GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

JULY 17, 1998

Evenings Out

The minister's tomboy daughter

Tori Amos discusses the lessons she has learned from gay men

by Jeffrey L. Newman

Tori Amos is a crème puff with a machete. "I really enjoy having a giggle with a friend, but then someone crosses my line, then I don't really take it lightly. Some guy flipped me off recently in L.A. and I started chasing this group of Mexican guys down the road. I sometimes forget I'm not 7'2" and a Viking," says the 33-year old singer.

Versatile and sometimes unorthodox, Amos defies categorization. The combination pianist and vocalist continues to amaze critics and win over new fans with her offbeat, somewhat intoxicating vocal style. Nearly eight years after breaking onto the mainstream music scene, the often outspoken and zestful redhead is at the height of her career, having racked up a slew of gold and platinum records and set to embark on a major national tour in July that will continue through Thanksgiving.

The newly-married Amos is also promoting her fourth solo album, From the Choirgirl Hotel, on Atlantic

Records. It's her first new album since

Amos isn't surprised.

"Women are doing well, but it should be that way. We should be half of the market. For years and years, it has always been male," the singer says, noting that when she first broke out there were only a few others like her penetrating the market.

"The truth is, everything is still well in the boys' music world,” she said. “Women [musicians] are coming out with their own name and creating their own sound."

And certainly the success and attention of Lilith Fair, the all-female rock fest that's touring the country this summer is helping, although Amos has distanced herself from that pack.

"It's just not something I choose to do. I like Sarah [McLachlan, Lilith founder] as a person. But it's her thing and what she has time to do. My show is about not fitting in, and it doesn't fit in with what they do," she

"Women are doing well, but it should be that way. We should be half of the market. For years and years, it has always been male.”

1996's Boys for Pele. The new album debuted in the top 10 of the Billboard Top 200 album chart in late May, and was certified gold within its first seven weeks, a rare feat for any artist.

Amos has a huge following among gay and lesbian fans, and she keeps herself loyal to the people who helped shape her into the person she is today.

"I only know what I grew up with, which was around a lot of gay people,” Amos said. "When I first started I was working in the gay clubs. They taught me how to put a dress on, be confident, put on lipstick and most of all, to believe in myself."

"The only time I was confident was when I was at the piano,” Amos added, recalling her days as a shy tomboy. "By being around the gays, I learned a lot about coming out of my shell. A lot of the ideas and concepts I hold today were given to me at an early age by gay people."

In fact, she said, gay men taught her all she needed to know about sex.

"I got my sex education from gay men. It was gay men who taught me to French kiss and give head,” added the singer, who at 14 was dating a 21-year-old man.

"When you don't have a sister or a mother there--not that your mother should ever teach you that—and nobody else was there tell me anything, it was great that [gay male friends] were there to teach me that."

While Amos has enjoyed commercial success with her previous releases, never has the soil been so fertile for female singers. According to a recent article in the entertainment trade paper Variety, solo female artists are beginning to outsell and outnumber solo male artists on the pop charts.

said. "But Lilith is doing very well and should make a lot of people happy."

Born in North Carolina, the daughter of a Methodist minister, Amos grew up in a somewhat regimented upbringing. She began playing the piano as a tot and composed her first music score when she was only four years old.

At five, she was sent to the prestigious Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore to hone her craft. But after six years of trying to conform to their way of doing things, the ever-independent Amos realized she couldn't, and found herself expelled from the academy.

"They didn't think they'd get much out of me on any level. They were too regimented on how I felt a pianist should be. I mean, I'm not a great pianist, I'm an inventive one... that's really my strength," she said. "Plus, they saw these guys [the famous composers] as these upscale type people. They put them on this pedestal. They forget that these guys were vagabonds. They all had sexually transmitted diseases. They were outcasts, freaks. They weren't a part of the right-wing elitist crowd as these people would have you think.”

At 13, having moved with her family to the Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area, Amos took a job working in, of all places, a gay bar. For the next few years, she perfected her craft by playing Gershwin and other popular composers on the piano at various gay clubs.

“I grew up in a very Victorian household where you were taught to be a virgin until you were married. And then I began working in the gay clubs where I learned that not only didn't you have to be a virgin, but you didn't have to be a virgin with any one sex,” she said. “It was a complete contradiction.”

After an ill-fated pop attempt in the mid1980s called "Y Kant Tori Read?" the singer took time off to write solid, alternative pop music. The result of that effort became her

The Cornflake Girl

stellar 1992 debut Little Earthquakes. With feminine venom, skewed humor and stark eroticism, the release became that year's sleeper hit and sold more than two million copies worldwide. The album spawned several hits, including "Crucify," "Silent All These Years" and "Winter."

Her follow up, Under the Pink, also sold more than two million copies worldwide, but critics were harsher on Amos' sophomore release, balking at its stark, stripped down, ethereal sound. Still it yielded two top-40 hits, "God" and "Cornflake Girl.”

With Boys for Pele, her third opus, the singer seemed more in control. Recorded in Ireland and Louisiana, it veered off center even further than Under the Pink, and transcended the boundaries of any one genre, landing in a vast area of uncategorizable alternative pop.

During her two-year hiatus, which was partly fueled by a miscarriage she had during her a Christmas show promoting Boys, the singer decided she need to let go of many things, including her writhing away on the piano. She decided she wanted to marry her voice and piano playing with other instruments and sounds, and give it an edgier, rockier sound. And from that, From the Choirgirl Hotel was born.

"There's a deep love on this record," Amos said of her most recent release.

While Amos has never physically had sex with another woman, she says she has fallen in love with several of her women friends.

"I wouldn't say no, but I'd have to be drawn to that person. For me it's about a taste and a smell, a chemistry. And that taste and smell seems to want hairy legs. For some reason that smell of a male creature is just my preference. It's not like I couldn't see myself with a woman, but it's a choice I haven't made. Not that I couldn't," Amos said.

"And there have been moments. But chemical wise, you are drawn to who you are drawn to. I have some very close women friends and we're like mustard on Spam, we're that close. And, I have a lot of dyke friends. And I wouldn't think for one minute of begrudging their desire for a soft, beautiful woman. That's who they are chemically drawn to. But, I seem to like hard [male] bodies."

And, as for gay men, Amos says surrounding herself with gay male energy is very important.

"Growing up I never felt threatened [by her gay male friends], never felt invaded. They didn't want anything from me physically. I felt safe. It's so great to have a dear, dear friend who is gay. You can talk about stuff, go shopping. It's a friendship that is different from those with females and straight males."

"There's nothing like it. There's no competitiveness," she adds. "I've always been this way. I wanted to have deep and meaningful relationships since I was five."

As for public misconceptions about her, Amos says the really big one is people think she's some far-out, hippie girl and don't really get her.

"I'd like people to think if we met up, and hung out, we'd have a good laugh," Amos said. "That irony and humor doesn't come across in interviews. Instead I'm painted as so hippie new age, and that's so not me... that's not my scene at all."

Tori Amos will appear in Cincinnati on July 21 at the Crown (previously the Riverfront Coliseum). Amos will then be in Cleveland on July 22 at 8:00 pm at the Cleveland State University Convocation Center. Tickets for both shows are available at the box offices or by calling Ticketmaster.

Jeffrey L. Newman is a New York writer who can be reached at editorjeff@aol.com.