Tori Amos Biography

Tori Amos (born Myra Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963) is an American pianist and singer-songwriter. She is married to English sound engineer Mark Hawley. Together they have one daughter, Natashya "Tash" Lórien Hawley, born on September 5, 2000.

Amos was at the forefront of a number of female singer-songwriters in the early 1990s and is noteworthy as one of the few modern pop music stars to use a piano as her primary instrument. She is known for lyrically opaque but emotionally intense songs that tackle a wide range of subjects including sexuality, religion, patriarchy and personal tragedy. Some of her charting singles include "Crucify", "Silent All These Years", "Caught a Lite Sneeze", "Me and a Gun", "Jackie's Strength", "God", "Cornflake Girl", "A Sorta Fairytale", "Professional Widow" and "Spark".

Amos has experienced limited chart success in the United States and the United Kingdom, but has enjoyed a large cult following, selling around 12 million albums worldwide during her solo career. She is also known for making eccentric and at times ribald comments during interviews and in concerts, lending her a reputation as being highly individualistic.

The majority of the allegations made here surfaced in Amos' biography Piece by Piece. They can neither be proven nor disproven, and are simply assertions made by Amos; however, they have not been contested by her former record label.

Conflict between Amos and the music industry has surfaced on various occasions. Her first label, Atlantic Records, wanted her 1994 album Under the Pink to be changed significantly before its release. She told them that it was not going to happen, and that if they brought it up again she would burn the masters.

After the release of her album From the Choirgirl Hotel in 1998, she had a meeting with the heads of the label. Amos questioned why her work was not being promoted properly. Atlantic revealed that they preferred to spend their capital trying to break in newer artists, who they felt would make them more money. Amos demanded to be freed from her contract, but the label refused. Instead, they chose to exercise their option to keep Amos on board until she had released an additional three albums, as stipulated in her contract. According to Amos, they felt their power had been challenged and intentionally would do as little as they could do (legally speaking) to promote the works so that her career would be decimated by the time she had a chance to switch to a new label.

The label fully followed through on their threat. For example: artists usually provide the label with a section of seats to each of their concerts that can be given to local radio honchos in exchange for the promise that the artist's new work would be heavily played. Atlantic Records gave Amos' tickets while requesting that other artists on the label be played as a return favor. As a result, Amos' album sales steadily declined.

Amos, however, managed to beat the label at its own game. She experienced a sudden burst of creativity which formed into the 11 new songs on the first disc of her fifth album, To Venus and Back. In place of a previously planned album of B-sides, Amos released a double disc (including a disc of live material from her "Plugged '98" tour) thereby fulfilling two of her three remaining albums in a single release.

Ultimately in 2001, Atlantic records released a widely distributed press release listing the acts that they were "dropping from the label" due to alleged poor album sales. Among them were singer Poe and Amos. Amos claimed her contractual obligations had simply been fulfilled and that neither side was interested in renewing the contract.

If Amos’s reputation suffered from her dealings with Atlantic, it did not do so for long. After establishing a new deal with Epic Records, she achieved her most successful American radio single to date, "A Sorta Fairytale" (2002/3). Despite this, however, Epic has used a similar "promotion" that Tori was receiving from Atlantic.

Amos's fan base remains one of the most devoted of any artist. Many persons outside of Amos's fanbase perceive her fans to be overwhelmingly devoted to her, something that has been commented on by the media and towards which Amos has responded alternately with ire or acknowledgment. In particular, there is an infamous interview with an Australian radio station during which Amos turns hostile towards her interviewer when he refers to her fans as zealots.

Tori refers to her fans as "ears with feet", and has been quoted as saying "don't ever call yourself fans; you're ears with feet". 1. Amos coined this term circa 1996 and has since abandoned it, consistently referring to fans as simply "fans" during press in 2005; said fans still hold onto the term devoutly, however. Amos also refers to her fans as "The People Who Come to the Shows."

Numerous fans online have also coined the term, "Toriphiles".

She is known for having a large fan base in the gay community, and has been referred to in the press and by fans as a gay icon . Amos stated in a Dateline NBC interview that in her teen years when she played in gay clubs she was taught "how to become a woman" by "these wonderful gay men".

In Amos's memoir Piece By Piece, her band members also commented on how a whole new generation of fans have been seen coming to the shows. Now, they observed, the original fans's younger siblings are coming.

Certain celebrity fans of Amos's include mutual fan and friend Neil Gaiman, Alanis Morissette, Ruben Studdard, Gisele Bundchen, Trent Reznor, Michael Stipe, Maynard James Keenan, Courtney Love and the late Kurt Cobain who said that "[they] used to slow dance to" her remake of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," Amy Lee of Evanescence, Fuel, Boy George whom Amos gave a KISS doll to, Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit, World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Mick Foley, Bam Margera of Jackass, the late Kevyn Aucoin, Shakira, Todd DiSanto, and numerous others.

The popular cult video game Maniac Mansion features a character "Razor" allegedly based upon Tori Amos' early 80's career. In the context of the game, if one plays with Razor as a character, one must perform a recording on a grande piano in order to complete the game.

At least two of Neil Gaiman's characters, Delirium from the Sandman comics series, and the talking tree in Stardust, are based in part on Tori Amos.

Despite her arguably fading commercial popularity, Amos remains one of the world's top touring artists and her tours regularly sell out. She was responsible for one of the world's highest-grossing tours in 2002-03, and her fans remain interested in her new music. When her 2005 tour was announced, tickets sold out for all 14 concerts on the opening US leg in under 10 minutes. Despite equally successful spring and summer tours in Australia and Europe, her 2005 Summer of Sin tour has only seen two concerts (Boston and Houston) sell out, the rest of which did not due to large venues being booked in preparation for a band tour à la Scarlet's Walk, which never happened.

Amos is recognised as one of the most-toured artists in modern popular music. She has been performing in bars and clubs from as early as 1976, and under her professional name began playing clubs in London in 1991, but her first "proper" tour began in 1992. Since then, she has performed more than 950 "proper" concerts as part of tours, and was voted by Rolling Stone magazine in 2003 as the fifth-best live act. Her concerts are notable for their changing set lists from night to night.