The first thing you notice about Tori Amos, besides her still-vivid red hair, is that she’s a total press pro.

She greets me like an old friend, compliments me on my dress, and stretches out on the couch like a ten-year-old watching TV, even though it’s the first time we’ve ever met.

It’s no surprise; after all, the iconic musician has been wooing audiences for nearly 20 years. On the eve of her new release, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Amos opened up to NYLON about making it on Broadway, singing duets, and fighting your way up the alt-music world’s ranks.

I hear you’re working on a musical right now. How’s that going?

I’m getting put through my paces, in a good way. I guess what that is, is that the project still has a green light. For a while it was the only thing that I thought about creatively. Samuel Adamson and I had been put together as a team a few years ago. And we’re at a stage now where, after we’ve turned in the first draft, the producer, who’s here in New York, said, “Okay great. Let’s roll up our sleeves now.”

Any idea when it will open?

Well, we want to have the draft—a real working draft—top to tail done by the end of the year, and then, I think, start going into proper workshops with it.

So you’re doing a musical, you’ve inspired a comic book, you’ve put out albums…is there anything you haven’t done that you’d really love to do?

Yeah, I’m sure there is. [Laughs] That’s so funny. Well I haven’t done a Christmas record. There are all kinds of things I haven’t done…I haven’t done a duets record.

Would you do it with anyone in particular?

Ben Harper—I just ran into him at SXSW. But if I did a duets record, I think it’d be really fun to do 12 to 14 songs with different people, different styles, different worlds. When I ran into Ben again after many years, I realized [a duets album] is something I could enjoy doing—working with people that not only you respect, but that you get a great buzz with.

With the increased digitalization of music, did you approach your new album any differently?

Well, I wanted to deliver a beautiful package and I know that this is a time when packaging is becoming obsolete and it’s all very disposable. Sometimes I’ll look at packaging and think, “Oh my God, why did you even waste the trees?” Having such an affinity with the visual world, I don’t capitulate to the fears out there. I think that there’s got to be somebody who embraces the visual side in a digital sonic age and weaves it in there. We’re trying to understand this wild west of digital format, and visuals are going to be involved. How is yet being defined, [but] I thought if each song [from the new album] had its own little movie.

How do you manage to stay relevant and still connect with your audience, after nearly 20 years making music?

Well, you have to be interested and excited about what you’re doing. As you develop enough life experience, you’ve got to value what that is. Youth does not have that. Youth has a lot but it doesn’t have any fucking wisdom. That’s not negative, it’s just like, I don’t have lineless skin, and you don’t get these lines without living. I know that sometimes the culture only values the teenage perspective, but there are other perspectives, too. And when you’re about ready to jump off a cliff, I don’t know if talking about shopping is going to get you through it.

Is it any easier to be taken seriously as a young female musician?

Sure. In some ways, there are a lot of opportunities for musicians now that were really tough in 1990. There are a lot of outlets now that you didn’t have then. I think there are so many opportunities as a new female artist, and as a new male artist as well. There seems to be a lot more out there now, and I think that’s exciting.

So it’s not so much a matter of changing norms, but rather of people who can take advantage of it?

Well, and you’ve got to get through the fact that the aphrodisiac is the new, the next thing. It’s like a fix, [the public] needs the next one to be consumed with, and then the next one. What’s changed—and what needs to happen now—is that they are able to keep coming back to artists as they change and grow. They do have something to say, they just have a different fight now.

REBECCA WILLA DAVIS

source : Nylonmag.com

At her recent standing-room-only performance at this year’s South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Tori Amos premiered songs from her tenth studio album, Abnormally Attracted to Sin, due May 19th. It’s her first studio LP since 2007’s American Doll Posse, and the record finds the singer-pianist exploring familiar territory: power in all its guises, be it sexual, monetary or political. “Before, we used to think power was if you had a job and you had money,” she says. “And if that’s our definition of success, then very few people have it — the money part anyway. So [I’m] redefining what it means, because power is also an aphrodisiac.”

Working once again with her husband, engineer Mark Hawley, Amos says that the album’s production is key. “Sound is an instrument,” she explains. “It’s not just, ‘Let’s jam.’ ” But visuals were central to the record, too: the LP will be accompanied by a series of 16 “visualettes,” short films that Amos largely funded herself that were directed by Christian Lamb. The footage, captured during Amos’ world tour in support for American Doll Posse, actually inspired the songs that would become Abnormally Attracted to Sin.

“I’d see montages of our life on the road,” she says, “and I’d shut off the music, realizing this music is not the underscoring for what I’m seeing at all.” Near the end of the tour, she started writing the songs because she knew that Lamb’s films “needed another story. I said, I wanna give people something that says my favorite thing: If it’s too loud, turn it up. I wanna give people creative worlds to walk into so that they are getting a sensory overload. You give people treasures, not ‘How can I cut all the costs?’ ” Though the project took money out of her pocket, it was important to Amos, she says, because “people are just putting out the worst. And I don’t agree that music is disposable.”

