December 14, 2022 • 59 mins
With her groundbreaking 1992 debut album, Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos paired pianos with guitars and shook the music world to its core. The record's most poignant and painful moment was the a cappella track “Me and a Gun,” a chilling account of the artist's sexual assault. Long before the MeToo movement, Amos was a hero and crusader who spoke truth to power, not only with her songwriting but with her work as the first spokesperson for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the largest nonprofit anti-sexual assault organization in the U.S.
In this episode, we explore one of the most soul-baring, innovative releases of the ’90s—and the uphill battle its creator faced to get it made. With special guest Tori Amos.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where Were You In ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. A special note this episode features themes
of sexual assault and may not be suitable for all listeners.
The idea of being this like fierce, intelligent, open, vulnerable
person who is also like so fierce with her sexuality
(00:22):
and just being like whatever she wanted kind of blew
my mind wide, wide open. Welcome to Where Are You In?
A podcast in which I your host Jason Laufier, look
back at the major hits, one hit wonders, shocking news stories,
(00:43):
and irresistible scandals that shaped what might be the wildest,
most eclectic, most controversial twelve months of music effort. This week,
with her groundbreaking debut album, Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos ripped
the music world apart, mining her pain, her history, her fears,
her fantasies, and her path to salvation. The singer songwriter
(01:07):
reached deep into her core to craft a record this
sounded like nothing else before it. It's most poignant and
painful track was Me and a Gun, a song about
her sexual assault. Long before the Me Too movement, Amos
was a hero and crusader who spoke truth to power,
not only with her music, but with her work is
the first spokesperson for RAIN, the Rape, Abuse and INSUSTS
(01:29):
National Network, the largest nonprofit ani sexual assault organization in
the US. In this episode, we explore one of the
most gut wrenching, soul bearing innovative releases of the nineties
and the uphill battle Aimos face to get it made.
Sitting down in the I Heart studio, the musician reveals
the story and process behind Little Earthquakes in her own words,
(01:51):
reflecting on the legacy of the thirty year old touchstone
that ignited her career and literally saved lives. Certain records
leave their mark on you in ways you'll never fully comprehend.
They pull you from the mere, take you in their arms,
and whisk you away to another world. A world that
(02:11):
feels safer, a world where you're understood, where you find
the you you long to be. They're real you. These
albums hold up a mirror. They show you the truth,
which yes, can be painful, brutal even, but that truth
emboldens you, That truth sets you free. Torri mus debut
(02:33):
Little Earthquakes was one of those albums For me. I
discovered it years after its release. I was a troubled lonely,
bullied teenager. Most of the everyday connections I was establishing
felt tenuous and fleeting because I wasn't sure how to
be myself. I felt like I was acting portraying someone
I thought. People wanted me to be the smart one,
(02:54):
the funny one, the talented one, the pious one, perfect
But I was still a target ridicule. I was an anxious,
sexually confused drama geek, trying to distract my audience from
the secret behind the curtain. My parents marriage was imploding.
My father, a recovering alcoholic, had lost his job, fallen
(03:14):
off the wagon, and was having an affair. He and
my mother were waking me up every night with her
screaming matches. He was crashing cars and getting arrested. I
was getting straight a's and hating him for shattering the
illusion of perfection I was fighting to maintain, to save
me from the mayhem and the violence. My mother sent
me away to live with my Baptist minister and his wife,
(03:35):
somewhere closer to God. I had already started turning to
music for escape, but at that time one of my
few close friends was falling in love litori Amus, devouring
her discography, breathing in her angst and blowing out smoke,
rings of confidence, radiating a badass, cooler than now attitude.
I admired. I hitched a ride with her on that journey,
(03:56):
buying a copy of Little Earthquake. Because I awkwardly settled
into my fake bedroom with my new fake parents and
the parsonage beside our church. I had no idea what
I was in for, no idea how much the music
would speak to me. Me a wounded and furious queer
teenager who had somehow found himself shipped off to some
stranger's home where religion was a centerpiece, while my religion
(04:19):
was the beauty and trauma seeping from my headphones. But
enough about me, let's talk about Torri. Tori Imus was
a prodigy, drawn to the piano as soon as she
(04:41):
could talk, she was playing it too, and writing her
own songs. At three, she was admitted to the prestigious
Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore at just five years old, becoming
the youngest musician ever to be accepted to the school.
She studied classical, but it wasn't her bag and she
hated sight reading. Instead, in her free time, she immersed
herself in a very different kind of music, the guitar
(05:04):
rock of acts like led Zeppelin. She had a very
religious upbringing, Amos has said her methodist past her father
thought music would save her from boys, when in fact
she wound up connecting to rock music at a sexual
and spiritual level. Legends like Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant enthralled
and seduced her. As she writes Centauriums piece by piece,
(05:26):
her two thousand five book with music journalists and critic
and powers, quote, they were conjoined with their instruments. You
could not divide them, and you couldn't invade them either,
unlike the way the church and its ideas and invaded
my consciousness. She was looking for, as she puts it,
quote unquote, sensuality without the subservience. She wanted the profane
(05:50):
to become sacred. Like so many sutting rock stars, Amos
was rebellious and impudent, and for that she was booted
from the conservatory at the age of eleven. As you
can imagine, her parents were gutted, knowing her talent was
(06:11):
too exceptional to go to waste. Her father nudged her
out of the nest a couple of months before she
turned fourteen, the Reverend Dr Edison McKinley Amos drove her
to Georgetown to find her a gig performing. As she
writes in her two thousand twenty book Resistance, he had
quote more than a dose of mam arose in him,
referring to the memorable definitive stage mom in the musical Gypsy.
(06:34):
He became tories detager. She recalls the sermon he gave
her on the way to Georgetown, in which he said
something to the effect of, quote the way I see it,
you are drowning in your own self destructive mediocrity. You
have spent three years of ignoring your potential. Her father's
clerical collar on full display. The two hit up several
(06:57):
restaurants and bars, but no dice. Finally, they ended up
at a gay bar called Mr. Henry's, where the manager
agreed to take a chance on Amos. Sitting at the
bars upright piano. She took request, vowing to learn songs
she didn't know if she was invited to come back
to play. She was invited back the following Friday. Reverend
(07:17):
Amos was undeterred when churchgoers expressed concern that he and
his daughter were now affiliated with an establishment frequented by homosexuals.
In fact, his reply couldn't have been more astute, there
is no safer place for a thirteen year old girl
than in an all gay bar. As the years passed,
Amos would play for tony or establishments and for more
(07:38):
money in conservative patrons. She found herself in a hotel
bar near the White House, breathing in the cigar or
smoke of bankers, politicians, lobbyists, intellectuals, and corporate big wigs,
and receding into the background. She remained loyal to religion,
attending Sunday services until the age of one. That's when
she decided she needed to get out from under her
(07:59):
father's watchful eye. She moved to Los Angeles, where by chance,
she ended up living behind a Methodist church. She met
other artists, folks who like her, were looking to shut
the shackles of their past and forge their own path.
Her path, or so she thought at the time, was
a pursuit of a rock career. In the mid eighties,
(08:21):
the piano wasn't seen as cool at all, especially if
a woman was playing it. Yes, Amos apparently beat out
Sarah Jessica Parker for Kellogg's Just Right commercial, in which
she plays a Cereal box piano. You know that was Cereal.
Amos Is demos, which heavily featured the piano, were met
with disdain. As she writes in Piece by Piece, the
(08:44):
producers and A and our guys would listen and reply,
nobody wants this. The piano girl thing is dead. If
she wanted to get out of the bar circuit, she'd
have to ditch the instrument she had been conjoined with
for twenty years. Rock music and very Big Hair seems
like her only option, So in she formed the band
(09:06):
Why Can't Tori Read? Its name a nod to her
struggles reading music while studying a Peabody. Fun fact the
band's drummer was Matt Sorum would eventually play with Guns
and Roses. Atlantic Records put out the group's self titled
debut album. Sales report reviews were no better. Watch the
(09:32):
video for Why Can't Tori Read's first single, The Big Picture,
and you'll see traces of the dynamic performer and vocalist
Amos would become. She even plays a little piano in it,
but she's drowning in excess, stifled by overproduction. Decked out
in skin type black pants and a billowy sleeved top,
she prances around like a new wave pirate on a
(09:53):
sound stage made to resemble an l a back alley,
bearing her middrift and brandishing a ridiculous samurais or teased
and towering her signature bright red hair had never been
closer to God. The response to the Big Picture was
so tepid the label refused to grant the group funds
for another video, a shame since her second single, cool
(10:14):
on Your Island, while still very much a product of
his Time, is actually a really lovely, tropical flavored pop song.
Why can't Tori Read? The album tanked it's cover, which
featured Amos and long black gloves and a black boostier
rocking that same frizzy do and wielding that same random
mass samurai sword, couldn't have helped. A Billboard review noted
(10:38):
that Amos was a gifted artist, but concluded, quote, unfortunately
provocative packaging sends the inaccurate message that this is just
so much more bimbo music. Why can't Tori read? Whose
original lineup had disbanded even before the album was complete,
with session players filling in for its recording officially broke up.
(11:03):
Amos was angry, mortified, and crust fallen. When she and
I spoke recently, she recalled feeling like she'd hit a
musical rock bottom. The worst thing that I could ever
imagine in music was to put out a record and
be laughed at, be ridiculed. And and the thing in
(11:26):
l a that you really don't want to catch is failure.
You will not be going to any parties if you
have failed. And I remember walking into a little restaurant
that I always walked into, and these people were in
the music business, and as I passed by, they laughed,
(11:49):
they laughed at me. You know, it was it was
a fleeting moment because nobody cared. Failure gets brushed under
the rug and you get swept out, you know, with
the garbage. Amos had abandoned her true love, the piano,
to try to emulate the guitar rocks she idolized as
a kid. She'd sacrificed her integrity and sold herself to
(12:11):
market demands and trend chasing record execs. Now she felt
like she not only looked like the bimbo billboard had
culled her, but that she was that bimbo. I followed, uh,
what people were saying at the time, which has embraced
the synthesizer and and embraced this other type of sound.
