Tori Amos: Piece by Piece (31 page)

In the early days we used to fly all the time, or drive around in rental cars. If the distance between shows was less than 150 or 200 miles away we'd drive. At that point it was just me, Tori, and Ian on sound. We were out for months and months and months. When we started we had no idea that it was going to be almost a year before we finished. We decided to do some more shows in June and then a few dates in July and then maybe we'd go to Europe and come back to the States, and then before you knew it, it was December. And the record kept going and kept going and kept going. There wasn't a show on that
Little Earthquakes
tour that wasn't sold out.

When I first started going on the road with Tori, when she was touring for
Under the Pink
, she was a Mrs. Fields cookie freak. Instead of stopping for Starbucks every day, we were stopping for cookies. And she was not a bus girl at first. She got sick when she tried to ride on it. So she and John would fly. The crew would already be at the gig, setting up, and they would fly on the morning of the day of the show and rent a town car and drive to the gig, then after the gig drive to the airport, or if it was far they'd drive to a hotel, fly the next morning, do the same thing again. I don't think it was until 1996 that she finally got in the bus.

We did like a little trial run with Tori on the bus. I think it was Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.—a short jaunt. We were discussing the possibility that on the next tour she might get her own bus, you know, instead of flying all the time. And the first ride just didn't go that well. It was touch and go there for a while, but I think that once she had her own bus and realized it was a little bit better than what we started off with, she adapted.

There was one horrible time when Tori's apprehensions about the bus really proved right. We were going from Munich to Florence, over the Alps, something like that, and we had just left the venue and made it out of town. We were on a double-decker bus, as you often get in Europe. Bunks upstairs. We were all still downstairs and Tori was having her meal after the show. We came to this covered bridge, and the driver didn't read the signs right; he didn't see that we wouldn't be able to clear it. We slammed into the top of the bridge, and it took all the skylights and everything right off the top of the bus, and all the glass and bus parts just came streaming down in shards. I jumped on top of Tori to protect her. We got through all that, and we're off on the side of the road, and what do we
have? Open the door, and I've got a fan standing there
—Can Tori sign this for me!

I said, “You've got to be kidding, get out of here.” So what we had to do—we got Hefty bags and that sort of thing. Of course it was going to snow and rain that night, and we're up on top of the bus pathetically trying to make a new roof out of plastic bags. Imagine a convertible bus— there wasn't much of anything we could do. The flight options to Florence were limited. We wouldn't make it in time to do promotion the next day, so we decided to bite the bullet. It got very, very, very cold that night, and rainy, and the wind had the Hefty bags flapping like birds on drugs. That was a scary night, to say the least.

Once I was in a position to provide us a better way to tour, I did. I'm a good businesswoman—even with just five dollars in my pocket, I've never asked anybody for money or borrowed money in my life. Even when I was playing for weddings and funerals at age nine. Call it pride, call it a woman who brings home the bacon, but there's a level where you go, “Yes, we can support these people, we can feed them, we can put petrol in the tanks, we can sit there and calculate to the dollar what it's going to take.” Sometimes, because of the level of comfort I create on tour, we only break even, after months and months and months on the road. Meaning me, I break even—sometimes just … everybody else on the tour gets paid. Does it make things tight sometimes? Sure. So I'm saying, I don't need to do this the way I do it. I don't need to tour at all. But honestly, I do it because I love it.

I have to play And if I do it at age forty, I'm not staying in the two-for-one motel at the corner of Bargain Boulevard and Friends-of-Flea Avenue, when I have three beautiful homes where I could be. If you want
to be harsh about it, what's in it for me? Tramping my kid all over the fucking world?

ANN:
Like any complex organism, Amos's caravan requires structure. Road crews are often deeply hierarchical, with authority radiating outward from the protected inner sanctum of the artist. Special circumstances have tampered with the usual order of things on this tour: not only a personal life that has put her in intimate contact with the quietly acknowledged champion of the crew, Hawley, who has brought a lot of them into the Tori camp, but also Amos's own untrammeled generous streak, which she's had to learn to balance with a leader's assertiveness.

Because Johnny, Mark, Marcel, and I basically came up together and became friends, and because I didn't have a band in those early days, I bonded with the crew. Some crews you might not want to bond with in that way, just because they're living a whole different experience. But I've seen artists who are so far removed from how the organism works that they get duped. They're controlled and they don't even know it. I have sometimes known what was going on with an artist more than the artist did, just because crews talk when they cross each other's paths. And if I know what's going on with another artist's tour, then he or she does not have the right team. So I made a decision to be involved. Being married to somebody who's from that side of it has made it very difficult for anyone to shine me on. There's no hiding the information. I'm democratic in my approach, but at the same time I know when I need to be the boss. It doesn't make me feel strange or make them feel strange. But we all treat it as shifting the gears on a car. The term
boss
has such weird, jacked-up connotations; I see it more as allowing the Artemis archetype to lead me with her bow and quiver.

As I've grown older, I've realized that problems are going to happen. How can they not with so many people? But maybe because I married Mark, I realized the crew is my backbone. Many crew members come back time after time. I try to be fair, though sometimes I'm tough. To be a real leader you have to be able to deal with confrontation. You have to be able to say, “Dude, this is uncomfortable to talk about, but we need to deal with it.” And if you can't do that, then you have to turn that role over to somebody. Usually I don't have those conversations. They can be embarrassing for the crew member, so they are delegated to someone else. But if things land on my plate, I've got to deal with it. And I will deal with it.

