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Tori Amos

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Tori Amos

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963 in Newton, North Carolina, USA) is an American singer-songwriter.

Amos led an influx of confessional female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and is noteworthy as one of the few modern popular music stars to utilize a piano as her primary instrument. She is known for lyrically opaque but emotionally intense songs that tackle a wide range of subjects, including sexuality, religion, patriarchy and personal tragedy. Some of her best-known songs include “Crucify,” “Silent All These Years,” “Me and a Gun,” “Cornflake Girl,” “Professional Widow” and “Spark.”

Amos has experienced limited chart success in the United States and the United Kingdom but has also enjoyed a large cult following. She is also known for making strange and spacey comments during interviews and in concerts.

Biography

Early years

She was born Myra Ellen Amos (called Ellen) to Dr. Edison & Mary Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963 during a trip from their home in Georgetown to North Carolina, at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, N.C. When Amos was 2½, her family moved to Baltimore, Maryland where she began to play the piano and attend her father's church every week. By age 5, she had written her first song. During these years, she spent formative time with her maternal grandfather, who was part Eastern Cherokee (an Eastern Cherokee with some European ancestry).

In 1968, she won a full scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music; she was the youngest person ever to attend the school. At age 11, her scholarship was discontinued due to the growing influence of popular music on her. Two years later, she began studying at Montgomery College and began playing at piano bars (many of them gay), chaperoned by her father. Reverend Amos began sending tapes of the songs she'd written to record companies at this time.

She first came to local notice by winning a county Teen Talent contest, and her picture was published in a local paper. The song she sang was called More than Just a Friend. By the time she reached high school, she was well known in the DC area. During her years at Richard Montgomery High School, she was elected Homecoming Queen, Most Likely to Succeed (female), Most Talented (female), and Best All-Around (female) and became involved with the drama group. As a high school senior, Ellen Amos co-wrote Baltimore with her brother Mike for a competition involving the Baltimore Orioles. This song won the contest and became her first single, released as a 7" pressed for family and friends. At around this time she adopted the name "Tori," after a friend of a friend told her that she looked more like a Tori than a Myra Ellen. She sang at a wedding and a funeral for the same family also.

Y Kant Tori Read (1985-88)

At age 21, Tori Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career. While there she managed to get several acting jobs, including a Kellogg's Just Right cereal commercial (for which role she beat out a then-unknown Sarah Jessica Parker). After playing a bar one night, she gave a ride home to a patron, who sexually assaulted her—an experience that would feed into her influential song "Me and a Gun". She also met Steve Caton, who played guitars on her albums through To Venus and Back (1999).

In 1985, Amos formed a music group, Y Kant Tori Read. The band's name is a reference to Amos’ facility with playing by ear at Peabody and her difficulty with playing from sheet music. Besides Tori herself, the group was comprised of Caton, Matt Sorum (later of The Cult and Guns N' Roses), and Brad Cobb. A year later, Atlantic Records gave Amos a 6 record contract. In 1988, her debut album Y Kant Tori Read was released and was panned by critics. Amos was devastated, and started working with other artists (including Stan Ridgway of Wall of Voodoo, Sandra Bernhard, and Al Stewart) as a backup vocalist. She also recorded a song called "Distant Storm" for the film China O'Brien; in the credits, the song is attributed to a band called "Tess Makes Good" with "additional vocals by Ellen Amos".

Little Earthquakes (1990-92)

Atlantic Records told Amos that she had to produce another record by March 1990. When she presented them with her initial recordings, they were rejected on the grounds that the "girl and a piano thing" wasn't going to sell. Extensively re-worked and expanded with the help of Steve Caton, Eric Rosse, Will MacGregor, Carlo Nuccio, and Dan Nebenzal, the record ended up full of raw, emotive songs recounting her religious upbringing, sexual awakening, struggle to establish her identity, and her rape. The Atlantic executives changed their minds upon hearing the edited version, and relocated Tori to England to launch the "new" album, which was released under the title Little Earthquakes.

Atlantic's European counterpart, East West, worked hard to promote the record. It was trailed by a promotional single featuring the emotional, unaccompanied desolation of "Me and a Gun", which received considerable critical attention. When the album was released in the UK, it went straight to #14. A month later, it was released in America to breakthrough critical success. The accompanying singles were "Me and a Gun", "Silent All These Years", "China", "Winter" and "Crucify". During this time, Tori recorded the song "Happy Workers" for the Toys movie soundtrack. A remix of the song is also included on the soundtrack.

