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Q (UK)
December 2006

Last Requests
Mourning Glories. With the High Priestess of Kook Tori Amos.

How have you checked out?

I'm 82, and I'm piloting a small plane that is buzzing the White House in protest of the incumbent president, who has outlawed all live music. I've just finished my last show on my last world tour and I run out of gas and crash into the West Wing gardens. That's a good way to go, no?

The last song playing in your head was...

Well, "Suicide is Painless" [the theme to '70s TV serial M*A*S*H] would be fitting, I think. I'll be plummeting in my plane, but [M*A*S*H actor] Alan Alda will not be there to save me.

Three other songs for your funeral playlist?

The Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Hey Joe," Big Brother & The Holding Company's "Piece of My Heart," and one of my own songs, "God" [from 1994's Under the Pink].

Who's on your funeral guest list?

Lots of rock celebrities, but only the debauched ones. Anybody who's been in AA wouldn't qualify, because they'd want to save my soul, and I don't need my soul saving, thank you very much. Naughty people only, please. No right-wing Christians, no Republicans, no reformers.

The service will run as follows...

My funeral will be part of the Rock'N'Roll Hall Of Death, a live TV event that I would like to be called Clash To Ash. There will be a studio audience alongside judges, people cryogenically frozen upon their own deaths and brought back to life: Simon Cowell, Ozzy Osbourne -- who'd be in better health dead than he ever was alive -- and that Pete guy -- Pete Doherty. I'm sure he'd have been arrested for possession of a Class-A drug in an open casket. What a way to go!

Burial or cremation?

Well, with a title like Clash To Ash, it would have to be cremation, right?

First person you'll call in the afterlife?

My Cherokee grandfather, and I'd say, "Where's the pipe, Poppa?" He liked to smoke the peace pipe, did Grandpy.

One person you'll want sent downstairs?

I don't believe in an up or a down. Me, I'm going out. But who would I send to at least a notional idea of hell? Some of the women I grew up around in church, I think [Amos' father was a minister], these so-called Christian ladies who were hypocritical and judgmental towards a teenage girl who wanted to explore her own sexuality. In my eyes, these women deserve eternal damnation, whether it exists or not.

The epitaph on your tombstone will read...

Always served good wine, even to her enemies.

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