Too often, artists turn over their power when they go on the road. I've seen it firsthand—managers and tour managers taking a bribe (a backhander, as the Brits call it) from the equipment companies, from the sound company, so its equipment will get on a big tour. It might not be the best thing for the artist; it might not be the best sound you can get, or the best lighting rig you can get, or the best bus and truck company, or the most reputable tour accountant. I've seen tour managers fire crew members who might have been good for the artist but were getting too close and might have shared too much confidential information about what management was up to. I made a decision to be aware of what was going on with my support system. I've kept my ear to the ground. That means knowing things that aren't necessarily going to make my day happy. But if I'm paying, I want to know what I'm paying for. There are people whom I do trust, but ultimately I trust myself. I trust myself to say, “This support person lost it today and can't make a clear decision. If I'm the one who can't make the decision, if I'm too emotional, then I'll delegate to whoever I think can make it best for me. I delegate a lot. I give a very wide berth. But there are rules. There is a discipline.

For the art to be taken out into the world, you need people around who
can help you present it. You create a tribe around you. We have to see what everybody's abilities are and understand how to use those abilities. But the thread running through all this is
how we treat each other.
When someone starts treating others offensively, then there are consequences. The whole tour can suffer if it's not dealt with.

On this tour, there's a really strong family vibe. I think we all appreciate the level of maturity. Not to say we're all over the hill, but everybody kind of has a life somewhere. People have houses and spouses and girlfriends and dogs, and the camaraderie extends from the general understanding that this tour is just one part of our lives. We take care of ourselves. We don't stay out drinking all night; we really want to get our sleep so that we can enjoy the next day.

It's almost like a lesson, just living this close to people, many of whom you didn't know before. You can't be a bitch; you can't be difficult. On days when you want to be that way, you just have to go and hide. Because you've got to make it work. Everybody's too close and depends too much on one another to make the show happen.

Mark keeps tabs on the technical side of things, and John is the final word as Tori's manager. My job is to keep the details in line across the board. What I've learned working with Tori is that if you put together the right team, you can give people space to be responsible. My personal style is loose reins, big pasture, and when you're at the fence you know where it is. That seems to work with this group of people. We've all become very, very, very close friends, but there's a line you don't cross. I've known Mark for fifteen years, from before either of us knew Tori, but I'd never use that
connection to slack off. People on this tour understand how to balance their personal connections. You have to stand up and perform, and you can't use anything as a prop. This is a very performance-oriented tour, and though it may seem odd to say this, in this business I don't think that's the norm.

When there's trouble I'm there in the trenches, but at the same time I have no problem saying, “We must get rid of this person, this one and this one, goodbye.” Because I've seen what happens when you don't. I've seen how one person can pull a whole crew down, a whole tour canceled. Over. Bands splitting up. Not on my turf.

I provide a lot of freedom and a place for people to express their opinions. But there is a protocol and a way you treat people. If you're passive-aggressive I'm going to smell you out quick. And if you think that you're going to manipulate things, then you get to meet the lioness. Not a problem; I will rip your throat out. I've made it here with myself and my piano, against all odds, having pissing matches with chairmen of Warner Brothers. I have no problem facing a lighting guy who happens to have the Bitch from Hell Mother complex.

Attitudes can be contagious, like colds. People start reacting to a mood and they don't even know where it comes from; sometimes they're taking it personally when things aren't addressed. I have found more often than not, people aren't even aware of how they're treating others. They're going through something, or somebody said something and they just reacted. Loose cannons, dangerous things. It's different when you can go home from work, when home and work are separate. But month after month after month after month of working and living as a group, you can't have the cancer within. You'll bring the whole thing down.

“Okay, when did you talk with them about it?” I ask as Keith, our tour manager, pulls up a chair.

“I spoke with them about the bitching and moaning exactly four days ago.”

“Let's get them in here, pronto.”

“You have radio promo.”

“Yeah, yeah. Okay ladies; let's take ten for you to get a coffee, and Keith, let's get the guys in, and I want you, my friend, to witness what is about to transpire. After all, you will be overseeing sending these two out and bringing their replacements in. How long till the big shows in a row?”

“You got five days, T.”

“So only two days to train the replacements?”

“That's it.”

“So Keith, do we have them on hold?”

“Their tickets are already booked and I've already brought them up to speed. They want to come.”

“That's the right attitude. That's what I like to hear. But they realize it isn't a done deal, right? Not until our guys have failed the final test, which I'm hoping they won't do, but the glass carriage is already part pumpkin and the clock has just struck twelve.”

“It's all been made very clear that there is one more chance, but it is the final one.”

“Let's go. This can take only seven and a half minutes from the moment you shimmy out the door.”

“I'm shimmying, and T …”

“Yeah?”

“It's well overdue. They've had plenty of chances.”

(Door opens three minutes later with Keith and the other two.)

“Hey, Miss T” “Hey, Tor.”

“Hi, guys. So, you two were asked to sort your differences out and it continued. So then you were asked to sort your shit out. And now your alls’ shit has made it into my dressing room. Your alls’ shit has now, today, become the center of this tour.”

(A bit of throat clearing.)

“Look, T, we're cool. It won't happen again.”

“No, get clear—you may think it's cool, but I am boiling here. You've heard of a sleeping volcano? Well, she just woke up. By tomorrow's sound check, if you two haven't sorted out your negativity, your bitching, and your attitude, although I'm going to miss your creativity, you gotta go.”

“But, Tor, we're all a team.”

“No, get clear—we are all a team until we do things that bring the team down. Then we are a team divided. Instigated and held hostage by certain individuals—who will be taken off the team so as not to facilitate the whole group to self-destruct.”