Tori Amos: Piece by Piece Read online

  Some women performers are playing with one archetype; some play with a combination of quite a few. The combinations are endless. It can range from Hathor to Freya to Queen Maeve to Shakti to Athena to Diana—the list goes on and on. However, Aphrodite is one that is consistently chosen over time. And when a female artist embodies this archetype and can really pull it off—you look at her and you can feel that she emanates a supernatural presence. An obvious example is Marilyn Monroe. There was no mistaking: it's almost as if she were carrying that Venus lineage with her and stepped into it and realized it, and the people around her needed to keep her there. Ultimately she couldn't separate from the otherworldly. Some performers take an archetype on board with that intensity when they're onstage; the show depends on the audience believing the myth. But then, sometimes, they die. Or they get old, and they can't really do it anymore. Others transcend; they're the performers who ultimately have to tear down the altar of themselves, by themselves.

  You have to be careful not to buy into that moment of projection, the idea that forms when all these people are having a relationship with the songs, with your shoes, with themselves. This is where working with archetypes is different from thinking you are one. When you start believing you are Aphrodite, or believing you are the Dark Prince, first of all, you have offended the Divine. And I find you don't know how to access it anymore. The true Shamans are the ones who have had to eat some humble pie and realize that they are only a part of the creative process. What an honor. What a privilege to be a part. But there is the Divine. And I'm not the Source. You're not the Source. Tash is not the Source. But we can all tap into the Source.

  If performers get too wrapped up in their own personalities, I say they didn't feel it. They never truly connected to what was giving them their power in the first place. You might try on an image that people are projecting onto you, with the frequency and ease with which you try on a pair of sandals. I did that for a while, but I had to get out of it really quickly. In Under the Pink, my image was at its zenith, and I was feeling completely empty. But that's because I was taking the image on board rather than letting the songs energize me. I got out of that while making Boys for Pele. That's when I ditched that.

  The idea that some musicians pass around is that other people don't have access. But I know my audience has access. I'm trying to encourage them to find their own—I talk about soul blueprints. Their own autonomy, their own sovereignty. Their own creative calling. It could be gardening. I can't do that. There are so many things I wish I could do that I can't do. It doesn't always have to be singing; some people are tone-deaf. That's a bit of a minus ten if you want to write songs, although it doesn't make it impossible.

  To bring myth into your life, you don't have to dress in a purple and blue robe and wave a wand. You can if you like, but you could also be a waitress somewhere and inhabit an archetype. In today's world, we put entertainers on this kind of archetypal pedestal. In the old days, it was royalty. In the 1930s and ’40s it was the movie stars’ role, then it belonged to rock stars, then sports stars, then the celebrity phenomena, and now it's a mixture of all of them. These people are playing it out, just as the Greek gods and goddesses and their representatives did in ancient times. What Joseph Campbell was trying to tell us is that modern-day humankind shouldn't feel that these stories merely happened to anybody and everybody in every other era, but that they are also happening to us. We don't often see our own stories. Good artists are the ones that whisper our own stories back to us.

  ANN: What makes an artist? Talent, yes. But mostly, curiosity.

  ANDY SOLOMON:

  Tori would have been accomplished and renowned, known and respected, as a musician in any time—the forties, fifties, sixties—I really think she would have found her audience and her voice. Why? Well, there are not many people out there who can play three keyboards at the same time in seventeen-inch heels. And exorcising her demons publicly—that I think is really what catches people. Man, that chick's got balls, you know? I think she was born to do just what she's doing.

  CHELSEA LAIRD:

  She's just so interested to learn. On tour, everywhere we go she asks questions, her radar is out. She buys books, gets the papers, wants to talk to the locals. She just wants to learn everything about the area and the people. Not to mention the traveling library that tours with us—it sits in one of the bunks on her bus. It's a collection of some of her favorites and some we've picked up along the way, but all are points of reference.

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  All creators go through a period where they're dry and don't know how to get that plane ticket back to the creative source. Where is that waterfall? At a certain point you say “I'll take a rivulet.” And you find a place. When I hit a wall in my mid-thirties, I went back to story. And I began to see the pilgrimage that our hero or heroine would have to make, then, to get the oracle to speak to him or her again.

  As a songwriter, if you're honest, you begin to find the qualities you scorn within yourself. When you are able to crawl inside and stop judging for one second and just find that place within where you could do that thing that horrifies you most—you need to find the incest victim in you, the perpetrator of incest in you, the killer and the killed: you need to find all those places. You have to get the ego out of it to do this exercise, because if you don't it will make you very, very uncomfortable. Have you never had a vision of something that abhors you? That you would do, or have done, to yourself? Of course you have. We do have murderous thoughts; in our minds we have done things that are violent. We've had things done to us, too; not just in dreams, either. This is what art is for.