Under The Pink (1993-94)

After touring throughout 1992 in support of Little Earthquakes, Amos went to New Mexico to write her second solo record, Under the Pink. It debuted at #1 in the UK and #12 in the US charts on its release in January 1994. It disappointed some critics, however, who considered it a step sideways rather than forwards from Little Earthquakes (but was voted among the greatest albums of the 1990s by Rolling Stone magazine some years later). In February, she began the "Under the Pink" tour. Four tracks were released as singles: "God", "Cornflake Girl" (a #4 single in the UK), "Pretty Good Year" and "Past the Mission", which featured the vocal contribution of Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. A limited edition release of the album commemorating the Australian tour included a second disc entitled "More Pink", a collection of B-Sides including a cover of the Joni Mitchell song "A Case of You".

Around this time an Austrailian tabloid managed to take "up-skirt" photographs of Amos during a live performance at which she was not wearing panties. Amos did not comment on this until eleven years later, citing it as her impetus to not return to Austrailia during a tour between 1995 and 2005.

Amos also contributed the song "Butterfly" to the soundtrack for the 1994 movie Higher Learning as well as a cover of the R.E.M song "Losing My Religion".

In June, 1994, Amos co-founded RAINN, The Rape Abuse and Incest National Network. RAINN is a toll-free help line in the US which connects callers with their local rape crisis center. In 1995, Amos, duetting with Robert Plant, contributed the song "Down by the Seaside" to the Led Zeppelin tribute album Encomium.

Boys For Pele (1995-96)

Soon after the "Under the Pink" tour, Amos released her third solo album, Boys for Pele. Mystical, experimental, and substantially longer than the first two albums, it garnered mixed reviews. The erratic lyrical content of its songs seemed unduly indecipherable to some fans, and the instrumentation, including church bells, bagpipes, and a gospel choir, kept it away from the mainstream scene. The accompanying tour was known as the "Dew Drop Inn" tour; as on the album, Tori performed on harpsichord in addition to piano. The single "Caught A Lite Sneeze" was a hit in the UK, and the Armand Van Helden remix of "Professional Widow" became a massive club hit.

Boys for Pele is Amos' most successful transatlantic chart release, reaching UK #2 and US #2 upon its release in January 1996. As with her first four solo albums, it has been certified platinum for sales of more than a million US copies.

The movie Twister released in 1996 included one of Amos' songs, "Talula" also found on the Boys for Pele album.

Also in 1996, Tori began her own label, internal to Atlantic Records, called Igloo. Her first signing, which she co-produced, was the band "Pet" headed by lead singer Lisa Papineau. Their self-titled debut album included the song "Lil Boots" which was also featured on the soundtrack for The Crow: City of Angels.

From The Choirgirl Hotel (1997-98)

Her fourth solo album, From the Choirgirl Hotel, was released in May 1998. A departure from earlier records, it was much more lavishly produced and featured arrangements which expanded considerably on her core piano sound, including elements of dance music, electronica, and jazz. Again reviews were mixed but mostly positive (voted among the best albums of the year by Q magazine), and the album was generally feted by Amos fans.

The lead single "Spark" became a substantial hit in the spring of 1998, and was followed by "Jackie's Strength" and the club hit "Raspberry Swirl." The album itself followed the commercially successful trend of its predecessors by reaching UK #6 and US #5 upon its release and selling more than a million copies in the US alone.

The accompanying tour, Amos' first with a full band, was known as the "Plugged '98" tour. Another tour followed in 1999, the "Five and a Half Weeks" tour with Alanis Morissette prior to the release of her To Venus and Back double album.

To Venus And Back (1999)

Next, Amos planned to release a live album - a document of her first band tour from 1998. She decided to write a small amount of new material to be included as a bonus disc on some releases; ultimately, however, she produced a double album's worth of material which was released in September 1999 under the title To Venus and Back.

The album included a live disc (subtitled Live: Still Orbiting) as well as a disc of new studio material (subtitled Venus Orbiting). This was sparser both in production and arrangement than From the Choirgirl Hotel, but like that album featured overt dance music and electronica influences and a relatively subdued piano sound.

