BIOGRAPHY from the choirgirl homepage

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Tori Amos was born on 22nd August 1963 in Newton, North Carolina. Her birth-name however is not Tori but Myra Ellen Amos. Somebody who had seen the 17-year-old her at a concert told her afterwards that she did not look like Ellen. Her name should rather be Tori. Apparently, he was very convincing and Tori agreed with him.

Her mother, Mary Ellen Amos, is a grandaughter of a full-blooded Cherokee man. Tori feels very attached to her Indian descent.

Some find it hard to believe that Tori's father is a reverend, because according to some of her songs, she does not seem to be in favour of the church. She explains: "Being a ministers daughter you get [...] an incredible amount of confusion. But when you're 14 years old and you don't know what your believes are, you're taking on eveybody's believes around you. And you're making them yours. And I'm not about the institutionalized church, at all."

Already during her childhood it became more and more obvious that Tori was an extremely gifted piano player. So her parents agreed to send her to the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Balitimore, Maryland. Tori was the youngest person who had ever attended that school. She trained there from 1968 until 1974. But she had some problems with adapting in the conservative surrounding. As a result her scholarship was not renewed and she got booted out and took private lessons.

Music always played an important role in Tori's life: "I have a real love for what music does to your heart, what it does for people because it bridges languages like nothing else." She does not see herself as a poet. "It's really.. without the music, I don't think that the words would come together for me. The words really come because of the tone and the rhythm. If I would just sit down and write poetry, I think I would insult other poets because I don't have that skill. I don't work with just words as a universe. Words aren't a universe on their own that come from me. They have to come with the music." Her songs "[..] are like living beings. They visit me. They rape me till I get them right."

Tori started "working" at quite an unusual place for a 13-year-old: a gay bar. Her father must have had some second thoughts about that, but instead of not allowing her to perform there, he accompanied her to all shows.

When Tori went to L.A. at the age of 21, her days as a rock chick started. The band "Y Kant Tori Read" was founded. But success would not come and so Tori tried a different approach..

Then something happend that would change Tori's life forever. She was raped. However terrible that experience was, it was the base for one of the greatest albums ever. "Little Earthquakes" deals with that experience, but it becomes most obvious in the song "Me & A Gun", of course. "Me & A Gun is based on a personal experience. And I wouldn't talk about it for 7 years. I saw 'Thelma and Louise' and it's like a door opened. And I began to open that door and free myself from being a victim in my head. You can carry that with you for the rest of your life really. And I've smashed that."

In order to encourage others who have been through the same, she is supporting the R.A.I.N.N. (=Rape Abused Incest National Network). If you want to know more about this organisation, click here or on the logo below.

The next album of course was "Under The Pink". Some critics were disappointed because they thought it was not as personal as "Little Earthquakes". In 1996 she released "Boys For Pele". "The record [BFP] is about finding your own fire, not through somebody else. What you do, that you're worth as a person is intrinsic to somebody else or something else."

The inspiration for her fourth album "From The Choirgirl Hotel" again was rather tragic. "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. [..] I lived with the feeling and got attached to the soul that was coming in. And then at almost 3 months, I miscarried." Making this record helped her to get "through a real bad patch".

On 22nd February 1998 she married Mark Hawley, her sound engineer. In 1999 she released "To Venus And Back", a double CD, which featured both brandnew and live songs that were recorded during the Plugged-Tour. During that tour Tori was accompanied by a whole band for the first time consisting of Matt Chamberlain (drums), Jon Evans (bass) and her long time cohort Steve Caton (guitar). That same year, she did another US-tour together with Alanis Morissette which was called "5 1/2 weeks". It came as a surprise to both her record company and her fans when it was official that Tori gave birth to her daughter Natashya Lórien on 5th September 2000. 

Her next project was called "Strange Little Girls". This album contains cover songs that were all written by men, e.g. Eminem, The Beatles, Depeche Mode or Tom Waits. They all have one topic in common: women. By interpreting them Tori gives these women a voice and makes you see these songs in a whole new light.

Back to the roots could be the motto for her "Strange Little Tour" in fall 2001. She performed in the US and Europe without a band, even without Caton, just herself, her Bösendorfer piano, an electric piano and the Wurlitzer piano. Many fans consider this her best tour ever.

She then left her old record company Atlantic and got signed at Epic (Sony). Apparently, it was a mutual decision. Her latest album is called "Scarlet's Walk" and will be released on 28 October 2002 (in the US it will be 29 October). It's about a girl's journey from the west to the east coast and reflects America's history, parts of it were recorded after 9/11. A tour is about to follow this winter.

Some more quotes from various interviews: 

• "Adolescence and audiences kind of go together because I remember playing this song when I was 12, to this boy. I'd written this song for this boy ["More Than Just a Friend"]. And everybody knew in school about it. And he threatened to beat me up. It was gonna be in front of the whole school, you know assembly. His name was John. Well you know.. I.. braces and pigtails...and he was dating the girl.. Sylvia.. you know.. 14 and should be you know on the front of a ship. And the point is I sat there.. there wetting my pants, I mean my knees were water. He was sitting right there with all his cute friends. And you know.. what do you do? You're 12 years old and you have a crush on somebody and you really wanna say: You know buddy, in 15 years, I'm not gonna have braces anymore. And I'm not gonna have my knees like water. And I might be an interesting person and you know you shouldn't be so mean to me. But adolescence is that time when I think it can be.. it's the cruelest place on earth. It can really be heartless. And I played that song and everybody knew what was going on, needless to say he didn't beat me up. And he came up to me and said: That was really better than I thought it was gonna be. I haven't heard from him since. I think about that sometimes when I have to go out and play in front of an audience. And I go: Oh, my knees are weak and they're full of water!"

• From the Plugged tour book: I'm aware more of clocks now that we're on the road. When we're not on the road I meander and curve around till I figure out were I want to go. Sometimes just curving around is the farest it gets. At about 4 p.m., when we're touring, another sensation makes herself slowly known. The sensation is without question a presence that I cannot put a name to. What I do know is that she tries to give me and the crew clues to when the current where the current for tonight's show is. At soundcheck, for me anyway, I haven't found my emotional way "in". It usually isn't until I go set backstage and just allow myself to travel with a Jaguar Eye. Sometimes I sense one if the band or one of the crew has found an etheric way "in" to that particular town's current - so they become a window in order for the rest of us to prepare the magic carpet ride. Obviously everybody that shows up brings a different set of maps and codes and decoding devices that decide our course. As always, I never know where we're going but I know we're going. See you there, Tori.

The quotes are taken from some interviews I happened to tape (You can trust me, I truthfully transcribed what Tori said. :)) and from various magazines.

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