Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

The Music Week (UK, radio)
BBC Radio 6 Music
September 17, 2006

Tori Amos interview

["Cornflake Girl" plays under interview]

Tori: Hey there, this is Tori Amos, and you're listening to The Music Week. I've been putting this box set together, and I had no idea that I'd be going through a catalogue of over fifteen years. Not just one mix of the track that might be chosen, but every single mix that we had on it. What I didn't realize when I agreed to do the project is because the record industry has imploded -- how they've kept the tapes over the years -- some of them have been severely damaged. I'm talking about the old tapes, the old analog tapes. Therefore, we had to get everything brought back to our studio in Cornwall and comb through it to find the closest thing to what I thought was the integrity of the original piece.

BBC: You must have been quite upset when you found out about the deterioration of the original tapes?

Tori: "Numb" is a really good word.

BBC: It must have been a little bit like watching a movie of your life, in a way?

Tori: I've told people I felt like Billie Piper, not as a musical person, but like in the TARDIS... A box set is a sonic TARDIS, you go into a different time frame and you are there. Every cell of your being is back in 1990 or 1993. It took seconds to time travel.

BBC: And did you like it back there; did you want to stay or were you happy to get back in the TARDIS and come back?

Tori: There are moments I did want to stay, if I'm honest with you, but that's the danger of doing a box set -- you have to come back.

["Professional Widow Remix" plays under interview]

BBC: From where you are now, how does it all look?

Tori: Well, it's kinda crazy to say to you that I wouldn't change any of it. I think it's been pretty confrontational, and I have a reputation as a ball-buster. You know, the Corporate Boys, when they see me coming, I think they call the guards because they know that, while they're asleep in their beds, I'm going to be thinking of ways to rescue my masters.

BBC: Do you think it's too easy for pop acts like Beyonce, Kelly Clarkson, Paris Hilton to kind of dominate the music scene?

Tori: Well, you can't put some of those women in the same category. I think if you really have a vocal instrument and you can sing, that's a very different conversation than celebrities . . . What you have to understand now is if we didn't have the technology we have and we went back fifteen years ago, it would be very hard for a celebrity, where you're cutting every note together -- and I'm not saying you are with one of these women, but I'm saying with quite a few of these records that are based on celebrity, that's what they do -- in ProTools, I could make you HOT, baby. Vocally, I could make it happen.

BBC: I'd love you to do that.

Tori: We could do that; because you see, we'd bring in, I'd bring in whatever I had to do it with, but if you were the most famous woman in the world, or one of 'em, and you had videos out of yourself doing all kinds of things with Coke bottles, then we'd find a way to get you in pitch.

[Paris Hilton's "The Stars Are Blind" begins to play, then dramatically distorts and abruptly grinds to a halt]

["Take Me With You" intro begins]

BBC: Can you tell us a little bit about the next album?

Tori: No. No . . .

BBC: What stage is it in?

Tori: I'm in the middle. I feel like Albert Einstein with my hair out to here, and I've put my finger in an electric socket, and I'm editing, and blowing things up, and bringing harpsichords back in, and Wurlys in and out, and pianos in . . . You know, I'm in the middle of the mad scientist phase.

["Take Me With You" continues, playing in its entirety...]

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