I do not remember the last time I had felt so anxious. A bombardment of butterflies bouncing around my belly to the deafening beat of my pounding heart. My hands clammy with tiny sweat beads while I clutched the telephone and waited for the call. Today, I was interviewing Tori Amos.
“Oh, it’s going to be ok! I promise!” she beams, with an assuring grin evident in her voice, when I explain to her the petrifying nerves taking over my body. And with that warm acknowledgment, I take a deep breath, relax slightly and we begin chatting like two women enjoying a margarita, taking power in our ability to analyse everything from the current political climate to Greek mythology and finally how it all relates and forms the basis of her ninth studio album, American Doll Posse.
“I was observing women in 2004. I was troubled because I didn’t understand how the women didn’t rise up in America and put an end to this [George Bush’s] administration that was clearly not for the rights of women. Not what I define the rights of women. I decided to go [and] observe and do my research. And as I was doing that, the songs began to come to me in snippets”.
“I quickly realised that I wasn’t getting one kind of musical scene. There were varied musical styles,” Tori explains of the fragmented musical ideas, “so that took me to two ways of thought: I was either creating many records or I was creating one record with many different perspectives. I chose the latter.” American Doll Posse was written from the perspective of five different women, including Tori herself, patterning and developing the internal psyche of the female perspectives, drawing parallel with women appearing in the mythological Greek pantheon.
Discovering exactly how involved a project American Doll Posse was, and knowing how completely emersed in her work Tori becomes, I ask if taking on such roles created any conflict during the songwriting and recording processes and exactly how the relationship worked between the various female characters and the different musical styles they were each bringing to the table. “I was really looking towards some of the rock gods in my preparation. The girls seem to like guitar and so, you know, the Tori in me had to not be jealous and say ‘Well you know, they like piano too, right?!’ That’s where Tori’s character had to morph She had to be able to not hold the role of a singer/songwriter, but be more of a unit with the women as well as with the guys in the band. She’s been the centre of attention for a long time!”
Over 30 songs were recorded for American Doll Posse, 23 making it onto the double album and 3 others released through iTunes and other outlets, which Tori admits was quite a challenging task. Not only did Tori have to remove herself from the sole singer/songwriter role in order to allow the other women’s perspectives their deserved time in the spotlight, she had to take on the role of a producer working with a band. “If you’re dealing with a singer/songwriter, it’s really essential that everything is working around that central expression. But it is not about full rock power. The players really have to work around that central performer. These songs were never going to work in that expression”.
Taking on that role of producer, Tori found it imperative that the musicians understood the energy of each song that they were recording, in particular Teenage Hustling, with its moods and heart definitely not in a singer/songwriter perspective but in more of a testosterone driven rock band perspective.
My curiosity and excitement grows with more and more mention of ‘the band’ and I can no longer hold off asking whether Tori will be touring with a full band on the back of this album, unlike her 2004 Original Sinsuality tour when she was solely accompanied by her beloved collection of black and white keys.
“It looks like it! Everybody wants to come to Australia. I think this record is truly about people coming together and playing music as well as allowing myself to take on these personas and sing from a different perspective and push myself into places that maybe I didn’t even know were really there. Everybody is feeling very creative and I love seeing that in other musicians and in the crew.”
So what should we expect at the shows, which are scheduled for September? Will it be a production full of costume and set changes ala Christina Aguilera? Tori lets me in on a few secrets, speaking in and out of third person. “The idea really is that the show will start with one of the four girls that isn’t Tori and that will be Act 1. Then Act 2 will be Tori ‘every night’, mainly because she does have that massive back catalogue which we need for a two hour show!”
Preparation, it becomes apparent, is a gruelling process consisting of having to give in to each persona completely and then knowing when to return to Tori’s reality. “I have to shut myself off and allow that perspective [of the individual women] to filtrate my body. Luckily they’re all able to really play the piano quite well! Bionic piano players the posse!!”
American Doll Posse is available now in two different formats: the standard version and the limited edition deluxe version which includes 5 collectible postcards, a full colour 36-page booklet and a Bonus DVD which contains a bonus track and behind the scenes footage.