And you know the piano's history that to leave it
(12:33):
back in the seventies. So in my dark night of
the soul after that album bombed, I crawled back to
the piano and realized that I had to find out
who I was. Within a few days of reading that
withering review, she ditched the makeup, hairsprained tight pants. She
rented a piano because she couldn't afford to buy one,
(12:55):
and vowed to never leave it betray it. She says again,
I've warned so many masks to try and get out
of the barroom that, um, I didn't know who I
was anymore. So the piano had to take me back
to when I was five years old studying at the
Peabody Conservatory and and take me back to a magical
time when when music was magic, and I had completely
(13:19):
burned that to the ground. To recapture the tori Amos
she thought she was destined to be, she began working
on demos for a solo album what would eventually become
Little Earthquakes. For four years, she played and she wrote,
working with producers Eric Ross and David Siggerson on a
batch of piano driven songs and adding some quote unquote
(13:40):
sonic sweetening. As Amost puts it, she was dressing the
way she wanted to, thank lots of Patagonia and finally
making the music she wanted to make. No barroom covers,
no glossy cock rock. She was proud of what she'd done.
It felt honest. Though why can't Tori read? It? Flopped?
Atlantic Records kept Amos's contract. The label was eagerly awaiting
(14:03):
her next effort, but the guys on top were unimpressed
when she submitted a batch of piano based tracks. They
didn't get it and thought it had no place in
the musical landscape and their minds. The girl and a
piano thing was still that on arrival at the time.
The piano was not cool. So Elton and Billy it was.
(14:26):
They were still touring the world and they were, you know,
these legends where it was um embraced and accepted because
of their track record. They've been around a long long time.
But really, uh, what was happening in the music scene
was women like Tracy Chapman and Susanne Vega. The guitar
(14:49):
um was being embraced, which is great, but the piano
was seen as some kind of well, let's put it
this way, part of the Seattle sound. Not It wasn't considered, Oh,
this could stand next to grunge and be badass for
(15:09):
this album to move forward, the men at the top
said the piano had to go, but Amos couldn't bear
the thought of that. She was freaking out, scrambling to
find a solution. When we turned in the record then
it was it was not accepted. So the suggestion was
from a producer to the head of Atlantic at the time,
(15:33):
I was Doug Morris. The suggestion was take all the
pianos off and put guitars on, and Doug and I
were able to come to a different outcome, which was
I would turn in a few more produced tracks, and
so I turned to Eric Ross and musicians that I
knew in l a Friends to come and collaborate, and
(15:54):
then that was the next stage. Up next after the break,
we look at how twenty six year old torre Amus
rebounded from another rejection to create a landmark album that
(16:15):
would eventually have a seismic impact on pop music the
(16:45):
year was. Though her label had essentially told Torre Amos
to ditch all her pianos for guitars to save her
first solo album, she was determined to get it made
without sacrificing her vision. She knew she couldn't defy the
powers that be, so she decided to write four more
tracks to prove her viability. The label agreed to let her.
(17:07):
The first of those four songs was Girl, attract she
wrote after she left l A and flew back to
d C. To see her parents. They drove out to
an old farm in the mountains of Virginia where her
father had grown up. She was surrounded by calm, far
away from the din of the big city. She took
long walks with her mother, who made dinners from their garden.
(17:27):
One night, while her mother was rocking in a rocking chair,
Amos sat at the upright piano and wrote Girl, the
track that would bridge the gap between the earlier rejected
songs of her debut solo album and what would eventually
become its final version. Yes, the song would feature guitars,
but the piano was its backbone, and Girl was about
Amos finding her backbone. So girl was documenting what I
(17:55):
was going through in my battle at that time, Girl
reflecting what I was living at the time, which was
she's been everybody else's girl. Maybe one day she'll be
her own. And it's like, yes, yes, t a it,
come on, You've you've got to stop being um such
(18:18):
a sponge and just saying Okay, I'll twist myself and
turn myself into whatever you want just because you want
to leave the bar room. What if you never leave
the bar room, you need to go there, because if
you can accept that, then you will write what you
need to write for your soul. The match was lit.
(18:51):
Amos had found her spark. She proceeded to write the
tracks Precious Things, Tear in Your Hand, and Little Earthquakes,
all of which and to both piano and guitars at
the label felt the girl and the piano thing was dead.
Amos proved she and her music were very much alive. Meanwhile,
label had Doug Morris had returned to one of the
(19:13):
original rejected tracks. Amos had submitted a piano and string
led song called Silent. All these years he had listened
to it going home in his car. One night and
he got it. The penny dropped and he said, Okay,
I realized this, this was one of the original twelve,
but I get it. I get it now, and I
(19:33):
think you need to go to England and I went,
pardon what what? He said, Yes, I have a counterpart
over there called Max Hole East West Records in London,
and he will get it. He will understand and his
team will understand what to do with this, and that
was the next phase of the journey. Amos flew to
(19:55):
England and recorded a handful of B sides and the
last two of the twelve tracks that to a a peer
on Little Earthquakes, China and Me and a Gun. She
handed over the new guitar least songs, along with six
of the original piano lead songs she presented. The label
accepted the retooled material. It would release Amos's first solo
(20:15):
album in January. One of Little Earthquake's most beloved songs,
Silent all these years has become Amos is calling card
like Girl. It's about losing and finding one's voice, a
story Amos knew all too well after why Can't Tory
Read bombed and she rekindled her love with the piano.
(20:37):
Amos was inspired to write it after reading Hans Christian
Anderson's The Little Mermaid with her young niece Cody, and
the classic fairy tale the titular heroine loses her voice.
As Amos said in a two thousand nine Rolling Stone interview,
watching Cody respond to this young woman giving up her
essence and power all for something else and that more men,
(21:00):
I realized that when she had no voice, that just
completely took me to the place where I needed to
go to reclaim it. Amos has said Silence all these
years is one of the most important songs in her
(21:21):
thirty year repertoire. As she writes in Resistance, she was
the life support that helped me survive a severe personal
and artistic crisis. The songs that would form little Earthquakes
were the sound of Amos finding her voice taking charge
of her destiny. She writes, it was a long and
(21:42):
arduous climb to song write my way out of a
very personal help. Silent all these years would become much
bigger than her. It would eventually serve as a rallying
cry for women and men who had been suppressed, degraded, harassed, assaulted.
It was the Ultimate Survivor's Anthem and the fall of
(22:05):
just before Silent All These Years was released as a single.
In the UK, the subject of sexual harassment had begun
dominating headlines. Anita Hill had come forward accusing U. S.
Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the U
S Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of
sexually harassing her, a black woman. She presented her case
(22:29):
to a Senate Judiciary committee of fourteen white men. The
world watched an awe. I found it really intriguing that
people were gravitating toward that song. Anita Hill had just
been um on television. I saw her on television and
(22:49):
she said something to the effect of I couldn't stay
silent any longer, something to that effect, And within two weeks,
three weeks, Silent All These Years was getting played on
the radio in England. This was volcanic what was happening
with Anita Hill. This was shocking the world and the
(23:11):
courage that it took for her to speak. And it
just so happened that this song, Silent to All These
Years was coming out within a couple of weeks of
this shock. So it was really relevant at the time,
and when I was writing it, you have no idea
what circumstances are going to cross the song's path, which
then becomes part of the narrative. Silent All These Years
(23:34):
was not Amos's first single. It was included as a
track on her first single, Me and a Gun, but
because it was the more accessible song, radio stations opted
to play it instead, so the Me and a Gun
single was rereleased soon after, entitled Silent All These Years.
It's not that surprising that DJs avoided Me and a Gun.
(23:54):
The song is totally acapella, just Amos detailing her sexual assault,
which occurred when she was twenty one years old and
living in Los Angeles. Certain facts were changed well. The
narrator in the song was raped at gunpoint. Her attacker
had a knife. The imagery is nonetheless chilling, harrowing. Years
(24:16):
after the incident, she saw the movie Thumba and Louise,
in which a female character is nearly raped, and realized
she had to tell her story. As she recalled to
CBS News in two thousand seventeen, I think I saw
it fifteen times and then it began to come from
deep within. Amos has called the process of writing Me
(24:40):
and a Gun difficult and raw. The song itself is
difficult to listen to because it's so raw. Amos traces
the thoughts running through her head while she's being assaulted,
some horrifying, some absurd. Her account unfurls like a stream
of consciousness. She sings about Jesus, Mr Ed Carolina biscuits,
(25:05):
how she must survive her assault because she hasn't been
to Barbados, and I want to live, she vows at
one point, it is all so close to the bone,
you are right there with her. While playing Little Earthquakes.
Over the years, I would often skip the track. If
I didn't play it, it wasn't real, as Amos said
(25:28):
in an interview with Rolling Stone, and it was through
gut wrenching pain, hysteria. I think that the music began
to come in the quiet. In the silence being alone,
I couldn't speak to or be with anybody, So I
just went off to one of my secret private haunts
that you go in the world, You just leave everything
(25:49):
you know and go. That's what I did, And when
I came back out again, this song was walking hand
in hand with me. It became something I had to
sing to move forward. Music journalists and Powers, who collaborated
with Aimless on her book Piece by Piece, describes the
singer's place in the rock landscape as a precarious one.
(26:11):
Solo female artists then had to navigate a male dominated
industry and play the game while still trying to preserve
their vision. But they carried another heavy burden on their shoulders.
They were symbols, heroin's idols who were supposed to represent
their female listeners and speak to them, says Powers. At
(26:31):
that time, there were bands, there were some women bands
or some bands that you know, in which women and
men played together, But more often than not, the successful
artists were solo women or women who were perceived as solitary,
who were expected two articulate this kind of separateness, this
(26:53):
kind of solitude, this kind of like we're Joan of arc.
You know, I'm out here leading something, but but I'm
only listening to the voices in my head. Powers considers
me and a gun Amos his most impressive political statement
in the nineties. It's such a such an incredible, uh
brave act, but you know it's an acapella. She performs
(27:18):
it alone like silent. All these years, Me and a
Gun did for a strong connection with listeners. It too,
became an anthem, not for victims, but for survivors. For many,
it was the me too of its time. Amos told
me about a moment when she began to understand the
impact of the song and her music in general. A
(27:42):
young girl attending one of her shows was watching her
perform Me and a Gun and was deeply moved, and
she fainted during the song. Um. And after this show
they had taken her backstage, and she told me her story,
and she said, can I please come on the road.
