Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

Baltimore Sun (US)
November 8, 1992

Baltimore native rewrites rules of rock and roll piano

By J.D. Considine

TORI AMOS
When: Wednesday and Thursday.
Where: Steeltown, 2401 North Point Blvd.
Tickets: $17.50 (Wednesday's show sold out).

     When Tori Amos' version of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" crept onto the air at alternative rock radio stations earlier this year, it created a quiet sensation. It wasn't a hit in the usual sense -- indeed, it only surfaced as a bonus track on her single, "Crucify" -- but almost everyone who heard it was immediately struck by how powerfully original her take on the song was.

     Some of that was because it offered such a radically different view of an intensely familiar tune. In terms of its sound, Amos' approach was almost the total opposite of Nirvana's, replacing their charging, power-chord guitar hook and aggressive, punk-inflected pulse with a moody, half-whispered vocal and carefully shaded piano arpeggios.

     Yet Amos got the feel exactly right, offering the same blend of disaffection and dread that made Nirvana's original so arresting. Except that where Nirvana expressed its emotions in a scream of rage, Amos relied on implication and understatement -- hinting instead of howling.

     That was part of the difference between the two, and the aspect of her arrangement everybody understood at once. But there was another layer of revelation to her performance, though, one that even the most attentive listeners might have missed. And that has to do with the way she rewrites the rules of rock and roll piano.

     Most rock piano players, after all, alternate between two techniques. One is to rely solely on boogie-woogie and gospel licks, pianistic standbys that haven't changed since the days of Fats Domino; the other is to approach the piano as if it were merely a more awkward form of guitar, and pound out chord patterns that would make far more sense if they were strummed.

     But Amos takes a different view. Listen to her version of "Teen Spirit," or one of the songs from "Little Earthquakes," her current album, and it quickly becomes clear that she has no interest in the typical approach to rock and roll piano. As she sees it, you can either work with the instrument, or work against it. And she'd rather let the piano be her guide.

     "I listen to the piano," she explains, over the phone from a Philadelphia tour stop. "It has its own ideas. A lot of times, pianists try and master it, instead of working with it. But I don't go after a tune on trying to copy it like a guitar would. What I try and do is really appreciate that this piano has a certain body, and not to try and fit a size 6 dress on it. It wants size 12. You have to respect it for what it is.

     "More than anything, I don't do it alone," she adds. "I work with a partner, which is the piano itself. I really believe in there being a piano consciousness; it teaches me sometimes, and kicks me when I don't explore things enough."

     Amos realizes that her notion of "piano consciousness" doesn't strike a responsive chord in everyone. "I know that people kind of go, 'Oh, there she goes again, her and the fairies,'" she says, laughing. "This is why the English thought that I was cracked, out of my mind.

     "And yet at the same time it works, doesn't it? I always get answers."

A child prodigy

     Of course, it doesn't hurt that Amos has been listening to the piano for as long as she can remember. A child prodigy, she grew up in Baltimore ("My dad was the minister of Epworth Chapel on Liberty Road for eight years," she says. "We lived off of Betlou James Place") and was accepted into the Peabody preparatory program in 1968, at the age of 4.

     "What was fascinating to me was the people I was coming across," she says. "I was there at the height of the '60s, and that was exciting because I was exposed to a world that I wouldn't have known in first grade. I was meeting people who were, like, 17, and living in a house with eight other people -- I'd meet them in theory classes on Saturday at the Peabody."

     This gave Amos her first inklings that there was more to the artistic life than Chopin etudes and Czerny exercises. Rock and roll gave her yet another glimpse. "I would see pictures of Jim Morrison and Robert Plant, and I wanted to run away and give them my virginity. Of course, I didn't know what that meant," she says, laughing. "I thought that meant having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! But I had feelings blossoming for these very passionate men."

     Unfortunately, that sort of passion didn't quite fit within the Peabody lesson plan.

     "They've cut passion out of their lives, for the most part, in the conservatories. That's why I was this changeling child, crossing my legs over the idea of Jim Morrison and not understanding why."

     As a result, Amos emerged from her conservatory days with an impressive amount of keyboard technique, and a serious case of what she calls "a suppression of passion."

     "It's been a very long trip for me," she says. "There were so many people telling me that I didn't have it, telling me that I was completely going up the wrong street. And I listened to them. By a certain point in my life, after I'd had seven years of rejections from record companies, I decided maybe they had a point. . . .

     "I refused to put myself out there again. I refused to let my emotions be exposed. So I decided I was going to develop this persona I could hide behind."

Persona to hide behind

     That persona was the Tori Amos who turned up, in heavy metal makeup, on her first album, "Y Kant Tori Read." A classic case of an artist wanting to make it without really knowing why, the project was a commercial disaster.

     "That was an incredible gift to me, because I really got to see what the music industry was about," she says now. "I got to see what fame was about. Why I wanted it so badly. Nobody cared after 'Y Kant Tori Read.' Nobody cared that it died. Just me, probably."

     Caught in retreat, she forgot about making music "for the industry," and began to write for herself. "I didn't have to turn anything in," she recalls. "There were no demands, and nobody expected anything. I stripped away all these images, things that I wanted people to think I was, and I finally said, 'Who am I really?' And these songs started coming out."

Tori Amos had found her voice.

     And that, really, is what makes "Little Earthquakes" sparkle so. "This record gave me the keys to my subconscious," she says. "Writing this record was just trying to be honest about how I really felt about myself." And that honesty draws the listener in, whether it's expressed in the stunning self-affirmation of "Silent All These Years," or the harrowing anger and fear of "Me and a Gun." In these songs, Amos makes us care about her and her problems, in part because she sings about struggles and doubts most of us go through, but mainly because it's hard not to react to passion so eloquently expressed.

     That's why Amos is glad she kept struggling, despite all the hardship and humiliation. "I'm thankful that I did that other album, because I could have never gotten to this," she reflects. "It's kind of funny, but I've gotten people responding when I didn't try, when I didn't need them to respond."

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