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Tori Amos - Biography
| 07-07-2006 20:15 | 0 reaction(s) | add reply |
The red-haired goddess known as Tori Amos, was born Myra Ellen Amos to Dr. Edison and Mary Amos on August 22, 1963. She was born at the Old Catawba Hospital in Newton, NC, while her parents were visiting her grandparents-to-be. She favored her maternal grandfather who she affectionately called Popa. Later, Tori would adopt a lot of his views of the world and the little wonders that natured scattered around for her to find. Tori was 2 and half when she would mimic whatever her brother Mike and her sister Marie would practice that day on the piano (she could not even reach the pedals yet). Playing by ear, she soon played classical pieces, popular tunes, and anything else she heard.
It seemed only logical to the Amos family that Tori should expand her horizons as a pianist when she reached 5 years of age and could play anything she took a fancy to after hearing it once. So, they suited her up and made her the youngest student te Peabody Conservatory of Music had ever accepted. Although she felt that the teachers saw her as "a thing that could do things", she fit very well with other, older classmates. Her new found friends helped her discover and fall in love with the sounds of the Beatles, Led Zepplin & Jimi Hendrix.The fun of playing piano was threatened when instructors at the school forced Tori to learn how to read music in order to "break her ear". Tori's way of playing the classics did not soother the teachers' ears. She loved to play the songs as she felt them; needless to say, when Tori reched 10 years old, her way of playing the classics led to her being kicked out of school.
After leaving the conservatory and awhile of studying, Tori decided to reach her goal and become a rock star. She started playing in clubs with her father as a chaperone - surprisingly, gay bars were the first ones to open the doors to a 13-year-old and her Methodist minister father. In the fall of 1980, Tori cut her 1st single with the private pressing of a song co-written with her brother Mike. The song was entiled, "Baltimore", written in honor of the city's baseball team, the Baltimore Orioles. She was awarded from the city's Mayor for "The splendid quality of public service which you have rendered". In 1983, she changed her name from Myra Ellen to Tori, after a friend's boyfriend said she looked more like a Tori - thus, this became her stage name. She then flew to San Francisco to record a demo at Narada's Automatic Studio, her focus turned from the piano to her voice and home recording equiptment.
One year later, Tori left home to head to L.A. where she would later face the worst night of her life. After offering a ride home to a fan, he in turn raped and threatened to kill her. She promised herself never to speak of the experience and tried to move one. In 1987, she signed with Atlantic Records to record an album with a band she had put together called Y Kant Tori Read. This album was a total disaster - she went from child prodigy to being called a bimbo. Needless to say, she took this failure very hard. It was during this stint in L.A. that helped to pay the rent she did a commercial for Kellogg's Just Right cereal; ironically enough, she was chosen over now-popular actress Sarah Jessica Parker (of Sex and the City fame) to be in the spot.
After the failure of Y Kant Tori Read, Atlantic decided to give Tori one more chance and gave her until March of 1990 to create a new album. A slap in the face will certainly break down some barriers while in the safety of your own home. Tori took that new vulnerability and poured it out on paper. After Doug Morris, Atlantic's Presidenet listened to her new material, he said, "What is this shit? I don't know what I'm going to do with you. Where's Rocket Man?", remembering that Tori had told him before that the new material would be more piano-oriented. Another slap in the face but this time it took some help from her friends to put her back into her "Rock Chick" mode. She picked herself back up and followed friends' advice and kept true to herself. Creating a faerie ring in her living room, she placed some envelopes in the middle, vowing that each would get a name and become a song. The first to be born was, "Take to the Sky". But only the names were new, the songs were exactly the same as they were the last time Doug Morris heard them.
In early 1990, Atlantic grew worried at the likelihood of having hits by March and sent Davitt Sigerson to "help" Tori with her songs. When he got to her house, he heard what she had written and promptly left, saying "You don't need my help". Toir let Atlantic take another listen and they said she should take a chance in London. Off she went and loved every minute of it - playing clubs was a setback, but then again, she wasn't getting fired. People loved her, for who she was and the writer she truly was.