Her own music certainly has staying power — especially for the die-hard fans that pack her shows hoping to hear early cuts. “I’m a different person,” she says, “but the songs, the faces, the life experience or the fantasies that you assign to certain songs in order for you to perform them, and to let them live in you, change. So when I perform them now, if I do ‘Winter’ or ‘Silent All These Years’ [both from Amos’ platinum debut, Little Earthquakes], I’ve surprised myself what stories, what photographs come up in my mind. And that’s why I do insert the catalog, because I don’t see it as my past, I see the songs as timeless for me. It’s just my perception that needs to change.”

Amos’ new music will be her first to come out on Universal Music. She landed the new deal after stumbling into a label rep while she was at lunch — with other, smaller distribution companies. The rep passed her table, said hello and took a phone call from “my boss’ boss,” Amos recalls: Doug Morris, the Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group. As Amos was finishing lunch, she noticed the woman still outside the restaurant, pacing and talking on her cell. “And in that moment, my life flashed before my eyes,” she says. “I thought, Doug Morris. He’s right there. We haven’t talked in 14 years. I miss Doug Morris. We didn’t always agree, but he’s still passionate about music.

“I put all my mother’s training of manners and everything I know to be right and good in the world, and I walked up and I looked at this woman who I’d barely met and interrupted her call, and said, ‘Would you send Doug my love?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘Right now?’ I said, ‘Now would be good.’ “

source : MySpace

source : Billboard Blog

source : LP33.tv Festival Blog

Tori Amos is in a good mood when she phones Spinner from her Cornwall, England studio. She owes her glee, in part, to a white chocolate chip cookie, which she informs us her 8-year-old daughter, Natashya, baked for her. “Husband didn’t marry me for my baking,” she laughs.

It’s just weeks away from Amos’ scheduled performance at SXSW, where she’ll unveil new tunes from her tenth studio album, ‘Abnormally Attracted to Sin,’ due May 19. In addition to debuting the album cover and tracklist with Spinner, Amos discussed her new work, how to divvy up the Democrats and Republicans, and what she considers to be the greatest sin of all.

What was the impetus behind this new collection?
I’m drawn to questioning what traditional authorities have defined sin to be. As a minister’s daughter, I’ve been exposed to the traditional belief system. [Sin] has been used to shame and control people. If you’re controlled by a religious structure, then you’re going to have a very different outlook on life and what you’re open to than if you’re not controlled by these old, crumbling concepts.

The new album, ‘Abnormally Attracted to Sin,’ takes its name from a line in ‘Guys and Dolls,’ said by the character Sarah Brown. Do you feel a kinship with her in any way?
No, because I’m not torn by my religious beliefs. A lot of the problems we have right now in our world are because of intolerance dictated by the big religions.

Do you feel it’s your duty or obligation to expose these truths in your work?
I find that right now, in this turbulent time where there’s so much strife all around the world, there is an opportunity for religions to open their doors and their hearts — to become compassionate for someone else’s beliefs instead of intolerant. That’s always really disappointed me about people who talk about being religious, and yet they’re the most judgemental, usually. Right now, we’re at war, and I wrote quite a lot of this album while I was on tour last time. I traveled the world, I played in Israel, I traveled through countries where the major religions exist — and the one thing that I started to do more than ever was to really ask questions about “What do I believe in?” Traveling and seeing how women see themselves in different cultures … how the community thinks of them becomes so important for some of them, more than how than how they even feel about themselves. And some of them are dying — they’re dying in their lives. You might be approved of in your community, but your heart is completely breaking. And I don’t find that a tolerant society — that is not the compassionate Christ path to me. I began to see that kindness and tolerance were not found in institutions, but found in individuals who seemed to be breaking away from the old patriarchal viewpoint.

Did you have a similar experience growing up in a Christian household?
I was brought up in a home that was … we were brought up in the Christian doctrine, and that’s just what it was. We believed in it, and I think the question is: What is that doctrine? Because it’s not about the open heart. Maybe it takes times like we have right now, times of so much upheaval, where you allow yourself to really find out what it is that you feel about something. My daughter has all kinds of questions all the time, and if she were brought up in a less tolerant household, she would be broken, no question about it. But she has a grandfather who was a Methodist minister and she has a part of her family who are very much practicing Christians, yet she loves them. But she is not interested if they agree with what she thinks because she is allowed to believe in what she wants.

