News: Shirley Temples At Mr. Henry's - Tori's First Paying Gig

The Guardian’s Nige Tassell talked to a slew of musicians, actors and celebrities about significant firsts in their careers and the responses were compiled in an article that appeared in the January 12th edition of the paper. Our heroine leads off the column, reminiscing about the first time she was played to play live at a gay bar in Georgetown, Washington, DC after leaving The Peabody.

Of course, this may not new news to the seasoned Toriphile but if you haven’t seen this from previous interviews, it’s an amusing little story.

Thanks to Brian and @iammatthewwolf for the link!

Note: the Guardian article got noticed by BANG Showbiz so a repackaged version of her portion of the article has appeared elsewhere as well, such as CTV News and The Times of India.

Tori Amos, Kristin Hersh, Anton Corbin and more recall their big career firsts

From Tori Amos’s dad chaperoning her at her first paid gig, to Don Letts DJing with only one deck, a host of stars recall the formative moments that kicked off their careers

Interviews by Nige Tassell
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 January 2012 16.00 EST

The first time I was paid to play live Tori Amos

I’d been kicked out of the Peabody conservatory in Baltimore at the age of 11 and lost my scholarship because I wasn’t Peabody stock any more. I had real issues that they weren’t teaching contemporary composers. They said the Beatles would be gone and dead within 30 years, and no one would care. It was 1974, I was 11, and it was good to be right! My minister father was really distraught. He had these dreams of me being a concert pianist and then going into religious music. I just looked and him and said: “Dad, this music is just not moving me.” He said: “Well, if you’re going to go into that world, you need to get a job.”

At 13, I was ready. I had a repertoire of a couple of hundred songs – things you hear on the radio. That’s why I’d got in trouble. Instead of playing Brahms, I was playing other things. So I got dressed up, put on my sister’s high heels. My dad wore his clerical collar. We went down to Georgetown, in Washington DC, to Mr Henry’s – a gay bar. I had to be chaperoned! My dad sat in the corner and drank Shirley Temples. I played there for tips until I was 15. People were really receptive at Mr Henry’s. They requested a lot of showtunes, and put me through my paces – they told me how to not look like white-trash: “No, you can’t go from church to hussy!”

There were church members who complained later when it all became known and got written up in the papers. But when they criticised him, my father would say: “What safer place is there for a 13-year-old girl than a gay bar?”