Tori Amos: Piece by Piece

by Amos, Tori

  TORI:

  The road. The friendships. A way of life that I hold very dear to my heart. The crew doesn't notice that I've popped in this morning—off the bus, in a hoodie. I'm up early just walking around with a cup of tea. We're not in a hotel because we're doing a quick show today and we're off again right afterward, so the buses are parked up in the backstage of this cozy outdoor woodland where the show will be tonight. After years of coming up with a good team of people who could probably do this in their sleep, I see they still give 100 percent because, let's face it, it's their love, too. The coffee machines are going; I can smell the beans. Catering travels with an espresso machine. This is one of the most comforting smells that I know. I hear the kettle boiling for the Brits. I hear laughter along with a lot of clanging and banging. Although it's not exactly “whistle while you work,” we definitely have our own version of Grumpy. We call the head of sound “Grumps,” fondly. He wouldn't have it any other way. The lampies are always up early, along with Mark and Mike from the sound side of things, picking their points, where they are going to hang the big PA. I hear production with its machines making an odd kind of music, but music nonetheless. Music to my ears, anyway, because it means that we are up and running.

  If Andy knew that I was snooping around he would probably have heart failure. But I do this just to make Chelsea laugh. Of course she has to laugh quietly, or she'll give the game away. You see, the crew doesn't know it sometimes, but I watch over them in my own way. I hear Dunc playing opera—that's a good sign. That means he's making me something, probably Mediterranean, tonight. And being since we are in the middle of nothing Mediterranean, it's definitely a treat. Dunc brings his spices and works off local produce, but we have a wine cellar to pull from to complement his creations. The other caterers always seem to be whistling and the catering tent draws you in, no different from those kitchens you see in the movies and wish you had in your own house. Well, of course, this isn't exactly a house. Anything you could ever want is in this space—call it a tent, a place to gather … I call it paradise. This is our little world on the road, and we take it with us. Wherever we might find ourselves tomorrow, the one thing I can guarantee—the coffee will be brewing, the kettle will be boiling, sound and lights will be laughing as things clang, then of course there will be shouting and obscenities hurled back and forth endlessly, Dunc will be playing opera, catering will be whistling, I'll be smelling the soup they'll be putting on, and I will know that I am home.

  ANN: Artistic performance is always planned enchantment, even when its energy descends like a mad god's whirlwind wake. Dionysus, that original rock star, traveled with a road crew: the male satyrs and female bacchantes who attended the god not only enjoyed his glories but organized them, accomplishing the practical tasks that must precede any communal rite. Antiquity offers images of Dio-nysus's followers as mad, driven to ecstasy by divine intervention. But how did they behave in their off-hours? It's amusing, but realistic, to ponder them essentially on tour—moving along the road in a sleepy caravan, setting up a space for their revels each night, and afterward striking the tents, cleaning up their mess, and moving to the next town, where the publicists among them would have already raised interest for the next ritual.

  In the contemporary world of digital sound and virtual reality, many artists have lost interest in the power of public performance. The hassles of the touring life can outweigh the benefits for musicians whose art really only finds its ideal space in the recording studio or the promotional video. For Amos, on the other hand, touring is essential. Her songs present themselves as intimate communications from the universe to her audience, and she views herself as a conduit, entrusted to bring their news. Her musicianship, rooted in improvisation and the physical feel of hands on a piano keyboard, also demands live performance. Long after many of her peers have pulled back on their commitment to the concert circuit, Amos continues, getting fed by offering sustenance to her fans.

  Since her late twenties, Amos has spent easily half her life on the road. So much wandering leads many like her to all varieties of self-destruction. Yet despite the hardships of a lifestyle that shaves decades off the lives of many entertainers, Amos has somehow managed to preserve her health, her creative spark, and her personal life. She has been able to do this because of those attendants who, like levelheaded descendants of Dionysus's crowd, ensure the smoothness of her journey. The few cherished hours Amos and her band spend each night in music making's free zone are supported by a vast constellation of boring details: the usual gas /food / lodging concerns of any vagabond assemblage, augmented by the technicalities of transporting sound equipment, costumes, lights, and a stage set, and the need to maintain harmony among the hundred-plus creative souls who belong to this cavalcade.

  Learning the art of the road has been a gradual process for Amos. When Little Earthquakes first brought her mass success, she performed solo due to limited resources and the desire to build a close fan community. Eventually her musical ambition led her to seek out collaborators, and her entourage grew exponentially. With husband Mark Hawley already onboard as chief sound engineer, Amos was ready when it came time to add another layer to touring life, and she has brought her daughter, Natashya, on every extended sojourn taken since her birth. As Amos's daylit family life merges with the night logic of the road, she is playing a role in the reconfiguration of rock and roll as a life's work.

  TORI:

  Breathe. Remember.

