Tori Amos - Interviews Archive

Time Off (Australia)
May 2, 2007

Personality Clash
Tori Amos

by Sasha Perera

No longer the Tori Amos from the bitter and twisted years, the Tori of 2007 is an attractive and enigmatic woman, with graceful poise and charming elegance (read: she's kinda hot).

Following her 90s international success, Amos was widely regarded as angst-ridden, anti-men, alternative-rock singer-songwriter with "issues". Now living in the English countryside with her husband and young daughter, the American artist is a different woman; a woman who's learned to let go, has transformed into "a confident erotic creature", and a woman who's happier as a result.

She's also a woman who exists in five distinct personalities, as she reveals on her return-to-form album American Doll Posse, written and performed by Tori and her alter-egos Santa, Clyde, Isabel and Pip.

"When the songs started cming, I began to realise early on that there was a diversity in styles, musically," Amos explains. "This is very different from a record whereby there's a thread going through it as far as the arrangements go, there's a very organic feeling from beginning to the end, or that it's just electronica from beginning to end. No -- I realised this was coming from different voices, and so I began to categorise these voices, and they came out as five distinct voices.

"The psyche of a woman really is complex. My husband tells me all the time! He always says to me 'Wifey, you have no idea what I'm going through', and I say, 'Stop complaining -- you're a lucky guy who gets to shag five different women and be monogamous!'

"So anyway, I thought 'Let's go to the Greek pantheon' and the five women are there. I did not choose Hera because I feel she has sided with the patriarchy, and so I decided to choose the fice women [including Tori, the singer] and their patterns. So they were loosely what I based the character types of the posse on."

American Doll Posse also offers up another notable revelation. Amos -- as herself, and not one of the other ladies on the album -- has begun to embrace her inner erotic-woman, as highlighted on the honky-tonk rumble of her first single "Big Wheel", in which she boldly proclaims, "I am a M-I-L-F don't you forget."

"It was during this crazy 19-day recording session, which was 10-12 hours a day, and I got up one morning with this rhythm and this song in my head," she says. "I ran across to the studio barefoot, as the sun was coming up, and I write the idea down and then went over to check my computer and m niece had sent me anote, knowing that I was recording, saying 'Whatever you do today, just remember you are a M-I-L-F!', and straightaway I knew that was it. I had been christened and I've embraced it."

Lastly, Amos wants to let her Australian audiences know that she's on her way down under later this year -- and she's bringing along the whole American Doll Posse.

"It's a done deal -- I'm coming in September. All the girls have their passports and their wardrobes ready. I have been looking at their wardrobes and I must admit I'm jealous," she says.

American Doll Posse is out on Sony BMG.

original article

[scan by Sakre Heinze]

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