The Boston Globe
September 16, 2001
Added Sept 17, 2001
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The Boston Globe
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An article on Tori appeared in the September 16, 2001 edition of The Boston Globe newspaper. Thanks to Marla Tiara, David Louie, Stephen White and Don Burgess for telling me. This article was seen in other publications as well, including the September 23, 2001 edition of the Kansas City Star. Tori Amos play-acts pop's images of women
By Steve Morse, Globe Staff, 9/16/2001
Pop feminist Tori Amos doing a song by arch-chauvinist
Eminem? And while she's at it, how about delving into
songs by figures as diverse as Neil Young, the
Beatles, Slayer, Depeche Mode, Tom Waits, Lou Reed,
and other male icons?
Maybe only Amos could get away with it.
The result is an album of cover songs that ''is not a
tribute record,'' she is quick to point out. Rather,
the new CD, ''Strange Little Girls,'' which comes out
Tuesday and is sure to be controversial, has Amos
reinterpreting male-written songs from a female
perspective - specifically, that of the women
portrayed in the songs.
''I said, `OK, let's really turn over these stones,'''
notes Amos. ''Let's look at this a little more
closely. Let's crawl behind the men's eyes and hang in
their heads. And then let them crawl back over that
bridge into the skins of these different women and see
how they heard what they had written. You take the
man's seed, you plant it in the womb of the voice of
the woman, and the consummation happens there. This
album has a Y chromosome in it.''
It also has strikingly different photos of Amos in the
CD jacket to accompany each song. Aided by a team of
fashion designers, Amos changes from a vulnerable,
Sharon Tate lookalike for Eminem's '''97 Bonnie &
Clyde'' (in which Eminem raps about killing his wife),
to twin, tough-as-nails businesswomen for Neil Young's
''Heart of Gold.'' In Amos's revision of the tune
(though she keeps the lyrics intact, as she does with
every song on the CD), it is about women ''not looking
for a heart of gold in a man, but looking for gold in
the corporation.'' She also assumes the pose of a
woman in the French Resistance for Slayer's ''Raining
Blood,'' and a woman talking to Satan for 10cc's ''I'm
Not in Love.''
The new album was sparked by Amos's belief that there
has been ''a mass, unconscious rage against the
feminine'' in much of today's pop culture. ''And it's
not just from Eminem. In a lot of work out there, I
was hearing about this subjugation of women and that
was a turn-on for a lot of people and even for some
women,'' says Amos, who will introduce these songs,
and play some of her hits, during a solo performance
at the Wang Theatre on Oct. 15.
Amos is no stranger to edgy subject matter. Her
previous repertoire includes ''Me and a Gun,'' a true
account of her rape as a young girl; and ''Juarez,''
about the unsolved murders of many women in the desert
where ''no angel came.''
The idea for the new CD came when Amos, 38, nursed her
first-born child, Natashya, last year. She had ample
time on her hands and would sit up to 12 hours a day
with her daughter on her lap. The infant was a
long-awaited arrival: Amos says she had three prior
miscarriages, including one just after her tour with
Alanis Morissette two summers ago.
Some will assume that an album of cover songs was a
natural project at a time when Amos did not have the
energy to write original material, as she did in her
previous hit albums, ''Little Earthquakes,'' ''Boys
for Pele,'' and ''Songs from the Choirgirl Hotel.''
(Collectively, she has sold 10 million albums.) The
truth is that she has continued to write original
tunes; she just became fascinated by the thought of
probing women who populate male-penned songs.
She consulted a ''laboratory of men'' to come up with
the songs. ''Straight men, gay men, all sorts of men
contributed ideas,'' says Amos. ''It was tricky to
assemble this material because a lot of the songs just
didn't work. But the men were my control group. They
brought the songs to me that meant something to them
as men.
''I contributed the Eminem song. He was brought up by
the men, and I said, `OK, he seems to be a real
talking point with men.' Some didn't want to have
anything to do with it. Some did. And some of the gay
men said, `No, you have to do him. You need to look at
this.' Because some of the gay men were very offended.
''When I heard [Eminem's] `Bonnie & Clyde,' I found it
very scary, just because nobody ever mentioned [his
wife] in any of the discussions. As I listened, she
reached out her hand to me and said, `Let me show you
how I heard the song.'''
In Eminem's version, he raps almost cockily to his
daughter about killing her mother. Amos changes the
tone to a haunting near-whisper. Again, the lyrics are
the same, but they're conveyed through the fading
voice of a dying woman. It's a chilling moment.
''[His wife] dies soon after, knowing that her
daughter will be divided between the two of them. This
is her daughter's legacy - to be completely pulled
apart - and she will grow up as a strange little
girl,'' says Amos.
Hence, the album's title, and hence the reason the
song is followed by Amos's take on the Stranglers'
''Strange Little Girl,'' released as a single in 1982.
''This is such a dangerous project,'' Amos says.
''It's not about your own work, where your DNA is in
your songs and you are the mom. This is something I
really had to approach differently. You have to
acknowledge that these men are the song mothers. I'm
not the mother here. But what I did find surprising
was that with each male song, a different female
character came intrinsically tied to it that had
access to me.
''A woman said to me that this [album] is like my
little archetypal United Nations. And maybe it is,
because if you look at the different women, there are
some that hold the Athena essence, some that hold the
Aphrodite essence, some that hold the Demeter, some
that hold the Persephone. It's all there.''
Her band on the album included guitarist Adrian Belew
(known for his work with David Bowie, King Crimson,
and Talking Heads) and bassist Justin Johnson, from
Beck's group. ''Justin suggested the Slayer song,''
says Amos. ''He said, `You haven't represented the
metal acts. You've covered the rappers and everyone
else. So I said, `OK, expose me to what matters to
you.' He opened up his world and said `Raining Blood'
was a benchmark album for him. I said, `Let's go.
Let's do it.'''
The new album may not be destined to be a grand
commercial success, but Amos has outdone herself in
creative experimentation. Young's gentle ''Heart of
Gold,'' for instance, becomes a roaring,
industrial-style tune. And ''Happiness Is a Warm Gun''
is augmented by a spoken-word rap about the Second
Amendment by Amos's father, who is a Methodist
minister.
Have any of the male authors heard her versions yet?
''Some, yes,'' she says. ''But they've been very quiet
about it, though Slayer did send me a [tour] T-shirt
that said `God hates everyone.'''
Meanwhile, Amos has gone on tour with her husband,
Mark Cawley [sic] (also her sound engineer), and
Natashya, whom she says will be her only child.
''We're all out together. We don't want to be away
from'' Natashya, Amos says. ''But down time means
something very different to me now. Down time is
crawling around on the floor with stuffed animals. But
it's taught me patience - and I'm giggling now,
because patience isn't something that I've been known
for.'' |
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Please give me feedback, comments, or suggestions about A Dent In The Tori Amos Net Universe. Email me (Mikewhy) at mikewhy@iglou.com |
