Tori Amos is heading back to Australia to promote her new album, Unrepentant Geraldines. Tori will be performing a string of solo concerts around the country, including a special show at the Opera House with Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Trent Titmarsh is well known in the Australian music industry for his work liaising with both artists and media. A massive Tori fan, we were able to get the two together earlier this week for a TOM exclusive. Tori was in NYC and Trent was on the other end of the line in Sydney.
Trent: I don’t know if you remember me, Tori. We’ve met several times when you’ve been in Australia. I was the guy that put together that petition to try and get you back to Australia.
Tori: Oh my God, of course I remember you. How are you?
Trent: I’m really good. It’s a thrill to speak to you again, and thankfully, you did see the petition and came back. I thought I might have to do another petition because it’s been five years. I was getting worried.
Tori: No, but we’re very excited to come. It’s going to be really fun this time.
Trent: I’m so excited about a very special show in Sydney with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
Tori: Yeah, me too. They invited me to come and I’m still buzzing from the whole invite. It means I’m going to have to practice like a crazy woman, but I will. Playing there with the orchestra, It kinds of makes you feel sort of ‑‑ this might sound crazy but a bit like Freya coming in with the Valkyries, flying in on wild creatures. Our instruments are breathing fire, and there we are, all of us, flying in together. Music warriors, right?
Trent: Amazing. And then the rest of the country it’ll be you and the piano, which is what the tour has been around the world so far?
Tori: Yeah, it’ll be the tour that’s happening now. The Unrepentant Geraldines tour.
Trent: Which I’ve been watching closely and I think it’s some of the best set lists from you I’ve ever seen.
Tori: It’s been really liberating and freeing, because I haven’t done a show like this in a while. When you do structured shows there’s something really exciting about it because working with an orchestra, you have a set list. You stick to the set list and you rehearse. To play with all those people is a real ‑‑ it’s a conversation, but that has to be in harmony, rhythm, and together. So it’s over 40 people having to completely work together and harmonize together. And so in a way, it’s a beehive. You must work together to make the honey.
Trent: You’re the beekeeper.
Tori: I’m one of the bees, I think, with the orchestra. When you’re on your own you’re more like the beekeeper because you’re asking the songs to come to you. And they’re coming to you but you’re on your own. However, you can change the set really quickly. You can change it every night.
Trent: What fascinates me is particularly during the Lizard Lounge is the covers you’re choosing, my particular favourite was “Because The Night”: that was outstanding. And Madonna’s “Frozen.” And in Russia, when you covered t.A.T.u’s “Not Gonna Get Us,” that spoke volumes of what you and everyone in that audience had on their minds that night.
Tori: That was a crazy night.
Trent: Is it a similar process with the covers? Do they come to you, as well, then and there; are they a bit more thought out beforehand? How do you choose them?
Tori: No, so my repertoire, I’m continuing to build it, right now here in New York, even now. I’m building the back catalogue. There are a lot of songs there. I’d like to think I’ve built a lot of it up by the time it gets to Australia. But there’s a lot to build with so many albums. I’m trying to build them now so I can add a couple every night, and then use the sound-check time to build the covers. That you get requests at the stage door.
I’m trying to buy time here, so I’m building my repertoire. You can’t just drop it all in the first night because I won’t have enough time at sound check to completely put in 10 new songs every night. Unless they’re rehearsed. Do you see? I’m rehearsing now and rearranging. The covers operate ‑‑ usually you get requests at a show or the day before a show, and somebody’s coming to both. You don’t have a lot of time to bring that cover up. You have a sound check.
Trent: Understood. So I adore the new album, and congratulations on its success. Critics and reviewers have been saying ‑‑ I keep reading “Return to form.” Is that a compliment or a backhanded slap, them branding maybe the other recent albums not to form? I don’t understand that myself.
Tori: Whatever the terminology is, I get what they’re trying to say. They’re trying to say it’s not a Duetsche Grammophon record. It isn’t variations on a theme. That’s what I think they’re trying to say. That’s what I hope they’re trying to say. Critics ‑‑ people have been open to the record, and possibly because I haven’t done a contemporary record like this in five years.
Trent: I love the honesty that’s coming through, and again it keeps getting written, you’re now 50. They’ve always put a number after your name now, which is I think quite frustrating and insulting. But I’m glad you’re wearing that and proud of that. But the music, your whole career has been such an evolution. I see your career as two different eras… sort of a preScarlet’s Walk and a post Scarlet’s Walk.
