Tori's Online Chat At TVGEN/Yahoo

Added August 6, 1998

On Wednesday, August 5, 1998 at 7:00PM Eastern, Tori chatted for 45 minutes with her fans for the TVGEN and Yahoo Chat web sites. This was done shortly before her concert that evening in Albany, NY. Tori talked about several interesting subjects, and I thought it was a good chat overall. The most interesting revelation were the bside songs that Tori says will be on the new Jackie's Strength single. Tori also said the single would be an enhanced CD with the video for Jackie's Strength on it! To read a summary of the chat and/or a full transcript, look below. You will also likely find a transcript at the Yahoo Chat Site or TVGEN web site.

Chat Summary

Tori chatted for about 45 minutes tonight from Albany NY shortly before she was to take the stage there for a concert. Tori said several interesting things. The big news was that Tori revealed 2 b-sides that are going to be on the new Jackie's Strength single. I assume she was refering to the U.S. version (since Europeans are getting Raspberry Swirl.) Tori said the b-sides are:

Never Seen Blue
Beulah Land

These songs were orginally written got BFP (like Cooling) but did not make it. She also said the black & white James Brown directed video for Jackie's Strength would appear on the single since it is supposed to be an enhanced CD!

Tori also said she wrote a song for Choirgirl called "Snow Cherries From France" that is one of her favorites, but has not recorded it yet. I bet we will see it pop up one day...

Other highlights from the chat:

1)Tori said the new album. "from the choirgirl hotel" was not really a departure from her earlier work, but the next logical step. She was integrating the piano with rhythm.

2)She said that "home" has become really important to her over the last few years but she will not be able to spend time at home until after Christmas.

3) She wanted her musicians to come up with ideas for the songs while writing/recording for the new album.

4) Tori talked at some length about both the song and video for Jackie's Strength and the fact that it relatea to her own marriage and a small book on Jackie that she read once at an airport. One page had a photo of her in her wedding dress and on the next page there was a photo of the JFK assassination. It helped Tori realize how fast life can change. The video features a woman (her) who has always been too afraid to follow through with her dreams, including her marriage. Luckily Tori did not get lost of HER wedding day!

5)Tori said she liked black comedy and is fascinated with rules, ideas, and limitations. She said people can get trapped in their limitations, opinions, and inaccurate perceptions of themselves that they get from others. She called herself an explorer.

6) Tori had called LE a diary and UTP an impressionist painting. BFP was a novel. Tori said that the new record was a car race, with feamle drivers, where fluidity and form were more important than winning.

7) Tori finds Independence to be sexy.

8) She said that there are some subjects she will not write about. She said that timing is important, that there has to be an opening where a subject can take root.

9) Tori is happy with how the videos for the new album have turned out.

10) In her spare time, Tori enjoys racing her little boat and reading. She enjoys studying mythology, other cultures, and other people's belief systems.

11) Tori finds the ocean to be very humbling. To her it is a massive, living and breathing organism.

12) Mythology has been watered down and disrespected by the media, which has altered ancient belief systems into tinkerbell philosophy. They commercialize and sensationalize mythology.

13) Tori said her favorite venues are The Greek in L.A., the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Madison Square Garden in NY.

14) Tori said she started writing choirgirl right after her miscarriage on December 23, 1996 and the songs were done in February 1998. Pandora came first and was inspired by the water. Tori was watching the sea transform itself and trying to figure out how she could transform herself from a grief stricken person to a woman who could experience joy again.

15) Neil made her a tree in the Stardust series and gave her pictures of the tree for a wedding gift.

16) There are songs on choirgirl that she enjoys performing more than others, but she refused to reveal them because she is worried that the other songs will turn on her!

17) She said that playing solo and with a band are both "valid." She enjoys the challenge of keeping up with the band.

18) Someone asked her if there is anything she has not accomplished yet professionally. She said that there is still so much more she can experiment with musically. Song structure and working with sound effects are the main challenge. She said the problem with some musicians is they become "numb" and then start repeating themselves and cease to explore.

19) She ended the chat by telling people to watch out for each other at the concerts. "If someone needs help, try and help them. But if you get a bad feeling about them, they're probably a psycho."

A good chat IMHO :)

The Full Transcript

Special thanks to meade for sending this transcript to me!

Tvg_star [Tori's online name was Tvg_star]: hi everybody

Let's get right to the questions...

Do you think that choirgirl hotel is a departure from your previous work?