Some of the topics Amos covered included a massacre on the U.S.-Mexico border in Ciudad Juárez. Its closing track "1000 Oceans" was much closer in spirit to her early songs and, along with the more experimental "Bliss," "Glory of the '80s," and "Concertina," became a radio and chart hit. The album itself, on account of increased price due to its double-disc format, reached UK #22 and US #12, making it transatlantically the worst-charting original album of her career.

Strange Little Girls (2000-01)

Amos took a break from both touring and writing in 2000 and that September gave birth to her daughter, Natashya, after suffering three miscarriages. She returned in September 2001 with Strange Little Girls, an album of cover versions of songs written by men about women. Despite her break, the album was still a commercial success, reaching UK #16 and US #4, her best position there for almost six years.

This time, the reviews were quite uniform: most critics saw the album as a mixed bag, praising the unlikely reworkings of Eminem's "97' Bonnie and Clyde" and Slayer's "Raining Blood", but panning the sprawling, messy version of John Lennon's cryptic "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and the rocky, fuzzy version of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold".

The accompanying "StrangeLittleTour", Amos' first entirely solo tour since 1994, was acclaimed particularly for its solo renditions of Boys For Pele, From the Choirgirl Hotel and To Venus and Back material and is perhaps deemed her best tour.

Scarlet's Walk (2002-03)

In 2002 Amos released her eighth major label release, Scarlet's Walk. Described as a "sonic novel", the 18 track album proved to be a landmark for a variety of reasons. Stylistically, Amos put drums and bass guitar at the forefront, using her piano playing as an accent rather than a highlight. Thematically, the album explored Amos' alter ego Scarlet and her cross-America trip post-September 11, 2001. Through the songs, Amos explores the history of America, the American people, Native American history, pornography, masochism, homophobia and misogyny. The first single, "A Sorta Fairytale", was a top 10 hit in the US. It was also released in the UK with a B-side entitled "Operation Peter Pan".

The second single, "Taxi Ride", was an homage to the late make-up artist Kevyn Aucoin, a friend of Amos'. A contest was held online to create a music video for the song, and it reached the top 40 in the US. The third single, "Strange", was remixed with a country and western feel and almost became a radio staple.

In an attempt to prevent Internet trading of the album, Amos, in conjunction with her husband and crew, invented a special kind of glue to bind closed portable CD players containing the album. These were then distributed to the press on the understanding that they would be returned within forty-eight hours. If an attempt was made to open the player, both it and the disc inside would shatter. The success of this attempt was so great that the record industry began to follow suit.

As an additional incentive to buy the album rather than download its contents illicitly, the CD also served as a key to access "Scarlet's Web", a web site which featured several songs ("Tombigbee", "Seaside", "Mountain") as well as various photographs and journal entries that were not available elsewhere. Tori was nominated for a Grammy for the packaging of the limited edition version of the album. It included a bonus DVD as well as collectible items such as charms, stickers, a map, and mock Polaroid postcards. Once again, the album was a commercial success for Amos, reaching UK #26 and US #7 and becoming her biggest-selling album for five years.

Tales of a Librarian (2003)

In 2003 Amos released a sonic autobiography, Tales of a Librarian (she does not believe in the term "greatest hits"). Rather than compiling hit singles and tossing them into a generic hits package, Amos instead chose to revisit the mixing of many of her own favourite songs from a career spanning over a decade, focusing on those she thought were not fully realised in their original recordings. Recording under the premise that a librarian is a "chronicler", Amos pieced together the album, adding two new songs and two re-recorded b-sides: "Angels", "Sweet Dreams", "Snow Cherries from France" and "Mary". Though the album charted #40 in the US and #74 in the UK, making it her weakest-charting album to date, sales have evened out in the long-term.

Welcome to Sunny Florida (2003-04)

In 2004 Amos released a DVD/CD set called Welcome to Sunny Florida. The DVD featured a full-length live performance from her 2003 "On Scarlet's Walk" tour. The CD compiled several previously Internet-exclusive B-sides from Scarlet's Walk, with some new tracks on a bonus disc entitled "Scarlet's Hidden Treasures". The tracks on the bonus disc are "Ruby Through The Looking-Glass", "Seaside", "Bug A Martini", "Apollo's Frock", "Tombigbee", and "Indian Summer". The set reached UK #1 on the Music Videos and DVDs Chart, and #2 on the US equivalent, qualifying it as a commercial success.