Tori: That’s interesting. I can see that. I can absolutely see that.
Trent: Was that conscious?
Tori: No, it just happened. The way I’m looking at 50 is 50 on fire.
Trent: I love that.
Tori: It’s what you make of it once you’re there, but getting there can be very much a walk on hot coals. That’s because you don’t even recognise when it’s happening. But you can get into a sense of ‑‑ an acceptance that isn’t the right kind of acceptance. Before that, usually in your 20s and 30s you’re striving. Because you’re not necessarily secure and you don’t hold that status yet of having been around 20 years, whatever you want to call that. I can’t use certain words because I don’t think it’s my place to use them. But words like iconic, that’s not a word I use ‑‑ one should never use that for themselves. But I say once you’ve carved out your space, and your part of the music pantheon, and you have your own style, and you can tour ‑‑ sometimes you can get comfortable in that.
Yet, what’s really happening, and this is true, while you might be comfortable with that in your 40s, as 50 comes up you begin to realise that fewer and fewer women are getting the “frontline” recording contracts, once you hit 50 and up, as a singer/songwriter.
If you have a career, it’s difficult, I think, to be maintaining through your 50s and 60s. What I’m saying to you is not on the festival circuits. I’m not talking about the touring life. I’m talking about having new releases that the label is going to promote and kill for, no different than a new release from a 20-something.
You do have that if you’re Bruce Springsteen, if you’re Tom Petty. We could go on and on. And they should have that because they’re great. But what I’m saying to you is the female reflection of those guys, the Rickie Lee Jones of the world, who are amazing, they’re not being given the same contracts. They’re just not. It’s not fair.
What the guys told me at Universal was “It’s supply and demand. So change the demand, Tori, for yourself.” And I thought that was interesting. They did give me a frontline contract, after Night of Hunters. But I didn’t have one before that, meaning I was given an opportunity to go to Deutsche Grammophon but I didn’t have a pop contract.
So if you kind of see what’s going on, I had to go to another genre in order to kind of prove myself, and get people to invest in it, the idea. Therefore, I had an opportunity and it was my daughter who said, “You can’t be ‘great for 50’, mom. You can’t, or it’s going to fail. You have to just go be fucking great. You have to tour by yourself. You have to do it alone, at the piano.” Not the records, because that’s not what she was saying to me. She said, “But you have to go out there alone, and prove to yourself that you still have the power that you had 20 years ago.”
She just said, “When you’re grandma’s age, when you’re 84, there’s no way you’re going to be able to ride the piano side-saddle, in six-inch heels, without us worried you’re going to fall over and break all your bones.” I said that’s a fair comment. She said, “There’s a time for you to do this and prove this to yourself, and then when you’re 84, yeah, maybe you’re still touring. I’d like to think, mom, you are. And yet if you need to go get some oxygen on the side of the stage, who cares? Have some backup singers and some musicians, and that’s fine.”
Trent: I’ll be there in the audience.
Tori: She was trying to make a point to me. She was trying to say the record industry contract, the offers make it look like women over 50 are 84, compared to the men. You’re not, so don’t accept it, but bring it. Prove something to yourself.
Trent: Great advice.
Tori: It was good advice, and to be fair, and I’m talking your ear off, but Universal gave me an opportunity and brought me the contract and said, “We believe in you. Go do it.”
Trent: Thank God they did.
Tori: Thank God they did, Trent, but I believe that all of us women that are in this position, we have something to prove to ourselves, because there’s so many great women out there that have such great stories and things to say.
Unrepentant Geraldines is out now through Universal Music. Tour dates below.
TICKETS ON SALE 10AM FRIDAY JULY 18
AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, SYDNEY
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11
Accompanied by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
PALAIS THEATRE, MELBOURNE
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 15
HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE, ADELAIDE
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 16
RIVERSIDE THEATRE, PERTH
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 18
QPAC CONCERT HALL, BRISBANE
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 21
My Live Nation pre-sale: 1pm Monday July 14 until 5pm Tuesday July 15
Ticket Agent pre-sale: 1pm Wednesday July 16 until 5pm Thursday July 17
For complete tour and ticket information, visit: www.toriamos.com & www.livenation.com.au
