Life Thru A Lens
Rifling through their photo albums, chortling at the rumness inside...
***Full page pic of Tori with fangs***
Fangs, indeed, for the memories! It's the new bit where we take pop types down a back alley of pictorial reminiscence. This month: Tori Amos, pig suckling and that "retail slut" look. Hurrah!
***cover picture of Y Kant Tori Read***
1.) That First Album, LA Foxtress "Look"
"The image was not that far away from Adam Ant, but it's the 1988 California version- not bangers 'n' bitter, it's more like Sammy Jo leaves Dynasty and goes to the Rainbow club and finds her true calling. A new romantic feeling on top of a little bit of leather. I shopped at Retail Slut on Melrose. And yes, that is a sword. I was taking broadsword lessons at the time. I wanted to be Highlander II. My instructor was Scottish and he taught me the moves. Now, if I have a 12-inch blade coming at me I know how to block it."
***Pic of Tori playing the piano (from Dublin 1994)***
2.) Straddling the Ivories, 1994
"When I was in Dublin in 1994, right after Kurt Cobain died, I'd just recorded a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit and when I started it, all the lighters came out and everybody was singing. You'd have thought that it was planned. Thousands of people were singing softly, like a lullaby. It was beautiful. It was almost like we were singing Kurt to bed. It was quite a moment and it was really out of my control. I was a part of something with them."
***pic of Tori with a sly grin and a devil thingie behind her***
3.) The Naughty Vamp, 1996
"This is from the same shoot as the fangs one. You have to be able to laugh at yourself. Sometimes people read things into silly stuff. You may go after some really tough emotional issues, but when you're not doing that, people can get confused. I married a Brit, so I know nothing is sacred, except how you make tea ‚ sugar in first, teabag, water. I love people who use humour to bring insight, it's the kind of thing that Brits do well ‚ like cheddar cheese."
***CALS pic w/ mattress***
4.) The Whiffy "Boys For Pele" Mattress
"This was from 1996, a time in my life when I was investigating erotica. Everybody has had a power/sexual relationship with somebody, where power becomes an aphrodisiac. This picture's about what you're willing to five of yourself because you need this person's essence. {Er...of course}. You're an emotional vampire. That's where I was before I met my husband. And yes, there's always a reason for a stain on a mattress. It's not like you purchase one and go, Whoops! How did I not see that?"
***Pig pic from BFP***
5.) Boys For Pele Sleeve
"The cover was me with the gun. The pig was the inside sleeve. I wanted it to be a Christmas card for my dad. See, he'd been bugging me for years to make a Christmas album with church songs. He's a Methodist minister in Florida. So I said, OK, I'm gonna do a little Christmas card for my dad ‚ Madonna and child. He sends a newsletter out to everybody every year, with little pictures of us all, so I said, Here's my little contribution. He didn't use it. The Pig was called Pig, like in Babe."
***Tori Amos, written in UTP hair writing***
6.) The Unnerving Hair Writing
"This isn't my hair. I don't have that much. I have no idea why that was done. It was the photographer's idea. It was around this time, early 90's, that I realized that my name means 'little chicken' in Japan. I was ordering stuff and yakatori is little chicken."
***Wedding Pic***
7.) The Whacko Druid Wedding
" It was quite a do. I married Mark {Hawley} on 22 February 1998. The wedding was in West Wycombe because the wedding planner, Peregrine Armstrong-Jones, knew the National Trust people. He does all kinds of groovy parties. This place was a pagan site for 1000 years. It's a magical place. My father tried to convince me that he was going to conduct the ceremony. I said, Incorrect ‚ be my dad! It would have been all bad ‚ for all three of us. My mother helped him adjust. I was pretty militant about it. We decided we didn't wasn't children under 18 there. It was a very adult party."
***5 SLG characters***
8.) The Bonkers New Sleeve "Characters"
"On the new record, Strange Little Girls, I choose powerhouse male songs: Neil Young, Eminem, Tom Waits. All of these songs, I felt, I could hold a different character, a female. And the pictures are my idea of who these women are. So Heart Of Gold was just dying for a woman to step in and say, What you're saying is you want a woman who'll put up with your bullshit. With '97 Bonnie and Clyde, Eminem wrote a myth of domestic violence. In my version his wife is still alive in the trunk of the car; she knows she has minutes left and that she will not be able to protect her daughter. The I Don't Like Mondays character is the Texas Ranger who's first to arrive on the scene. Sorry Bob, but once you put a song out there, you cannot control it anymore. Your song is a child who meets other people."
***Tori in the box from LE***
9.) In A Box On Little Earthquakes, 1992
" I suppose I'm trapped here. That's sort of how I felt. I wrote a song about rape {Me and a Gun} and got letters from rapists who have a point of view on it. They didn't think of the girl as someone they might have known. They're completely cut off from her terror. I didn't have any choice when I had somebody's hands around my neck, trying to take my breathe away. In Me And A Gun, that girl didn't make it out of the trap. And the rapist who raped me knows she fucking didn't make it out."
***2 Q cover pics***
10.) The Q Covers
"The trio thing was 1994. it was just a magical day. I really like those two. I had met Bjork before, 10 years ago. I have huge respect for her and for Polly {Harvey}. I haven't seen them in while, but messages get passed back and forth. We're always in a different part of the world. Once the camera was gone, we began to see what each other was about, and in a very brief amount of time we built up a huge amount of trust. Do you like the breastplate one? I'm like this little warrior woman! This is so funny. I did this cover in 1998. it's my little nod to magazines like FHM, and to girl groups like the Mary Jane Girls. If those girls wanna give it away for almost free, then when they decide they've had enough, I'll turn then on to some good accountants."
