Grace, Feeling, and Passion
From: Ulrich Grepel
Subject: Visions-interview English translation
Hi all,
I finally managed to steal enough time to translate the interview that
appeared in the September 1992 issue of the German Vision -
Crossover-Magazin. The little "drawing" is "Tori Amos" with a
single big O instead of the two o's in the original form of the
name.
Any errors due to the translation from German to English are mine and
are too obscure to be found by Ilka (who reviewed the translation,
thank you!).
At least this interview (and it's comments) show that Tori is not
totally ignored in Germany, but unfortunately the magazine is and --
even more un-luck -- the magazine normally has quite a different
musical taste. The other bands with articles about them in the
September issue are 'Gwar', 'Fugazi', 'Screaming Trees', 'Rollins'
Band', 'MC 900 ft Jesus', 'Ministry', 'Suicidal Tendencies', 'Helmet'
and others. None of them was (and is) known to me, but the articles
are speaking volumes...
If anyone out there on this list has a NeXT computer, I have a version
with a better layout. It resembles the original layout in the visions
magazine, including color, excluding photos. You will need NeXTSTEP
3.0 to use this. If anyone is interested, email me.
Uli
Grace, Feeling & Passion
___
/ \
T|ri Am|s
\___/
If you review the last years, you will realize that only a few albums
were extraordinary and moving at the same time. But even here
Little Earthquakes takes a special position. Never before has
an artist managed to present beauty and grace, feeling and dismay
nearly as intensely as Tori Amos. And live, the American woman living
in London has proved in her March tour that concerts can be more than
just concerts. With an incredible intensity the red-haired beauty
captivated her audience, let them fall into a doze wherefrom you were
released after the concert - into the raw reality. The environment
disappeared, you only saw a woman and her piano, you witnessed an
extraordinary event. And after the announcement was made that she
would come back to Germany for three concerts in June, this interview
took place in Frankfurt. An interview that turned three adults into
very young teenagers who let their CD be signed and who were enchanted
by an elve-like being. And we experienced those little earthquakes,
too.
- Many people assumed that Little Earthquakes is your debut, but
there is another album, published under the band name Y Kant Tori
Read. What about that?
- "Do you know the cover? (it shows Tori as a metal amazon, comparable
to Lee Aaron's "Metal Queen" cover) I wish that the LP would sound the
way the cover looks. The record is just not heavy. It doesn't have a
clear statement. I mean, when someone plays Thrash Metal, then that
has a point of view. And even if this thrash consists of nothing but
noise, that has a point of view. That should be the point of every
publication. Take a clear position, if you want to make noise, do it,
if you only want to be cute, that's also o.k. But at the time the
album was created, I was not able to take a clear position. If I had
to take a position, I would have had to have it out with myself, but I
was much too busy to suppress things like the rape. I could not sing
about it. Only in August last year I was able to write Me and A Gun,
before it was simply impossible. When we started to record the album
five years ago, the rape
"One day they tell you how wonderful your record is,
and when the sales figures failed to materialize,
the same thing suddenly is shit."
only happened one year before. The record was published and died four
years ago. By the way, the drummer of the band was Matt Sotrum, Joe
Ciccarelli (among others Pat Benatar) and I really liked his
productions, but just before the recordings the band split up, we took
studio musicians and so the songs lost their direction. I believe that
the record has its moments, but I tried too much to be everybody's
girl, because I was not able to listen to myself. You just have to be
strong and not only pretending. It is simple to play a tough chick,
but it is really boring and, above all, it is sad, because it shows a
deep uncertainity, and when you are uncertain, you can not be
strong."
- In "Girl" you use the same subject. You sing about a girl that wants
to please everyone. Is the song an experience you made yourself?
- "(smiling) Unfortunately the whole record is about self-experiences,
comparable to the shedding of a snake. When I was thirteen, I believed
in fairies and other spiritual things, was sunk in my own world of
imagination, believed in the unseen world, what I still do today. But
over the time I started to feel like a nitwit. I mean, when you smoke
dope, it might be normal, but like this? You sit in your English
lesson and you are talking to a fairy. The people did not want to
understand that, and when you are 13, you don't want to be
"You can be a bigmouth without having anything
to say. At that time I definitely only had the wish to
be an in-chick."
faced with a pityful smile all the time. So I began to destroy the
part in me that is actually creative. Instead, I became very cynical,
disguised myself to become popular, to be loved by everyone. But
actually that was nothing else than a game of hide-and-seek. You can
be a bigmouth without having anything to say. At that time, I
definitely only had the wish to be an in-chick. Today I know that you
should have your own thoughts and that you have to stick to your point
of view. Today I accept that not all people like me, that's all right.
Just before I listened again to some of the songs I wrote at that
time, and it was very interesting. There were some really good ideas
in the song, not in the lyrics, after all, aged 15, I had rather
different ideas. You are thinking in a different way when you made the
experience, but the music was good. Well, with 19 I certainly had
experienced so many rejections with respect to my music that I began
to doubt my music. I thought, perhaps the people are right, look for a
band for you, play dance music, at the moment we are interested in
heavy metal and so on. In the beginning I tried to discover new
things, and perhaps to learn something, but then I let myself be
infected with the virus of the everlasting questions. "What do you
think of that?". When you always had success as a small child, you
wonder why today no one is clapping any longer? You become so
addicted to the noise of applause that you lose your self-confidence
and wonder what you have done wrong. And then you begin to convince
yourself that what the people tell you is right. Certainly it was an
incredible positive experience when I sat down again at the piano and
was myself. I do not need to sell myself, in a certain way the first
LP was something like the rape of my soul, the music lays more closely
to my heart than anything else, and it surely was a good experience to
play with Matt. But I wish I would have been stronger then and had not
listened to those idiots. One day they tell you how wonderful your
record is, and when the sales figures failed to materialize, the same
thing suddenly is shit. It is quite shocking for them to see that this
album sells so well."