One of the current arguments at large in America is whether or not gays should have the right to marry. Religion is often used in the argument against gay marriage. Why do you think that union is so threatening?
We go back to that word — intolerance. That, to me, isn’t what America ever was. It wasn’t about telling another person how to live their life. I always said in a perfect world, you keep the Democrats out of your bank account and the Republicans out of your bedroom. But in life, why do you have to have anybody else in your bedroom if you’re a consenting adult? That is the need people have right now, it seems, to dictate to another person how they should live there life. I find that the greatest sin of all. The record explores all kinds of feelings and depending on your state of mind, your set of circumstances could result in a very different outcome.

What can you tell me about the visuals that will be accompanying each of the songs on this album?
I’m calling them “vignettes” because it’s more akin to a mini-film. This all started on tour last time, when we were filming the live shows. The director was putting together montages, and as I saw the montages, new music was already coming. I started to put the new music to the mini-films that were being made out on the road.

When I travel I get all kinds of ideas. I’m forced to see things that I wouldn’t and question. When you asked me about ‘Guys and Dolls,’ I guess I was never a Bible-thumping Christian; I was always trying to question because I had so much religion in my upbringing. I was drawn to those people and those ideas that weren’t accepted necessarily, and it’s not because these ideas in reality are “evil” — that’s just the perception that’s being given. The reality I was brought up in was, “Anything that doesn’t work within the Christian doctrine is sinful.” And that’s a lot of stuff.

‘Abnormally Attracted To Sin’ Tracklist

01. Give
02. Welcome To England
03. Strong Black Vine
04. Flavor
05. Not Dying Today
06. Maybe California
07. Curtain Call
08. Fire To Your Plain
09. Police Me
10. That Guy
11. Abnormally Attracted To Sin
12. 500 Miles
13. Mary Jane
14. Starling
15. Fast Horse
16. Ophelia
17. Lady In Blue

There’s information about the Live At Montreux 1991/1992 release, the song-writing process, The Light Princess musical and some information about the new album that she’s working on.

You can download the entire Keyboard Magazine interview with Tori Amos here in .pdf-format. 

It was to avoid conflicts like that that led Amos to leave Sony and fund from her own pocket the project she is currently working on. “It’s very much about the marriage of film and music. Think silent films, but centred around a song. It’s not a video. I’m calling them Visualettes. The story comes to you from the film and the song together.

“I had to become my own investor because, in this day and age, if you turn around and say, ‘I want to produce 17 short films and 17 songs…’ they’re looking at you and saying, ‘Not on our dime you’re not.’ That’s true of an indie as well as a giant, because an indie doesn’t have enough money. Everyone wants a guaranteed return, and with the economic situation the way it is, that means the ability to be brave is being aborted by the fear of our times.

“By leaving the Sony system I knew that if I could be the investor in the artist Tori Amos, then the work could be taken to its final moment on the creative side, before it gets meddled with. If you’re not holding those financial cards, if you have to partner with someone, then you have to open the door, and I don’t think records can be made as a democracy.”

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The maverick singer is spreading her wings. She’s writing a feminist fairytale for the National Theatre, she tells James McNair for The Independant.

“There’s nothing wrong with Disney,” says Tori Amos, “but my benchmarks are more West Side Story meets Jesus Christ Superstar. I’m trying to write a musical that will be relevant to a 16-year-old today, a rite of passage for a young girl into womanhood.

“The National Theatre [with whom she's in talks] has been more open-minded than anyone I could have worked with on Broadway, but everything has to be approved by committee, and I have to tell you that not everyone is aboard my Bösendorfer rocket-ship. They can pull out and this musical may never be staged, but I don’t want to be writing for a fuddy-duddy audience.”

Having split with Epic, Amos is financing recording sessions for her as-yet-untitled 10th studio album herself (again there’s a concept; each song will be tied to its own short film), but with 12 million album sales and a vast, famously loyal fan base behind her, the singer surely needn’t worry about this winter’s fuel bills?

We’ve ostensibly met to discuss Amos’s upcoming DVD release Live at Montreux 1991/1992, but for now we’re talking about the stage adaptation by her and the playwright Samuel Adamson of George MacDonald’s 19th-century fairy tale The Light Princess.

It figures that Amos, 45, once dubbed “Queen of the Fairies”, should be attracted by a story about a princess whose lack of gravity causes her to float above the world. But as the North Carolina-born singer and pianist points out, MacDonald’s fantastical allegory has substance and a malleable, enduring resonance, the princess’s “lightness” being a vehicle for Amos to explore modern-day illnesses such as anorexia, and other elements of MacDonald’s work lending themselves to environmental themes.

This being Amos, we can expect the work (which she hopes to complete by 2010) to be packed with feminist ideas. “The thing about the original story I wasn’t crazy about is that the princess’s disability gets blamed on an old hag,” she says. “We’re not going to deal in spells cast by old ladies; we’re dealing with problems caused by power and greed, many of which start with men.”

