The Beginning
Tori Amos Biography Part 1
Myra Ellen Amos graced the earth with her presence on August 22, 1963 in Newton, North Carolina. Proud parents Reverend Dr. Edison and Mary Ellen Amos were on the road, traveling from Washington D.C. to North Carolina when their third child decided to make her grand entrance.
The Amos’ (Mom, Dad, and “Ellen” and her siblings Mike and Marie) moved from D.C. to Baltimore Maryland when Ellen was two years old. At two and a half, the youngest Amos child was already showing a penchant for the piano, picking up pieces of soundtracks by ear. By five years of age, Ellen was composing her own piano ditties, and by nine she discovered she had vocal talent…adding lyrics to her compositions.
At only five years of age, Ellen earned a full scholarship to the esteemed Peabody Conservatory of music–being the youngest person to ever enroll in the program. Her time at the Peabody was short-lived, and at age eleven Ellen was asked to leave the prestigious conservatory. While today Tori admits she was heartbroken at the time, she is glad she left. Her instructors were put-off by the young girl’s distaste for reading music and by the fact that she held Robert Plant in higher esteem than Mozart. Tori Amos fans would hate to consider what would have happened if Tori decided to cater to her instructors and stayed at the Peabody!
At 13-years-old, Ellen took her talent to the streets…playing piano and singing at local gay bars (chaperoned by the Rev. Dr. Amos of course!). Her parents, still immensely proud of their daughter’s prodigious talent, frequently shipped off tapes and demos to record companies hoping to catch someone’s attention.
Slowly, Ellen Amos began to achieve local popularity, winning a Maryland talent contest, composing music for the Baltimore Orioles (”Baltimore”), and rising among the most popular of her high school class (she was voted Homecoming Queen, Most Likely to Succeed, Best All-Around and Most Talented [of course!]). Sometime shortly after graduation, Ellen Amos acquired the name Tori after a boyfriend of a friend said she “was a Tori” (i.e. didn’t look much like a Myra Ellen).
[In later interviews and in her quasi-autobiography Piece by Piece Tori also said she was glad to move away from “Myra” as she, her mother (Mary) and her sister (Marie) were all named for the virgin Mary…when she considered herself much more of a Black Madonna.]
Throughout Tori’s childhood and adolescence, she endured a lot of pressure, guilt, shame, and hurt at the hands of the fundamentalist church in which she was raised. The majority of this angst came not from her father, but from her grandmother of whom she speaks of in interviews as quite overbearing. Tori learned to cope with the oppression through her music and the guidance of a beloved grandfather (an intensely spiritual Native American) and her mother who, although she loved her husband to no end, knew that he could go overboard sometimes with this Christian beliefs.
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