(28:02):
I'll do anything. I'll do any I'll work in the
kitchens or whatever I can do. Um, because my stepfather
raped me last night, he will tomorrow night, and when
I get in tonight he will. And so I was,
of course, you're coming on the road with me and
we'll figure it out. But Amos too was young and
didn't comprehend the possible ramifications. I didn't understand what was happening.
(28:28):
But I saw the terror in the eyes and in
my um. Well, it's just trying to do something. You're
trying to do something. So I get a call from
legal coming into the venue saying you will be arrested
for kidnapping. You are crossing state line tonight on the buses,
(28:49):
and you will be arrested. And at the time, there
just wasn't um a place where I knew where to call.
Realizing her initial plan was just too risky, the singer
back down. She had to leave the girl behind. I
watched her go. I've never seen her again. I've never
(29:10):
heard from her again, and it plagues me to this
day because we have no idea. But this fan and
her tragic story stayed with Amos. She was inspired that
same year to become the first spokesperson for RAIN, the
Rape Abuse and Incests National Network, the largest nonprofit antisexual
(29:31):
assault organization in the US. It operates the National Sexual
Assault Hotline, a twenty four hour toll free phone service
that routes callers to the nearest local sexual assault service provider.
Since it was found, it has helped more than three
million survivors and their loved ones. Delicate, daring, damning, clever, funny, seductive,
(30:09):
and incendiary. Little Earthquakes was the sound of Torre Amos
finally finding her voice, or at least really starting to.
It's first track, Crucify, opens with lyrics that by turns
convey strength, defiance, fear, and vulnerability. Every finger in the
room is pointing at me, Amos things I want to
(30:31):
spit in their faces. Then I get afraid of what
that could bring. The final track, Little Earthquakes culminates with
the artists repeating what could be considered the album's thesis,
give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.
(30:55):
Amos knew that the truth is scary, messy, some times
almost unbearable, but she also knew that it must be
told at all costs. On this record, nothing is off limits. Lust, heartache, religion, masochism,
the beauty of childhood, the pain of adolescence, dreams, wasted dreams, nightmares, mortality.
(31:19):
The singer herself admits that the guitar is a label
insistent she include did indeed lend a gravity to the proceedings,
as does its colossal percussion, which often sounds tribal or primordial,
like it's rising from the planet's core and bursting through
the surface, echoing the title of the album. Gripping, seething
and unpredictable. Sounds like Girl, Precious Things and Little Earthquakes
(31:42):
swell into massive, soulful neo prog rock marvels. Amos's visual collaborators,
photographer Cindy Palmano and stylists and creative director Karen Bins,
were imediately shaken by the revelations and revolution of Little Earthquakes.
(32:04):
Paulmano handled not only the photography for the album, but
also directed all of its music videos. For the songs Crucified, Silent.
All these years Winter and China, Palmano tapped Binns, who
had recently relocated from Brooklyn to London, to help her
establish strong imagery that lived up to Amos's powerful storytelling.
The work the three women did together was stark and impressionistic,
(32:28):
conjuring the spear of the seventies but also feeling like
it was suspended in amber. It favored simple props and
intimate close up shots of Amos that make the viewer
feel like she's speaking to them and only them. The
trio's vision was cohesive, poignant, and haunting. Binns was a
hip black arc chick who paled around with Baskia in
(32:48):
downtown New York in the nineteen eighties. Amos was a
Maryland gal into bell bottom jeans and led zeppelin. The
two met for an evening coffee and hit it off instantly.
Amos would get to wear her flair legged jeans, but
with Bin's pulling the strings, she pair them with a
vintage swimsuit. Amos was drawn to Ben's pluck and her
(33:09):
sense of adventure. Binns was drawn to Amos's honesty and
her quote unquote radical points of view. When we spoke recently,
this is how Bin's described her relationship with the singer.
She is the woman that's going to make it happen,
that's going to save the life. Well, that's going to
come up with the answer, that's truth. You know. To
(33:31):
be a part of that for me was everything. That's
when I knew I was on the road with someone
to do great things. Bin's continues to serve as Amos's
stylist and creative director to this day. You might be
tempted to dismiss Bin's remarks about Tore Amos being the
woman who's going to save the life as hyperboly, But
(33:53):
looking back on my adolescence, when I was struggling to
make sense of my sexuality, my parents turbulent marriage, I
sure the health like she was my savior. Listening to
little Earthquakes not only felt like reading Amos's memoir, it
felt like reading mine. I was hardly alone. I discover
over the years that so many of my friends and
peers had seen their own heartbreak, confusion, and insolence in
(34:15):
these lyrics, heard their own pain and redemption and Amos's
commanding delivery. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find
a thirty or forty something emo artsy type today who
hasn't been affected by Amos's music. Lola van Ella is
one of those types. She's in New Orleans based burlesque
artist who has performed Little Earthquakes eighth track Leather several
(34:37):
times for live audiences. The song, which tackles sex, power
and religion, is a jaunty, cheeky Vaudevillian tune that sounds
like it fell off the back of the Godspell truck
and straight into Amos's lap. It pulls its listeners in
instantly with its arresting opening lines, Look, I'm standing naked
before you. Don't you want more than my sex? I
(35:00):
can scream as loud as your last one, but I
can't claim innocence. Vanilla has been a fan of Amos
since her teenage years, when she, like me and so
many others, was trying to figure her ship out and
find her place in the world, she told me recently,
So I think there was like this big explosion of
both like raging hormones and also sexual curiosity. And I
(35:22):
think that combined with just like all of the normal
angsty ship that kids go through, Tori was like the
most It just she just spoke to me, and I
really loved how out there she was. I really loved
how feral she seemed when she would play the piano.
I really just loved her energy. The idea of being
(35:45):
this like fierce, intelligent, open, vulnerable person who was also
like so fierce with her sexuality and just being like
whatever she wanted kind of blew my mind wide wide open,
as as somebody who was, you know, discovering all of
that for myself. Van Ella's performance of Leather is atypical
(36:07):
for her. First, rather than just interpret it, she actually
sings the song. Also, she doesn't do her usual rolesque
strip tease. There's no fancy costume, no dazzling rhinestones. Instead,
she walks onto the stage and drops her robe just
as she utters that first line, Look, I'm standing naked
(36:30):
before you. Depending on the venue and its restrictions, she'll
either perform the song completely nude save for a pair
of high heels, or, as she puts it, and whatever
keeps me legal. She likes to lock eyes with some
of her spectators to make them feel squeamish as she
gets to the refrain, if love isn't forever, and it's
(36:52):
not the weather ham me my mother. For her, it's
about making the audience really think about what they're staring
yet what they may or may not be complicit in
who has the control in the room. Then. Ella's rendition
of a leather is tantalizing, searching, fierce, unsettling, everything Amos
(37:13):
intended the song to be. Then, Ella says she's received
a lot of feedback from audience members about how the
performance surprised and moved them. She attributes this to the
way Amos is spry, theatrical melody is juxtaposed with his
tracks rawness and directness, how well naked it is. Leather
stands on its own as this kind of I mean,
(37:35):
it's just a very it's a really confrontational piece of
songwriting and and I think timeless in that way too,
Like that song will be a bot forever. You know.
It's just like it's just got such a quality about
it that is really um Yeah, it's a little haunting,
it's really beautiful. The haunting beauty of Little Earthquakes had
(37:55):
a profound effect on accountless musicians. Well, Amos never came
a top for the artist, her influence could be felt
throughout the nineties and beyond. A slew of female singer
songwriters had walked down the road she helped pave a lot.
It's more Set if You an Apple Jewel, Paula Cole
Imaging Heat died O, Alicia Keys, Back for Lashes, lad
(38:16):
Rey f K Twiggs. I hear Tory Amos all over
Tyler Swift's recent albums, Folklore, and evermore. These women found
power in their vulnerability. Their mission was to get as
close to the truth as possible, no matter how dramatic
or dark, or ugly or uncomfortable or terrifying it. Maybe
the truth was their weapon. As Karen Binn says of Amos,
(38:39):
she became an esthetic two Little Earthquakes. We started trends
through that. We started other artists wanting to portray that
and wanting to be like her. Up next after the break,
(39:00):
we speak with Tory Amus herself about her recent book
Resistance and the dark night of the soul that propels
her to make and remake Little Earthquakes, one of the
most significant enduring albums of the nineties. Welcome back to
(39:36):
Where Were You In nine two. We've been discussing torre
Amos and a groundbreaking album, Little Earthquakes. Now it's time
to hear from the woman behind it, singer, songwriter and
piano virtuoso Torrimus. So the first question I'm asking guests
on this show is a very simple one, but also
a very very weighted, very layered one, I think, which
(39:58):
is where were you mentally? Physically? I was releasing a
record called Little Earthquakes, and so I reckon I was
probably in UM, the UK, going back and forth to
(40:18):
the States in the UK early and ninety two, and
the record came out and I started to go on
a world tour. But it was a rocky road, of course,
it was not. It wasn't the easiest. Uh, the conception
was not easy. The release wasn't easy. Um, and you
(40:39):
definitely had two to fight for this record. Yeah, I
had to fight. I had to fight for the record,
And the other thing is it was a process, so
it really took about four years if I'm if I'm
being fair and accurate about the whole thing, and it
happened in stages. Me and a Gun is a pivotal track,
(41:04):
a touchdowne in your career, and I mean you've spoken
already about the significance of it, and now it resonated
with people. And UM, take me to that moment when
you knew you had to write that song, where you
had to include it on the record, when the music
spoke to you insaide, Tori, this is maybe arrist this
(41:27):
is maybe going to be the most challenging moment of
your career, but we got to do this. Yes, Uh,
there are moments when you're guided and I was guided
to do this acapella, um. And there's a level of
(41:53):
trust that you have with the muses in the moment,
because my goodness, when you're creating and talking about some
of the harrowing things, um, which some of the songs
over the years cover cover difficult, you know, the skin
(42:14):
is off. We're on zipping getting to those deep emotions
that people have been harboring their whole lives and you're
and you're going into the wound, and how you go
into that wound and then how you hopefully the song
walks with someone through their dark night. You know that
(42:35):
that is what the muses um do and and so
being part of that there's a huge responsibility because you're thinking,
if I get this wrong, if I get this wrong,
if I tell this story wrong, then what I don't
want to do harm. I don't want to take somebody
to a place and get them shattered. You want to
(42:59):
take them to a place of recognition of Okay, this
might have happened to him, to her, to them, and
then they foind they find something empowering by it. Now,
maybe there's a long journey that has to happen from
victim to survivor maybe there's a lot of work that
(43:22):
will have to be done, but the first step is
always acknowledging and and not running away. You know from
from those um tragic moments that that that sometimes people
want to block out. So working with Rain all these
years has really taught me, taught me a lot. And
(43:46):
the people that are on that front line every day, um, wow,
what a commitment that they have. But it all started
by a song. That then people UM people embraced and
then told their story to me. I've always been, you know,
(44:06):
interested in why you decided to do it acapella and
if you were met with not to go back to
this word again, but resistance from from the label because
not only did this song not have guitars, it didn't
even have pianos, it had nothing. It was the most
it was the rawst thing imaginable. Well, there was a
faction at the label that didn't want this song on
(44:29):
and and said, this is you. This is really disturbing.
