Tori Amos talks about
her miscarriage
By JOHN SAKAMOTO
Executive Producer, Jam! Showbiz
Tuesday, March 24, 1998
Tori Amos says a miscarriage she suffered at the
end of her last tour was the seed for her new
album, "from the choirgirl hotel".
"I wasn't going to write this record as soon as I did.
But at the end of 1996, I was near the finish of a
tour and I was pregnant," she says in a startlingly
candid interview included in her record-company
bio, not usually the forum for anything weightier
than a gushing sales job. (Amos, needless to say, is
not your usual recording artist.)
"I had known from very early on -- within a week
-- that I was pregnant. So I lived with the feeling
and got attached to the soul that was coming in.
And then at almost three months, I miscarried. It
was a great shock to me, because I really thought I
was out of the woods and I was really excited to
be a mom.
"I went through a lot of different feelings after the
miscarriage -- you go through everything possible.
You question what is fair, you get angry with the
spirit for not wanting to come, you keep asking
why. And then, as I was going through the anger
and the sorrow and the why, the songs started to
come. Before I was even aware, they were coming
to me in droves. Looking back, that's the way it's
always happened for me in my life. When things get
really empty for me -- empty in my outer life -- in
my inner life, the music world, the songs come
across galaxies to find me."
One of those songs, "Spark" (the album's first
single), appears to centre around Amos's
miscarriage, as she sings: "She can crawl like a
glacier/But she couldn't keep baby alive".
"People had a very hard time talking to me about
what had happened. And I had a hard time talking
about it. But the songs seemed to have such an
easy time talking to me. And I began to feel the
freedom of the music.
"Each song would show me a certain side of herself
because of what I was going through. So a song
like 'Cruel' came to me out of my anger. 'She's
Your Cocaine' and 'iieee' came out of a sense of
loss and sacrifice. And other songs celebrated the
fact that I found a new appreciation for life through
this loss.
"There's a deep love on this record. This is not a
victim's record. It deals with sadness but it's a
passionate record -- for life, for the life force. And
a respect for the miracle of life.
"This record got me through a real bad patch. But I
can laugh with this record, and I can move my hips
to this record, which is really good for me. It's very
sensual -- that's the rhythm."
NOTE: All of the quotes above are taken from
Tori Amos's bio, provided by Atlantic Records.
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