The Beekeeper and Piece by Piece (2004-05)

In late February of 2005, Amos returned to superstardom with a new face and a new concept album, The Beekeeper. The album deals with topics like death, adultery and romantic conflict, and makes brief reference to ancient Gnostic mysticism. It was leaked to the Internet over a month before its release. Early reviews described it as her most lyrically accessible, and reminiscent of her first album. The music is perhaps Amos' most melodic, and sees a move towards a more groove-based sound, evidenced by the appearance of the London Community Gospel Choir on four songs and Amos' whirring B-3 Hammond organ.

"Sleeps with Butterflies" was the first single released from the album, with "Sweet the Sting" following in the summer. The album itself reached UK #24 and US #5, making Amos one of an elite group of women to have secured five or more US Top 10 album debuts. Despite this feat, however, "The Beekeeper" remains Tori's weakest selling album to date (233,000 copies, even less than the 1992 and 1996 EP's "Crucify" and "hey Jupiter".)

The accompanying tour, dubbed the 'Original Sinsuality Tour,' began April 1, 2005 and was Amos' first solo tour since 2001, bringing out piano and organ. The tour also encompassed Australia, Amos' first trip there to perform since 1994. The tour received mixed reviews, but continued into the late summer of 2005 through Europe, including appearances in June 2005 at the Glastonbury Festival and Patti Smith's Meltdown festival in London. The European Leg of the tour included what fans believe to be some of Tori's strongest performances yet, with several Americans following the tour oversea. The tour finished in the States as the 'Summer of Sin', which received much better reviews than the U.S. Spring Leg. Amos played over 202 different songs on the tour.

In conjunction with the album, Amos released an autobiography entitled Piece by Piece; co-authored by rock music journalist Ann Powers, it delves deeply into Amos’ obsession with mythology and religion. It explores her songwriting process while telling the story of her progression into fame.

In July of 2005 Amos released an exclusive 45 track compilation in conjunction with the ITunes website called "iTunes Essentials". It consisted entirely of previously released material. In August of 2005, Amos released the first two of six official "bootlegs" of the Original Sinsuality tour. Each double-CD was recorded live. Amos had expressed frustration with the inferior sound quality of various unofficial bootlegs. The first two discs were recordings of the Chicago and Los Angeles shows.

Official bootlegs (2005)

Amos, a long outspoken adversary of live bootleg recordings, announced in late 2005 that she would be issuing a series of live "official bootlegs", all recording during her "Original Sinsuality" tour. A website was established at Tori Amos Bootleg Boutique where hard copies of the releases were made exclusively available. The packaging was minimal and featured butterfly/insect artwork following the theme of her The Beekeeper album. They were sold for $13.98 each and featured full concerts from her 2005 tour. Soon after the hard copies were released online retailers began offering the entire albums for paid download.

Six two-CD sets were released in all:

Chicago - April 15, 2005, Auditorium Theatre; Denver - April 19, 2005, Paramount Theatre; Los Angeles - April 25, 2005, Royce Hall Auditorium; Manchester - June 5, 2005, Carling Apollo;

Next album (2007)

Amos' next album, her third full-length release for Sony/Epic, is tentatively due for a release in 2007. No recordings have been made, although Amos has spoken about intended songs for inclusion.

In an interview in May 2005 she stated that she has not got a particular sound ready for her next album, "which usually means we're doing something quite different." She played a new 12-minute song on piano at a sound check in Bonn, Germany, on June 23, 2005, and later told a fan that she hoped it would be on her next album, which featured the refrain "I heard you scream from the other side of the mountain."

In an August 2005 interview for In Newsweekly magazine, she stated that she had been working on new material, and soon after described the new songs as "little embryos." At a concert on August 23, 2005, Amos stated that she was inspired to write three new songs after visiting the water park in Saratoga Springs for her birthday, and then in an interview the following day said that there were some songs that she had been working on for several years that may appear on the next album; Amos also stated that she has "a Warrior Woman inside of [her] that will come out on the next record."

In her 2005 book Piece by Piece, Amos also wrote about a song called "Melusine," which she said is linked with "Marys of the Sea" from the album The Beekeeper. "Melusine" is expected to appear on the next album, a fact verified by author Neil Gaiman on his website journal as early as October 2004.

