This year Tori Amos’s massive world tour has taken her across Europe and America and next she’s heading our way. She spoke to Graeme Watson from her home in Cornwall.
Your album ‘Unrepentant Geraldines’ has been described as a return to popular music after exploration into more classical forms, was this a conscious decision when writing the songs?
No. No, it wasn’t a conscious decision. I was just writing these songs to survive all the other experiences I was having over the last five years. These were my little talisman songs, they ‘get yourself thorough the day’ type songs.
With this record you didn’t have the pressure of a record contract or a release date, did that change the creative process for you?
Yes, I think there was to be something in that, because when you’re writing just to write, not thinking that anyone is going to hear it then there is a different motivation… that demon isn’t on your shoulder in that moment. But in the back of your mind, because I’ve made a lot of albums, you know that there might be one down the line, it might happen.
So I don’t know if that demon is ever really off your shoulder when you’ve been writing and making records for over 25 years.
I find it intriguing what happens to creativity when we remove deadlines.
Well I had deadlines on the other projects I was working on, so I still had deadlines that were very real in my life for ‘The Light Princess’ and for ‘Hunters’ for Deutsche Gramophone and then working with an Orchestra for ‘Gold Dust’ there were serious deadlines on me.
At the time of the writing of these songs, songs of survival, these songs weren’t under deadlines but what suddenly became a deadline was once the tour was booked and then it became necessary to record all these songs. Then the pressure came on that side of it.
In your tour you have a segment called The Lizzard Lounge where you play a selection of covers, you’ve dropped in everything from Conchita Wurst’s ‘Rise Like a Phoenix’ to show tunes and FM radio favorites.
It was very challenging, because you if you analyse the time-line you’ll see there wasn’t a lot of time to get these songs up to snuff. The honest truth is that for some of them, the first time I’ve ever played the song is in front of the audience that night. I didn’t always have the luxury of practicing. I’d be learning them at sound check but I wouldn’t always get to play it through.
I think that’s refreshing in a live show that it’s not super-polished. So many live performers we see today are filled with lights and dancers and fireworks that there is no space for spontaneity.
Well that’s a different type of skill-set with those type of shows. Pulling off a slick show is a skill set, it’s just a different type. I don’t think that would ever work with me, dancers and all that – unless they were really camp.
Often when you see those big shows though the most poignant parts are when someone just sits down and plays a song at a piano, I sometimes wonder if we need all the fireworks.
Well between you and me, it’s quite tricky to hold a stage by yourself. Think about, just think about it, for two hours to hold an audience by yourself you’re very reliant on your relationship with the audience. It has to feel like you’re in their living room. It has to feel very intimate.
If you have a band, when you’re having a cold night from the audience, you can just jam with the band and get through it. This tour has forced me to… there is a vulnerability in being out there on your own and it takes a lot of energy.
That’s why when I said ‘I don’t know if I can do it when I’m sixty’, people misinterpreted that. I think I could do concerts at sixty, possibly with a band, but to play on your own for two hours takes a lot of energy.
My daughter challenged me to do it, because I was turning fifty, she said ‘Look – you need to prove to yourself that you can do what you did on ‘Under the Pink’ back in 1994.’
I said, ‘Oh Tash, I’m not sure if I can do that’ and she said, ‘Yeah you can, you’re not eighty, you can do a two hour show Mum! You need to prove to yourself that there’s a difference between being fifty and being Grandma Mary’s age’ – who is 85 now and doesn’t have the energy that she used to, thirty five years ago.
My daughter trying to get it through my head that fifty isn’t eighty, snap out of it. Just go train and prepare.
You have a duet with your daughter on the record, how did ‘Promises’ come about?
I think from these types of conversations. Just communicating and having conversations about how to talk to each other, and talking about things.
Sometimes I have to realise that she has a point of view that’s valid, and sometimes a teenager realises than maybe Mom has a point of view that’s valid. But sometimes neither of us, like all of us, aren’t ready to hear something, until we are.
Is there still a teenager in you?
Oh, I hope so! I hope so because I think that sometime you have to not know the answer as a grown up. That’s what the song was talking about and that was one her complaints about grown-ups, when we think we know the answer. She would say, maybe you don’t know the answer, maybe I have to go find the answer myself.
You have a very diverse fan base, ranging from young and older, gay men love your records, women love your records – what do you put that diversity down to?
One thing the songs have told me is that I need to get out of the way and stay out of the way. They [the songs] have relationships with people that really are none of my business. I’ll be in a coffee shop, anywhere in the world, and people will come up to me and just say, this is what this song meant to me at this time and honestly every time I’ll just say, “Wow! I never thought of that, I never heard it in that way, but it’s valid.”
After they tell me I can see it, but just because it doesn’t mean that to me, that doesn’t mean that’s it’s the only meaning. The muses tell me that they have relationships with people too, and I have respect that.
Live Nation presents Tori Amos at The Riverside Theatre on November 18. Tickets are available from www.livenation.com.au
Graeme Watson
Subscribe to OUTinPerth’s E-Newsletter and keep up to date with the latest news.Sign up now.