I'm disturbed by this. And I said, if you were
not disturbed by this, then that would be scary. You
need to be disturbed. Sometimes music wants to be disturbing.
That's what it is. So let's not resist that, let's
(44:51):
embrace that. But I had to really again, I had
to put up a resistance of capitulating. I had to
be strong. I had to stand by UM the songs,
and and also I had to listen to some of
the improvements that the team wanted me to make, because
(45:14):
you know, we're back to babies in bathwater, just throwing
everything out just to dig your heels and that's not
very clever, so sometimes taking on board somebody's comment, some
someone's critique of something so that we can improve it.
And that was a huge learning curve as a creator.
When do you have a think tank where you can
(45:34):
agree with some things and then you thinking, well, not
so fast. I think we're having a knee jerk reaction
and we need to be bold and brave and stand
by the acapella track and it stays on. And you
made you made concessions, yes, after you went back and
you said, okay, I'm not going to give you one song,
(45:54):
my guitarist, and I'm leaving four, including Girl, including Precious
Things for anyone who thinks who's not as familiar with
your music, which that's criminal, but victoriums cannot rock. You've
never heard Precious Things because hearing that is revelatory. The
(46:16):
drums alone are massive, and then the bridge is just explosive.
And also you use these voices throughout the record, and
you use them and Precious Things, and you use them
in and Girl, and they almost it's a male voice,
and it almost sounds demonic. It sounds dark. And I've
(46:40):
always you know, I've always wondered it really stood out
to me when I discovered this record and fell in
love with it because I had never really heard anything
like it. Can you tell me a little bit about that,
about those almost so things like precious things of voices.
I was going through, Um, you know, I was crossing
the river sticks, I was going to meet Persephone. I
(47:02):
was in hades because I had failed. But through the
failure and being on your knees and being in the muck,
which has happened at different times in my life. Not
all records come from there, but a few have, um
this one, Scarlet's Walk and Ocean to Ocean. They've come
(47:25):
from a place of deep despondency and and deep heartache
because you know, I'd lost myself. But the truth is
I had lost myself a long time before that, Jason.
I started losing myself when I started chasing it, and
(47:48):
when I started chasing it in my early twenties and
just saying well, I've got to get out of the barroom,
so I'll do anything to get out. I'll I'll write
any song I need to write, and so you know,
talk about the fame whore, the fame hore archetype. Um
(48:08):
just took over my brain and my my pen and
my piano, and I allowed her to do that. I
allowed her to do that. And so these songs and
these voices that you talk about, there's a there's a conjuring,
and there's a there's a narrative that I was trying
(48:29):
to tell sonically, I was trying to explain the level
of emotions that were happening at the time. It to me,
has always felt like this internal tug of war with
you and your past, with you and what people want
you to be versus what you want to be. Their
(48:52):
voice versus your voice. They're dragging you down. You're looking
for uplift. I'm dragging me down. So they're actually you,
you would say, those voices are or maybe maybe maybe
they were your Yes, my saboteur, absolutely spot on. I
have to take responsibility for listening to opinions, to chasing it.
(49:20):
And I'm sure any artist that's listening right now that
has has thought, Okay, you know, this is a hard slog.
When you get rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection.
We're talking years and years and years and years and
years and years. Then you go, okay, maybe I'm on
the Maybe this um singer songwriter talking about my emotions.
(49:46):
Maybe I'm on the wrong path, Maybe I need to
right in another way. So then you start listening to
what people and the labels are signing and what they
want to be, and all of a sudden you think, Okay,
well maybe I can do that. But just because you
(50:07):
can do it, because you have the musicality, doesn't mean
anybody's going to believe you, because it's disingenuous, because it's
a lie. Now, I think some people can create a
character and step into that character and it works and
they have the facility to make that happen. But that
(50:28):
was not working for me. So this was this was Yeah,
this was much you really wanted to. Like you said,
you wanted to rekindle your relationship with the piano, and
you wanted this to be your your record. You came
back with Girl, Precious Things. What were the other two tracks?
Oh my goodness, you're testing me now, I'm trying to
was a little Earthquakes one because earthquakes and tear in
(50:51):
your Hands here in your Head, which also has guitars. Yes, um, oh,
wonderful tracks. I can't imagine that record not having those tracks.
Looking back, do you think, my god, I'm so happy
they made it onto the record. I don't know what
it would be without or do you absolutely, Jason, because
without them and and Me and a Gun wasn't on
(51:12):
the original record that came later, Okay, So that was
something else you submitted after the guitar the guitars. You
gave them that, so you can probably you know, were
you thinking, I'm gonna give them this so that I
get a win later m h. When I was in England,
I wrote men a Gun after I turned in these
four and we recorded a song called China. So um
(51:35):
what had been the original twelve songs. Those songs became
B sides, the ones that were moved aside for the
four and then China and men a Gun. So yes,
it's a completely different record. So if Doug had gotten
it from the beginning, it wouldn't be what it is.
(51:55):
So that's where sometimes you have to kind of go
through the process. In the battle and out of the battle. Um,
I hung onto the pianos, but we got seven tracks
that because of his perception, um that we wouldn't have had.
So you know, that's where the magic of a relationship
(52:18):
can create something good. What do you think of the
current state of affairs with women in the music industry.
Do you think it has gotten easier harder? Do you
think there are new battles to fight? I think the
words easier and harder a tricky words because I don't
want to dilute it down to either one. There are
(52:41):
challenges always to stand by your art, and let's face it,
there there are some artists that have a tougher trek
up the mountain than others. Some doors open for whatever reason.
It might be the people that they're working with. I'm
(53:02):
not saying that they're not great, but there are some
artists out there that I know of who who have
really um sometimes had to do serious battle. And so
I think when you asked me about female artists today,
of course they have challenges. We had challenges. Then what
(53:23):
is true. What is absolutely affect though, is that you
have a big microphone that can get direct to the fans,
so that it's it's more difficult for somebody to gaslights
somebody or go somebody. That's how this happened a lot
adjacent in the nineties, where you don't have to sell
(53:47):
an artist to another label. If you've signed seven records
with an option on an eight album, that's sixteen years
of your life. And that's if you're really prolific and fast.
So in sixteen, you know, sixteen years or even twenty years,
that's a lot of records. That's a lot of time.
And what's some what a label can do is make
(54:08):
sure your value on the street plummets. So if there
is some kind of what do you call it persecution
going on, or if there's some kind of punishment situation,
because it's who do you think you are as an
artist standing up to a great CEO? And this happened,
um mentioning no names, but people would be shelved, so
(54:32):
they wouldn't be sold and and um, their their record
would just be shelved. And unless they had a really
good attorney, really good lawyer which costs a lot of
money to move that, then that's just a tragic story
that would happen. But now with social media, an artist
(54:53):
has the ability to share with the public because the public,
I don't think knows what happens behind the curR. They
certainly didn't know in the nineties. If you could say
to someone who had not has not listened to little
earthquakes yatt which again criminal. Uh, well, going into this
record telling this person what to expect and what you
(55:18):
think it's legacy is what would you say, Tori? Well?
I I guess the point of Little Earthquakes is encouraging
people to be their own person. And sometimes you don't
know exactly who you are, and that's okay, you know,
the given that everybody knows who they are, some people do.
(55:42):
Some people have tapped into that and accepted that. But
some of us had to try different pieces on pieces
of ourselves, and then you make this mosaic. You take
the pieces and then you find the whole. Sometimes some
of us are bits of stained glass, right that that
then make a different picture once you stand back from it.
(56:04):
Not everybody is a solid, you know, art walking piece
of art. Some of us came in pieces and that's okay,
And that's what I think Little Earthquakes helped me to find.
To work on this episode, I had to look back
(56:25):
at some pieces of myself I frankly wish to forget,
pieces from a distant past. When it came time to
press play and revisit Little Earthquakes, I realized I hadn't
listened to the album from start to finish. In years.
It was just too painful. I took a deep breath,
bracing myself for the memories that become flooding back. By
(56:48):
the time I reached the end of it, I felt
the same catharsis I had the first time I'd heard it,
the tenth time, the hundredth of time, the five time
I felt with a sadness I had as a lonely
broken teenager. But I also felt so much more powerful,
aware of how far had come, grateful, stronger. Until very recently,
(57:13):
I hadn't been back to my hometown in years. My
parents moved away after I graduated high school. My father died,
my mother met someone else, and moved to the country.
In a strange twist of fate, while working on this episode,
I found myself returning to that hometown for a funeral.
My dear friend from high school, the one who had
helped introduced me to the glory of Tory, had lost
(57:35):
her dad. To pay my respects and support her in
her family, I had to book a flight and go
face my past all those ghosts. Two days after the funeral,
after having nervously set foot in that place I used
to call home, I was sitting in my mom's rocking
chair on her front porch. Starting to write this script,
(57:56):
I again felt that adolescent sadness and the newer sadness
and adult sadness, sadness over lives, changing, sadness over death,
sadness over the passing of time. But I also felt proud, serene, comfortable,
knowing all those ghosts were pieces of me, Like torri Amos,
(58:19):
like the countless fans whose lives she figuratively and literally saved.
I had survived, I had found my voice. Where Were
(58:54):
You in ninety two was a production of I Heart Radio.
