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Interview: Tori Amos

Tori Amos has never suffered from a paucity of songwriting topics, so when she opened the door to a quintet of disparate and opinionated characters (or alter egos) on her newly released American Doll Posse, it was little wonder that she wound up with 23 tracks. Aside from the music itself—an adventurous collision of styles ranging from her signature piano-based songs to twangy dustups and full-on rockers—Amos created an elaborate world around the album, offering photo shoots and detailed blogs from each of the five women.

Prior to beginning rehearsals for her upcoming tour, Amos sat down with ARTISTdirect to explain how she's translating her latest concept to a live setting. Much like her albums, the resulting conversation was far-ranging in focus—touching upon politics, philanthropy, and her path toward becoming "a classic car."

Let's talk about the quintet of ladies who are on this album—they're having their grand public unveiling now, but did they just emerge and meet one another now, or are they older friends?

Oh, they know each other very well. They're all getting ready to go out on tour. They're in strict lesson mode right now. I've been cracking the whip because they all need to learn how to play the piano by May 28. So I've been a little bit hard on them, but they don't mind—they like a little bit of torment.

There was some speculation among your fans about who exactly would be coming on the tour, and whether anyone would be left out.

Are you kidding? They'd claw my eyes out; nobody is getting left out. But a different girl goes out every night, and then Tori comes on, because you can't have a Tori show without that big back catalog. I think the other songs would revolt. When you've got 15 years of music, you have to respect it, and you have to figure that some of the people coming to the show have different songs – you can't cover all of them every night, but you try and cover different timeframes within the show and hope that you touch upon at least a few songs that each person has gravitated to over the years.

It's also impossible for me to hold that character. Within a two hour timeframe, there's no way—it would just be a relay race of getting dressed and undressed, so you'd be paying tickets for a ladies' changing room event. To develop a story or narrative, it's got to be about act one or act two.

The last time we talked [in 2001], we were discussing the myth that artists produce more compelling work when they're wrapped up in times of darkness and desperation, and you were saying that you were interested in the coming years to cross over and report back from the lighter side. Mission accomplished, as we like to say in the U.S., or mission changed?

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