Tori Amos - Boys for Pele

[liner notes]

lyrics, quotes & videos

1. Beauty Queen/Horses
2. Blood Roses
3. Father Lucifer
4. Professional Widow
5. Mr Zebra
6. Marianne
7. Caught a Lite Sneeze
8. Muhammad My Friend
9. Hey Jupiter
10. Way Down
11. Little Amsterdam
12. Talula
13. Not the Red Baron
14. Agent Orange
15. Doughnut Song
16. In the Springtime of His Voodoo
17. Putting the Damage On
18. Twinkle

B-Sides

Frog on My Toe
Sister Named Desire
Alamo
Samurai
Amazing Grace/Til the Chicken

Silly Songs:
This Old Man
Hungarian Wedding Song
Graveyard
Toodles Mr Jim

Tribute to Chas and Dave:
London Girls
That's What I Like, Mick (The Sandwich Song)

Misc.

For Mark (1996 unreleased)
Abbey Road (1996 unreleased)
Oom La Boomleigh (1996 unreleased)
Walk to Dublin (Sucker Reprise) (2006 A Piano bonus track)
Sucker (2016 Boys for Pele re-issue bonus track)
To the Fair Motormaids of Japan (2016 Boys for Pele re-issue bonus track)

Tori's third solo album, Boys for Pele, was released on January 22, 1996 (UK) and January 23, 1996 (US). Boys for Pele was recorded June-October 1995 in a church in County Wicklow, Ireland, a rented house in County Cork, Ireland, and New Orleans, Louisiana. This was the first album Tori Amos produced herself. Pele sold 110,000 copies the first week it was released and debuted at number 2 on Billboard's Top Album Sales chart, reaching number 1 in the UK.

(photos of the recording)

Tori talks about Boys for Pele

It makes me think of mushroom pasta with dripping garlic bread and butter, not margarine. No margarine on this record, it's all butter. [CNN.com - February 1, 1996]

Pele is a volcano goddess in Hawaii, and I fled to Hawaii in the middle of the Under the Pink tour for five days when I was at my lowest, and I couldn't feel any fire within myself. I couldn't feel anything. I came to the north shore in Hawaii, and a friend of mine -- we'll call her a medicine woman, a very wise woman -- was there. And I felt after the San Francisco, or around those dates, I couldn't feel a sense of when I wasn't behind that piano or with a man in my life. I couldn't find out who the woman was. Some of you may ask me, "Why did you go to the men in your life?" and the truth is I felt they had an energy force, to a flame, that I couldn't find. When I went to the north shore and I just spent time walking up and down that beach with this medicine woman, I just began to feel the presence of Pele all over the island, even though I know she's not on that island. I just felt this deep little flame start to happen. [Everybody's News - May 31, 1996]

[more Tori Amos quotes about Boys for Pele]

Boys for Pele magazine ad
from Out magazine (US), February 1996

Boys for Pele French promo poster

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