The executive producers are Noel Brown in Jordan run Talk.
The show was researched, written and hosted by me Jason Lafier,
with editing and sound design by Michael Alder June. If
you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us
a review. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, check
out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(59:17):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Where Were You In ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. A special note this episode features themes
of sexual assault and may not be suitable for all listeners.
The idea of being this like fierce, intelligent, open, vulnerable
person who is also like so fierce with her sexuality
(00:22):
and just being like whatever she wanted kind of blew
my mind wide, wide open. Welcome to Where Are You In?
A podcast in which I your host Jason Laufier, look
back at the major hits, one hit wonders, shocking news stories,
(00:43):
and irresistible scandals that shaped what might be the wildest,
most eclectic, most controversial twelve months of music effort. This week,
with her groundbreaking debut album, Little Earthquakes, Tori Amos ripped
the music world apart, mining her pain, her history, her fears,
her fantasies, and her path to salvation. The singer songwriter
(01:07):
reached deep into her core to craft a record this
sounded like nothing else before it. It's most poignant and
painful track was Me and a Gun, a song about
her sexual assault. Long before the Me Too movement, Amos
was a hero and crusader who spoke truth to power,
not only with her music, but with her work is
the first spokesperson for RAIN, the Rape, Abuse and INSUSTS
(01:29):
National Network, the largest nonprofit ani sexual assault organization in
the US. In this episode, we explore one of the
most gut wrenching, soul bearing innovative releases of the nineties
and the uphill battle Aimos face to get it made.
Sitting down in the I Heart studio, the musician reveals
the story and process behind Little Earthquakes in her own words,
(01:51):
reflecting on the legacy of the thirty year old touchstone
that ignited her career and literally saved lives. Certain records
leave their mark on you in ways you'll never fully comprehend.
They pull you from the mere, take you in their arms,
and whisk you away to another world. A world that
(02:11):
feels safer, a world where you're understood, where you find
the you you long to be. They're real you. These
albums hold up a mirror. They show you the truth,
which yes, can be painful, brutal even, but that truth
emboldens you, That truth sets you free. Torri mus debut
(02:33):
Little Earthquakes was one of those albums For me. I
discovered it years after its release. I was a troubled lonely,
bullied teenager. Most of the everyday connections I was establishing
felt tenuous and fleeting because I wasn't sure how to
be myself. I felt like I was acting portraying someone
I thought. People wanted me to be the smart one,
(02:54):
the funny one, the talented one, the pious one, perfect
But I was still a target ridicule. I was an anxious,
sexually confused drama geek, trying to distract my audience from
the secret behind the curtain. My parents marriage was imploding.
My father, a recovering alcoholic, had lost his job, fallen
(03:14):
off the wagon, and was having an affair. He and
my mother were waking me up every night with her
screaming matches. He was crashing cars and getting arrested. I
was getting straight a's and hating him for shattering the
illusion of perfection I was fighting to maintain, to save
me from the mayhem and the violence. My mother sent
me away to live with my Baptist minister and his wife,
(03:35):
somewhere closer to God. I had already started turning to
music for escape, but at that time one of my
few close friends was falling in love litori Amus, devouring
her discography, breathing in her angst and blowing out smoke,
rings of confidence, radiating a badass, cooler than now attitude.
I admired. I hitched a ride with her on that journey,
(03:56):
buying a copy of Little Earthquake. Because I awkwardly settled
into my fake bedroom with my new fake parents and
the parsonage beside our church. I had no idea what
I was in for, no idea how much the music
would speak to me. Me a wounded and furious queer
teenager who had somehow found himself shipped off to some
stranger's home where religion was a centerpiece, while my religion
(04:19):
was the beauty and trauma seeping from my headphones. But
enough about me, let's talk about Torri. Tori Imus was
a prodigy, drawn to the piano as soon as she
(04:41):
could talk, she was playing it too, and writing her
own songs. At three, she was admitted to the prestigious
Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore at just five years old, becoming
the youngest musician ever to be accepted to the school.
She studied classical, but it wasn't her bag and she
hated sight reading. Instead, in her free time, she immersed
herself in a very different kind of music, the guitar
(05:04):
rock of acts like led Zeppelin. She had a very
religious upbringing, Amos has said her methodist past her father
thought music would save her from boys, when in fact
she wound up connecting to rock music at a sexual
and spiritual level. Legends like Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant enthralled
and seduced her. As she writes Centauriums piece by piece,
(05:26):
her two thousand five book with music journalists and critic
and powers, quote, they were conjoined with their instruments. You
could not divide them, and you couldn't invade them either,
unlike the way the church and its ideas and invaded
my consciousness. She was looking for, as she puts it,
quote unquote, sensuality without the subservience. She wanted the profane
(05:50):
to become sacred. Like so many sutting rock stars, Amos
was rebellious and impudent, and for that she was booted
from the conservatory at the age of eleven. As you
can imagine, her parents were gutted, knowing her talent was
(06:11):
too exceptional to go to waste. Her father nudged her
out of the nest a couple of months before she
turned fourteen, the Reverend Dr Edison McKinley Amos drove her
to Georgetown to find her a gig performing. As she
writes in her two thousand twenty book Resistance, he had
quote more than a dose of mam arose in him,
referring to the memorable definitive stage mom in the musical Gypsy.
(06:34):
He became tories detager. She recalls the sermon he gave
her on the way to Georgetown, in which he said
something to the effect of, quote the way I see it,
you are drowning in your own self destructive mediocrity. You
have spent three years of ignoring your potential. Her father's
clerical collar on full display. The two hit up several
(06:57):
restaurants and bars, but no dice. Finally, they ended up
at a gay bar called Mr. Henry's, where the manager
agreed to take a chance on Amos. Sitting at the
bars upright piano. She took request, vowing to learn songs
she didn't know if she was invited to come back
to play. She was invited back the following Friday. Reverend
(07:17):
Amos was undeterred when churchgoers expressed concern that he and
his daughter were now affiliated with an establishment frequented by homosexuals.
In fact, his reply couldn't have been more astute, there
is no safer place for a thirteen year old girl
than in an all gay bar. As the years passed,
Amos would play for tony or establishments and for more
(07:38):
money in conservative patrons. She found herself in a hotel
bar near the White House, breathing in the cigar or
smoke of bankers, politicians, lobbyists, intellectuals, and corporate big wigs,
and receding into the background. She remained loyal to religion,
attending Sunday services until the age of one. That's when
she decided she needed to get out from under her
(07:59):
father's watchful eye. She moved to Los Angeles, where by chance,
she ended up living behind a Methodist church. She met
other artists, folks who like her, were looking to shut
the shackles of their past and forge their own path.
Her path, or so she thought at the time, was
a pursuit of a rock career. In the mid eighties,
(08:21):
the piano wasn't seen as cool at all, especially if
a woman was playing it. Yes, Amos apparently beat out
Sarah Jessica Parker for Kellogg's Just Right commercial, in which
she plays a Cereal box piano. You know that was Cereal.
Amos Is demos, which heavily featured the piano, were met
with disdain. As she writes in Piece by Piece, the
(08:44):
producers and A and our guys would listen and reply,
nobody wants this. The piano girl thing is dead. If
she wanted to get out of the bar circuit, she'd
have to ditch the instrument she had been conjoined with
for twenty years. Rock music and very Big Hair seems
like her only option, So in she formed the band
(09:06):
Why Can't Tori Read? Its name a nod to her
struggles reading music while studying a Peabody. Fun fact the
band's drummer was Matt Sorum would eventually play with Guns
and Roses. Atlantic Records put out the group's self titled
debut album. Sales report reviews were no better. Watch the
(09:32):
video for Why Can't Tori Read's first single, The Big Picture,
and you'll see traces of the dynamic performer and vocalist
Amos would become. She even plays a little piano in it,
but she's drowning in excess, stifled by overproduction. Decked out
in skin type black pants and a billowy sleeved top,
she prances around like a new wave pirate on a
(09:53):
sound stage made to resemble an l a back alley,
bearing her middrift and brandishing a ridiculous samurais or teased
and towering her signature bright red hair had never been
closer to God. The response to the Big Picture was
so tepid the label refused to grant the group funds
for another video, a shame since her second single, cool
(10:14):
on Your Island, while still very much a product of
his Time, is actually a really lovely, tropical flavored pop song.
Why can't Tori Read? The album tanked it's cover, which
featured Amos and long black gloves and a black boostier
rocking that same frizzy do and wielding that same random
mass samurai sword, couldn't have helped. A Billboard review noted
(10:38):
that Amos was a gifted artist, but concluded, quote, unfortunately
provocative packaging sends the inaccurate message that this is just
so much more bimbo music. Why can't Tori read? Whose
original lineup had disbanded even before the album was complete,
with session players filling in for its recording officially broke up.
(11:03):
Amos was angry, mortified, and crust fallen. When she and
I spoke recently, she recalled feeling like she'd hit a
musical rock bottom. The worst thing that I could ever
imagine in music was to put out a record and
be laughed at, be ridiculed. And and the thing in
(11:26):
l a that you really don't want to catch is failure.
You will not be going to any parties if you
have failed. And I remember walking into a little restaurant
that I always walked into, and these people were in
the music business, and as I passed by, they laughed,
(11:49):
they laughed at me. You know, it was it was
a fleeting moment because nobody cared. Failure gets brushed under
the rug and you get swept out, you know, with
the garbage. Amos had abandoned her true love, the piano,
to try to emulate the guitar rocks she idolized as
a kid. She'd sacrificed her integrity and sold herself to
(12:11):
market demands and trend chasing record execs. Now she felt
like she not only looked like the bimbo billboard had
culled her, but that she was that bimbo. I followed, uh,
what people were saying at the time, which has embraced
the synthesizer and and embraced this other type of sound.
