Feb. 8, 2007

"At the end of the day," says Tori Amos, "if I'm not inflammatory, I wouldn't be Tori."

Even over a transatlantic telephone line, Amos is a whirlwind. Calling from her home in England to discuss her recent five-disc box set, "A Piano: The Collection" (Rhino), she displays the freewheeling, free-associating, free-speaking attitude that inspires such devotion from her fans. Conversation veers into painting, architecture, literature and studio technology, and she's not afraid to challenge the iTunes empire with her opinions about the way her music is delivered digitally.

"A Piano" is a lavishly packaged collection that contains 86 songs from Amos's 15-year career -- hits, alternate mixes, dance versions, B-sides, unreleased material found in storage boxes and (most difficult for her to include, as she explains below) demos of a few of her classics. Though she has previously released a two-disc retrospective, "Tales of a Librarian" (2003), and a fleet of live albums, including a bunch of Pearl Jam-style authorized bootlegs, "A Piano" attempts to capture the full scope of a groundbreaking artist who is equal parts Laura Nyro and Led Zeppelin. And Amos says she's proud of what she sees in this body of work and of the effort required to make it. "It's hard to come by sometimes," she says, "being better than good."

MSN Music: What was most surprising to you as you revisited this material?

Tori Amos: When we listened to the mixes, I was able to hear how the music sounded in the control room before it got put to cassette, vinyl, CD. Certain CDs aren't holding up as well sonically now because we didn't understand -- or didn't have -- certain technology yet. We've come so far digitally that it doesn't surprise me that George Martin wanted to revisit the Beatles' catalogue. It's just not designed to live in a digital vocabulary.

So the first thing was the sonic quality, which is good, because it was such a huge project -- much bigger than I thought it would be. I have more than 300 songs now, each with many different mixes. And the way the tapes were stored over the years, many have been perverted.

What do you mean?

As the record industry has imploded, one of the first things to go is the tape libraries. In some cases, the original mix had not been stored properly and was simply unusable. The released versions of these songs already live on, say, "Little Earthquakes," so I wasn't just trying to replicate those; I wanted to take new technology and apply it.

I'm such a pain in the ass. I make the engineers do so many mixes it would make you angry -- "OK, can we bring the oboe up in the 37th bar?" And thank God I do, because now we needed it. So after gaining a reputation as an ant-f***er who drives everybody mad, the engineers said, 'We will never complain about that again.'

It took months and months -- much more than I thought. I really didn't understand how involved it was going to be. And it was painful to be honest with myself and recognize the mistakes in the choices I made.

Like what?

"Boys for Pele" was the first job I was in the producer's chair by myself. I pulled in a drummer that just didn't work, and Manu Katche came to drum after that original drummer to fix the parts. We were at this Irish house I had acquired to finish the record. Manu said, 'Let's retrack everything and get the groove right.' And I thought he was out of his mind -- we could never have recreated the sound of the church where we first recorded, so I just said no. And that was just inexperience. Now I wouldn't think twice about going back in and redoing everything.

As a producer, you have to give your artists the confidence that they can do it again and again and again and again until you get it perfect -- not good, but perfect. So that was me as an artist making that decision because it would have been really hard work. But now the producer wouldn't take that lip from the piano player.
 
How was assembling "A Piano" different from figuring out a set list for a tour? It seems like that would be the other time to think about a whole catalogue taken together.

The work is a living sculpture. It's alive. But when you're choosing a specific performance for a box set, it's permanent. The decisions I was making are no different from an architect building a building -- you're not going to go in and redo the new World Trade Center once it's up. It's finished; it's set in stone. So I had to be completely present and accurate. On tour, it's constantly changing, performances are different every night. But this is concretized.

Read more of this exclusive interview on page 2 >>>

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