Tori: ...Being, Just to have that feeling, not because you do something that gives you that, or you're with somebody who gives it, but just walking down the street you feel this force, um and I was startled about it because I tried to find it through everything. And it isn't out there, that's the funny thing, I mean it ain't in Jesus, it ain't in anybody, it ain't in the cute boy down the street, it ain't in famous, it ain't in anything, except just being. Just being a part of this planet, and saying, I can just sit here and um, get pretty warm all on my little-self-own! Once I kind of, sort of opened up to that concept, and I was in Hawaii when I did that, and I felt this energy of Pele, I felt this deep heat. Um, I kind of thought that the relationships that I've had with the men in my life, the intimate relationships, brought me to my fire, for what they gave me or what they didn't give me in some cases, it forced me to find it on my own.
Interviewer: There is a track on the new CD that I want to play before we go any further, that is going to be the new single, but actually what is being released now, is a different recording of Talula, which you've rewritten and recorded for a movie soundtrack, Twister.
Tori: Well, the funny thing is, I didn't rewrite it for Twister, I didn't even know Twister existed. I wrote ti becaue I was having linguinie in a restaurant, and he was telling me about the webpages, the remixer. I knew I wanted to remix it because I wanted more heat on it. He said to me, "Don't you know about these websites and stuff, they're these nuts, they're everywhere, for instance people actually have a page where they talk about chasing tornados, and they get out on their jeeps and they talk about their experiences." And I said, "you're kidding me!" He said, "No, I'm not kidding, people really go out there and do that." And I started singing, "He's chasing tornados, I'm just waiting, calmly, chasing..." I don't know if you have the beginning of that on your version, there's so many versions out right now, but um, I raced to a studio, with this remixer, and we put it down.
Interviewer: The copy I have here has several versions, there's a tornado mix edit, the tornado album version, BT's synthasazium mix...
Tori: Can I see? I'll tell you exactly what you're looking at. You have, the, isn't this funny. Tornado album version. Yeah, play the Tornado Album version.
Interviewer: Lightning 100, there is one of the new Tornado mixes of Talula from "Boys for Pele" that's Tori Amos who is visiting us here in the studio in Lightning 100. Tori, you said that this album feels like a new chater for you, why?
Tori: Um, well, it's kind of like um, you know, I know age has nothing to do with it, but when you cross into womanhood, I know people that are 60 that never become women, I know that. But there's just, something happened when all my, I don't know, I put so much of my woman's worth into what the men in my life thought of me, that when that all fell to pieces, I had to find my own worth as a woman by myself. And it wasn't really fair on them that I looked to them for it, and it wasn't fair on me either, it just got really messy as you can imagine, because you know, they couldn't have bled enough. I was always wanting their blood. And some of them always wanted to give it! But there you go, that's why you stay together and work things out. And I had several relationships with different guys where it was really about stealing fire. And that's what I go after in the record. Trying to not steal from them, or need to be stolen from, just to be free, to be whole.
Interviewer: From your comments on stage last time, I know that you're a Led Zeppelin fan, and since we saw you, you got to work with Robert Plant. You wrote a track for Encomium. Was it what you hoped it would be?
Tori: Yeah well he asked me to marry him. And that was really great. Little did i know that he'd asked 6 girls the same day. So once I did, that lessened it for a moment, but I then I said I'm not going to concentrate on that too long. Because when I was 7 I wanted to run off and marry Robert, so he finally asked me, and that was like totally groovy for me.
Interviewer: Tori there are some rather provocative photos in this CD booklet, have you enjoyed the reactiosn to these? I can imagine they'd be rather interesting.
Tori: Interesting reactions, yeah I mean, because it's very much the Madonna and child shot, this particular picture that you're talking about, where I'm breastfeeding a piglet. Um, I just had to put this in there because, for me, it represents that which is hidden, you know, bringing that out into the open and owning it. So, yeah, it's quite a study to see what people see in that picture, because, you know, sometimes people just kinda can't stop hooting and hollering, and getting all giggly, and then a lot of times, I'll get, and don't take this wrong, but particularly from the women, just because they have those things, no matter how little or big we all have them, and there's this thing in us that knows they can be food, so there's a side of sensuality with those things, we know what they can do too, lets not get each other, but when I was breastfeeding that piglet, I wasn't lactacting, but it really turned to me in that moment, and it was very much a motherly feeling. And I know sometimes guys are like "oh oh yeah right" and I kind of find that, cute, you see what you want to see in it.
Interviewer: I want to ask you your thoughts on the track that we first were exposed to from Boys for Pele, before you go, and I want to thank you for taking the time to stop by, it's been a real treat, and have a lot of fun tonight at TPAC. That's gonna be a great show, I'm sure. But "Caught a Lite Sneeze," of course, could I get your thoughts on that song?
Tori: What would you like to know?
Interviewer: Are you talking about getting a cold?
Tori: It was definitely a cold. It was more like malaria, yeah.
Interviewer: How so?
Tori: Just being, catching the bug. Catching the desire to be with somebody. And it gets so in your blood that it overtakes everything else. I swore to myself at one point, I swore I'll never let this happen to me again, where I'm so out of myself, that I crave a man to the point where I can't think anymore. Because I'm not normally like that, but when I get a bug, you know you'd think I was, I don't know, a crocodile just staring at this little creature at the side of the pond going, I will wait, it doesn't matter how long I have to wait, this little critter is going to get tired. And I'm like, "Tori!! What are you up to!" And I think it's singing Onward Christian Soldiers so many times that you just start to get a little wacky.
[transcribed by Kourtnee Lauria]
t o r i p h o r i a tori amos digital archive yessaid.com
