Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

Rock et cetera (Germany, radio)
on Deutschlandfunk (DLF)
May 18, 1998

Tori Amos interview

[this interview was translated into German for the radio broadcast, then excerpts were translated back into English by Timmy and a Purple Monkey]

After the miscarriage

"I ran out over a big lawn, over a big shore, straight into a big sea, searching for the dead baby's soul. Instead of that I found lots of other things. And these are the girls from the choirgirl hotel."

"The girls from the choirgirl hotel are worlds that want to be Led Zeppelin songs multiplied by ten and sung by girls with breasts and high-heels."

"Black-Dove" bleeds water

"I had the engineers watch and rewatch the movie Fargo. That's a fascinating movie made in North Dakota with all those thunderstorms and the ice and the car that comes driving from the range. There is such an excitement in this situation, you know, the car will soon be there, but it ain't there yet, but you know, that you don't know, if you really want it to come, but you can't stop it, the car comes driving straight to you. And I wanted Black-Dove to carry this ice world. And I said to the guys, 'I see a black dove in front of me, you see her face but the black dove is made of ice, she is transparent, if you bore into her, she bleeds water, not red blood, you can see your hand through the blood. And that's what I wanna hear.'"

She further tells that her girls live their own lives and that it takes a whole tour to really know them. Especially on this album, she had the feeling that the girls sometimes let her in and sometimes not. She would find new details in each time playing them.

"Hotel" is also about her miscarriage

"I was definitely crashing at a certain point. I mean, emotionally crashing. I had almost crashed and that's what I sing about in 'Hotel.' It's a strange feeling to see you are crashing... and you know that it is so, and you know nobody will appear and say, 'You don't have to crash now.' You crash, and then you gotta crawl out of that one."

"In this record I walked a lot with the dead. Maybe they weren't dead, just in another dimension, not physical present at all. Such are the songs, they aren't physical as well. I tried to get them into the same dimension."

"Raspberry Swirl" is about sex

"My women friends and I take on different roles. And as my woman friend once had problems with her boyfriend I slipped into his role and told the men who wanted to come near to her: if you wanna come here you will have to make sure you're good enough for her. But I wasn't impressed by any of them."

"Most of my women friends are authors, women who deal with mysticism and arts. Many of my male friends are musicians, who play with me or with whom I work."

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