  I can go back. Back to 1994, playing shows every night for months and months and months. Playing then was really the only time when I was alive, present, and in tune with my Being. When I would come offstage, it was as if I had been unplugged. As if my Duracells had been taken out to be put into another toy.

  Johnny looked at me and asked, “Why are you so sad?”

  I said, “Because when I play, I'm included in what's going on around me onstage. Backstage, I'm part of a tribe, a team, but after the show I get put back in my box, The Singing Puppet, and left until a couple of hours before the next showtime, just feeling empty.”

  He had tears in his eyes. I saw them.

  A couple of weeks ago Johnny asked me if I remembered saying, “I don't just want to be a puppet in a box to be taken out and put away.” “Yes. I remember, vaguely.”

  Then he said, “And do you remember the rest?” “Fuzzy. Kinda. It's 2004. That's a lotta remembering.” “Well,” he said, “after the anti-human-piano-doll speech, I asked you what you wanted and you said, ‘To be treated like a friend,’ and then do you know what you said? You said, ‘Can I be your friend?’ ” I looked at him and said, “What did you say?”

  He hugged me then, saying, “You daft sod. You've been my friend since the beginning, and I will be your friend through the end.”

  The Alpha and the Omega. Right here. Live performance began with friendship. The sacred marriage. First with the piano, when I was two and a half. Next with the Beings who become the songs. And then finally with the people who have become the crew. Sometimes the crew is Mark, Marcel, and myself, slogging it out in the control room. Sometimes the crew is Chelsea and Johnny at a restaurant, clarifying all the components that must be planted, fertilized, and watered before the creative harvest will be ready to be presented. With Johnny's friendship I understood that you can deal with matter— money—let's face it, money must be dealt with. It's one of the things that brings a show to fruition. But along with matter there can be spirit, intellect, knowledge, and honesty—sometimes brutal, but honesty nonetheless. Johnny brought me the road crew; some are still with me. It works because when everyone is juggling and striving for the balance of matter, spirit, creativity, mutually respected knowledge, and honesty, we have the six directions listening to each other. In other words, all the different departments recognize one another as part of the circle, which makes the wheel turn. When this breaks down, blaming, internal struggles, verbal shit slinging, and out-and-out mutiny can drown the whole caboodle. We are a little
city traveling on wheels. But we need wheels or we don't roll.

  I toured Europe opening for Marc Cohn in 1991. My record wasn't out yet. The EP was coming out. It was an opportunity; he was huge at the time. We went through Europe and through the United Kingdom and Ireland. I had two different guys, production managers I was out with. Three altogether in the end. There was this really good guy in the end—the other two were cokeheads, I think. I'm not quite sure what they were doing, but they were out of their minds. I just remember missing the ferry from Ireland to Wales. We missed the show in Birmingham. You can't buy experience like that. I understand what it's like to drive across Europe with a cokehead and miss a show and navigate with the maps myself.

  After I started releasing records, I was just touring with a crew, no band. There were many times before the buses, when Johnny and I would drive everywhere in a car. Then we would fly and drive, or drive and fly, and meet up with the crew. Our budgets were tight, but we made it work. Now I have hair and makeup and people who can pack my bags, but there was a time when Johnny, my security man, Joel, and I did everything by ourselves, with a sound guy and rented pianos.

  It might have been at the end of the Little Earthquakes tour when we had a Yamaha CP-80 E electric grand piano we were taking around with us. In those early years, sometimes the gigs were in these rat-infested, crappy bars. I'd already spent eleven years of playing in bars when I was a lounge performer. My only rule was I never ate the cheese that they would put out in my closet/toilet of a dressing room, in case my furry friends were hungrier than I was that night. I played on all kinds of pianos, usually good ones in the hotel lounges, the nicer hotels. Usually crap ones in the bar days. I played the gamut, and I think that is one of the secrets to my success. When it comes to live performances, it's not easy to shock me.

  JOHN WITHERSPOON:

  I first met Tori when I was still tour managing, as the result of an argument with my then wife. It was January 1992. Tori was playing her first big show in London, at the Shaw Theater. Little Earthquakes had just come out. My good friend Ian Thorpe was doing her sound and he'd told me I should come down and see her. I'd just got off a tour and wasn't really interested in going out, but I was having a bad day at home. My soon-to-be ex-wife and I were having dinner, a glass of wine, and the usual argument. I had a choice: drink the rest of the wine and go to sleep or get out of the house. I decided to go out. I actually left the house not really knowing who I was going to see, as I couldn't really remember what Ian had told me about Tori. I sat and watched the entire show. I had not done that for any artist for many years, but like everybody else there that night I was completely blown away. Afterward I went backstage and ran into Tori's European agent, Mike Dewdney, who asked what I was doing the next week. I said, “Nothing. Why?” He explained that Graham Cooper, Tori's tour manager, was leaving to go out with They Might Be Giants and they needed someone to fill in for two weeks. I said, “Yeah, why not? I'll do it.” And so the next week, after a few transatlantic phone calls, I rented a car and drove from London to Munich—no budget for cozy flights in those days! Before I knew it, there I was, checking into my first of many hundreds of hotels with Tori.