- If you look at the reactions to your concerts, many of your
spectators are so deep in thought, others (often women) find your
appearance too offensive because of your posture and gestures (Tori
Amos supports every move with gestures, puts breathing under her
singing and facing the audience frontally).
- "I am not offensive, that's just passion. I want to show my power.
Many women think that, when they are not intelligent or show their
passion, they are considered to be bitches. And to justify themselves,
they sit there, with dry, closed legs and condemn me for that. I have
a concience, a heart, a spirit but also my sex. I am a sexual,
emotional being. When you describe that appearance with one word, I
would consider confrontation the right word. The people should be
responsible to their feelings when they leave the concert, because
what they feel and think afterwards, is not my feeling, it is their
feeling. Why are there so many men who hate me, who want to rip off my
clothes or who jerk off when I play "Me And A Gun"? When you come to
my show, you either have to ignore me or have to look into yourself,
here is nothing that can distract you, there's only me and the piano.
You can close up yourself, but when you don't do that, then things
will show up in you which you are reluctant to think about. These do
not really have to be good thoughts, but I have understood that
monsters are neither good nor bad, they are just there. There are
things in you which are good and there are other things which are bad.
Sometimes you are cruel, sometimes you are the victim, sometimes you
are passionated and sometimes not, what counts is the whole being!
Some things you simply can not exclude. You have to show
responsibility for your whole being. Try to learn as much as possible
about yourself and show responsibility."
- Let's come back to your lyrics and your songs. Many critics have
compared you to Kate Bush, but when someone visits your shows or
studies your lyrics more closely, he finds completely different
heroes. Cover versions of Whole Lotta Love, Angie,
Thank You, lyric lines like 'Strawberry Fields' in Happy
Phantom, 'Even the wind cries your name' in Mary.
- "What? You know the song? Yes, it is true, my heroes come out of
the seventies and are mainly men, though I rather [hear?, there's a
word missing in the German text] the things of Judy Garland, Barbara
Streisand and Joni Mitchell (which you could convince yourself of at
the last concert in Stuttgart, where you could hear "Somewhere Over
The Rainbow" and "Moon" as the last encore, and, as she stresses, the
first time in front of an audience). But I believe that my preference
of male musicians has to do something with the fact that I always
wanted to play the guitar. I love to play the piano, but I do not like
it, because all people are thinking that a piano has a certain sound.
I want to change this idea, so on the next record we will use an
effected piano side by side with the acoustic one, so that we will be
able to play riffs and to connect the piano to a Marshall Amp. I want
to develop myself. (And with a laugh). On the next tour I will have
two pianos and roll to and fro with the piano chair."
- What also stands out is your way to breathe while singing the
words.
- "The voice is an instrument like every other one. The breathing
takes very much room. The breathing helps you to survive and I find
the sound of breathing very exciting."
- Back to your lyrics. You often use colours to accompany your
lyrics, actually typical thoughts of someone who has just taken drugs.
- "My mother is an Indian, and once there was a time when mankind
did respect the plants and the earth as a great vision, and when they
neither abused the plants nor the earth. Today that has changed
substantially. Even the Indians have started to make abuse due to
their situation. If you visit a reservation today, and I have lived in
one for many years, you will find many alcoholics there, what is very
tragical. But many think, that this is an escape, but it makes
"I have a concience, a heart, a spirit but also my sex."
them unable to think. It is bad to see what became of many great people. Today
drugs mostly serve as an escape from reality and you are able to experience
other levels of consciousness and to reach other dimensions. I took drugs
in a controlled way in the past to reach other dimensions, smoked pott,
while listening to Jimmy Page and hoped that my father wouldn't catch me, but I
think, that this is a part of your teenage days, especially when you lived in
"I took drugs in a controlled way in the past to reach
other dimensions, smoked pott while listening to Jimmy
Page and hoped that my father wouldn't catch me..."
the sixties and the beginning of the seventies. That was a completely
different time, the revolution of many young people against the
bourgeoise normal. An outbreak from the aims that once were given by
the parents. The try to change something. Aims like humanity, the
emancipation of the woman and also the equality of men, like it was
shaped by Martin Luther King. And today? It seems as if these people
have given up, these aims are just caricatures of themselves. The
women have not reached their aim, humanity is a foreign word in
today's society and hate for blacks and foreigners is stronger than
ever. And then you see the abuse of extasy in London and recognize
that this generation has not grasped the whole conflict. What sense
does it make to load yourself with drugs so much that you are not
noticing anything anymore?"
Unfortunately many questions had to be left unanswered, we had overrun
the interview by twenty minutes, another one should follow, and the
soundcheck could not be held up. Fortunately, because the soundcheck
was nothing else than a 45 minute request concert, and what happened
on the following three evenings was unforgettable. Three concerts,
different in the choice of songs, partially very spontaneous and
always so intensive that cold showers run over your back to be
captured in the next moment by an undescribabal warmth. Even at the
open air in Hamburg this intensity came over. Merely acting as a
supporting programme for Luka Bloom [who's that?], she convinced the
audience so much that the whole schedule was turned completely upside
down, she unrestrained had to play further encores and finally Luka
Bloom visibly despaired had to ask the audience to applaud to him at
least a little bit. This woman is something very special, a being you
can't capture in words, music that simply is not graspable in it's
beauty anymore. In a world of music that has lost a lot of it's
original fascination due to it's predictability, you cannot stress the
greatness of this woman enough. Tori Amos is unique.
HOLGER ANDRAE / OLE BERGFLETH / KARLO RADIC