News: Tori Featured in June 7 PerthNow Article

“I use my body as a canvas and my sculpture is the tone and the words and the music. I don’t see myself as trying to push Nicole Kidman out of the redhead acting position. I don’t dream about that.”

Australian newspaper The Sunday Times and PerthNow offered a new ADP article late last week. Click the link or click below to see the whole thing.

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The original possecat doll
Kathy McCabe
June 07, 2007 10:00pm
Article from: The Sunday Times

TORI Amos has some sage advice for the imploding It girls of Hollywood: study Greek mythology.

The outspoken singer/songwriter introduces five characters, inspired by the Greek pantheon, to represent different feminine traits on her new album, American Doll Posse.

She believes that if more women — particularly those whose celebrity is based on their car-crash behaviour rather than creative achievement — embraced their inner Greek gal, the world would be a better place.

“You don’t get celebrity because of anything you achieve or what you know. These young icons are damaged because they are getting all this attention, but they don’t have a toolbox of experience to deal with that,” she says.

“The toolbox is not only experience, but embracing all your different character traits.

“But you can’t say that to some cynical 23-year-old who thinks she knows everything without a line on her face.”

Amos has always intellectualised her process, searched deeper for the muse. This time the muse was the many facets of herself, whether they be the mother of her daughter Natashya; the wife who enjoys going out to dinner with husband Mark Hawley and their friends; or the highly opinionated songwriter who asks on opening track Yo George: “Where have we gone wrong, America?”

Her “posse” of Toris on the new album include herself as Demeter, the mother figure, Isabel (Artemis), Clyde (Persephone), Pip (Athena) and Santa (Aphrodite).

“Santa is not allowed to go to play group,” she laughs.

“It’s hard for us to not get stuck in an image of ourselves. So I started to bust out and explore these character traits.

“People have asked, ‘Why are you changing? Are you going through a life crisis?’

“I decided to tell a story using my songwriting process and that story is that if we — as women — are going to combat the Right-wing patriarchy, we have to recognise that they have compartmentalised women and their traits. We have to let them come through.”

IT SEEMS ridiculous in this era of so-called reinvention — which is, in fact, recycling of past icons, from Marlene Dietrich to Marilyn Monroe — that anyone would question a female pop artist presenting a new image.

On the cover of the album, the five women wear different clothes and wigs and strike a pose relating to their attitude.

Though each of Amos’s characters sing different songs on the album, they won’t be appearing on stage individually — the costume changes alone would make it a very long show.

Amos has just kicked off her world tour in Europe this week and brings it to Australia in September.

“I prepare for at least an hour before I walk out there. I know the material and I have devised a musical script,” she says.

“As a writer, I know the women’s stories and their back stories. I understand the improvisational side of it.

“But until you, as Isabel, or whoever, walk out there, it’s a strange one . . . when she walked out the other night, it was strange how different she was, which made me very happy.”

Each of the “characters” sings their songs from American Girl Posse, and so Isabel, as the most political character, sings Yo George and Dark Side of the Sun.

“You write a dialogue that fits their personality. Otherwise, if they are just doing random Tori covers, it’s all just dress-up,” she says.

Amos likens this tour presentation to performance art rather than a one-woman show involving her acting different parts.

“I use my body as a canvas and my sculpture is the tone and the words and the music. I don’t see myself as trying to push Nicole Kidman out of the redhead acting position. I don’t dream about that.”

Amos also believes the influence of mythology on her music and how she presents it stems from the great male frontmen.

“It’s about David Bowie and Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant and Jim Morrison. They were great conjurers and they were tapping as much into the feminine character traits as the male ones.”