Tori Amos: In the Studio

by Jake Brown

Overview

Featuring exclusive interviews with people who worked alongside Tori Amos in the studio — sound engineers, one of her producers, and backing band members — as well as in-depth research into the singer herself

Tori Amos: In the Studio explores this groundbreaking artist’s career album by album. From her childhood as a piano prodigy to her first band, her seminal album as a solo artist to her prolific years of recording and touring, Tori Amos has refused to play by the rules of the recording industry and instead fearlessly forged her own path and musical identity.

Amos achieved note early in her career by being one of the few alternative rock performers to use piano as a primary instrument. Known for her emotionally intense songs that cover a wide range of subjects including sexuality, religion, and personal tragedy, Amos has sold over 12 million albums worldwide, and seven of her studio albums have debuted in the top ten on Billboard’s Top 200 chart. In this book, Jake Brown goes behind the music to reveal Tori Amos’ artistic process while creating 11 studio albums — from Little Earthquakes to Midwinter Graces — that are beloved by her devoted fan base and praised by music critics.

This is the third title in ECW’s In the Studio series by music journalist Jake Brown. Other subjects include Heart and producer Rick Rubin.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550229455
Publisher:	ECW Press
Publication date:	05/01/2011
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Music biographer Jake Brown is the author of 31 books. He is the author of Heart: In the Studio (ECW, 2008) and Rick Rubin: In the Studio (ECW, 2009). He lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Read an Excerpt

“I could not have written Little Earthquakes without skinning my knees ... at a certain point you go, ‘Well, what is my thing? Who am I? What am I all about?’” Those were the questions Tori Amos had to ask herself before she could release a second album for Atlantic. After the sting of failure with Y Kant Tori Read, she retreated from music. It was a friend of hers, Cindy Marble, then singer of a band called The Rugburns, who helped her find her sound. Cindy asked Tori to play piano for her — and Tori played and played for hours. Tori recalls the advice Cindy gave her: “You play your piano and you sing your songs. That’s what you do. And you’ve been trying to get away from it and be Lita Ford or somebody for the past five years, but this is what you do. Doesn’t matter if it’s hip or cool or not.” Despite the fear of failing again — and this time truly exposing her artistic self — Tori decided that she would take down the walls, be herself, and write music that was true to her own vision, and not in imitation of anyone else’s style.

The process of writing songs began with literally reintroducing her instrument into her home. “I didn’t even have a piano in the house,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “I’d trashed that before. So I rented this old upright and just started to write what I was feeling.” The songs that would eventually become Little Earthquakes were not originally conceived as material for her next album. “I was just writing so that I didn’t go crazy. I wrote for me. I wasn’t thinking about making a record: I knew that one had to come eventually, that’s how things work if you’re not dropped by your label. They do expect another one before you die ... But, you see, I was working on the dying part, so making another record wasn’t first and foremost on my mind.” With her realization that she “had to do music for the mere expression of it,” Tori learned “to not be afraid of exposing myself. And if people wanted to piss all over it, then I’d just let it drip off the tape.” After a lifetime of trying to please others, Tori had finally decided to put her own artistic vision at the forefront.

The songs that formed Little Earthquakes acted as a sort of diary of feeling and experience that Tori was finally giving expression to. “It was like I was birthing myself. It was as if I was in a tunnel and I didn’t know the end. It was the first time I really allowed myself to feel things, to really feel them as I was feeling them. Not cutting them off, not trying to censor them. Not trying to dilute anything, make excuses.” Her mandate was not to compromise lyrically or musically in the composition of these songs. As she put it to Performing Songwriter in 1994, Tori felt strongly about the role of the songwriter: “Our job is to get in touch with ourselves. If we’re not in touch with ourselves, how can we possibly give something to the people out there?” The songs were centered on the piano and vocal — and that meant many hours spent at her instrument crafting these songs. Said Tori, “[A] good song speaks first to your soul, your heart, and when your heart isn’t in the composing and you only work with your brain, then what comes out of it is dead and cold. To compose from the heart you have to give it the chance to open up and react. When you do that, then the piano answers back. That’s a dialogue you can’t force... . When you don’t have the patience to explore it, then it’s the most boring instrument in the world, but if you spend a lot of time with it, you’ll always be discovering something new.” Songwriting is a process of exploration, of creating and recreating, fueled by a willingness to let go what isn’t working. Explains Tori, “I’ll go, ‘I’m going to write four different bridges for this song and we’ll see who wins the prize.’ And then it’s like, ‘What if I change this chorus? What if I just cut it in half?’ That all happens sometimes. You can’t be afraid — and I used to be — of experimenting.”

