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Philadelphia Daily News (US)
Tuesday, January 23, 1996

THE STORY ON TORI

Singer/songwriter Tori Amos, 32, burst onto the music scene four years ago with "Little Earthquakes," which turned her own acquaintance rape into the harrowing "Me and a Gun." Since then, Amos has released another album, 1994's "Under the Pink," blabbed to reporters about "communicating with the fairies," lip-synched on a video while rats skittered across her body, and turned Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" into a sober piano nocturne. For Jonathan Takiff's review of Amos's new CD, "Boys for Pele," turn to Page 30. For what the"Cornflake Girl" has been saying about her latest creative catharsis, keep reading:

WHAT SHE SAYS ABOUT HER BLEAK 18-SONG CD, "BOYS FOR PELE":

"This work is a novel. It's the story of the descent of a woman to gain her passion and gain her compassion and not hate the thing that taught her that."

PELE? WASN'T HE A SOCCER SUPERSTAR?

Wrong Pele. In this reference, Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of the volcano, a symbol of female empowerment.

WHAT DOES MARY MAGDALENE HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

Amos calls her "the blueprint for women which was never carried over and passed down." She sees Magdalene as representing woman as a passionate, compassionate being. "I went to reclaim that hidden womanhood. Because you can't have grace without the whores."

WHY AMOS RECORDED IN AN IRISH CHURCH:

"The idea of speaking my truth, no censorship, in a place that did not honor anyone's truth unless it was the church's truth . . . was something that I was going after."

AMOS ON SONGWRITING:

"I couldn't stop them from coming," Amos says of the new songs. "And some of the things they were telling me I didn't want to know. I would have difficulty finishing a song, and then a voice would tell me, 'That's because you haven't experienced the second verse yet. 'Sometimes, in the middle of a concert, it would arrive."

AMOS ON MEN:

"In my relationships with men, I was always musician enough, but not woman enough."

"It's about being used, being an object. [About] men that weren't ready to fall in love who have no problem licking every inch of your body and trying to suck out your soul."

ON BREAKING UP WITH BOYFRIEND/PRODUCER ERIC ROSSE:

"I began to live these songs as we separated. The vampire in me came out. You're an emotional vampire, with blood in the corner of your mouth, and you put on matching lipstick so no one knows."

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