Tori Amos: Piece by Piece

by Amos, Tori

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  Even in live performance the songs are like moving paintings, and I—I as a person and performer that may be changing inside and outside at different times during a performance—cannot change who and what the songs are: they are sovereign. However, there is backstory to a song, there are conversations that the songs have with me from day to day—in that way they are alive. But “Leather” will be “Leather” whether I become an old granny who has become a vegetarian or a celibate carnivore. “Leather” will not change herself for me, and I cannot ask her to and would never. But in live performance—because of, let's say, current circumstances in the world that day, in the city where I'm playing that day, in me that day, in Jon and Matt that day, in the people that will come to the show that day, the perspective of “Leather” can change that day, and that is because how we look at her is constantly changing. For instance, there were these working girls in Vegas who sent me a note (through a person who knew a person who has a sister, yada yada yada). These gals worked as a duo act, and apparently while doing what they do best they would put “Leather” on repeat. This is a part, a piece of “Leather's” exposure to other people that has pulled her into their lives. So when the duo act comes to one of the shows, clearly they will be having a different sensory feeling experience from one had by, say, my mother. The duo act will have pictures in their memory banks that will rise to the surface, no different from my mother, when “Leather” is played.

  The difference is only what the pictures are. My mom always tells me, “You know, darlin’, I just love the swing of that piana. I used to sell a lot of honky-tonk records back in Carolina.” So as you can see, these factors, compounded with how “Leather” is used in the narrative of the show that night, may change my relationship to the song itself and how I feel about her. Because a live show is sonic theater, for a few simple hours in my life or in the life of a person in the audience, we are descending to the underworld. Here, very personal internal feelings about ourselves, other people, and issues can take off their masks and show us where they truly stand. Then, as we ascend into the fifth and final act of the show, we can choose what we want to take back with us: a piece of our underworld self that, frankly, the cheating boyfriend may need to meet, or the boss that doesn't appreciate you, or the terrorizing Bitch at school—or maybe you're the terrorizing Bitch, maybe I am. Some fragments that took their masks off while we were on this underworld journey sometimes walk quietly with me. Only I know that after the show they will be staying with me as my figurative New Renter in my seafront condo, down the street from Pituitary Lane, behind Heart Terrace. Then again, some unmasked Beings that I see during a performance find me once I'm back in my dressing room and receive from me the “Okay you, thank you for the perspective and the vision, but in this century you can't just chop people's heads off and feed them to your cats, and I know these guys are bad guys, and thank you for the vision. So you can haunt me during the show again in Indy”

  Songs can be used as an exit door from an ideology that might not be working for the people. Songs can become the getaway car from a relationship, especially if you are in a relationship with a guy who is driving the physical getaway car. Songs can penetrate when hours of talking with a parent only seemed to build up walls. Songs can tear them down in minutes if the parent and the child are willing to listen. Songs can remind you that you don't want to leave this space, although your bags are packed and ready to go. When we think of space, some of us stand outside at night and think of it as this endless outer space. For me, the songs are that space we can walk into. For me, songs are a state, a state of being that can make you see your physical place completely, in a new fresh way—or a state so vast and varied, like the state of New Mexico. The belief that the songs are a space doesn't change. When I walk in it, though, what I choose to hang on the walls and bring into the room can change. But whatever the space, the challenge is to find the root of what and who the song Being is. It might be a lullaby, or a waltz. If I can go back to the song's original form and retain the core of that form, then I can still thoroughly justify the interior decoration, what I call the rearrangements of the song, in whatever the space is.

  CHELSEA LAIRD:

  When she sings certain songs now, they come from a very different place, and they've evolved into completely new arrangements. “Hey Jupiter,” for example. You listen to the version she plays live next to the one that's on the album—the lyrics are the same, but the arrangement is entirely different. I think that's just because that song kind of became something else for her. That's true for basically any song from Boys for Pele, because she wrote that album when she was going through a dark time in her life. When she sings those songs now they naturally come from a different place, because her life has evolved on so many levels since she originally sang them. She's retained the integrity of the songs but sings them from a different perspective.

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  Some songs are easier than others to apply to my life now. “China,” for example. It doesn't have to be about the same people who inspired it. I can feel the distance getting close … That situation can be with a girlfriend, or with a different man than the one I wrote it about. With other songs, it's hard for me to connect them to my situation. But the songs aren't overly sympathetic with me about that. They sort of imply “Look, T, we're not just existing for you to relate us to just your little life. If you can't relate to us on a specific day then try to see our narrative occurring in someone else's life who is going through what we're talking about.”

