Tori Amos: Piece by Piece

by Amos, Tori

  I've often thought that the people you become close to depend on certain circumstances occurring. For instance, sometimes you are with someone during a crisis: by chance, as I was with Lesley Chilkes on September 11 in New York City. Other people were there, but because Karen Binns went to deal with her family in Brooklyn and because Lesley's friends were stuck in Miami, she and I gravitated toward each other. Marcel and I also had a moment at the rehearsal studio that afternoon; while all the horror of the day was occurring, we seemed to find another depth to our friendship. I've been working with these people since 1991 and 1994, respectively. But during that time, because I was with them in circumstances when our private selves were completely on display, I saw sides of them, and they of me, that strengthened an already existing friendship by a hundredfold. Now I know these two people really well. I would say they know me extremely well. I realized my depth of love for them and I felt their depth of love for me as I had never felt it before.

  People are the most fascinating mysteries I've ever read. I'm sure someone reading this has had another experience like the one I've had: You meet someone's public self and choose to work with them because you've had a good feeling about them. Then the nightmare begins. And familiarity sets in, the masks droop and slide, and you see the heart of a monster. What has blown me away is that some of these people retaliate if you don't choose to accept their monster. I have found that the only way to tour with the many different personalities you deal with backstage, as well as onstage, is to truly know the scope of your own monster. If you don't, you are a walking time bomb. Before a world tour starts, my private self always takes a long walk with my public self, and the protective clothing of the former and the masks of the latter are packed together in the suitcase, ready to board the bus. “All aboard” takes on a new meaning these days.

  SONG CANVAS:“Goodbye Pisces”

  I'm a sucker for a good love song. One of my friends had sent me this book called Sextrology, mainly just 'cause she's into that kind of stuff. Anyway, I was thumbing through it one night, as you do, and I started thinking about how in a relationship you can't stop yourself sometimes from putting your lover's attitude about something down to their sign. I don't necessarily think that the male character I'm singing about is a Pisces; he might have Pisces in his chart somewhere. But more than anything it's about the end of an age—whether that's the end of a relationship or the end of the Piscean Age, which has been the last two thousand years. And sometimes a relationship can feel like it's been going on for two thousand years.

  ANN: Feminine power is not only a warm, nurturing thing. Furious goddesses have transformed the world since ancient times, laying waste to mans corruption, wreaking havoc until justice is served. From the wild dance of the Indian deity Kali to the rampage wrought by Tura Satana in Russ Meyer's exploitation movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! stories of women on fire with rageful power have taken hold of the culture's imagination. “No more nice girls!” these archetypes scream, reminding us that what is right is not always easy, and that kindness has meaning only when fierceness is its counterpart.

  One of the oldest deities of Egypt was an angry goddess: Sekhmet, red-haired and lion-headed, hot as the sun. According to her legend, Sekhmet burst forth from the eye of Ra, king of the gods, to punish humanity for losing faith She relished her path of mayhem so much that Ra had to put a stop to her by leading his thirsty daughter to drink a lake full of beer and lose consciousness. Awakening, she saw the error of unwarranted destructiveness and lived on, transformed, as a righteous punisher of wrongdoers.

  Sekhmet survives today in the imaginations of modern-day women battling the lingering forces of sexism. Despite enormous gains made in the past century, women's equality remains tentative and circumstantial; old-boy networks still dominate most areas of public life, while in private many women still fight to maintain confidence in their talents and authority. Nowhere is equality more paradoxically fulfilled than in the entertainment industries, where women artists are expected to present themselves as strong and independent, despite the fact that few actually control the nuts-and-bolts aspects of their careers. All artists are at risk of exploitation within a system founded on the sale of something as intangible as talent. Women, whose contributions have historically been underestimated, from the hearth to the hospital to the secretary's desk and beyond, are at the greatest risk of being used and discarded. With so much emphasis placed on youth, beauty, and novelty, the female popular artist has no choice but to tap into fury to demand the right to a full career.

  Tori Amos learned the need for anger's energy early, when she wrongly trusted the “experts” who led her into the ill-begotten artistic and physical makeover of the Y Kant Tori Read project. Reclaiming her identity as Tori Amos meant learning how to say no to bad guidance. Since those early years, Amos has never stopped fighting to maintain control of her art and her image. Battle after battle have taught her to wield her fire with uncompromising grace.

  TORI:

  I'm in a tight corner. Is it serious? Yes. Let's say that if we were playing the final chess game in the world, WWChess, then my opponent has just looked at me across all the chess pieces and said, “Check.”

  I have one move left to save my soul. My mind races to a similar quote by Dr. Faustus made in 1592 (in a book with the same name written by Christopher Marlowe). Dr. Faustus wanted all the knowledge that there was to have. He made a pact in Blood. He made it with Lucifer, the one called Satan in the Bible. Once he realized the extent of the agreement, he wanted to break the pact, but it was too late. If only he could have his soul back … He studies the pact. “See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop: Ah, my Christ!”

