you for a while

Tori Amos Biography Part 7

Tori, having had so much fun touring with her bandmates, decided to release an album of live songs recorded during the Plugged ‘98 tour. Knowing her fans as well as she does, she also wanted to included a few b-sides for flavor. But once Tori’s creative juices start flowin’, nothing can stop her. Instead of producing a live album plus a few b-sides, Tori wrote an entirely new album. Hence, To Venus and Back was a complete double CD. Venus “Orbiting” included the new stuff, Venus “Still Orbiting” included the live songs.

The new albums were recorded in a hurry, but the integrity of the sound was not compromised…Tori simply wouldn’t allow that! The Oribiting songs, like the songs on Choirgirl, were heavy on the electronics and lighter (not light…lighter) on the piano. Tori opened herself up as far as lyrics went, drawing inspiration from unsolved murders (Juarez), her herb garden (Datura), her father (Bliss), recollections of 80’s life (Glory of the 80s), and the passing of her beloved father-in-law (1,000 oceans). The video for her song Bliss was her first live concert footage video and the video for 1,000 oceans stands out as her most poignant. She did well on the charts with Venus, but not as well as she had with previous albums. The pricey-ness of the two CD set was hypothesized to be the culprit.

For this tour, Tori teamed up with like-minded female artist Alanis Morissette for their 5 1/2 weeks tour. Many Tori fans (including this writer) were a bit turned off by the fact that Tori apparently “opened” for relative newcomer Alanis. But our hurt was somewhat assuaged when we learned that Tori went first simply because her 20-foot long piano was a b***h to set up. A solo tour was also planned, but most unfortunately for the newlyweds, the couple suffered another miscarriage. According to her autobiography, Tori decided to split with Atlantic when they, showing no compassion for her emotional and physical condition, demanded she go back on tour two days after losing her baby.

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