CD singles, B-sides and non-album contributions

Early in her career Amos garnered a reputation for releasing an extensive catalogue of CD singles in conjunction with her albums. This catalogue of music collectables is so vast that a book was actually published titled "Tori Amos Collectables" which served as a partial (to that date) photographic journal detailing the variety of world-wide releases. One of Amos' best selling early releases was a five track E.P. for her song "Crucify" which was sold at regular album prices. Amos' penchant for including non-album B-sides on each of her singles played a major factor in her initial popularity. In particular her cover of the Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from the "Crucify" E.P. garnered major press attention and critical lauds. Though in recent years the production of CD-singles has become less common, Amos continues to release non-album B-sides through the internet.

Amos also established herself early-on as a willing contributor to film soundtracks (including Mission Impossible 2 and Great Expectations) as well as to compilation projects and projects by other artists (including Al Stewart, Tom Jones, and Sandra Bernhard). As such she had, to date, accumulated a catalogue of over 100 non-album tracks (not including live versions of album tracks or remixes.)

Conflict with the music industry

(The majority of the allegations made here surfaced in Amos' biography "Piece by Piece". They can neither be proven or disproven, and are simply assertions made by Amos; however, they have not been contested by her former record label.)

Conflict between Tori and the music industry has surfaced on various occasions. Her first label, Atlantic Records, wanted her 1994 album Under the Pink to be changed significantly before its release. She told them that it was not going to happen, and that if they brought it up again she would burn the masters.

After the release of her album From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998, she had a meeting with the heads of the label. Amos questioned why her work was not being promoted properly. Atlantic revealed that they preferred to spend their capital trying to break newer artists, who they felt would make them more money. Amos demanded to be freed from her contract, but the label refused. Instead, they chose to exercise their option to keep Amos on board until she had released an additional three albums, as stipulated in her contract. According to Amos, they felt their power had been challenged and intentionally would do as little as they could do (legally speaking) to promote the works so that her career would be decimated by the time she had a chance to switch to a new label.

The label fully followed through on their threat. For example: artists usually provide the label with a section of seats to each of their concerts that can be given to local radio honchos in exchange for the promise that the artist's new work would be heavily played. Atlantic Records gave Amos’s tickets while requesting that other artists on the label be played as a return favor. As a result, Amos's album sales steadily declined.

Amos, however, managed to beat the label at its own game. She experienced a sudden burst of creativity which formed into the 11 new songs on the first disc of her fifth album, To Venus and Back. In place of a previously planned album of B-sides, Amos released a double disc (including a disc of live material from her "Plugged '98" tour) thereby fulfilling two of her three remaining albums in a single release.

Ultimately in 2001, Atlantic records released a widely distributed press release listing the acts that they were "dropping from the label" due to alleged poor album sales. Among them were singer Poe and Amos. Amos claimed her contractual obligations had simply been fulfilled and that neither side was interested in renewing the contract.

If Amos’s reputation suffered from her dealings with Atlantic, it did not do so for long. After establishing a new deal with Epic Records, she achieved her most successful American radio single to date, "a sorta fairytale" (2002/3). Despite this, however, Epic has resorted to the same "promotion" Tori was receiving from Atlantic, a strategy which selects inappropriate songs for singles and does not promote; Amos has as a result not had a song on radio sans AAA since 2003's Minor Adult Top 40 hit "Taxi Ride."

Acting

Amos’s acting has been limited to fringe performances. She performed in a variety of musical theater productions during high school; notably footage of her performance in "Gypsy" has been shown in television specials about her career. She has long been asked to audition for roles, notably the female lead in The Crow: City of Angels. She appeared in the telesoap Trial by Jury in 1987 as a woman who was accused of killing her married lover. Also in the late 1980s she appeared in a television commercial for Kellogg's Just Right, a breakfast cereal. Amos has commented on a variety of roles from this era that she auditioned for but did not receive; notably she was offered the role played by Lea Thompson in the notorious flop Howard the Duck, but the offer was retracted when Thompson expressed interest. (Amos was later offered the role of the keyboardist in Thompson's character's band but had other commitments.) She was also offered the role played by Andie McDowell in the film Groundhog Day. Most of her contributions to cinema have been musical. In 1998 she coordinated the soundtrack of the film version of Great Expectations, weaving breathy, ethereal vocals through the film's background. She made her first character appearance in the 2003 film Mona Lisa Smile as a big-band singer.

