Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

Steve Wright Show (UK, radio)
BBC Radio 2
June 16, 1992

Tori Amos interview and live performance

I write my songs and I say what I'm thinking, but I kinda do it like a camera. "What perspective am I gonna take this from?" 'Cause you know, there are only ten thoughts, really. [Five of them are] Hunger, anger, fear, love, and the word "yes."

I don't consider myself just a surreal writer because I'm biting your leg off at the same time as I'm making you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And that's not a bad thing. It's like, you know insects, like their eyes, you know how they have 'em going all over the place. It's having this with senses, so you're feeling one thing and you're also feeling another thing. You know, when you're laughing hysterically and something horrific is happening, and you're going, "Uh-oh, what does this make me?"

No, I like it here. I know a lot of English people who have been to America.

Well, living there for seven and a half years, this would happen weekly when I would be driving through west Los Angeles. After six o'clock, if you're a black motorist, you would be pulled over.

I think a thought that gets put out there can absolutely change a process of thinking. I know that my thoughts have been changed by something that I heard. Thelma and Louise, a movie, changed my whole life.

which I hope is changing some people's lives.

to stop feeling like they have to be a victim for the rest of their lives.

I was really self-involved on this record, Little Earthquakes, because I wasn't able to look at anything socially until I dealt with my own stuff. And I'm still dealing with it. But I was at a point when I started writing that record where I hadn't even looked at myself. Everything was just fine and dandy, if you would have met me five years ago, and I ended up on my kitchen floor just because I hadn't dealt with the "Me and a Gun" issue, I hadn't dealt with my belief systems, and all those things. So, I had to look at my own self and my own prejudices before I'm ready to go out and say, "Hey, this is kinda my view on this." You have to clean your own closets a bit, and it's a constant cleaning. You know, I'm always trashing my closet, so I always have to go in there and go, "So, what have I done this week?" And I'm not into preaching at people. I don't get off on that at all. I hate people telling me what to do. But what I really get off on is writing something that makes somebody go, "Hmm..."

[Tori performs "Silent All These Years"]

[Tori performs "Crucify"]

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