And you know the piano's history that to leave it
(12:33):
back in the seventies. So in my dark night of
the soul after that album bombed, I crawled back to
the piano and realized that I had to find out
who I was. Within a few days of reading that
withering review, she ditched the makeup, hairsprained tight pants. She
rented a piano because she couldn't afford to buy one,
(12:55):
and vowed to never leave it betray it. She says again,
I've warned so many masks to try and get out
of the barroom that, um, I didn't know who I
was anymore. So the piano had to take me back
to when I was five years old studying at the
Peabody Conservatory and and take me back to a magical
time when when music was magic, and I had completely
(13:19):
burned that to the ground. To recapture the tori Amos
she thought she was destined to be, she began working
on demos for a solo album what would eventually become
Little Earthquakes. For four years, she played and she wrote,
working with producers Eric Ross and David Siggerson on a
batch of piano driven songs and adding some quote unquote
(13:40):
sonic sweetening. As Amost puts it, she was dressing the
way she wanted to, thank lots of Patagonia and finally
making the music she wanted to make. No barroom covers,
no glossy cock rock. She was proud of what she'd done.
It felt honest. Though why can't Tori read? It? Flopped?
Atlantic Records kept Amos's contract. The label was eagerly awaiting
(14:03):
her next effort, but the guys on top were unimpressed
when she submitted a batch of piano based tracks. They
didn't get it and thought it had no place in
the musical landscape and their minds. The girl and a
piano thing was still that on arrival at the time.
The piano was not cool. So Elton and Billy it was.
(14:26):
They were still touring the world and they were, you know,
these legends where it was um embraced and accepted because
of their track record. They've been around a long long time.
But really, uh, what was happening in the music scene
was women like Tracy Chapman and Susanne Vega. The guitar
(14:49):
um was being embraced, which is great, but the piano
was seen as some kind of well, let's put it
this way, part of the Seattle sound. Not It wasn't considered, Oh,
this could stand next to grunge and be badass for
(15:09):
this album to move forward, the men at the top
said the piano had to go, but Amos couldn't bear
the thought of that. She was freaking out, scrambling to
find a solution. When we turned in the record then
it was it was not accepted. So the suggestion was
from a producer to the head of Atlantic at the time,
(15:33):
I was Doug Morris. The suggestion was take all the
pianos off and put guitars on, and Doug and I
were able to come to a different outcome, which was
I would turn in a few more produced tracks, and
so I turned to Eric Ross and musicians that I
knew in l a Friends to come and collaborate, and
(15:54):
then that was the next stage. Up next after the break,
we look at how twenty six year old torre Amus
rebounded from another rejection to create a landmark album that
(16:15):
would eventually have a seismic impact on pop music the
(16:45):
year was. Though her label had essentially told Torre Amos
to ditch all her pianos for guitars to save her
first solo album, she was determined to get it made
without sacrificing her vision. She knew she couldn't defy the
powers that be, so she decided to write four more
tracks to prove her viability. The label agreed to let her.
(17:07):
The first of those four songs was Girl, attract she
wrote after she left l A and flew back to
d C. To see her parents. They drove out to
an old farm in the mountains of Virginia where her
father had grown up. She was surrounded by calm, far
away from the din of the big city. She took
long walks with her mother, who made dinners from their garden.
(17:27):
One night, while her mother was rocking in a rocking chair,
Amos sat at the upright piano and wrote Girl, the
track that would bridge the gap between the earlier rejected
songs of her debut solo album and what would eventually
become its final version. Yes, the song would feature guitars,
but the piano was its backbone, and Girl was about
Amos finding her backbone. So girl was documenting what I
(17:55):
was going through in my battle at that time, Girl
reflecting what I was living at the time, which was
she's been everybody else's girl. Maybe one day she'll be
her own. And it's like, yes, yes, t a it,
come on, You've you've got to stop being um such
(18:18):
a sponge and just saying Okay, I'll twist myself and
turn myself into whatever you want just because you want
to leave the bar room. What if you never leave
the bar room, you need to go there, because if
you can accept that, then you will write what you
need to write for your soul. The match was lit.
(18:51):
Amos had found her spark. She proceeded to write the
tracks Precious Things, Tear in Your Hand, and Little Earthquakes,
all of which and to both piano and guitars at
the label felt the girl and the piano thing was dead.
Amos proved she and her music were very much alive. Meanwhile,
label had Doug Morris had returned to one of the
(19:13):
original rejected tracks. Amos had submitted a piano and string
led song called Silent. All these years he had listened
to it going home in his car. One night and
he got it. The penny dropped and he said, Okay,
I realized this, this was one of the original twelve,
but I get it. I get it now, and I
(19:33):
think you need to go to England and I went,
pardon what what? He said, Yes, I have a counterpart
over there called Max Hole East West Records in London,
and he will get it. He will understand and his
team will understand what to do with this, and that
was the next phase of the journey. Amos flew to
(19:55):
England and recorded a handful of B sides and the
last two of the twelve tracks that to a a peer
on Little Earthquakes, China and Me and a Gun. She
handed over the new guitar least songs, along with six
of the original piano lead songs she presented. The label
accepted the retooled material. It would release Amos's first solo
(20:15):
album in January. One of Little Earthquake's most beloved songs,
Silent all these years has become Amos is calling card
like Girl. It's about losing and finding one's voice, a
story Amos knew all too well after why Can't Tory
Read bombed and she rekindled her love with the piano.
(20:37):
Amos was inspired to write it after reading Hans Christian
Anderson's The Little Mermaid with her young niece Cody, and
the classic fairy tale the titular heroine loses her voice.
As Amos said in a two thousand nine Rolling Stone interview,
watching Cody respond to this young woman giving up her
essence and power all for something else and that more men,
(21:00):
I realized that when she had no voice, that just
completely took me to the place where I needed to
go to reclaim it. Amos has said Silence all these
years is one of the most important songs in her
(21:21):
thirty year repertoire. As she writes in Resistance, she was
the life support that helped me survive a severe personal
and artistic crisis. The songs that would form little Earthquakes
were the sound of Amos finding her voice taking charge
of her destiny. She writes, it was a long and
(21:42):
arduous climb to song write my way out of a
very personal help. Silent all these years would become much
bigger than her. It would eventually serve as a rallying
cry for women and men who had been suppressed, degraded, harassed, assaulted.
It was the Ultimate Survivor's Anthem and the fall of
(22:05):
just before Silent All These Years was released as a single.
In the UK, the subject of sexual harassment had begun
dominating headlines. Anita Hill had come forward accusing U. S.
Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, her supervisor at the U
S Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of
sexually harassing her, a black woman. She presented her case
(22:29):
to a Senate Judiciary committee of fourteen white men. The
world watched an awe. I found it really intriguing that
people were gravitating toward that song. Anita Hill had just
been um on television. I saw her on television and
(22:49):
she said something to the effect of I couldn't stay
silent any longer, something to that effect, And within two weeks,
three weeks, Silent All These Years was getting played on
the radio in England. This was volcanic what was happening
with Anita Hill. This was shocking the world and the
(23:11):
courage that it took for her to speak. And it
just so happened that this song, Silent to All These
Years was coming out within a couple of weeks of
this shock. So it was really relevant at the time,
and when I was writing it, you have no idea
what circumstances are going to cross the song's path, which
then becomes part of the narrative. Silent All These Years
(23:34):
was not Amos's first single. It was included as a
track on her first single, Me and a Gun, but
because it was the more accessible song, radio stations opted
to play it instead, so the Me and a Gun
single was rereleased soon after, entitled Silent All These Years.
It's not that surprising that DJs avoided Me and a Gun.
(23:54):
The song is totally acapella, just Amos detailing her sexual assault,
which occurred when she was twenty one years old and
living in Los Angeles. Certain facts were changed well. The
narrator in the song was raped at gunpoint. Her attacker
had a knife. The imagery is nonetheless chilling, harrowing. Years
(24:16):
after the incident, she saw the movie Thumba and Louise,
in which a female character is nearly raped, and realized
she had to tell her story. As she recalled to
CBS News in two thousand seventeen, I think I saw
it fifteen times and then it began to come from
deep within. Amos has called the process of writing Me
(24:40):
and a Gun difficult and raw. The song itself is
difficult to listen to because it's so raw. Amos traces
the thoughts running through her head while she's being assaulted,
some horrifying, some absurd. Her account unfurls like a stream
of consciousness. She sings about Jesus, Mr Ed Carolina biscuits,
(25:05):
how she must survive her assault because she hasn't been
to Barbados, and I want to live, she vows at
one point, it is all so close to the bone,
you are right there with her. While playing Little Earthquakes.
Over the years, I would often skip the track. If
I didn't play it, it wasn't real, as Amos said
(25:28):
in an interview with Rolling Stone, and it was through
gut wrenching pain, hysteria. I think that the music began
to come in the quiet. In the silence being alone,
I couldn't speak to or be with anybody, So I
just went off to one of my secret private haunts
that you go in the world, You just leave everything
(25:49):
you know and go. That's what I did, And when
I came back out again, this song was walking hand
in hand with me. It became something I had to
sing to move forward. Music journalists and Powers, who collaborated
with Aimless on her book Piece by Piece, describes the
singer's place in the rock landscape as a precarious one.
(26:11):
Solo female artists then had to navigate a male dominated
industry and play the game while still trying to preserve
their vision. But they carried another heavy burden on their shoulders.
They were symbols, heroin's idols who were supposed to represent
their female listeners and speak to them, says Powers. At
(26:31):
that time, there were bands, there were some women bands
or some bands that you know, in which women and
men played together, But more often than not, the successful
artists were solo women or women who were perceived as solitary,
who were expected two articulate this kind of separateness, this
(26:53):
kind of solitude, this kind of like we're Joan of arc.
You know, I'm out here leading something, but but I'm
only listening to the voices in my head. Powers considers
me and a gun Amos his most impressive political statement
in the nineties. It's such a such an incredible, uh
brave act, but you know it's an acapella. She performs
(27:18):
it alone like silent. All these years, Me and a
Gun did for a strong connection with listeners. It too,
became an anthem, not for victims, but for survivors. For many,
it was the me too of its time. Amos told
me about a moment when she began to understand the
impact of the song and her music in general. A
(27:42):
young girl attending one of her shows was watching her
perform Me and a Gun and was deeply moved, and
she fainted during the song. Um. And after this show
they had taken her backstage, and she told me her story,
and she said, can I please come on the road.
(28:02):
I'll do anything. I'll do any I'll work in the
kitchens or whatever I can do. Um, because my stepfather
raped me last night, he will tomorrow night, and when
I get in tonight he will. And so I was,
of course, you're coming on the road with me and
we'll figure it out. But Amos too was young and
didn't comprehend the possible ramifications. I didn't understand what was happening.
