Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

Red Dragon Radio (UK)
April 6, 1998

telephone interview

Chris Bloomer: (Plays 'Spark') So I told you last week actually that I met up with Tori Amos, well actually I didn't meet up with her, I did a phone line interview with her last week. Of course she's got a ne album coming out and she's about to embark on another tour so we had lots to talk about and this is how it sounded...

Chris: With the tour, when it actually takes part, will you actually be playing your old hits or concentrating on the new album on this tour.

Tori Amos: There's always a mixture because a show is about um...you know, I need a show to work in itself and I think it's, I pull on all my material.

Chris: So we can expect a bit of everything then.

Tori: A bit of everything. I'm always heavier on the work I'm on at the moment.

Chris: Right.

Tori: On every tour I've done you've always gotten a bit more, a little bit more of the record I'm working on, but I always sprinkle a bit from each album and the bee-sides within the show.

Chris: Now the new album is 'From The Choirgirl', which I think is absolutely superb.

Tori: Thank you.

Chris: How long has this taken to put together?

Tori: Um... a good year, you know, a good year and a half I guess if we consider when I started writing. Um. I'm a slow-poke you know, it just takes me time to get it right.

Chris: Would you say that this album is a different style to your previous three albums?

Tori: Well, I recorded live with a drummer and before the other records were written played around the piano and vocal and now I cut the piano and vocal live with a drummer and a programmer, and I felt that the piano really needed that to have that interaction and there was an internal rhythm to the work that, you know, I just wanted to explore.

Chris: Would you say that this has been easier to record than the other three?

Tori: Well... I really loved playing you know, with a band. It was exciting for me. It's, before it's always been like you're there on your own singing and I got a little lonely I think, playing by myself.

Chris: Ahhhhhhh.

Tori: Sometimes you just wanna go, God, I gotta jam with somebody.

Chris: The first release we got is 'Spark', that's gonna be coming out Monday April the 20th. What's it all about, Tori?

Tori: Well I think it's finding that little piece of magic. I miscarried, about a year and half ago and I think I was really trying to find the spirit of this baby.

Chris: Do you find this was a way of dealing with grief then, to get it down with words and music?

Tori: Yeah it was. I mean, the whole record was really about, I really respected life in a way that I hadn't before. I mean, it's strange when something like that happens, the love doesn't go away. It's strange in that way so it's not like you're left with nothing.

Chris: You know, you're breast feeding this piglet on the album 'Boys For Pele'. We're in Wales, the radio station is based in Wales and one animal associated with this country is the sheep,.would you reast feed a sheep?

Tori: Chris, what are you getting at?

Chris: I don't know, I don't know.

Tori: Do you need to be breast fed, Chris, is that what this is about?

Chris: Well, that was my next question, you see.

Tori: Were you taken off too early, was that the problem?

Chris: That was the problem you see, I was put on straight to those high-fibre sort milk shakes, so I missed out on all of this, Tori.

Tori: Yeah.

[transcribed Lucy Bennett]

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