Atlantic Records electronic press kit
December 7, 1995
Tori Amos Boys for Pele
directed by Nancy Bennet
edited by Chip Eddy
transcript
"I've stolen my share of fire, if I'm honest. Didn't have to, but I guess I thought I had to. Pele's quite a teacher. It's taught me many things about finding my own fire. And I've gotten it mainly through the relationships that I've had with men. Stolen it, in the past. Now I'm claiming my own."
"I believe in currents. Any project has a current running through it. The current that I really wanted to run through this thing was the roots for Southern music as I saw it. I was just compelled to go to certain places. And Ireland, because a lot of music in the South came from those fiddlers, and from the gospel church. I'm also recording in the South, but it just felt right to keep recording here."
So, this particular church, what's it called and where is it?
"It's the Delgany church. We chose this church, we looked at like, seventeen churches in Wicklow. The acoustics here were just the best."
[Tori sings some high-pitched background vocals]
"When anything fails, I can sing in a church. And hey, a lot of sacred sites were built below these churches. They existed before some of these churches. So there's a real current where churches are. And I can get into a church and I just go, 'Ooh, I can work with this.' Just because um, there's so much current running through those things."
[Tori sings some more high-pitched background vocals, then stops and says, "Ok, Mark."]
"I've never experienced such an amazing sky or an amazing ocean like the feeling of when the sound is coming through and I don't know where it's going, and it's totally aligned, it's just right [there]. You know, there's this little silver string that's running off this planet somewhere else, coming down, and it comes down through the little red-head, and it's going right through here and right through there, and ffffff, into the ground. And it goes way in and then it goes through the earth and somewhere else and there's this cord running, and I just happen to -- it's like lightning. And you just happen to get struck by lightning and yet you're still singing and dancing."
"Ah, that song is saying to you, [sings] caught a lite sneeze, caught a lite breeze, caught a lightweight lightningseed. Boys on my left side, boys on my right side, boys in the middle, and you're not here... I need a big loan from the girl zone..."
"Caught a Lite Sneeze specifically has nuns on it. More, more than nuns. Nuns invoking this myth of the female god energy."
"It's really about a relationship. And she's kinda given herself away, so she's trying to get pieces back in any way she can. I mean, whoever works at that point. And if it's Inana or whoever. And if it works calling her in the church, to evoke a little ass, then you go for it."
Let's go back to the subject of your producing this record. This is a first time, really?
"Yeah, this is the first time where um, I guess I'm in the driver's seat. I like being in the driver's seat. You know, I've got a great tech crew. They're producing with me, sonically. 'Cause they, they're not just engineers. They're like, really going about it from a different thing than just getting it on tape. They're getting it on tape, pushing the envelope, the best way that they can possibly figure out. And I know that when I make a decision, they're gonna capture it. I know. We're after the same thing and I never look over my shoulder. And when, sometimes I'll talk to them about, 'Look.' I was showing them this picture of this brain on National Geographic -- the brain, I can't, I've been carrying that with me everywhere -- because I wanted them to get Caught a Lite Sneeze to be transparent like this brain. And it was just sounding -- it wasn't going there. And once they saw the picture of this brain, I come back in two hours -- plus the drum programmer, Alan -- and I get the brain."
[Tori sings some high-pitched background vocals for Caught a Lite Sneeze]
Tori Amos: "Ok, one more time, please?"
Mark Hawley (sound engineer): "Ok, here we go."
[Mark starts a recording of Caught a Lite Sneeze, and Tori sings some more background vocals over it, as Mark records.]
"Music has never been too much of a problem for me, as far as figuring out when it's not right, immediately. What doesn't work for me in a song that I'm writing is when I'm going from one section to another and it's not like, blast-off. There's gotta still be... a shift."
"There's an instinctive skill that you develop if you make something your passion and your life."
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