(28:28):
But I saw the terror in the eyes and in
my um. Well, it's just trying to do something. You're
trying to do something. So I get a call from
legal coming into the venue saying you will be arrested
for kidnapping. You are crossing state line tonight on the buses,
(28:49):
and you will be arrested. And at the time, there
just wasn't um a place where I knew where to call.
Realizing her initial plan was just too risky, the singer
back down. She had to leave the girl behind. I
watched her go. I've never seen her again. I've never
(29:10):
heard from her again, and it plagues me to this
day because we have no idea. But this fan and
her tragic story stayed with Amos. She was inspired that
same year to become the first spokesperson for RAIN, the
Rape Abuse and Incests National Network, the largest nonprofit antisexual
(29:31):
assault organization in the US. It operates the National Sexual
Assault Hotline, a twenty four hour toll free phone service
that routes callers to the nearest local sexual assault service provider.
Since it was found, it has helped more than three
million survivors and their loved ones. Delicate, daring, damning, clever, funny, seductive,
(30:09):
and incendiary. Little Earthquakes was the sound of Torre Amos
finally finding her voice, or at least really starting to.
It's first track, Crucify, opens with lyrics that by turns
convey strength, defiance, fear, and vulnerability. Every finger in the
room is pointing at me, Amos things I want to
(30:31):
spit in their faces. Then I get afraid of what
that could bring. The final track, Little Earthquakes culminates with
the artists repeating what could be considered the album's thesis,
give me life, give me pain, give me myself again.
(30:55):
Amos knew that the truth is scary, messy, some times
almost unbearable, but she also knew that it must be
told at all costs. On this record, nothing is off limits. Lust, heartache, religion, masochism,
the beauty of childhood, the pain of adolescence, dreams, wasted dreams, nightmares, mortality.
(31:19):
The singer herself admits that the guitar is a label
insistent she include did indeed lend a gravity to the proceedings,
as does its colossal percussion, which often sounds tribal or primordial,
like it's rising from the planet's core and bursting through
the surface, echoing the title of the album. Gripping, seething
and unpredictable. Sounds like Girl, Precious Things and Little Earthquakes
(31:42):
swell into massive, soulful neo prog rock marvels. Amos's visual collaborators,
photographer Cindy Palmano and stylists and creative director Karen Bins,
were imediately shaken by the revelations and revolution of Little Earthquakes.
(32:04):
Paulmano handled not only the photography for the album, but
also directed all of its music videos. For the songs Crucified, Silent.
All these years Winter and China, Palmano tapped Binns, who
had recently relocated from Brooklyn to London, to help her
establish strong imagery that lived up to Amos's powerful storytelling.
The work the three women did together was stark and impressionistic,
(32:28):
conjuring the spear of the seventies but also feeling like
it was suspended in amber. It favored simple props and
intimate close up shots of Amos that make the viewer
feel like she's speaking to them and only them. The
trio's vision was cohesive, poignant, and haunting. Binns was a
hip black arc chick who paled around with Baskia in
(32:48):
downtown New York in the nineteen eighties. Amos was a
Maryland gal into bell bottom jeans and led zeppelin. The
two met for an evening coffee and hit it off instantly.
Amos would get to wear her flair legged jeans, but
with Bin's pulling the strings, she pair them with a
vintage swimsuit. Amos was drawn to Ben's pluck and her
(33:09):
sense of adventure. Binns was drawn to Amos's honesty and
her quote unquote radical points of view. When we spoke recently,
this is how Bin's described her relationship with the singer.
She is the woman that's going to make it happen,
that's going to save the life. Well, that's going to
come up with the answer, that's truth. You know. To
(33:31):
be a part of that for me was everything. That's
when I knew I was on the road with someone
to do great things. Bin's continues to serve as Amos's
stylist and creative director to this day. You might be
tempted to dismiss Bin's remarks about Tore Amos being the
woman who's going to save the life as hyperboly, But
(33:53):
looking back on my adolescence, when I was struggling to
make sense of my sexuality, my parents turbulent marriage, I
sure the health like she was my savior. Listening to
little Earthquakes not only felt like reading Amos's memoir, it
felt like reading mine. I was hardly alone. I discover
over the years that so many of my friends and
peers had seen their own heartbreak, confusion, and insolence in
(34:15):
these lyrics, heard their own pain and redemption and Amos's
commanding delivery. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to find
a thirty or forty something emo artsy type today who
hasn't been affected by Amos's music. Lola van Ella is
one of those types. She's in New Orleans based burlesque
artist who has performed Little Earthquakes eighth track Leather several
(34:37):
times for live audiences. The song, which tackles sex, power
and religion, is a jaunty, cheeky Vaudevillian tune that sounds
like it fell off the back of the Godspell truck
and straight into Amos's lap. It pulls its listeners in
instantly with its arresting opening lines, Look, I'm standing naked
before you. Don't you want more than my sex? I
(35:00):
can scream as loud as your last one, but I
can't claim innocence. Vanilla has been a fan of Amos
since her teenage years, when she, like me and so
many others, was trying to figure her ship out and
find her place in the world, she told me recently,
So I think there was like this big explosion of
both like raging hormones and also sexual curiosity. And I
(35:22):
think that combined with just like all of the normal
angsty ship that kids go through, Tori was like the
most It just she just spoke to me, and I
really loved how out there she was. I really loved
how feral she seemed when she would play the piano.
I really just loved her energy. The idea of being
(35:45):
this like fierce, intelligent, open, vulnerable person who was also
like so fierce with her sexuality and just being like
whatever she wanted kind of blew my mind wide wide open,
as as somebody who was, you know, discovering all of
that for myself. Van Ella's performance of Leather is atypical
(36:07):
for her. First, rather than just interpret it, she actually
sings the song. Also, she doesn't do her usual rolesque
strip tease. There's no fancy costume, no dazzling rhinestones. Instead,
she walks onto the stage and drops her robe just
as she utters that first line, Look, I'm standing naked
(36:30):
before you. Depending on the venue and its restrictions, she'll
either perform the song completely nude save for a pair
of high heels, or, as she puts it, and whatever
keeps me legal. She likes to lock eyes with some
of her spectators to make them feel squeamish as she
gets to the refrain, if love isn't forever, and it's
(36:52):
not the weather ham me my mother. For her, it's
about making the audience really think about what they're staring
yet what they may or may not be complicit in
who has the control in the room. Then. Ella's rendition
of a leather is tantalizing, searching, fierce, unsettling, everything Amos
(37:13):
intended the song to be. Then, Ella says she's received
a lot of feedback from audience members about how the
performance surprised and moved them. She attributes this to the
way Amos is spry, theatrical melody is juxtaposed with his
tracks rawness and directness, how well naked it is. Leather
stands on its own as this kind of I mean,
(37:35):
it's just a very it's a really confrontational piece of
songwriting and and I think timeless in that way too,
Like that song will be a bot forever. You know.
It's just like it's just got such a quality about
it that is really um Yeah, it's a little haunting,
it's really beautiful. The haunting beauty of Little Earthquakes had
(37:55):
a profound effect on accountless musicians. Well, Amos never came
a top for the artist, her influence could be felt
throughout the nineties and beyond. A slew of female singer
songwriters had walked down the road she helped pave a lot.
It's more Set if You an Apple Jewel, Paula Cole
Imaging Heat died O, Alicia Keys, Back for Lashes, lad
(38:16):
Rey f K Twiggs. I hear Tory Amos all over
Tyler Swift's recent albums, Folklore, and evermore. These women found
power in their vulnerability. Their mission was to get as
close to the truth as possible, no matter how dramatic
or dark, or ugly or uncomfortable or terrifying it. Maybe
the truth was their weapon. As Karen Binn says of Amos,
(38:39):
she became an esthetic two Little Earthquakes. We started trends
through that. We started other artists wanting to portray that
and wanting to be like her. Up next after the break,
(39:00):
we speak with Tory Amus herself about her recent book
Resistance and the dark night of the soul that propels
her to make and remake Little Earthquakes, one of the
most significant enduring albums of the nineties. Welcome back to
(39:36):
Where Were You In nine two. We've been discussing torre
Amos and a groundbreaking album, Little Earthquakes. Now it's time
to hear from the woman behind it, singer, songwriter and
piano virtuoso Torrimus. So the first question I'm asking guests
on this show is a very simple one, but also
a very very weighted, very layered one, I think, which
(39:58):
is where were you mentally? Physically? I was releasing a
record called Little Earthquakes, and so I reckon I was
probably in UM, the UK, going back and forth to
(40:18):
the States in the UK early and ninety two, and
the record came out and I started to go on
a world tour. But it was a rocky road, of course,
it was not. It wasn't the easiest. Uh, the conception
was not easy. The release wasn't easy. Um, and you
(40:39):
definitely had two to fight for this record. Yeah, I
had to fight. I had to fight for the record,
And the other thing is it was a process, so
it really took about four years if I'm if I'm
being fair and accurate about the whole thing, and it
happened in stages. Me and a Gun is a pivotal track,
(41:04):
a touchdowne in your career, and I mean you've spoken
already about the significance of it, and now it resonated
with people. And UM, take me to that moment when
you knew you had to write that song, where you
had to include it on the record, when the music
spoke to you insaide, Tori, this is maybe arrist this
(41:27):
is maybe going to be the most challenging moment of
your career, but we got to do this. Yes, Uh,
there are moments when you're guided and I was guided
to do this acapella, um. And there's a level of
(41:53):
trust that you have with the muses in the moment,
because my goodness, when you're creating and talking about some
of the harrowing things, um, which some of the songs
over the years cover cover difficult, you know, the skin
(42:14):
is off. We're on zipping getting to those deep emotions
that people have been harboring their whole lives and you're
and you're going into the wound, and how you go
into that wound and then how you hopefully the song
walks with someone through their dark night. You know that
(42:35):
that is what the muses um do and and so
being part of that there's a huge responsibility because you're thinking,
if I get this wrong, if I get this wrong,
if I tell this story wrong, then what I don't
want to do harm. I don't want to take somebody
to a place and get them shattered. You want to
(42:59):
take them to a place of recognition of Okay, this
might have happened to him, to her, to them, and
then they foind they find something empowering by it. Now,
maybe there's a long journey that has to happen from
victim to survivor maybe there's a lot of work that
(43:22):
will have to be done, but the first step is
always acknowledging and and not running away. You know from
from those um tragic moments that that that sometimes people
want to block out. So working with Rain all these
years has really taught me, taught me a lot. And
(43:46):
the people that are on that front line every day, um, wow,
what a commitment that they have. But it all started
by a song. That then people UM people embraced and
then told their story to me. I've always been, you know,
(44:06):
interested in why you decided to do it acapella and
if you were met with not to go back to
this word again, but resistance from from the label because
not only did this song not have guitars, it didn't
even have pianos, it had nothing. It was the most
it was the rawst thing imaginable. Well, there was a
faction at the label that didn't want this song on
(44:29):
and and said, this is you. This is really disturbing.