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Those Formative Years 3

Chapter 2 Y Kant Tori Read 23

Chapter 3 Little Earthquakes 37

Chapter 4 Under the Pink 53

Chapter 5 Boys for Pele 71

Chapter 6 From the Choirgirl Hotel 89

Chapter 7 To Venus and Back 105

Chapter 8 Strange Little Girls 117

Chapter 9 Scarlet's Walk 129

Chapter 10 The Beekeeper 143

Chapter 11 American Doll Posse 155

Chapter 12 Abnormally Attracted to Sin and Midwinter Graces 167

Conclusion 179

Sources 181

Acknowledgments 197

Reading Group Guide

“I could not have written Little Earthquakes without skinning my knees … at a certain point you go, ‘Well, what is my thing? Who am I? What am I all about?’” Those were the questions Tori Amos had to ask herself before she could release a second album for Atlantic. After the sting of failure with Y Kant Tori Read, she retreated from music. It was a friend of hers, Cindy Marble, then singer of a band called The Rugburns, who helped her find her sound. Cindy asked Tori to play piano for her — and Tori played and played for hours. Tori recalls the advice Cindy gave her: “You play your piano and you sing your songs. That’s what you do. And you’ve been trying to get away from it and be Lita Ford or somebody for the past five years, but this is what you do. Doesn’t matter if it’s hip or cool or not.” Despite the fear of failing again — and this time truly exposing her artistic self — Tori decided that she would take down the walls, be herself, and write music that was true to her own vision, and not in imitation of anyone else’s style. The process of writing songs began with literally reintroducing her instrument into her home. “I didn’t even have a piano in the house,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 1994. “I’d trashed that before. So I rented this old upright and just started to write what I was feeling.” The songs that would eventually become Little Earthquakes were not originally conceived as material for her next album. “I was just writing so that I didn’t go crazy. I wrote for me. I wasn’t thinking about making a record: I knew that one had to come eventually, that’s how things work if you’re not dropped by your label. They do expect another one before you die … But, you see, I was working on the dying part, so making another record wasn’t first and foremost on my mind.” With her realization that she “had to do music for the mere expression of it,” Tori learned “to not be afraid of exposing myself. And if people wanted to piss all over it, then I’d just let it drip off the tape.” After a lifetime of trying to please others, Tori had finally decided to put her own artistic vision at the forefront. The songs that formed Little Earthquakes acted as a sort of diary of feeling and experience that Tori was finally giving expression to. “It was like I was birthing myself. It was as if I was in a tunnel and I didn’t know the end. It was the first time I really allowed myself to feel things, to really feel them as I was feeling them. Not cutting them off, not trying to censor them. Not trying to dilute anything, make excuses.” Her mandate was not to compromise lyrically or musically in the composition of these songs. As she put it to Performing Songwriter in 1994, Tori felt strongly about the role of the songwriter: “Our job is to get in touch with ourselves. If we’re not in touch with ourselves, how can we possibly give something to the people out there?” The songs were centered on the piano and vocal — and that meant many hours spent at her instrument crafting these songs. Said Tori, “[A] good song speaks first to your soul, your heart, and when your heart isn’t in the composing and you only work with your brain, then what comes out of it is dead and cold. To compose from the heart you have to give it the chance to open up and react. When you do that, then the piano answers back. That’s a dialogue you can’t force… . When you don’t have the patience to explore it, then it’s the most boring instrument in the world, but if you spend a lot of time with it, you’ll always be discovering something new.” Songwriting is a process of exploration, of creating and recreating, fueled by a willingness to let go what isn’t working. Explains Tori, “I’ll go, ‘I’m going to write four different bridges for this song and we’ll see who wins the prize.’ And then it’s like, ‘What if I change this chorus? What if I just cut it in half?’ That all happens sometimes. You can’t be afraid — and I used to be — of experimenting.”

Editorial Reviews

True to the title of the book much of the story is told through experiences in the studio and there’s mention of the use of certain equipment or what was done to achieve a certain sound but Brown doesn’t bog things down with too much technical info.” — Anti Music

From the Publisher