I wouldn't call it a departure. I would say it was probably the next logical step. I worked with a harpsicord on bfp, and I had taken the piano to a lot of different musical expressions in other records, in little earthquakes and on born.... Choirgirl is really about integrating piano with rhythm. I cut live with matt chamberlain, who is a drummer, and with a programmer

Tori do you ever miss home when you are on the road? And do you have any pets?

You can't really have pets because we are never around for too long, we as in the inner circle of the crew. It really wouldn't be fair to the animals. I particular love pets, but we can't really do that yet.

I do miss home. I just miss sometimes making my own lunch, even though it wouldn't taste so very god, just the fact that you can make it yourself and sit down by yourself.

Home has become really important to me over the last couple years, but I won't be able to spend time until after christmas

Do you write the full band arrangements for all songs now, or just the piano parts?

No the reason we get players really is to give them the freedom to come up with ideas. For example, caton the guitar player, will come up with a few different parts for each song, and some work and some don't, but it's really important to give the mus.... At the end of the day. If I can't live with something I just say it doesn't fit in with the spirit of the song, sometimes I get rid of my piano parts because they don't serve the song; so we try something else.

Did you write jackie's strength for anyone in particular?

We I knew I was getting marriend, and all those feelings were coming up, sort of flashbacks of your life.

So when I saw this tiny book on jackie's life at a book store in an airport ijust picked it up, and when I saw the picture of her as a bride... and then turned the page and saw the picture of her when jfk got shot, it really spoke to me about how fast your life can change, at the turn of a page.

I really didn't know how I was going to react on my wedding day when I wrote this song. A part of me could see myself getting lost, going to a 7-11 and having a slurpy all day...

This song is about a girl getting lost on her wedding day. I happened to show up at the church for mine in real life. but a 7-11 did cross my mind

There's definitely a serious overtone in your music overall. Is this an outward expression of who you are personality wise as a person?

I guess I enjoy good black comedy, and I think life is really like that.

Ideas that hold people back, or ideas that become like rockets that you put on your arms and take you, take you where I don't know. But I think that a lot of us are trapped in our limitations.

But limitations come from not physical limitations but I think internal limitations

We have perceptions of ourselves that we took on from other people's opinions of us which formed the way we see ourseves. That doesn't necessarily mean that's who we are.

I think most people are trapped in these opinions and wear them like a hefty bag

And we almost asphyxiate ourselves with other people's ideas of who we are I don't know if you could call this being serious, I see it more as an explorer, I see myself as an explorer asking questions, not necessarily having many answers.

Tori, you once said that LE is like your diary and utp is your fantasy and that bfp is your novel. What is from the choirgirl hotel for you?

I think it's a car race, but with women racing the cars. And it's not about winning as much as it is about fluidity and form.

I find independence very sexy, and I see these songs as very independent from each other. That's why I put them in a singing troupe

Tori, you're songs are so very personal... is there any topic that you are afraid to write about?

I'm sure there is. There's a lot that I won't broach. Timing is really important with certain subject matter. There has to be a window, an opening, where a subject can take root, because the minds of the masses are fertile, the ground in the consciousness or even the unc.... There are certain things that are not ready to be talked about yet. I don't even know what a lot of them are.

How long did it take you to write your whole cd?

Well all in all about, I started writing right after I miscarried, and I miscarried on december 23 1996, which obviously, the angel was on the tree and the whole bit.

So soon after that the songs started to come, thank god.

And pandora was the first one to come, not in her entirety, but she started to come. She came off the water. I was staying on the river, and the water was a large part of this record.

I would spend hours on the water and seeing how the sea transformed itself, knowing that I had to transform myself from a woman who had lost a baby to a woman who was grieving, to a woman who had to find joy in life again. So the songs began, I guess you could say, early january and the album was finished in february of 1998, ready to be remastered.

Were you pleased that neil finally "made you a tree" in stardust? What did you think of it?

It was about time he made me a tree, he had been talking about it for ages. He came and visited me at my beach house, and I was thrilled when he told me I was going to become bark.

For my wedding present he got me the originals of the drawings of them making me a tree.

Do you have a particular favorite on choirgirl?

It changes all the time like with every record.

I think if I'm fair there are always a few on each record that I enjoy playing more than others.

But I never tell what they are, because I have to live with these songs so I don't make it public in case they turn on me.