Fans

Tori Amos' fan base began building as soon as her first solo album was released. The tour to promote that album, Little Earthquakes, stunned audiences all over the world, and left them wanting more. Her fan base remains one of the most devoted of any artist, and they overwhelmingly report on how kind and generous she is when meeting in person. Many persons outside of Amos' fanbase perceive her fans to be overwhelmingly devoted to the point of sociopathy, something that has been commented on by the media and towards which Amos has responded alternately with ire or acknowledgement. In particular there is an infamous interview with an Austrailian radio station during which Amos turns overtly hostile towards her interviewer when he refers to her fans as zealots.

Tori refers to her fans as "ears with feet,"and has been quoted as saying "don't ever call yourself fans; you're ears with feet". (source: http://groups.msn.com/ToriSpeak/tourinfo.msnw). Amos coined this term circa 1996 and has since abandoned it, consistently referring to fans as simply "fans" during press in 2005; said fans still hold onto the term devoutly, however.

Despite arguably fading commercial popularity, Amos remains one of the world's top touring artists and her tours regularly sell out. She was responsible for one of the world's highest-grossing tours in 2002-03 and her fans remain devoted and interested in her new music. When her 2005 tour was announced, tickets sold out for all 14 concerts on the opening US leg in under 10 minutes. Despite equally successful spring and summer tours in Australia and Europe, her 2005 Summer of Sin tour has only seen two concerts (Boston and Houston) sell out, the rest of which did not due to large venues being booked in preparation for a band tour à la Scarlet's Walk, which never happened.

Tours

Amos is recognised as one of the most-toured artists in modern popular music. She has been performing in bars and clubs from as early as 1976, and under her professional name began playing clubs in London in 1991, but her first "proper" tour began in 1992. Since then, she has performed more than 900 "proper" concerts as part of tours, and was voted by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003 as the fifth-best live act. Her concerts are notable for their changing set lists from night to night.

  • Little Earthquakes Tour: Amos' first world tour began on January 29, 1992 in London and ended on November 30, 1992 in Auckland. She played on a Yamaha keyboard each night solo. The tour included 142 concerts around the globe.
  • Strange Little Tour: This tour was Amos' first since becoming a mother in 2000 and her first tour fully solo since 1994 (Steve Caton was present on some songs in 1996). It saw Amos perform on piano, Rhodes electric piano, and Wurlitzer, and though the tour was in support of her covers album, the set lists were not strictly covers-oriented. It began on August 30, 2001 in London and ended on December 17, 2001 in Milan, including 55 concerts. It is widely considered by fans her best tour.
  • Original Sinsuality Tour/Summer of Sin: This tour was Amos' first solo tour since 2001 and began on April 1, 2005 in Clearwater, Florida, with Amos on piano, two organs, and Rhodes. The tour also encompassed Australia for the first time since 1994. Amos returned to the road in August and September for the Summer of Sin North America leg. The entire concert tour featured 82 concerts, and six full-length concerts are to be released in 2005 as official bootlegs, the first four already available.

Trivia

  • The character Delirium in Neil Gaiman's comic The Sandman bears a striking resemblance to Amos, which is all the more surprising since the character was created before Gaiman and Amos met and became close friends. "Delirium was created before I met Tori, but they steal shamelessly from each other," Gaiman once said. Since their meeting in 1991 Gaiman and Amos have collaborated on several projects. Gaiman also appears in many of Tori's songs. The character of Delirium was in fact based on another friend of his, Kathy Acker.
  • Married English sound engineer, Mark Hawley, in England in a non-denominational wedding with Irish musicians playing Celtic tunes; Mark is the inspiration for her songs "Northern Lad," "Snow Cherries from France" "Jamaica Inn" and "Goodbye Pisces". A b-side, entitled "Never Seen Blue", is also said to be about him. They have a daughter, Natashya Lorien Hawley (nickname "Tash"), born on September 5, 2000.
  • In 2001, Amos was voted the fourth greatest female artist in rock music by Q magazine behind PJ Harvey, Madonna, and Kate Bush.
  • The hurricanes striking the state of Florida in 2004 tossed a boat onto Amos’s property there, destroying her pier. Despite many pleas for help the owner could not be located and Amos eventually wrote a letter to officials stating that "perhaps our local craftsmen could come cut it into parts". After the letter was sent, the owner surfaced.
  • In November of 2004, Michael Edison Amos (Tori's brother) died in a car crash in North Carolina.
  • Following the #5 debut of The Beekeeper on the US album chart in 2005, Amos joined an elite club of female artists to have achieved five or more Top 10 debuts in the US - this club includes Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, Céline Dion, Janet Jackson, Madonna, Britney Spears, LeAnn Rimes, and Barbra Streisand.
  • In March of 2005, The Beekeeper became Amos' highest-charting album in Germany, at #8.
  • On May 18, 2005, at her concert in Melbourne, Australia, Amos performed a cover of Kylie Minogue's "Can't Get You Out Of My Head" in support of the Australian-born singer, the day after Minogue's breast cancer was announced.
  • Once while playing a benefit concert for RAINN, Amos was joined on stage by Maynard James Keenan of Tool, who sang "Muhammad My Friend" with her. She said that he sang to her and baked her cookies when she felt depressed.
  • In March of 2005, in an interview with the BBC, Tori spoke of her experiences with the hallucinogen Ayahuasca. She describes how the experience influenced the writing of the song "Father Lucifer."
  • Amos co-wrote and recorded a song with Michael Stipe for the soundtrack to the film Don Juan DeMarco; the song was not accepted by the label and has been indefinitely shelved. Footage of the two rehearsing the song was shown on television.
  • Many other musicians have expressed their admiration for Amos's work. Polly Jean Harvey, Robert Plant (they are friends, and according to Amos Robert Plant was the one who informed her about the release of her first bootlegs), Shirley Manson from Garbage, Bjork, Alanis Morissette (who toured with Amos in 1999), Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Dream Theater are among those.
  • Amos has contributed more original (not previously-released) recordings to soundtracks than any other pop singer in history, including "Higher Learning," "Mission Impossible 2," "Toys," "Great Expectations," "Mona Lisa Smile," "Hand of Fate," "and "China O'Brien".