  I have one move left to save my soul. Here I am saying this today, four hundred years later, from where I sit on this craggy Irish hill, looking out to America and the Power Seat of the music industry. I am reminded that today I am writing from what was once the Power Seat of Munster about 2,300 years ago. The Seat of Power changes. Yet those who wield the execution of power rarely act with a sense of fairness and integrity. Fairness and Integrity are more akin to Maat, the Egyptian goddess of Law, Truth and Justice. The fact that power in the wrong hands corrupts is a tricky one. Because when we place power into the hands of those we have deemed worthy, in that moment they seem worthy. In that moment it does not seem that we are putting our faith into the wrong hands. Little do we know, the person we think to be just and fair will be seduced and corrupted by the shadow side of power. We all think we are above this seduction, but I guess no one is. Then the other side of the coin is the character in this little story who could be you or who could be me, who could not believe we could be fooled by or drawn into this power epic. No, we do not think we have the need to be the power hungry, the addicted-to-the-hunt and close-of-the-deal-type PHC personality. That would be “Power-Hungry-Crazed” personality. And no, maybe we don't have this PHC personality, but that's not where it all goes “tits down,” as they say. It becomes a real-life game of cat and mouse when you, or when I, in this little story make an agreement—a pact—with this power-hungry-crazed type of individual. Sometimes you don't find out who they are until you're in so deep, so deep to where the struggle of trying to get out of the situation can drive the hooks in even deeper.

  In the music industry, like Dr. Faustus, you sign your pact in your own Blood. This contract can be with the record label, the manager, the business manager, the music attorney, the publishing company, or the agent. Or let's say you have no contract at all, yet you still have a massive fight on your hands because of the precedence that has been set in the years that the relationship has been going on, and yada yada yada, blah blah, puke. I have known too many people in the music industry, from label honchos to publishers to publicity assistants to accountants to managers to publicists to journalists who, when push comes to shove, will let you down and lower themselves morally down even further so they can cover their
ass by doing it.

  SONG CANVAS: “Take to the Sky

  He enjoys watching the fall of a colleague. The self-destruction of another. The physical defecation. His fingerprints are never on the person's state of mind—hard thing to measure. It makes him hard. Aroused.

  “Yes, Mom, it turns him on.”

  “How,” she asks me, “in Jesus’ name, how can someone that has been, let's say, not an enemy but even called friend, a good acquaintance or business associate, how can they become like this?”

  “Because, Mom … he likes the blood.”

  “But he doesn't seem like an evil person when he talks, dear.”

  “Yes, and bin Laden lives behind my trigeminal nerve—that doesn't mean I won't play fair. Some people you think you know until push comes to shove. The Day of Reckoning. It happens in every relationship; the friendship gets tested and it always comes down to one thing: Do we both want a win-win? He's the type of creature who in order to really win then needs someone to lose. Someone must pay. Someone must be yelled at, humiliated. A pound of flesh must be paid to feed his inflated sense of himself. Insatiable need.”

  “What need, pray tell, does he have? He has so much power, darlin’.”

  “I know, Mom. But so did Napoleon. So did Hitler.”

  “You know, Hitler was a vegetarian, dear.”

  “Yes, Mom. Never hurt an animal. But they have the same ravenous need.”

  “Need for what?”

  “An endless need to possess. You know, Mom, benevolent and malevolent are only a couple letters off.”

  “Yes, dear. I would say these two misguided tyrants, who remind me a bit of your friend somewhat, were six letters off.”

  “How's that, Ma?”

  “That would be Russia, dear.”

  this House is like Russia

  with eyes cold and grey

  you got me moving in a circle

  I dyed my hair red today

  I just want a little passion

  to hold me in the dark

  I know I've got some magic

  buried deep in my heart

  but my priest says

  you aint savin no souls

  my father says

  you aint makin any money

  my doctor says

  you just took it to the limit

  and here I stand

  with this sword in my hand

  you can say it one more time

  what you don't like

  let me hear it one more time then

  have a seat while I

  take to the sky

  I've been playing that almost every night on the Scarlet tour. Reclaiming something. Russia's landscape has changed since I wrote that in 1990. But my landscape has changed, too. Conflict and the pain of conflict come up in every show, in every record. At least somewhere.

  CONVERSATION BETWEEN TORI AND ANN:

  The music industry does not deal in music. It deals in moving product. There are a few terms you will need to know and understand to be involved in this world. The first one is actually two words: NET and GROSS. When it comes to you as the artist, you will want to know who is getting paid on the net or on the gross. Virtually in all cases the artist is paid on the net—that means after everyone has taken his or her piece of the pie, so to speak. Record companies take their piece first, and once you the artist have paid back all your expenses and some of theirs, then you finally get what's left … if there is anything left, sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't.

