On Boys For Pele

"It's not a revenge record but a releasing record. I've been angry at myself, too, for getting into certain situations with men. Anger is healthy, but out of balance if it doesn't have compassion."

"These songs are not about make-ups or break-ups. And they're not concerned about who is sleeping with whom. They're about the realization that you and the person you're with are talking different languages. They're about recognizing that an extreme kind of viciousness is being played out even as you exchange honeysuckle. They're about the things that go on in a woman's heart -- the things that are expressed and the things that have to remain hidden. They're about the breaking down of the patriarchy within relationships and the idea of women claiming their own power."

"Zebra gets invited to all the parties. Blood Roses doesn't get invited out a lot. She's alright about that. She's very aware of a thing that I haven't dealt with: faithful anger. Anger expressed faithfully. I think she's come to visit me blocked away."

"I know I'm not like a picnic in the city on Sunday; but when you wake up one morning and you are making these gingerbread muffins for breakfast and you are dropping razor blades into them just to see how he reacts, you have to pull back and say, 'hang on a minute.' And that's really where the record stems from. It's from being a woman alone and not being able to hide behind anyone else's personality."

"I had separated them from birth: the girl from the musician. For the most part, Pele is about my response. The women really held the space for me to dive into on this one. My women friends knew that only I could go after this. They would be dragging me back by my hair, going, 'Hello? Are you aware of what you just did to yourself?' And I'm sitting here with veins ripped open, licking a little blood from my chin, going, 'No!'"

“The record begins with the horses from Winter coming back to take me on this journey and we ride and go find the demons. The music keeps broadening out - whether it’s Father Lucifer, which is tongue in cheek style, or something else.”

“The record starts off with the horses from Winter taking us and we ride. Going into that program of the beauty queen. She’s a beauty queen, and that’s not enough because it never is. The idea that beauty is our answer when we are four years old, ‘oh, isn’t she pretty...’ that’s the first thing that you hear. So it’s going after those programs of the feminine, going after them, going after them.”

“It’s as if the horses have come to take us back, to descend, to find the dark side. By dark I mean what’s hidden, not necessarily satanic.”

“Well, I felt the day that this song was coming. I’m talking about the recording part now that I knew a Leslie needed to come in there. And I talked about it with my live guys...my live guys were very important on this record...and I said, “I think I’m feeling Leslie,” and so they said, “Well, give us a couple days,” and I said, “No, no. I think I’m feeling it by four o’clock.” And we were in County Wicklow, which means we had to go to Dublin or we had to fly one in from London. But we did get one from Dublin and it was probably the oldest Leslie in Ireland... Leslie cabinet, and they brought it in and part of it wasn’t working which was just fine. But they set it up in my little box cause I recorded in a... I was in a little box while the instruments were opened up to the church... It was a church in Delgany. And they had built this structure where I would go into and there were holes in the structure...only holes that would fit the keys of the Bösey and the double manual of the harpsichord and everything else was sealed up... except my pedals of course came in but everything around them... it was sealed, so that the sound... again, the instruments could work completely off the ambiance of the church and my vocal wasn’t drivin’ down those microphones. So I knew that “Horses” was coming and I knew that I had to get a Leslie, so finally this rickety-rackety thing gets brought in, and we had to put it out in the graveyard because we couldn’t fit it anywhere in the church without it interfering so they miced it up in the graveyard and they had little blankets over the mic cause of the wind and the rain. And “Beauty Queen” and “Horses” came in one take. It was all done as you hear it, live with the pedal of the Leslie.”

"Let go and love, "Fuck that shit! My heart is scarred. I have a tear running down the middle of it and I'm not ready to say, 'Let go and love.'"

“The songs started coming. Blood Roses was the first, and it was that feeling of ripping open your vein and going, ‘This blood has sold millions of records. This blood can do many things.’ And the men are like, ‘Yes, Tori, and this blood isn’t enough for us.”

“Blood Roses is really about me finally being aware that I’m choosing to be defecated on.”

“She’s very aware of a thing that I haven’t dealt with: faithful anger. Anger expressed faithfully.”

“We couldn’t go to Blood Roses, who we needed to go to first, because she’s the one that is crawling on her knees, and has given it all away just to be accepted. And has gotten defecated on to the point where she’s in the middle of the stench going, ‘How could I have let myself be so degraded, how could I have degraded myself by letting certain events happen. But we had to go to her, we had to travel. And it was very important that Beauty Queen/Horses took us there.”