  SONG CANVAS:“Winter”

  It's always shifting. When I sing “Winter” now, I don't necessarily get the same pictures I did on the last tour or the tour before or the tour before or the tour before. When I was writing that song, I was considering a relationship between a girl and her father, or grandfather. Or any male who held that space. Because as we know, some fathers don't hold that space. My perspective isn't always about a girl and her father. “When you gonna make up your mind? When you gonna love you as much as I do?” There was a moment for me when those lyrics were referencing Kevyn Aucoin. Especially when he died, that was my need. The song allows me the space to have my perception of it as I go through my changes, and yet I still hold the integrity of a girl and her father when that song enters my body in live performance. But I, as Tori, will feel what I feel, and see the pictures I see, and the songs have always allowed me that as long as I retain their DNA integrity.

  It can even come back to parenting. I will do something, say something to Natashya, and I'll just realize I have created a space that I did not want to create for her to walk into. Say she was very naughty and I said something like (and I am cringing as I write this), “Because you did this, this is why Mommy's going to London this weekend.” So then she thinks that when Mommy leaves it's because she's naughty. I saw that happen once, and it was as if a thousand prisms were shattered—I began to see in my own being how the tape plays, what I hear when somebody makes a rhetorical move like that. I did something that I'm going to have to deal with and work with now a lot, whenever I leave her. So when I sing “Winter,” sometimes now I see a girl walking over that hill with a mommy. Yet the pictures can still be of my Poppa, and my father. It's not always an either / or when I'm singing a song live. I can liken it much more to snapshots or Polaroids that I can flip through in a book, that tug and pull on my emotions with every turn of a phrase. But now other experiences affect me when I sing, “When you gonna make up your mind? When you gonna love you as much as I do?”

  ANN: Before she can gather perceptions onstage, Amos must create a framework. She does so through an unusual approach to compiling her set lists. Most pop musicians rely on repetition to please a crowd hungry for familiar hits, and to make their own night's work less complicated. Contrary to the myth of ecstatic release, an arena rock show now is much more likely to feel like a Broadway show, slickly plotted and perfectly rehearsed. In
Amos's view, this common approach serves neither the artist nor the audience. Her fans, who of en follow her tours, would grow bored; worse yet, so would she. And the great resource of her voluminous songbook would grow musty with disuse.

  Varying her selections each night over the years, Amos has slowly developed a way of creating a story through set construction. The songs she selects (aided by Chelsea Laird, who sits by her side with a large black pen each night, modifying the list) speak to one another, falling into an imagistic narrative reflecting the particular time and place of each performance.

  TORI:

  Where am I … ?

  “You're in Chicago, lady,” answers a voice in front of me in a coffee shop line, as Chels jumps back into line after answering her cell. It's nine a.m.

  I try to find a corner table. Okay. Where am I? I close my eyes and start scanning my memory banks, the memory banks that hold the lockboxes that hold the keys to the place called Chicago's memory banks. I've played here many times … First at a place called Shuba's in 1992. Yes, I remember. I can see that girl / woman / banshee playing for her life at the piano. Playing before the two Marys knew they had to marry within my Being for me to tap into the Feminine without my circuits being blown to bits. These two would have to integrate inside my Being for me to one day be able to play the hebe-jesus into the piano, shake those insurmountable mounds (don't I wish) above and below my navel line, have a sensual whisper with Husband before the buses leave, and be feeding a slightly-later-than-midnight bottle to my two-year-old.

  “Hey, they didn't have your usual, so I got you this instead,” Chels says with a devilish grin.

  “I'm desperate. I'm sure it's heaven.”

  Chelsea's weapon is open and she's ready to type.

  This is our ritual. Every day.

  Okay so where am I? This is the core question we must weave into our net before we cast it out into the information pool. Before the set list can be written, there are things I want to know.

  “So, Chels, let's get a rundown of what's on at any kind of museum in or around the city—a rundown on any other event or events occurring here this month, from the mundane to the strange. Let's get a synopsis of the week from the Tribune online, the last twenty-four hours from the BBC (since we have the previous twenty-four from the day before and so on and so forth …) and a National Read in the last twenty-four. The past and the present are the threads that together will give us the clues to what our Chicago tapestry should be.”

  With a trustee Americano at her side, Chels will ride like Brunhilde as Valkyrie on her laptop to Valhalla in Asgard and back to Chicago by sound check.

  Chels reminds me that we already have a history of this area precon-tact (pre-European contact).

  “So let's pull that up, and a bullet-point history of Chicago.”

  “Do you want an update from the Smoking Gun?”

  “Oh, yeah, the more the merrier. We've got two shows here, right?”

  “Yep, today and tomorrow. Are we focusing only on today's set list?” (I see that hopeful Chelsea we-are-so-up-against-it-girl-Friday look in her eyes …)

  “Both. They go in tandem.”

  “Thought so.” And off she goes.

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  Every night the set list is based on the things that cross our path, and we work with a palette. You're given what you're given. Cities have different essences, colors, smells. Letters come across to us that we read or don't read. The time of year matters; maybe we're near a holiday like Easter, and that means certain songs are appropriate. What's on the news figures in. Sometimes what happens is sad, you know—Tash fell down and scraped her knee and called for Mommy and I didn't know what to say. And she said, “Make it go away” and I couldn't, and I glanced at the television and was reminded that there's a war going on. Narratives arise in moments like that. We consider using everything, and some things we discard.