Tori, how accurately do you feel your videos depict the songs they represent? Do you view them as independent entities, or elaborations of each other?

Well I'm really happy with the videos for the new record, I spent a lot of time with the directors.

Talking about the songs themselves, and then I let the directors take the ball and run with it.

James brown directed bark (typo, spark) and jackie's strength. Jackie's strength is just being released now as we speak. It will be availiable on an enhanced cd coming out in the sotres in a couple of weeks, and you should be able to see it on THE BOX in a couple of weeks. Jackie's strength is in black and white and it's me on my wedding day getting lost. So it's kind of a parallel to my life, if that makes any sense.

I am in the back of a taxi in my wedding dress, not able to quite go through with it. I pass the boy I'm supposed to marry at the church and I hide in the back of a cab like a wimp. But you can see I'm torn because my whole life is flashing in front of me. And I run into myself as a 13 year old girl, which took lots of hair and makeup. And that 13 year old girl is reminding me that we had a dream... and the characters, the bride in the taxi, forgot. Even though I think she loves that boy, she didn't follow her heart. You know, she never took that trip to australia, she never took that art class, she never followed up on her dreams. And so she can't get married and close the blinds. So it's a very emotional this video, because she does love him, I believe that.

What kinds of things do you do when you're not on tour, and have time to yourself?

Well I like to race my little boat, it's really small, a 14 footer, but I like being out on the water. Once I took it into the big ocean when it was really calm, and it was so humbling, because you don't see land in the distance, like on a river. I said to myself, oh my God, how massive this living, breathing, organism is.

What else do I like to do? I like books, and I wish I could take a mythology class. I'm really fascinated with mythology, whether it's Egyptian, Hebrew, Celtic, Native American, whatever. I'm fascinated by cultures and what their belief systems are. Unfortionately , this has been watered down into the media to Tinkerbell philosophy. I call it Tinkerbell Smegma.

The history of the elemental world as many of you know goes back thousands of years, and it gets put into this new age diluted kind of philosophy, very white bread, that would probably get these journalists their nose removed if they urinated on Celtic... A lot of the media has a disrespect for other people's ancient belief systems. And you can't really commercialize it, it's too old to be commercialized. So the sensationalism of mythology is unfortionate.

What venue is your favorite to play, why?

Well ilove playing the greek theatre, it's really magical being outside. Last time I played to a full moon -- talk about atmosphere. Playing the albert hall in london. You can feel the ghosts of all the history And I must say madison square garden in new york, it was a big wow, even though I had a sinus infection.

Do you ever write songs that "don't fit in" with the rest of an album? What do you do with them?

Good question. Cooling is a song that was written for boys for pele and it didn't really fit in the album, so it came out as a bee side for sparks in england, you can get it as an import. And I play it a lot now. I tried to put it on this record but it didn't really fit.

On jackie's strength I have two unreleased songs that are coming out as part of the cd, as part of the jackie package. Obvious jackie is one, and never seen blue, and the third track is called beulah land These two songs were also written for boys for pele and recorded for it but weren't right so I held them and now they feel current, like their time is now

There is a song for choirgirl that didn't come out and I didn't record it. It's one of my favorites, calld snow cherries from france. And I haven't recorded it yet, and I wrote it for this record. So we'll see.

How do you feel about playing with a band in your tour? Do you like it more than when it was just yourself and your piano?

These musicians are so talented that it's a challenge for me to play with them. It's always a dream to play with people who are good enough to inspire you and who you hope to keep up with

Every night we change what we play, and we don't look at the clocks.

That's not the goal at all. At madison quare garden we looked at each other and send savor every second, because it will be over all too fast.

Is there anything you haven't accomplished in your professional career that you are striving to?

There's so much musically that you can experiment with that if you don't get lazy it will take a lifetime, and then some. I think for you to really feel like you can take a nap. The problem with a lot of musicians is we can get numb. Almost like a haze sets in. and you don't keep your ear to the ground, so you are not exploring anymore. And you start repeating yourself a.... obviously as a player you are drawn to certain sounds that becomes part of your lifestyle. But the problems of structure in songs, and how to work with sound effects, this is what's challenging.

For those that are coming to the concerts just remember to watch out for each other as well as yourselves. And if somebody needs help, try and help them. But if you get a bad feeling about them, they're probably a psycho.

Go Back

Please give me feedback, comments, or suggestions about my site. Email me (Michael Whitehead) at mikewhy@iglou.com