  My first meeting with her consisted of me knocking on her door, her saying hello and all in the same breath asking to change rooms, due to the stench of the previous occupant's cigar-smoking habit. I also have a hatred of stale cigar smoke, so no sooner said than done. That first meeting was one of only a handful of room changes Tori ever requested. We had such a blast those two weeks in Germany, but I had to head back to the United Kingdom to manage a big orchestra tour with the late jazz pianist and actor Dudley Moore. As soon as the Dudley tour finished, I signed straight back on with the Tori tour.

  In the early days we used to fly all the time, or drive around in rental cars. If the distance between shows was less than 150 or 200 miles away we'd drive. At that point it was just me, Tori, and Ian on sound. We were out for months and months and months. When we started we had no idea that it was going to be almost a year before we finished. We decided to do some more shows in June and then a few dates in July and then maybe we'd go to Europe and come back to the States, and then before you knew it, it was December. And the record kept going and kept going and kept going. There wasn't a show on that Little Earthquakes tour that wasn't sold out.

  ANDY SOLOMON:

  When I first started going on the road with Tori, when she was touring for Under the Pink, she was a Mrs. Fields cookie freak. Instead of stopping for Starbucks every day, we were stopping for cookies. And she was not a bus girl at first. She got sick when she tried to ride on it. So she and John would fly. The crew would already be at the gig, setting up, and they would fly on the morning of the day of the show and rent a town car and drive to the gig, then after the gig drive to the airport, or if it was far they'd drive to a hotel, fly the next morning, do the same thing again. I don't think it was until 1996 that she finally got in the bus.

  JOEL HOPKINS:

  We did like a little trial run with Tori on the bus. I think it was Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.—a short jaunt. We were discussing the possibility that on the next tour she might get her own bus, you know, instead of flying all the time. And the first ride just didn't go that well. It was touch and go there for a while, but I think that once she had her own bus and realized it was a little bit better than what we started off with, she adapted.

  There was one horrible time when Tori's apprehensions about the bus really proved right. We were going from Munich to Florence, over the Alps, something like that, and we had just left the venue and made it out of town. We were on a double-decker bus, as you often get in Europe. Bunks upstairs. We were all still downstairs and Tori was having her meal after the show. We came to this covered bridge, and the driver didn't read the signs right; he didn't see that we wouldn't be able to clear it. We slammed into the top of the bridge, and it took all the skylights and everything right off the top of the bus, and all the glass and bus parts just came streaming down in shards. I jumped on top of Tori to protect her. We got through all that, and we're off on the side of the road, and what do we have? Open the door, and I've got a fan standing there—Can Tori sign this for me!

  I said, “You've got to be kidding, get out of here.” So what we had to do—we got Hefty bags and that sort of thing. Of course it was going to snow and rain that night, and we're up on top of the bus pathetically trying to make a new roof out of plastic bags. Imagine a convertible bus— there wasn't much of anything we could do. The flight options to Florence were limited. We wouldn't make it in time to do promotion the next day, so we decided to bite the bullet. It got very, very, very cold that night, and rainy, and the wind had the Hefty bags flapping like birds on drugs. That was a scary night, to say the least.

  TORI:

  Once I was in a position to provide us a better way to tour, I did. I'm a good businesswoman—even with just five dollars in my pocket, I've never asked anybody for money or borrowed money in my life. Even when I was playing for weddings and funerals at age nine. Call it pride, call it a woman who brings home the bacon, but there's a level where you go, “Yes, we can support these people, we can feed them, we can put petrol in the tanks, we can sit there and calculate to the dollar what it's going to take.” Sometimes, because of the level of comfort I create on tour, we only break even, after months and months and months on the road. Meaning me, I break even—sometimes just … everybody else on the tour gets paid. Does it make things tight sometimes? Sure. So I'm saying, I don't need to do this the way I do it. I don't need to tour at all. But honestly, I do it because I love it.

  I have to play And if I do it at age forty, I'm not staying in the two-for-one motel at the corner of Bargain Boulevard and Friends-of-Flea Avenue, when I have three beautiful homes where I could be. If you want to be harsh about it, what's in it for me? Tramping my kid all over the fucking world?

  ANN: Like any complex organism, Amos's caravan requires structure. Road crews
are often deeply hierarchical, with authority radiating outward from the protected inner sanctum of the artist. Special circumstances have tampered with the usual order of things on this tour: not only a personal life that has put her in intimate contact with the quietly acknowledged champion of the crew, Hawley, who has brought a lot of them into the Tori camp, but also Amos's own untrammeled generous streak, which she's had to learn to balance with a leader's assertiveness.