  There are also musical considerations, of course. I know how the key of each song connects with the next; I chart out the rhythms in my mind. We also have to keep stations—there's the Wurlitzer station and the piano station, and the Rhodes, and I have to balance the time at each one. I also need to provide time for Matt and Jon to adjust to each song, you know, reach for a tambourine or quickly tune down. It has to move—I do not like lag. The last thing I want is for the show to turn into, you know, “The Best of Ricki Lake and Tori” with the audience between songs.

  That approach has no flow. I want each performance to be like a sonic film.

  Some consistency is important from show to show, because people just want to hear certain songs, but it's also crucial that we don't seem as if we're repeating ourselves out of thoughtlessness. Many artists work toward one show; they do their homework and spend weeks on their set, like a seminar. But I have a big catalog and don't see the value in doing the same thing every night. I mean, what is this? Like, our seventieth show? Or eightieth, since November. Each night I have to be somewhat different. What worked six weeks ago in Radio City won't necessarily work for Santa Barbara, which won't necessarily work two shows later in Albuquerque. We're different people now, here in the moment, at every show.

  The only thing that started being consistent was that we would have the metaphorical fire at the beginning every night. The Apache woman calls all of us to ceremony with “wampum prayer.” That's not Scarlet singing. They're different women. She's calling me and the musicians and everybody to the fire. We're burning the sage; it's very much a place for us to kind of shed, I think. Shed the outer world, our habits, the rational. And to walk into the world of metaphor and symbol and story.

  ALISON EVANS:

  There are certain nights when Tori lets the audience know what's behind the construction of the set list. On the Scarlet tour, she dedicated one set to Lori Piestewa, the first woman to die in combat in the Iraq conflict, who was a member of the Hopi tribe. Tori mentioned that during the show. The show was in Boise, Idaho. Other times the theme is not obvious at all. It can start with one line extrapolated from one song that on this night relates to a certain subject. On a different night when there's a different thread running through the set list, that same line could have a totally different meaning.

  DAN BOLAND:

  The biggest challenge is that she has such an arsenal of songs, and I don't know what she's going to play on any given night. I have to keep it fresh no matter what she chooses. With most artists, it's the same set over and over. You create your theatrical piece and it goes from beginning to end. But with Tori—the Austin show on the Scarlet tour is a perfect example. The entire first half of the show, she played all amber and red songs. One of my friends who was there was poking me—he's like, “Don't you ever use blue? Don't you ever use green?” “Yeah,” I said, “that's what I use for all the songs that are in the pool that we're not playing tonight!”

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  Sometimes I play a song a lot and I just need a break from it. Especially when we've been on a long tour, certain ones pop up a lot. Sure, we'll do the better-known songs, but it might also be a B-side that recurs. “Take to the Sky” was very much a part of the Scarlet tour. Especially with that nod to Carole King, when I break from the original song and put in a bit of “I Feel the Earth Move.” But for that tour, I would change it to, “I feel my earth move under my feet” instead of the earth. I was going back to one of the major themes of the album, that relationship to the land, getting people to realize that this is something they must claim. I wanted to communicate the idea that your relationship to your nation, and to the earth, is very personal. When we toured in the summer, I wanted to be outside as much as I could be. I wanted to get people back to the land, to their relationship with the land, with music that's working with the land. And Carole King's song, just like the outdoor settings, would also take people back to an innocent sensuality—kissing on the lawn on summer nights. I'd been there.

  We were also doing “Sweet Dream
s” a lot, because I wrote that during the first Gulf War, when we were in very similar circumstances. I wrote it in 1990 about another George Bush and another Middle Eastern war, and more than a decade later people were requesting it again. It became relevant, a commentary of the time.

  I was performing at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., of all places, when the Afghan war was announced. I remember that the whole city was in a vise, in the iron grip of a choice that was bringing up all kinds of emotions in people. The backstage was filled with union members— they had pulled Andy Solomon aside and asked him if I would play “Raining Blood” (my cover of a Slayer song) that night because a few of them had boys that were heading out and they didn't know if they would see them again. A lot of them felt as if this one was the beginning of the end of days, whatever that means to people. I was about ready to take the stage in a couple hours, a few blocks from the White House, having to hold a space for a crowd with mixed emotions. Anger. Grieving. Retribution. Reticence. All these being the components of the evening, to name a few. I've played many shows, and this one was one for which I had to remember my training from Poppa. How to make the music like a stream of clear water for people to come drink. Then have their thirst eased by that drink of music and harmony and words in a discordant world on a discordant day, whatever their political beliefs were. I did play “Raining Blood” that night for all the fathers and mothers who were going to have to let their flesh and blood go. To have their flesh and blood exposed.