Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

unknown source (the Netherlands, radio)
Amsterdam
1992

[listen/download]

Tori Amos interview and live performance

Tori Amos: I studied when I was young about the composers, and it was really a major part of my life. So, again, I think that it was happening without me realising it. And yet, at the same time, I was having a very American religious upbringing, which is kind of very much um, unique of America. When you're religious in Italy, still it's very different than an American, 'cause there, there seems to be a lot of freedom there in the States, but there are so many messages, so much guilt, so much of that moral judgment kind of thing. And you get torn apart really young and you don't understand why you're torn apart. And then you get angry, and you don't understand all these feelings, I certainly didn't until actually a few years ago. And I think I was getting things from so many sides, not understanding what was educating me. On one hand, you run into people that are great. And my father grew up from, you know, people around are farmers. And they have a lot of wisdom that you just don't get in school or by books. It's just by knowing. And then there's another side, though. These aren't necessarily the country people at all, I find it the opposite. It's the young professionals in their 40s who maybe smoked a little weed, did a little masturbating, now feel really guilty 'cause they have kids and don't want them to do it. So they become these incredible activists. And their ideas on things just blow my mind. Their ideas on, god, free choice for a woman -- what she wants to do, if she wants to have a baby or not. Their reasoning really turns my head around.

Tori performs Leather.

Tori Amos: I have a more open perspective, but I don't look at it as, "You're bad, you're good." But I look at what is. What is somebody's behavior. What is my behavior. What's my response. And what am I basing my feelings on. Now, if I want to stop you from playing something, why do I want to have that kind of control over you? If I slap you in the face, I mean, I'm crossing some serious boundaries here. I cannot stand the way people use analogies, because they really twist, they talk so fast, some of these fundamentalists, it's very hard to keep up. But the way that they use drama and the way that they use, you know, things to gross you out, and they compare things that have nothing to do with each other. But it's about trying to take choices away and free ways of thinking. And that's what's going in the States. And it takes no genius to see that. I mean, you watch it go in front of your eyes.

Tori performs China, with an improvised piano/vocal intro.

[transcribed by jason/yessaid]

t o r i p h o r i a
tori amos digital archive
yessaid.com