“You know, when she says, ‘I think you’re a queer, well, I think you’re a queer and I’ve shaved every place where you’ve been, boy, God knows I know I’ve thrown away those graces’... it’s very clear that the war has begun. You’ve just walked into the record and the war has begun. The blades are out. And she’s become a piece of meat in her mind, she’s willing to cut out her voice, she’s willing to ‘cut out the flute from the throat of the loon, at least when you cry now he can’t even hear you.’ It doesn’t matter who the people are, you know, and if you resonate with letting yourself go that far to be needed or to keep something going, well, do you need another pound of flesh? What do you need, what more do you want? And that’s the point when I say, ‘he likes killing you after you’re dead.’ So from the beginning of the record on it’s really obvious that you’re walking into not what is going on on top of the table, the conversation with the rose at the dinner of the couple, but what’s really going on in the couple. Sometimes the man changes, but it’s her story. It’s her, who she pulls in to work this out with, and the men that defecate, the men who can’t be enough, the men who aren’t ready to embrace themselves so no matter how much you like them you can’t go there because they’re not yet whole”

“So when I came home I guess it was at Thanksgiving because I remember a bird and forks going down at the table, when my father said to me, ‘Tori Ellen, I can’t believe you wrote this song about me.’ And I said, ‘I write everything about you, what are you surprised about?’ And he said, ‘No, but I’m really hurt about this one.’ And I said, ‘Well which one is it?” And he said, “well, you called me Satan.” And I said, “No! I was taking drugs with a South American shaman and I really did visit the Devil and I had a journey.” And he went, ‘Oh, Praise Jesus!’”

“Father Lucifer is about needing to go to the space of shadow, to go where we hide. Not Satanism. A whole different plane.”

“I’ve been taking tea with Lucifer. I mean I’ve truly spent time with Lucifer, the energy of Lucifer. So when I sing, ‘Father Lucifer, you never looked so sane,’ I truly went to those places. I’m talking about the shadow side, the secrets of the unconscious. It’s about claiming in ourselves what we hate in other people.”

“There were high spots, like my chat with Lucifer...You begin to face your fears – that’s what it’s really all about. Being alone forces you to do that. There’s nobody can make it go away. There’s this incredible strength you can pull from a great love. So being alone is hard, but it was time to claim my woman. Its what I’ve begun to do... I made a choice with this record that I wouldn’t censor it. I think when you hear the break in the voice and the fury and the piano, the undulating rhythm, its just me jumping off a cliff, a quest for freedom. But I couldn’t have freedom without looking at my part in what happened, without seeing the sides I wanted these men to give me that I could only give myself... It was the transition of womanhood for me, and I had to go visit Lucifer to make a descent. We had to go have a cup of tea, cut a deal and the deal was: No Censorship.”

"I’ve always said that Lucifer understands love better than anybody. You know he’s done a mean tango with Greta Garbo a few times. Really understanding love is the only way you get to that  side of things.”

“To visit Father Lucifer, to have a moment to dance... to go down in the dark, to visit with the dude! Not these Little prince of darkness wannabes... some of them are cute, but to visit the real energy force that has held the darkness: you go there with honour. And that takes a very big heart to hold the place of shadow. When I went to Lucifer I learned many things. But that whole thing of, ‘he didn’t see me watching from the aeroplane, he wiped a tear and threw away our appleseed’... there’s so much religious reference and metaphor coming back full circle from the myths. A part of her loved Lucifer, a part of her tried to find him in so many men that couldn’t carry his energy... And I am not talking about Satanism... that’s the distortion of those who can’t really claim the dark so they become evil because they are not really claiming their shadow. So we claim our shadow, then we go and meet the Widow. Then we pick up pieces as we go.”

“I wanted to marry Lucifer... Even though I had a crush on Jesus. Lucifer was the brother holding the space for mankind/womankind to act out their fears and hidden secrets, things they won’t acknowledge. That’s what the shadow is, the side that’s been denied, and once you don’t deny your shadow anymore then it’s not a perversion of that energy source. I don’t consider Lucifer an evil force. We can all tap into that free-running current of distorted energy... Some of my girlfriends-liberal London girls-had a problem with the idea that I was writing a song called ‘Father Lucifer.’ One of them heard it and cried and said, ‘You made him so beautiful,’ and I said, ‘What if he is beautiful?’ Shadow defines light. The shadow is where I hang out a lot because I like chasing and diving with those forces... Although I think my mom would like to tag along and have a dance with him because she’s been a minister’s wife for so long! But this is not Hollywood’s view of Lucifer.”

