In and out on this same path that I've followed for years -
Can't I look around and ask how could we still end out up here?
I can't just hold tight, wait for them to cut us to ribbons
If the sharpest thing where you come is a blade of grass.
Oh take me with you
I don't need shoes to follow.
Bare feet are running with you
somewhere a rainbow ends my dear.
These injuries - don't you think we need a new referee?
I can't let the ball drop, boy I need some interference -
To shut them up.
Oh take me with you
I don't need shoes to follow
Bare feet are running with you
somewhere the rainbow ends my dear
Oh take me with you
Chase rabbits into their burrow
Bare feet are running with you
Today even the rain can cut me up.
Tears turn to steel
And the wound never heals
In the darkness of November.
Well the witch is in the Tower
And the snake's in the bower
And the hunt goes on forever.
Now the stake is there to burn
My father's robe is torn between cross and mother -
With the blood on your hands come on whatcha doin'?
I am fed up with this questioning.
Here.
Oh take me with you
I don't need shoes to follow
Bare feet running with you
somewhere the rainbow ends my dear
Oh take me with you
Chase rabbits into their burrow
Bare feet are running with you
Today, today.
Oh take me with you
I don't need shoes to follow
Bare feet are running with you.
Today even the rain,
Even the rain,
Even the rain,
Can cut me up.
Take me with you.
Take me with you.
Details
1990 Phase produced by Tori Amos and Eric Rosse
Recorded by Eric Rosse and Dan Nebenzal
2006 Phase - all Vocals recorded and track mixed by Mark Hawley & Marcel van Limbeek
Bösendorfer and Vocals - Tori Amos
Guitar - Steve Caton
Guitar Programming - Eric Rosse
Bass - Will McGregor
Drums - Carlo Nuccio
Box Strings - Tori Amos and John Philip Shenale
Tori Quotes
"Take Me With You," was 16 years in the making, having been rediscovered by her engineer and husband, Mark Hawley. "When we put it up on the boards they looked at me and said, 'Well, all it needs is a vocal.' I said, 'I can't do that 16 years later,'" Amos recalls. "I thought about it and the song really started to call me to it. After 48 hours, I could finally finish the lyric and record it." [AOL Music News Blog - September 11, 2006]
One of the previously unreleased cuts, "Take Me With You," was originally an instrumental from the Little Earthquakes sessions. Now you've recorded a vocal. Why was the track abandoned?
"The truth is, there was a vocal on the 1990 take, and the lyrics to the chorus are the same. I've retained the chorus and parts of the bridge and used it as a skeleton. Then I worked around what was just humming in the verses. But the bridge was close to being there and the choruses were intact, so I haven't changed a word. It made an impact, but you can't put an unfinished work like that out. The way I was singing it, it was only a completed bottom chorus, so it wasn't a finished idea. Maybe at the time I wasn't able to really write what she wanted to be. I think that the journey that this song creature has made is really a story in itself. Sometimes I think about old visual artists and how it might take them years to finish a piece and how they've had to travel the world in order to finish their vision."
So, where did the words come from?
"Viktor and Rolf, the designers from Holland, called and asked me to do a piece for them (in 2005). They're quite subversive in their way and, being Dutch, they're very liberal and their viewpoint comes from a place I think of as closer to where I am. They had just made this perfume called Flowerbomb, so when they asked me to do it, the first thing I thought of was the war in the Middle East and "There Is A Bomb In Gilead" (sic). So I thought, let's go back to the Old Testament.
"I'd been immersed in the bee culture, of the Bee Masters and the Bee Mistresses when I was making The Beekeeper. Some of them had shown up at my door before anyone knew about the album. I met this one Bee Master and he talked to me about the Song of Solomon and how important that was for the feminine side, and how Christianity and Judaism and Islam were trying to kill the Goddess archetype.
It's a sacred verse to the Bee Mistress and the Bee Masters in their ceremonies, where women marry their sexuality and their sacredness. So I thought I'm going to take some of the words of the Song of Solomon and this song just came. And it was 'Take Me with You.'