  When you choose your character, you're stepping into fact. This is who you are. In “Me and a Gun,” I'm the girl who's raped. That is the ground that I covered. I did not cover the rapist's point of view. Now, if I were a guy, I'd cover that song from the rapist's point of view or from that of the victim's husband. If I were somebody who hated women, I'd cover it in one way, and if I were somebody who loved women, I'd cover it in another way. My having lived and survived this experience in real life wasn't the only reason that I could write and perform from that perspective. I could do it because I could walk back into that violated space and sing it from that space without wavering.

  All artists will be faced with having to play cat and mouse with themselves on what they're doing. You can live the artist's way you know—you can say it's not a job, it's what I'm doing. But if you start believing, sometimes you start taking on board these projections people offer you. You begin to take on the fantasy world that you created, and—this is the hubris of it—you also start taking on what the Divine has given you and not giving the Divine credit. Listen—when you're on the toilet, from the point of view of the toilet, you are not an icon taking a crap. You are a bottom taking a crap. If you can get that, you're going to be okay.

  When I spoke to the Dark Prince in ceremony, he told me, “As soon as you stop being humbled by the creation process, Little One, it is so much bigger than you are. And when you think it is you and you are it, it will drown you or burn you alive.”

  MATT CHAMBERLAIN:

  Tori's been so good at establishing a strong image, and a lot of people perceive her as the fairy princess or the wacky one. But they see her more than they hear her. That's the case with many pop musicians. You hear or read really great interviews with them and they say really cool stuff and you see their picture everywhere and they look good, and then maybe you hear one song. Maybe it's not the song that best represents them. That's the case with Tori. Friends I've known for years would come out to a show on this tour, and they'd be like, “Wow. I had no idea!” One friend of mine who's an avant-garde jazz saxophone player came out in Kansas City and he said, “This is like high art pop music.” She's just one of those people who will keep doing her thing and people will really get it—maybe not now, maybe in twenty years.

  ANN: An artist is also someone who accepts struggle. Am
os views her own career within the larger framework of a time in which creativity, and particularly the feminine spirit, has been pushed to the culture's margins. Sexy girls may be everywhere on our billboards and television screens, but real women still have to use all the strength of their voices to be heard.

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  We're in a Dark Age for artists. People are being threatened, accused; they're taking the microphone away; or you won't be on the radio; or you have to find your own way to get to the people because the powers that be won't help you. Unless you fly under the radar, unless you use symbology Because sometimes we give a bit too much credit, thinking that the people in charge are very intelligent. Sometimes they don't even know you're referencing them.

  I was born a feminist. And then at age five, when my strict Christian grandmother punished me, I realized, I'm not penetrating here. I'm just pissing people off. So I had to find another way to penetrate. I had to redefine what that word means. That word now is really about an opening, an entering into a separate space. And after the first phase of my life, I realized that it was okay to enter that space without having to be invaded.

  How does a woman penetrate? It's a beautiful paradox. We don't have that organ. Fundamentally, we don't pee standing up. And that changes your view of life, from the beginning. The figure of Mary Magdalene stands for the earth: a seed can be planted within her, whereas seeds can't be planted within men physically. But there's another way to think of it, as a joining, where they're entering each other, you know. Because ultimately human life is not about sperm dominating eggs. I like the idea of just being able to be inside. Not using penetration as a violent word. The idea of being able to find keys—we're back to music, using keys to get into a space that we couldn't before.

  I choose to fight my battles through my music, and if I'm misunderstood, well, I've done my best. I've gotten some good advice from people, some wise old people; you can call them medicine women if you want. And they said to me that it is not the right use of energy to try to get people to see who you truly are if they cannot see that. You can't control it, and why would you want to? Where will it stop? With one journalist? With France? With a generation?

  So I've reached a level of containment with my energy. I can sit like the Sphinx and watch people say stuff about me and whip it up. Some of it's true. The funniest thing was, once I had a bad encounter with a radio person, and this interviewer turned around and, after having made some malicious, below-the-belt comments to me, pronounced at the end of the interview, “Wow, you can fight back. I thought you were supposed to be spiritual.” I said, “What is your definition of spirituality?” All this guy knew how to do was be completely offensive. What did he think: I was going to bring out the prayer book and sage? The only thing this guy responded to was a firm line drawn in the sand. I just looked at him and said, “Cross this and we'll be having radio person medium rare for dinner.”

  This goes back to why I'm still around. Usually I'm a pussycat, but pussycats can become big kitties really fast if necessary. People always think there's this Svengali behind the scenes. Well, then, there are many. There are a hundred. Karen Binns is one of them. John Witherspoon. Matt Chamberlain. Neil Gaiman. Duncan Pickford. Mark Hawley Chelsea Laird. Marcel van Limbeek. In the end, there are thirty people who are very instrumental, but people change, the lineup often changes, and I'm still able to sell out three nights at Radio City. So then when somebody still says, “Oh, I wonder who's figuring all this out for her,” I say, “Tell me who it is, so I can call them and get a night off.”