"It was the transition of womanhood for me, and I had to go visit Lucifer to make a descent. We had to go have a cup of tea, cut a deal and the deal was: No Censorship."

"The record begins with the horses from Winter coming back to take me on this journey and we ride and go find the demons. The music keeps broadening out - whether its Father Lucifer, which is tongue in cheek style, or something else."

"I used strings in 'Father Lucifer', but that didn't work out at all. Then I asked the National Guard of Louisiana to march on the music, but when everybody was finally ready for it, those men had drunk so many Budweisers, that they couldn't walk in their places anymore."

"On some of my darkest days, he's the one that comes and gives me an ice cream. I feel such a sadness from him. I cry and feel his presence with his music. I feel like he comes and sits on my piano. Yet this is a pretty serious being. I'm a little squirt when you think what a very serious force this is."

"I just always wanted to learn flamenco so I could dance with him. I wanted a great tango in the June summer with somebody really hot. There are a lot of cute boys around. It's that quirk in their personality that makes my toes curl, and Lucifer's got a very quirky personality."

“That’s my Lady Macbeth, the side of me that wanted power. But power in a man’s world. I wanted to be Indiana Jones, not the girlfriend. But as I began to do that I started to alienate many men. Widow is my hunger for the energy I felt some of the men in my life possessed: the ability to be king. I wasn’t content just being a muse. I was the creative force. I was in relationships with different men where if they could honour that, they couldn’t honour the woman, and if they could honour the woman, they couldn’t honour the creative force.”

“I was going, ‘Oh, I wanna see him crawl.’ And letting that be there. Wearing a really cute fuzzy pink shoe. And having no limitation of exploring certain facets of the personality. And being shocked and horrified about Professional Widow, and then loving her - just loving the fact that she’s convincing him to kill himself, guaranteeing that Mother Mary will supply. And I said, you really can’t get any lower than that. I love the fact that she said, ‘This is how far I’ve gone - this is where I am at this moment. Are you willing to see that part of yourself? The part that wants his energy, that wants his fame, that wants his light - not recognizing your own.’ It gets to the point where you don’t even have to push him over the edge - you’re just reading him poetry, and that’s enough to make him want to kill himself.”

“As I got to know Widow, I began to really adore her candor. She was so cut off from so many other parts of being, but here she is, deliciously convincing him to kill himself so she doesn’t have to leave fingerprints on his body. She’ll make sure he showers before all this begins. She’s ready to extract what she wants until he’s dead. Whatever his addiction is, she’s convincing him that Mother Mary will supply it.”

“I wanted to go into the hidden parts of the feminine; the way I see it, anyway. We all have our own perspective, men and women, about what the hidden parts of the feminine are. I went after what in some cases have become distorted, such as Professional Widow, the black widow, and when I ran into the widow I had to come to terms with the fact that I wanted to be king. And to be this in the patriarchy. I never wanted to be the maiden. I wanted to be the knight that got the castles. I wanted to be the one who got the Land. But still I wanted to have babies; I wanted to be a mother, I wanted to feel that ability to do that. So the role of woman, to have babies and do that, you can’t be a knight too, you can’t do that. And the women who were knights were virgins, the Joan of Arcs so you are not a sexually active being who wants to be involved and have a baby and a love relationship and be the brains to keep the castle running. And I do not mean the chatelaine. I want to be Patton.”

“’Give me peace, love, and a hard cock’: because you can’t have one without the other. For her to really say, ‘Are you gay?/Are you blue?’ that same person has had to say ‘Give me peace, love, and a hard cock,’ because if I hear peace and love one more time! That is so full of shit!”

“I really like her because she’s dead honest. I’ve been a groupie and I wish I hadn’t been, but I was and it happens. I can relate.”

