pushing new frontiers for myself.