The Official Site
Pretty good, as official sites go. Plenty of fresh news for the Toriphiles, and active message boards/chat.
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The Story So Far
Myra Ellen Amos was born in Newton, North Carolina,
the daughter of a strict Christian reverend. As a
child, she often found refuge at her Cherokee
grandparents' home, learning to play piano and
listening to the songs and stories of their heritage.
She began to display such a prodigious talent for the
piano, and, at age six, Amos became the youngest ever
entrant into the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore.
Rapidly learning to conduct and write her own pieces,
by age eleven, her piano compositions had become so
radical, she was expelled from the Conservatory.
Amos began playing piano in bars as early as 13 years
old, giving her a taste of playing in front of an
audience. Her first success came at 17
when she and her brother won a songwriting contest
sponsored by the Baltimore Orioles baseball team. Her
first ever recording was the song that won the
contest, "Baltimore," in 1980. Around the same time,
Myra Ellen adopted the nickname Tori, given by her
friend's boyfriend because she "looked like a Tori."
At age 21, Amos decided to try out a professional career in Los Angeles. She joined a pop metal group called Y Kant
Tori Read with Brad Cobb, Matt Sorum, and
Steve Canton. An Atlantic Records exec soon signed
the band, which promptly released several singles and a
self-titled album. After the first album failed, Amos
bolted the band for a career of her own.
Drawing inspiration from among other the movie "Thelma And Louise," which
helped her reveal an incident in which she was raped, she wrote many of the songs for her 1991 solo
debut, Little Earthquakes. Critics and female fans
especially praised the work, sowing the seeds of one of the most
ardent followings in rock history. Amos followed up
the debut with 1993's Under The Pink, featuring a
simpler and vastly different musical palette than she used
on her debut.
Amos' first commercial breakthrough occurred with her third album, Boys For Pele, which spawned a number one single in the UK featuring Armand Van Helden's remix of the track "Professional Widow."
While touring in support of the album, Amos suffered a
miscarriage, which inspired songs for the follow-up
album, From the Choirgirl Hotel. Her subsequent 1998
"Plugged" tour featured a full electric band, a first
for her. Amos' next album was meant only to cull live tracks from the tour, but after receiving sufficient inspiration from "The Muse," Amos decided to release a double album, entitled To Venus and Back,
which included live tracks and an album of new material. She and her husband currently live in the countryside of Cornwall, England.
Confessions of the Toriphiles
Pandora writes: "I love Tori Amos because she is so multi-dimensional. She not one of those pop stars made by the Disney Channel and she is not the next Nirvana either. Tori is unique. She still manages to appeal to just about everyone who takes the time to listen and understand her music because they can always find a bit of themsleves in her lyrics. I LOVE TORI!!!"
Taryn Ogilvie writes: "I love, and am in absolute awe of, Tori Amos. My adoration began the minute I heard Little Earthquakes in 1992. I love her because she is very real, in her words and her actions. I love the way she shares her heartache, her dreams, and her life with us. She reaches out to people in need of her comforting, yet painful, words. People who are going through hard times, have been through hard times, or who are just plain looking for some words of reality. She is beautiful, in every sense of the word. I love her for the little girl who could play by ear at three years of age, for the young woman who dealt with all her trials and tribulations to get to where she is now, for the woman she has become, and for the woman she hopes to be one day. No one is perfect, but Tori sure comes close in my book."
