Tori Amos - Giant's Rolling Pin

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Giant's Rolling Pin

Lyrics by Tori Amos

Beth and Marlene's pies
with help from Caroline
after just one slice
you can uncover any lie
that's why the NSA
and now the FBI
want to be the ones who control
Beth and Marlene's pies
with help from Caroline
so basically that's why

I'm off to find the giant's rolling pin
legend says it does exist
if you don't stop looking for it
I'm off to find the giant's rolling pin
legend says it will bake for the world
(oh it will yes it really will)

in case we have
rolled out our little world too flat
then the giant's rolling pin
will roll the truth out
so that the whole world can dig in
to Beth and Marlene's pies

everybody spies
so why the big surprise?
that is why the working woman
well deserves a slice
(Mississippi mud or Key lime?)
but now the nice taxman
in every state has tried
to say that it's in his jurisdiction to decide
who gets a bit of pie
so honestly that's why

I'm off to find the giant's rolling pin
legend says it does exist
if we don't stop looking for it
I'm off to find the giant's rolling pin
legend says it will bake for the world
(oh it will yes it really will)

if in fact we had
rolled our little world too flat
then the giant's rolling pin
would roll the truth out
so that the whole world can dig in
the whole world can dig in
to Beth and Marlene's pies
with help from Caroline
for a window of time you can see through any lie
with help from Caroline
and the giant's rolling pin

Tori Quotes

There are all kinds of things on "Giant's Rolling Pin," um... I first played it on the piano for the team and I do think there was an idea of some, uh, collecting people along the way. And that's why, with the key changes happening where they happened, and how they happened, that more people would join the little march of the Giant's Rolling Pin, from village to village. So, it had, I guess, a little of the, um, Beatles inspiration as well, perhaps, in the instrumentation. It became its own thing. We had a lot of fun with it, and we were building it up, uh, instrument by instrument, trying to make sure that, um, with a very serious subject on one hand because, um, it's divided people; people in the States have been divided by this subject, which is, when does a government cross a line in spying? And in order to protect us, are our liberties compromised? So it's a big subject, and we thought that it needed some fun around it. And when we were talking about it, um, we were having this pie, this amazing pie that these women called Beth and Marlene make -- they are real women who make real pies, with help from Caroline, that's all true -- and they're so good that when I was eating the pie, I just started thinking, what if they were truth-telling pies? [Spotify commentary - 2014]

Truth-telling pies. That's the key. If you have a bite of this pie, you can see the truth for a moment of time. And their agenda, because that's very important in this conversation. Mine too, I always have an agenda. But don't we all? We all do. It seemed to me that this was a very important discussion about spying and technology. Is there a world whereby you as a writer, for example, are writing things that might be stirring it up? Would there be a force, and authority, that wouldn't want you putting it out there. What type of pressure could they put you under? The taxman gets mentioned as well. So what kind of covert pressure, in a world, could be put on one of you, if you all were writing something or thinking about something that somebody in a certain position, of authority, wouldn't want that out there. Say you're campaigning for a governor, or you're campaigning for someone and you're really making it happen for them, would there be someone that would have access to your email that might decide, "No, we're going to make it difficult for this person." These questions were coming up. In the states there was a real divided argument about this and if we knew this was happening what would we do? How would we respond to it? These were all questions coming into "Giant's Rolling Pin." [Meet the Musician podcast - May 20, 2014]

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