  JOEL HOPKINS:

  The main thing with Tori that I've seen from day one is that she's been entirely consistent in what she wants to do and what she wants to put out there, and the kids have never felt alienated. And we've gone from one generation to the next among her fans—now we have the original cohorts’ little sisters. The older ones may have moved on, but they have passed the torch. Tori is always planting these seeds for the next kids that come, and we've seen that happen: we're seeing the little kids coming out now.

  KAREN BINNS:

  Tori represents the woman who fights for the world. She fights for her children or fights for her man; she fights to make sure everybody's eating okay; she fights for the words that need to be said. She's always fighting. And if she's fighting, that means she has to be in touch.

  TORI:

  Sometimes you are forced to defend your beliefs. Sometimes you are forced to look at relationships that aren't positive anymore. There are times when I have had to make peace with the fact that I am at war. And sometimes you have to fight those who do not want love to conquer all.

  Now, backstage at an undisclosed arena where the sweat of athletes is still perfuming my makeshift dressing room, my many conversations with Ann Powers have begun.

  “Ann,” I said, “if we are going to spend two years working on a project together, we need to get a few awkward conversations out of the way.”

  “Tor, I've been dealing with awkward conversations professionally for twenty years. Have you ever tried to get something quotable from an exhausted lead guitarist after a three-hour stadium show, when he's got a seventeen-year-old groupie waiting for him in the back of the tour bus? Whatever you have to say can't be harder to take than that. Proceed.”

  I did. “You come from the journalist side. I come from the artist side. It can become offensive. I'm sure from your side as well as from mine.”

  “Well, it's true everyone expects us to be enemies. And in some ways we are. My job is interpretation. Yours is art, which often benefits from mystery. And while I've met many very articulate musicians, most seem almost threatened by detailed questions about their work, which makes interviewing them frustrating. It's as if they expect me to misunderstand them.”

  “No arguments here, Ann. Likewise, I may have spent only forty minutes with a journalist, but in that time I will have tried to open up the shutter—undress the obvious answer to get a more compelling response that will jump off the page. And then what happens? The article comes out and I can't even recognize the journalist that I met from the biting, vitriolic person that is writing about our time together.”

  “Well, some writers are just nasty—not unlike that charmer with the groupie on the bus. And even the nice ones have egos. We view our work as a creative process, too, and sometimes the artist's process gets in the way of ours! If I've decided a song means something—say, that “your cloud” is about your Natashya—and you tell me something different—that it's about Hamlet's ghost—I might just want to contradict you. I can't just assume you know everything that the song's about, either. As you yourself have said to me, meanings can change and emerge over time. Maybe I am right …”

  “You know the funny thing is, Ann, whenever I start asking a journalist questions, they either start to cream in their pants or run out of the room.”

  “Hey, it's more fun for me if we're friends, and friends don't just nod and agree. But let's be absolutely clear. I'm the one opening up the drawers here. And you realize, we will have to discuss some painful events in your life. I can't be my usual, sweet interviewer self all the time if I'm going to get—or help you get—what we need for this book.”

  “Look, Ann, I know you're going to probe. Rather you than a proctol-ogist.”

  She laughed and I continued, “Or a shitty rock journalist.” “Fair enough, Tori. And I thank you for not being a boring rock star.” Ann and I decided to strip our roles back to basics. We are both women born feminists in the 1960s. We are both married. We are both mothers. We are both in the music industry. Traditionally we are enemies. But for this project to be effective, I had to allow Ann to expose Tori Amos. And Tori Amos's inner circle. And me.

  ANN: Our mother is the ground we stand on, and the earth itself is our mother. How many people have believed this, over the centuries? Society itself began with kinship, lineages marked by blood and love, while civilizations took root in relationship) to th
e places where people settled and learned the land. The idea that the world was born of a woman is common in myth, across continents: in Africa, Asia, the Mediterranean, northern Europe, and the Americas, such stories abound. The Genesis story of a lone male God making life with a lift of the finger has achieved cultural dominance, but beyond that bragging tale of six days’ labor are others that present Creation as an ongoing process, undertaken by a matriarchal force nourished by her family's respect and love.

  Throughout the ages, people have chosen gods to suit their apparent needs; similarly, an artist can view her personal acts of creation in light of various sources. She can thank her ego alone, but that is dangerous—the limits of an individual's personality can quickly turn genius into a dry spring. She can acknowledge her peers as inspiration, cite the demands of the marketplace and the influence of various schools, but influences not so carefully chosen also cannot be avoided.