I'm disturbed by this. And I said, if you were
not disturbed by this, then that would be scary. You
need to be disturbed. Sometimes music wants to be disturbing.
That's what it is. So let's not resist that, let's
(44:51):
embrace that. But I had to really again, I had
to put up a resistance of capitulating. I had to
be strong. I had to stand by UM the songs,
and and also I had to listen to some of
the improvements that the team wanted me to make, because
(45:14):
you know, we're back to babies in bathwater, just throwing
everything out just to dig your heels and that's not
very clever, so sometimes taking on board somebody's comment, some
someone's critique of something so that we can improve it.
And that was a huge learning curve as a creator.
When do you have a think tank where you can
(45:34):
agree with some things and then you thinking, well, not
so fast. I think we're having a knee jerk reaction
and we need to be bold and brave and stand
by the acapella track and it stays on. And you
made you made concessions, yes, after you went back and
you said, okay, I'm not going to give you one song,
(45:54):
my guitarist, and I'm leaving four, including Girl, including Precious
Things for anyone who thinks who's not as familiar with
your music, which that's criminal, but victoriums cannot rock. You've
never heard Precious Things because hearing that is revelatory. The
(46:16):
drums alone are massive, and then the bridge is just explosive.
And also you use these voices throughout the record, and
you use them and Precious Things, and you use them
in and Girl, and they almost it's a male voice,
and it almost sounds demonic. It sounds dark. And I've
(46:40):
always you know, I've always wondered it really stood out
to me when I discovered this record and fell in
love with it because I had never really heard anything
like it. Can you tell me a little bit about that,
about those almost so things like precious things of voices.
I was going through, Um, you know, I was crossing
the river sticks, I was going to meet Persephone. I
(47:02):
was in hades because I had failed. But through the
failure and being on your knees and being in the muck,
which has happened at different times in my life. Not
all records come from there, but a few have, um
this one, Scarlet's Walk and Ocean to Ocean. They've come
(47:25):
from a place of deep despondency and and deep heartache
because you know, I'd lost myself. But the truth is
I had lost myself a long time before that, Jason.
I started losing myself when I started chasing it, and
(47:48):
when I started chasing it in my early twenties and
just saying well, I've got to get out of the barroom,
so I'll do anything to get out. I'll I'll write
any song I need to write, and so you know,
talk about the fame whore, the fame hore archetype. Um
(48:08):
just took over my brain and my my pen and
my piano, and I allowed her to do that. I
allowed her to do that. And so these songs and
these voices that you talk about, there's a there's a conjuring,
and there's a there's a narrative that I was trying
(48:29):
to tell sonically, I was trying to explain the level
of emotions that were happening at the time. It to me,
has always felt like this internal tug of war with
you and your past, with you and what people want
you to be versus what you want to be. Their
(48:52):
voice versus your voice. They're dragging you down. You're looking
for uplift. I'm dragging me down. So they're actually you,
you would say, those voices are or maybe maybe maybe
they were your Yes, my saboteur, absolutely spot on. I
have to take responsibility for listening to opinions, to chasing it.
(49:20):
And I'm sure any artist that's listening right now that
has has thought, Okay, you know, this is a hard slog.
When you get rejection after rejection after rejection after rejection.
We're talking years and years and years and years and
years and years. Then you go, okay, maybe I'm on
the Maybe this um singer songwriter talking about my emotions.
(49:46):
Maybe I'm on the wrong path, Maybe I need to
right in another way. So then you start listening to
what people and the labels are signing and what they
want to be, and all of a sudden you think, Okay,
well maybe I can do that. But just because you
(50:07):
can do it, because you have the musicality, doesn't mean
anybody's going to believe you, because it's disingenuous, because it's
a lie. Now, I think some people can create a
character and step into that character and it works and
they have the facility to make that happen. But that
(50:28):
was not working for me. So this was this was Yeah,
this was much you really wanted to. Like you said,
you wanted to rekindle your relationship with the piano, and
you wanted this to be your your record. You came
back with Girl, Precious Things. What were the other two tracks?
Oh my goodness, you're testing me now, I'm trying to
was a little Earthquakes one because earthquakes and tear in
(50:51):
your Hands here in your Head, which also has guitars. Yes, um, oh,
wonderful tracks. I can't imagine that record not having those tracks.
Looking back, do you think, my god, I'm so happy
they made it onto the record. I don't know what
it would be without or do you absolutely, Jason, because
without them and and Me and a Gun wasn't on
(51:12):
the original record that came later, Okay, So that was
something else you submitted after the guitar the guitars. You
gave them that, so you can probably you know, were
you thinking, I'm gonna give them this so that I
get a win later m h. When I was in England,
I wrote men a Gun after I turned in these
four and we recorded a song called China. So um
(51:35):
what had been the original twelve songs. Those songs became
B sides, the ones that were moved aside for the
four and then China and men a Gun. So yes,
it's a completely different record. So if Doug had gotten
it from the beginning, it wouldn't be what it is.
(51:55):
So that's where sometimes you have to kind of go
through the process. In the battle and out of the battle. Um,
I hung onto the pianos, but we got seven tracks
that because of his perception, um that we wouldn't have had.
So you know, that's where the magic of a relationship
(52:18):
can create something good. What do you think of the
current state of affairs with women in the music industry.
Do you think it has gotten easier harder? Do you
think there are new battles to fight? I think the
words easier and harder a tricky words because I don't
want to dilute it down to either one. There are
(52:41):
challenges always to stand by your art, and let's face it,
there there are some artists that have a tougher trek
up the mountain than others. Some doors open for whatever reason.
It might be the people that they're working with. I'm
(53:02):
not saying that they're not great, but there are some
artists out there that I know of who who have
really um sometimes had to do serious battle. And so
I think when you asked me about female artists today,
of course they have challenges. We had challenges. Then what
(53:23):
is true. What is absolutely affect though, is that you
have a big microphone that can get direct to the fans,
so that it's it's more difficult for somebody to gaslights
somebody or go somebody. That's how this happened a lot
adjacent in the nineties, where you don't have to sell
(53:47):
an artist to another label. If you've signed seven records
with an option on an eight album, that's sixteen years
of your life. And that's if you're really prolific and fast.
So in sixteen, you know, sixteen years or even twenty years,
that's a lot of records. That's a lot of time.
And what's some what a label can do is make
(54:08):
sure your value on the street plummets. So if there
is some kind of what do you call it persecution
going on, or if there's some kind of punishment situation,
because it's who do you think you are as an
artist standing up to a great CEO? And this happened,
um mentioning no names, but people would be shelved, so
(54:32):
they wouldn't be sold and and um, their their record
would just be shelved. And unless they had a really
good attorney, really good lawyer which costs a lot of
money to move that, then that's just a tragic story
that would happen. But now with social media, an artist
(54:53):
has the ability to share with the public because the public,
I don't think knows what happens behind the curR. They
certainly didn't know in the nineties. If you could say
to someone who had not has not listened to little
earthquakes yatt which again criminal. Uh, well, going into this
record telling this person what to expect and what you
(55:18):
think it's legacy is what would you say, Tori? Well?
I I guess the point of Little Earthquakes is encouraging
people to be their own person. And sometimes you don't
know exactly who you are, and that's okay, you know,
the given that everybody knows who they are, some people do.
(55:42):
Some people have tapped into that and accepted that. But
some of us had to try different pieces on pieces
of ourselves, and then you make this mosaic. You take
the pieces and then you find the whole. Sometimes some
of us are bits of stained glass, right that that
then make a different picture once you stand back from it.
(56:04):
Not everybody is a solid, you know, art walking piece
of art. Some of us came in pieces and that's okay,
And that's what I think Little Earthquakes helped me to find.
To work on this episode, I had to look back
(56:25):
at some pieces of myself I frankly wish to forget,
pieces from a distant past. When it came time to
press play and revisit Little Earthquakes, I realized I hadn't
listened to the album from start to finish. In years.
It was just too painful. I took a deep breath,
bracing myself for the memories that become flooding back. By
(56:48):
the time I reached the end of it, I felt
the same catharsis I had the first time I'd heard it,
the tenth time, the hundredth of time, the five time
I felt with a sadness I had as a lonely
broken teenager. But I also felt so much more powerful,
aware of how far had come, grateful, stronger. Until very recently,
(57:13):
I hadn't been back to my hometown in years. My
parents moved away after I graduated high school. My father died,
my mother met someone else, and moved to the country.
In a strange twist of fate, while working on this episode,
I found myself returning to that hometown for a funeral.
My dear friend from high school, the one who had
helped introduced me to the glory of Tory, had lost
(57:35):
her dad. To pay my respects and support her in
her family, I had to book a flight and go
face my past all those ghosts. Two days after the funeral,
after having nervously set foot in that place I used
to call home, I was sitting in my mom's rocking
chair on her front porch. Starting to write this script,
(57:56):
I again felt that adolescent sadness and the newer sadness
and adult sadness, sadness over lives, changing, sadness over death,
sadness over the passing of time. But I also felt proud, serene, comfortable,
knowing all those ghosts were pieces of me, Like torri Amos,
(58:19):
like the countless fans whose lives she figuratively and literally saved.
I had survived, I had found my voice. Where Were
(58:54):
You in ninety two was a production of I Heart Radio.
The executive producers are Noel Brown in Jordan run Talk.
The show was researched, written and hosted by me Jason Lafier,
with editing and sound design by Michael Alder June. If
you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us
a review. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, check
out the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
(59:17):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Jason Lamphier
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