"I retained the chorus I had written in 1990, then I wrote many verses that talked about now. It was an improv piece. I've done it once in my life. I went into a trance, I studied the verse and I had the melody. I had to trust that it would be a one-off piece for Viktor and Rolf."
So what happened to change that?
"Well, then Mark called me from Capitol Studios and said, 'We found a previously unreleased track from Little Earthquakes called "Take Me with You." Why don't you use it?' And I said, 'Well it's not finished.' So he brought it back and I tried to re-track it for Under the Pink. But I couldn't. It didn't work. The magic had gone and I couldn't finish the thought, I didn't know where it would be. So I put it away.
"I tried to track it the first time that I met Matt Chamberlain, but again I didn't have a verse. It was just a chorus. He said to me, 'Tori you've gotta finish this, then we should develop it.' So for five days they just put a mic up in room and I did it. But if I hadn't done the song with Viktor and Rolf, I don't think that I would have been able to approach it again. I needed to take it into another form and then come back to it. I had to explore the Song of Solomon to see what a romance can be in the midst of all that's happening in the story. I had to experience it.
"It talks about a father, but she's agonising about her father's torment. 'My cape was never worn/My father's robe is torn/Between the cross and the mother.' There are accusations in there. There is questioning. It does take you back to the witch trials and it does take you back to my father."
In what way does it relate to your father?
"My dilemma with my father has always been he's not the dark face of the patriarchy -- he's not a George Bush clone. However, I think that he would stand on the side of the patriarchy, because he would choose to believe that Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln are patriarchal, and maybe more liberal. But there's something worthy about it. He would believe that women should be equal in the church but he would not agree, I don't think, that you could have a woman Pope. Even though my dad is much more liberal than a lot of them he's not a liberal. So my war with that way of thinking, as a minister's daughter, came out in 'Take Me with You.' Though there's love there, we're very torn, because we do stand on the same side with some issues, but with others we just can't. People have to pick sides. You have to decide where you stand. So that's 'Take Me With You' -- its final point of gestation."
After such a long gestation was the actual birth an easy process, or did you need painkillers?
"Well, Mark and Marcel said, 'You've got to do this now or it's gone forever. You can't use it for the next record because it's very 1990 and this is perfect. This is what it is.' It's a radical move to work off a sacrosanct tape from 1990. First of all you have to be able to think that you can almost channel yourself as you were then, and yet still be you now. A lot of people's chords are destroyed 16 years later. They've smoked too much and coked too much, and so their voice has changed. Maybe they've lost five notes of their range. And I'm not saying I haven't changed -- I've changed a lot. But you can't just think that you can walk into an old master and it's all gonna work. It's a very dangerous thing. You can hurt yourself.
"Some of my contemporaries have changed so much in 16 years that you couldn't even contemplate doing that. Sometimes changes are for the good, meaning that I think some of my contemporaries sound like women now, instead of young girls. But that's not the point. The point is, if you're going to work with something that's that old, can you and your style and your vocal instrument make sense? I usually don't get very spooked about challenge, I don't have a hubris. I know how wrong you can go. You can get things so wrong recording. You really can miss it.
"Live is different, because people are there with you. You're all making love together in a room. What works coming off a disc is a different set of rules. So out of everything in the whole project, that was the one minute I sat there weighing up the options. And I looked at them and I said, 'Play it again.' The track seduced me. She just seduced me and I knew that it was her time." [Record Collector - November 2006]
Live Versions
"Take Me with You" / "Song of Solomon"
March 2, 2005 - Paris, France - Viktor & Rolf fashion show
[transcript & photos]
"Take Me with You"
December 15, 2007 - Anaheim, California
"Take Me with You"
October 7, 2009 - Berlin, Germany
"Take Me with You"
November 4, 2011 - Manchester, England
"Take Me with You"
May 28, 2014 - Brussels, Belgium
"Not the Red Baron" / "Take Me with You"
September 16, 2017 - Frankfurt, Germany
"Take Me with You"
September 30, 2017 - Munich, Germany
"Take Me with You"
July 23, 2023 - Paso Robles, California
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