  Now the dangerous question here is, obviously, Who is getting paid on the gross? Who is getting paid before all the expenses are deducted? Who is getting paid on your creative work before you are? There are a few managers who get paid on the gross because they are responsible for manufacturing an artist, but I have found through the years that many managers who don't manufacture artists still want to be paid on the gross and will take that option if they can get it. I find that grotesque. That is why I set up The Bridge Entertainment Group with Johnny and Chelsea, because I inherently disagree with the philosophy of more than a few management groups. It's less complicated to define how net vs. gross impacts an artist's financial future when it is explained in terms of touring. Here's an example of how paying on the gross could affect an artist. Whether the number in this example is $10 thousand or $10 million, the result for the artist in this scenario will be the same. Namely, that the artist will potentially be in debt after a year of touring. Being In Debt is Being In Debt no matter how you get there. Let's say this artist is involved in a deal where the manager is being paid on the gross, and after a year of touring the artist has grossed $10 million on tour. The artist will then realize, to their shock, as they start having an eczema attack, that before all the expenses have been covered, the agent and the manager are taking their share. What this means is simply that if the agent is on a 10 percent deal and the manager is taking 15 percent … well, you do the math. The agent would take $1 million and the manager would take $1.5 million.

  Now let's imagine your Accurate Accountant calls you and says, “Excuse me, Artist, we have a problem.” They then drop the bomb: “Because your expenses in themselves were eight million, with the added commissions of one million for the agent and one and a half million for the manager, you are now a half million in the hole, in the red, in debt.” “I am what?” you stutter in absolute horror. The very grave answer from the very Accurate Accountant: “I hate to say this, Artist, but you are a half million In Debt.” Then the artist starts to freak out and says, “This can't be happening, I've been on the road for more than a year of my life … how could this happen?” “It happened because apparently you agreed in the contract to pay your management company on the gross instead of the net.” Now usually agents get paid on the gross. Agents book the gigs. Some agencies get 10 percent, some get 7.5 percent, and some get 5 percent on the gross of an artist's tour. This must be negotiated with the agency. I've been with Carole Kinzel over at CAA since the beginning of my career. She's one of my dear friends, and yes, she knows how I feel about any agency taking such a huge percentage. In my opinion, the percentages for agencies are still out of line. However, it's a ballpark standard for an agency to take from 10 percent negotiating down to 5 percent of the gross of an artist's tour, depending on the artist's pull in the industry.

  Management companies, however, do not have a ballpark figure. Some are taking 15 to 20 percent off the gross of what an artist generates. Some are taking 15 to 20 percent off the net of what an artist generates. Well, obviously there is a massive difference in these two options. Net pay for managers off a successful artist is a pretty good payday, so can you imagine a gross payday off a successful artist? I feel that management companies receiving payment of 15 to 20 percent of the gross is extortion. The manager will be making more than the artist because, you must remember, the artist has to shoulder all the expenses, unlike actors. Actors are not responsible for the costs of the movies they are in, whereas musicians are completely responsible for many of the costs that go into the manufacturing and promotion of a record, including the funding for their own tour and quite possibly the party the label is throwing for the launch of their record. Don't forget the word recoupable, because everything is. The words recoupable and nonrecoupable will be mentioned more times in this industry than the words good luck. This is one of the reasons that you'll read about certain musical artists who have sold millions of records of their own music and yet are broke. I mean actually broke. No house. Move in with a friend. Move back home. Try again. Sing in the shower, it's safer.

  Now for our next word that I think is quite important, and here again it's more of a phrase than a word: YOUR FRIENDLY MUSIC ATTORNEY. Do I have one? I have two. They are known to our team as “the good guys.” They would be Jamie Young and John Branca at Ziffren, Brittenham, Branca, et al. Does it matter who your music attorney is? Well, let's put it this way: the first thing out of the mouth of “those who are they” at the record label will alway
s be, “So, you have good representation?” Now, that is not a question. Is it a warning? Well, in a way. Partially because if you don't have a powerful deal maker, your attorney, then you are toast. The record label likes toast, even those on low-carb diets. Toast is popular but something that you or I really do not want to be. Have I ever been toast? Yes. With organic honey and smooth peanut butter dripping off it. And I've also been toast that has no Dutch butter spread on it, that doesn't even have margarine on it, for chrissake. Just toast left on the counter fighting not to get stale and moldy while waiting for the attorneys to get back with a counteroffer. There's a natural question at this point: What does this music attorney get paid? I would say loads and loads. They can make tons. Sometimes, they can even make more than the artist. I did not say all the time. But I'm trying to impress upon you their importance. Or should I say the importance the music industry itself has placed on some of them. I'm only talking about the Big Guns. So if you're not a Big Gun, then you won't be offended by what I'm about to say. And if you are a Big Gun, then go on, bask in your Bigness— this is quite glorious.