The pandemic affected singer-songwriter Tori Amos more than many: it was the music that saved her

BY BEN WEST, PHOTOS BY DESMOND MURRAY

The pandemic has affected us all in profoundly different ways. For some, it didn’t impact on life all that much, while for others its effect has been devastating. For celebrated American singer-songwriter Tori Amos, it hit pretty hard.

“In the first lockdown my family did okay,” she says. “We were in Cornwall, we did a virtual book tour, we were in the studio.”

As well as her husband, English sound engineer Mark Hawley, her adult daughter Tash and her boyfriend were with her.

“What we thought would be two weeks became five months, but we pulled it together. We worked it out. But it just so happens that on the third lockdown I hit a wall. Hitting that wall, I found myself in a despondent place, for all kinds of reasons. Like everybody else, I hadn’t been in that situation [the pandemic] in my life. It’s the longest I haven’t toured, and my mom had died in 2019. America was falling apart from what I could see, looking over from the Cornish coast across the Atlantic.

“It seemed that my home country had gone mad after the election and the insurrection in January 2021. And how some of our leaders responded to the insurrection – elected leaders, because it’s very important, they were elected by the people – who have a responsibility and yet they were ready to torch democracy to the ground.”

Her voice falters.

“And so yeah, I just hit a wall.”

Tori Amos’s musical brilliance was clear from the start. A child prodigy, from infancy she was able to perfectly recreate piano arrangements that she had heard. When she was five, Tori was the youngest student ever to be accepted into the Peabody Institute, a music and dance conservatory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. When she was eleven, she was dismissed, for the main part not wanting to sight-read sheet music. Her musical education during her teenage years took a new slant, with her performing show tunes and standards in Washington DC piano bars and hotel lounges.

Since the release of her first, career-defining solo album Little Earthquakes, and her number one album Under The Pink, Amos has been one of the music industry’s most enduring and ingenious artists, releasing 15 studio albums including three that hit the top 10. The global smash hit single Professional Widow remained in the Top 40 for an impressive 15 weeks, continuing to rock clubland for over a decade.

“If you are a stage actor or a live musician, and that’s your life’s blood and your livelihood, we haven’t been able to do that for 18 months. So if you’ve been able to do what you do, you’re going to see it very differently, aren’t you, than if you haven’t been able to do what you do. I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to make a record, but for a lot of live touring musicians, that’s not been on the table, that’s not on the cards. So different people have been affected in different ways.

“I know people who have lost absolutely everything. Their marriage, their house, their job. They might see the pandemic a bit differently than somebody who was able, such as an investor down in Wall Street working in the stock market who didn’t have to commute – maybe life is swinging for you.”

Her new album, Ocean to Ocean, written during that difficult third lockdown, is her most personal work in years. It charts a journey of reaching rock bottom and renewing oneself again. She found the process of creating the record helped her get out of the despondency that engulfed her.

“It is a record about losses and how to cope with them,” she says. “You have to write from where you are, write your way out of it. That’s the only way to figure out how to pull yourself out of the place you find yourself. I’ve done it before.”

Reaching emotional lows – as happened when making this record – is painful, but can it bring out some of the best work?

“Well, I used to not want to admit that, because then you set up a thought that means if you achieve some happiness in your life, or some stability, that your writing will be less powerful,” she says. “And so I don’t really want to pin my colours to that mast because I would like to think that you can write work that’s valid and moving, without having to suffer.”

The album encompasses a variety of styles, including romantic balladry through to tango. What musical styles are she most fond of?
“I grew up with music from the 60s and the 70s, so there’s something about music from that period that takes me to a place, a childlike place, of wonderment. Because that’s what I was hearing as a kid. So when I hear that, I can almost beam myself back into that timezone.

“Historically, things were going on then that were shocking, like the Vietnam War, and the death of Dr. King in 1968, Bobby Kennedy getting shot. As a kid they were tumultuous times, but also it seemed to be a time of whimsy.”

While Tori has enjoyed considerable commercial pop success, she has in later years used her music to highlight serious issues focused on female gender. There has been a feminist stage musical, The Light Princess, and her harrowing autobiographical song, Me and a Gun, depicts violent sexual assault, for example. Does she ever feel that she might sometimes share too much or go too far, or that instead many other artists may be too timid?

“I don’t judge other artists,” she says. “You have to answer your calling as an artist. I do believe some people feel that their calling is to help people escape from certain emotions and so create something designed for escape. I understand, I get it, and the people that do it well do it really well.

“But that doesn’t seem to be my calling. I think that you have to know the kind of artist that you are. Not the calling that you wish you had, but the calling that you have, and what’s in your wheelhouse, what’s in your toolbox. I’ve come to accept the kind of artist that I am.”

It’s hardly surprising that she found lockdown a particular struggle, having played live since the age of thirteen, and in between touring, living between Cornwall and Florida. Does she enjoy the process of living in two places and touring and playing live?

“I find all the travelling very grounding, because I find that you have to be really focused and awake when you’re travelling. I find that my senses are pretty heightened. Mainly because I’m breaking the routine, I’m breaking what would be a daily pattern. So everything is not in its place when you’re travelling. There are surprises happening all the time, which I find quite exciting, and it forces me to be really present in the moment.”

Some people find touring repetitive and exhausting, others find it the opposite.

“If it becomes repetitive, that means you’re repeating yourself, doesn’t it, Ben?” she says. “I can change the show every night if I want to. But you know what that takes? It takes discipline, it takes work. That no-one misses a soundcheck. No-one. I don’t care what you do after the show, you know, whether you’re smoking a big fatty [a large joint], you’re having a nice cocktail, or whatever, but the soundcheck is sacred because everybody has to bring their best game, because that’s when we decide what the show is going to be that night. And maybe I have a beginning and end for the show, I have bookends, but if you hold a place of ‘we can do anything’, it’s a centre of power.

“I usually meet people at the stage door or whatever, and people coming to the show have requests, and ideas, and foolish, foolish – what a fool am I – if I don’t think of applying those suggestions.

“I’ve been doing this a long time. I turned pro at 13, and now I’m 58. So the reason I still go out on tour is because I’m not going to miss an opportunity. If you have an opportunity to have a great show, and it’s a great privilege to take that stage, then I’m going to bring the best game I’ve got. But it takes work and attention, but I’m not afraid of that. I’m sorry fellow musicians, but saying touring is repetitive is a reflection of your work ethic. You blaming the audience? Why is it repetitive? Because you’re only playing the same goddam 12 songs. Expand your repertoire, that’s what I would say.”

Does she prefer to play or listen to music?

“That’s really interesting,” she says. “It depends, they’re such different things. I split time doing both, but I guess I like it when people play me music as in they show me what they’re listening to. My daughter Tash’s boyfriend Oliver is a student at Guildhall studying jazz bass, and he plays all kinds of music, usually before we’re having dinner, when we’re all hanging out. We call it ‘Oliver’s tracks’. But then when I play, I usually play away from people most of the time, because I’m working stuff out.”

With her mind working overtime much of the time, coupled with her formidable musical talent, it’s no surprise that her music has a rare depth and complexity. No doubt, during those solitary sessions where she’s ‘working stuff out’, that already she is formulating the next chapter of what already is an exceptional musical career.

Tori Amos’s new album Ocean to Ocean is out now via Decca Records and she is touring the UK during 2022