Tori spent a lot of time in England soaking up as much information as she could about the country, and revelling in the history and literature inspired by the land. She always was a history buff, particular to the Norman invasion, so this was her chance to immerse herself. When the album finally pierced the American market, she was most of the time mistaken as British. That didn't stop her fans from taking to her like a duck to water. It was during this stay in England that Tori went to the cinema to see "Thelma & Louise" and was once again reminded of the horror she experienced many years before in L.A. "Me and a Gun" was penned later that day and sung for the first time at the gig she played the same night. This would later become one of Tori's trademark songs and the inspiration for the creation of RAINN, the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network, an organization which puts sexual abuse victime in touch with a local Rape Crisis Center.
Later in 1992, Tori released the Crucify EP which included a solo-piano version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", this offered a hint of what was to come on her next album, Under The Pink, released in 1994. The 1st single released was "God" which got its share of attention from critics and listeners alike. It highlighted the idea of God needing a woman to take care of him. Another song off of the album was "Cornflake Girl" which speaks about the way woman just shred each other apart. Tori has said this album was about the violence that exists between women - the meaning of the title "Under the Pink" was inspired by Tori's idea that "underneath it all, we're all pink" After a lenghty relationship with Eric Rosse, who co-produced both "Little Earthquakes" and "Under the Pink" he and Tori went their seperate ways. The breakup provided a lot of fuel that created the fire on "Boys For Pele", which Tori explains is more like a novel, each chapter exploring a different theme. Also, this album is said to be about Tori "stealing the fire from the men in her life".
Following the Pele tour, Tori discovered she was pregnant and was, "over the moon about it". Devastatingly, only 3 months into the pregnancy she had a miscarriage. She has talked in several interviews how it affected her and inspired a lot of the songs on her 4th album, "From The Choirgirl Hotel", released in May 1998 - which would later debut at No. 5. "The songs started coming not long after I miscarried. The strange thing is, the love doesn't go away for this being that you've carried. You can't go back to being the person you were before you carried life. And yet you're not a mother, either, and you still are connected to a force, a being. And I was trying to find ways to keep the communication going, along the way on the search, sort of walking with the undead, I would run into these songs. The one thing they kept saying to me was I had to find a deep woman's rhythm. You begin to create where you can. If you can't create physical life, you find a life force. If that's music, that's in the music. I started to find this deep, primitive rhythm, and started to move to it. And I held hands with sorrow, and I danced with her, and we giggled a bit. And this record really became about being alive enough to feel things, no matter what it is."
Quite to everyone's surprise, in March 1998, Tori was wed to British sound engineer Mark Hawley. It was at his Cornwall, England, studio that she recorded Choirgirl. The couple were married at a medieval castle in the U.K. After touring nonstop for the release of "From the Choirgirl Hotel", Tori decided to take a break from recording original material and decided to start a 3 cd project which would include hard-to-find b-sides and material from past singles and bootlegs. But, after getting in the studio and getting on a roll, the plan was modified to include live material recorded during the "Plugged 98" Tour and all-new songs, on 2 discs. Also to her fans' delight, she embarked on the 5 1/2 Weeks Tour with Alanis Morrisette which lasted from August 18th and ended in L.A on September 25th. "To Venus and Back" her 5th album was released in late 1999. On September 5th, 2000, Tori gave birth to her first child, a daughter, and all three are doing fine. Upon feeding her daughter for the 1st time, she noted that, "An ounce of breast milk is even more potent then the finest tequilla". In 2001, Tori Amos returned with the covers album Strange Little Girls, which also marked her last release for Atlantic.
Even today, Tori remains indefinable. Her ability to start and sustain the new wave of intelligent, literate female songwriting has been reaffirmed by 5 subsequent albums, including her 2003 release Scarlet's Walk. The album reveals not only Tori's musical prowess and exploratory lyricism, but also offers a rare peak into her more carefree, conversant side.
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