Amos says some of the music in the piece is Wagnerian in approach, while one song, “Delectable Guy Pain”, was partly inspired by the Shirley Bassey hit “Big Spender”. There’s an aria for the princess that Amos likens to a darker take on “Memory” from Cats. “Whatever you think of Andrew Lloyd Webber, he knows what he’s doing with a melodic arc,” she adds.

Like this year’s Comic Book Tattoo – a 480-page interpretation of Amos’s songs by various graphic novelists – The Light Princess demonstrates the singer’s desire to diversify. With albums as conceptually daring as 1991′s apiary/gnostic gospels-informed The Beekeeper behind her one can see why Amos would need a fresh challenge, but her move to cover more bases also seems driven by her recent split from Epic Records and the uncertainties that has brought in its wake.

Amos’s contract with Epic was drawn up in 1999. Back then, the music industry was in robust health, but by the time she had delivered her fourth album to Epic, a general decline in sales throughout the industry had made the terms of her deal almost impossible to meet.

In April this year, the singer managed to extricate herself. “I have my sovereignty now,” she says, “so I’m having all these dates with record companies and distributors. Some are new faces and some are people I might have been married to many years ago. Do I go with my ex-husband’s brother or do I go back with my first husband? It’s tricky, but it’s sexy to be holding all the cards.”

Lest Amos’s metaphor-speak confuses, she is married to the British sound engineer Mark Hawley. The couple met on Amos’s Under the Pink tour in 1994 and currently live between homes in Cornwall and Florida, with their daughter Natashya. Having split with Epic, Amos is financing recording sessions for her as-yet-untitled 10th studio album herself (again there’s a concept; each song will be tied to its own short film), but with 12 million album sales and a vast, famously loyal fan base behind her, the singer surely needn’t worry about this winter’s fuel bills?

“I don’t have endless amounts of cash to plough into things,” she says, “but we’ve been fairly careful. We didn’t buy any Ferraris – my husband has to watch Top Gear for his metal pornography. There’s actually a part of me that worries I might be spending Tash’s university money, but she’s fine with that. She’s like, ‘It’s OK, Mummy, go rock; I might not want to go to college anyway.’”

Unlike most eight-year-olds, Natashya Lórien Hawley has already been around the world four times. She has an iPhone. “She’s learning piano and a bit of guitar,” says her mother, “but she wants to be a film director and her main thing now is taking pictures. When I look at what she’s doing on Photoshop it’s clear to me that her eye sees something different because of the rich experiences she’s had.”

The Live at Montreux 1991/1992 DVD is noteworthy because its pair of year-apart performances bookend the success of Amos’s debut Little Earthquakes, which reached No 14 in the UK album charts on its release in January 1992. Prior to that Amos often topped the bill at entry-level UK venues such as the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden, north London. “I’d take the Tube and walk the rest,” she says. “I didn’t know where the hell I was.”

It was, Amos admits, “a bit of a headrush” when the impact of Little Earthquakes led to her face all over MTV and thousands of billboards. “But there was a rosier side to non-success,” she says. “There’s romance involved when people are discovering you. But then they begin to see your faults. Now, 16 years on, things feel different again, of course. People want to trade in their Ford for a new model ? you can’t be a ’68 Jag for ever.”

Still, Amos shows no signs of slowing down. She says that her brother Michael’s death in a car crash in 2004, aged 50, “burst the bubble of immortality” for her. “Life is fleeting,” she adds, “and in the light of that you have to seize the day.”

A stint filming some of the silent movies that will accompany Amos’s new album is scheduled for two days after our interview. She has also contributed to Carrie Borzillo-Vrenna’s new book Cherry Bomb, partly “a guide to becoming a better flirt”, and has recorded a duet with David Byrne for his forthcoming record Here Lies Love.

If all goes well with The Light Princess, Amos plans a comic-book version. She says it’s the promotional side of things rather than the creative that can be wearing: “Sometimes you can have great conversations, but unfortunately there are also journalists who want to get you divorced.”

We breeze through different topics. Amos tells me she doesn’t ride on her husband’s motorcycle for fear of damaging her fingers, but that she does take the jet-ski for a spin when in Florida. She says Tash demonstrated her Democratic leanings by scrawling “Vote Obama!” on FedEx boxes dispatched from the Amos household, and that her father Edison, a former Baptist minister, has started learning the piano aged 80 and is progressing well despite his arthritic digits.

“My parents are actually running across America like teenagers right now,” Amos adds. “My dad’s got this John Deere tractor from the farm he grew up on, and my mom sits up back ? it’s like a scene from Oklahoma!. When they visit me on tour we want to get them a nice room, but they’re from the Depression era and they always insist on some budget motel.

“They’re still madly in love, too. They’ve both come close to death and now they know that they are staring the physical end right in the eye. They’ve told me they feel like two old oak trees whose job is to be strong so that the rest of the family can come sit under them and find shelter and stability. I think that’s pretty great.”