BEST FIT: I love that you’ve chosen this song because both this and “Shush” are openers for huge concept pieces that really set the scene. When I interviewed you for Night of Hunters, you talked about the importance of reflecting both personal upheaval and global crisis in a song cycle like these. How do you see those two perspectives in the context of “Shattering Sea”?
TORI AMOS: Well, as you know, Night of Hunters was a modern song cycle based on the work of male composers and variations on that theme. That was the brief from Deutsche Grammophon at the time, which I found absolutely terrifying.
I kind of thought, ‘Oh my god, you’re really asking me to do this?” It was [musicologist and record exec] Dr. Alexander Buhr who was asking me to do it, and I just said, “This could be music suicide.” He said, “Yeah, it could be… or not.” So I spent a lot of time with the dead guys, with the dead composers, and I found all of them very helpful. And when I say helpful, they would point me in directions – to study, to be open, to think – and the one thing I had to get right was the narrative.
It was no different than with In Times of Dragons, which is really a narrative, a variation on a song cycle. In both albums, the threads had to be very tightly woven together, because, for instance – and I’ll come back to “Shattering Sea” in a minute – with In Times of Dragons, certain information had to be imparted to the listener at certain times. Like, you cannot hear “Song of Sorrow” before I’ve planted Lugh of the Long Arm in “Strawberry Moon” or you might think, “Surely she’s not singing ‘Song of Sorrow’ for the lizard demon?” But because “Strawberry Moon” comes first, you begin to understand that this woman is having a love affair with this Celtic god in the fifth dimension, which kind of actually happened [laughs].
How so?
Well, the gay witch from Brooklyn [who first appears in the song “Provincetown”] is based on Noah Michelson, the journalist from HuffPost, who would cast and channel Lugh of the Long Arm. And Lugh had been sending me messages since August – August 1st being his feast day, Lughnasadh – so I reached out to him.
Going back to Night of Hunters, which was also having to tell a narrative, the big job was understanding what that narrative was. The difference between these two records is that, for Night of Hunters, I had to write a narrative from scratch and then tie in these male composers, whereas for In Times of Dragons, I’m documenting what’s happening in America based on a lot of real people, so it’s different in that way.
For Night of Hunters, I chose to tell the story of a couple that was coming over from the New World to the Old World, and that the story was going to take place in Ireland, and the very first thing that needed to happen – which is similar to In Times of Dragons – is that the male figure is threatening the woman. The difference is, on the new record, the man will not allow her to run. She knows too much. She cannot be allowed to escape, whereas on “Shattering Sea” they are combative and things get smashed. I start the song with, “That is not my blood on the bedroom floor,” but it’s clearly somebody’s blood.
The song I based the music on is Charles-Valentin Alkan’s “Prelude Op. 31, No. 8”, which is subtitled in translation from the original French as “Song of the Madwoman on the Sea-Shore”, and I felt that, in Night of Hunters, where you have this relationship that is falling apart, there is a madness to it. There is a madness that can happen between a couple who have been lovers. Love is such a fine line, and I think we’ve talked about this before. On either side of 12 o’clock there’s love and there’s hate, and it doesn’t take too many ticks on either side of that clock for either one to walk in.
It’s not the same with liking someone rather than loving them. If I like somebody, for that relationship to move into hate is quite unusual, for me. I mean, liking someone but not liking their behaviour can happen, but I find that when there is passion, when there is love, it can move into just absolute detest, and it’s so wild how that can happen, you know?
I feel like “Shattering Sea” has a strong connection with In Times of Dragons, too, in terms of it being so elemental. You’ve got the man as the force of “tide and wave,” and you, the woman in the song, who represents the force of fire. And I mean, your relationship with fire goes so far back, way beyond even Boys of Pele, which was named after Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire. How would you describe your current state of flammability?
[diplomatically] Well, a Dragon Queen, she can breathe fire…
Fair enough, that speaks for itself! So, when you’re building all these multi-layered albums –Night of Hunters, American Doll Posse, In Times of Dragons – with all these characters and storylines, what part of the process brings you the most joy?
When it’s done [laughs]. Oh my god, it’s torture! Writing an album or any kind of work is always torture, but at the same time it’s a shedding, it’s a humbling, because you find things about yourself. On the one hand, those things can give you strength and you can go, “Okay, alright, I can put that in my toolbox,” and then there are other things that I discover about myself where I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I could really have handled that better.”
So, you know, when you’re peeling off those skin layers, I feel like there’s such a vulnerability to recognising who you are, to recognising who I am and who I would like to be but am not. You know, when I think of some of the beautiful people I know, one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever met in my whole life, is a singer/songwriter called Paula Cole.
Oh, I’ve interviewed Paula. She’s so lovely!
So lovely. She makes me absolutely look like a fire breathing fucking dragon, because she is just beauty and love. When I’m sitting there with a glass of wine and a fucking spear in my hand, going to fucking battle, next to the illuminating Paula Cole and her compassion and her love, sometimes I’m like, “I’m such a fucking rock and roll bitch.” But hey ho, it is what it is, Alan, you’ve got to claim what it is that you are.