Quotations

  • "I'm a church ministers daughter and my parents were ferocious in their belief that there is a Heaven and Hell. I was drawn to my maternal Grandfather. He was a haven for me, a lighthouse. A cherokee, his belief in the spirit world was fluid and warm, not scary in the least. Death, in his view, was part of life. We would die but our soul would continue and there was a Great Spirit that touched everything." -Daily Mail (U.K.), November 18, 2001
  • "I wanted to marry Lucifer…I don't consider Lucifer an evil force….I feel his presence with his music. I feel like he comes and sits on my piano…"
  • "We can't separate ourselves from what we create. I've heard a lot of people say, 'They're only words.' But words are like guns; they're very powerful."
  • "There are times when you miss playing with musicians you respect. And there are times when you love the freedom that improvisation gives you. When you're alone, you can change up even before your hands start moving, even before your brain can. You can just say, 'Oh, not working. Moving to another song. Gone. Next.' There is a freedom in that if you use it to your advantage."



Discography

Year Title Label Peak Billboard 200 U.S. Chart Position
1979 Baltimore M.E.A. Records N/A
1988 Y Kant Tori Read Atlantic/East West Records N/A
1992 Little Earthquakes Atlantic/East West Records 54
1994 Under The Pink Atlantic/East West Records 12
1996 Boys For Pele Atlantic/East West Records 2
1998 From the Choirgirl Hotel Atlantic/East West Records 5
1999 To Venus And Back Atlantic/East West Records 12
2001 Strange Little Girls Atlantic/East West Records 4
2002 Scarlet's Walk Epic/Sony 7
2003 Tales of a Librarian Atlantic/East West Records 40
2004 Welcome to Sunny Florida/Scarlet's Hidden Treasures (DVD/CD Set) Epic/Sony N/A
2005 The Beekeeper Epic/Sony 5
2005 Tori Amos: iTunes Essentials iTunes N/A
2005 Auditorium Theatre Chicago, IL 4/15/05 Epic N/A
2005 Royce Hall Auditorium Los Angeles, CA 4/25/05 Epic N/A
2005 Manchster Appollo Manchster, UK 6/5/05 Epic N/A
2005 Paramount Theatre Denver, CO 4/19/05 Epic N/A

Videography

Year Title Label Info
1992 Little Earthquakes WEA/Atlantic Records (VHS Only)  
March 17, 1998 Tori Amos: Live From New York (VHS only) PID Video  
November 17, 1998 Tori Amos: Complete Videos 1991-1998 Atlantic Records/WEA (VHS Only)  
April 8, 2003 A Sorta Fairytale Sony Music Video (DVD Only), in jewel case or DVD case  
May 18, 2004 Welcome to Sunny Florida/Scarlet's Hidden Treasures Sony Music Video (DVD Only), in jewel case or DVD case; DVD/CD Set  

See also

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