"Coming up against "Professional Widow" now, is delicious. At the time I had to cock my head because I had just been in a real, you know, musician space, going back to harpsichords, early keyboards, and trying to, in this contemporary quote-unquote pop world, pull in a classical background, while the suits in the music industry were telling me what I needed to do to stay around, and I would say, "Yeah but, for you or for my soul?" And you know, they're not interested in your soul, unless they're drinking out of your shoe and you're partying that night. But honestly, I had to have a laugh at the time with Widow, but I love it now. I can really enjoy it, and I've included it in a way that it's with other Pele songs, which I felt needed to be there, songs that have a gospel choir and songs that have brass, that we recorded in Ireland, so I felt like the whole Pele experience needed to be covered, but it's covered in its extremes, but Pele was a very extreme time for me." (speaking in 2003)

“Lyrics to me, when they become references so that Mr. Zebra can be who you want it to be, although you know that there are certain clear words - Strychnine, sometimes she’s a friend of mine. And you get a sense of the characters, of who they are. And I’m sure the person, women that you know that are Ratitouille Strychnine, and we can kinda love those women, but you have faces that are different from the faces that I see when I sing about um, that cute little babe that’s poisoning the muffins in the kitchen. But we love her, too. And that was important in this record. This is really the hidden sides of the feminine, the ones that get a little wicked, and the reasons that they’re wicked. That’s what is being said also in the story, the reasons, ‘cause they haven’t been recognized, that they kinda have to mutiny for me to listen to them so that we can get to the heart, and that’s really the core of the record.”

"In Mr. Zebra we pick up Ratatouille Strychnine, who we love because she's our little double agent who can poison people and get us out of trouble when they're hurting us! But she's tired, she's tired of the poisoning."

“Marianne represents the death of the girlhood.”

“Part of you has to die, and in Marianne it’s the whole Mary Magdalene reference, a young girl who I knew that died. There’s the whole idea of that part of woman that has been dormant, who’s been dead. ‘The quickest girl in the frying pan,’ the priestesses who showed her they were one with the knowledge and the passion...man, get rid of them!”

“Tuna/Rubber/A little blubber in my igloo’ For me to say that line in another way would just make it really gross and crass. Sometimes it’s just about how something makes you feel. You’ve got to go there, you’ve got to be willing to take that trip. And images, tastes, smells, objects it’s associations. To me, these things are concrete. Some were a little more layered than others, no question about that. But I think from beginning to end it’s about a woman’s journey; and it’s a really emotional journey.”

“Marianne Curtis is a girl I went to school with in junior high. She was the kind of person everyone adored, she was just magical. I had written a song about her years ago which I used to play in the bars sometimes. It never went any further than being performed, I didn’t record it. Since then I have always wanted to have Marianne in a song. She died from a drug overdose when she was 15. It is not known, but I don’t believe it was suicide. I think she took the wrong things together. She is very special to me, and comes to visit in my songs sometimes.”

"At first Caught a Lite Sneeze was going to be filmed in black and white so that the special effects could work, so it was a nice surprise when Mike the Director said he wanted to give it a go in colour. A Ghost. He kept feeling my character was my own ghost trapped between the worlds. Whether a part of me had gone so close to the edge that she went over the edge there by resulting in a death of some kind... I find it funny sometimes that although "Pele" was really playing with emotional death, my character physically dies in two of the Pele videos. "Choirgirl" on the other hand, which confronts physical death, has the most energetic -- being physically present -- from Super Girl in Spark, to Running Bride to rave chick in Raspberry. When I was studying all the videos with my friend Tam I tried to remember my impressions when we were filming. Sneeze was physically demanding whereas Jackie was the most emotionally challenging. I remember on the Sneeze set, which was at a studio somewhere in London, having conversations with Karen and Leslie about parts of "one" dying when particular relationship. It really took until "Choirgirl" with the inception and then the loss of the baby for me to need spiritually to the two men of whom Sneeze references. Karen and Leslie knew I was thru the whole video shoot demanding my heart to race across the planet and back into my body -- a theme I came back to time and again as in "calling for my Soul at the corners of the world. I know she's playing poker with the rest of the stragglers". The chair scene here has become a mechanical dragon dragging parts of myself from other parts -- it's a long way from the protective chair in Pretty Good Year."

“Caught a Lite Sneeze is about wanting to do anything to keep a relationship going, knowing that it’s over, knowing that it’s slipping through the hands.”

“Then we go on to Caught A Lite Sneeze and she’s still vampiring, she needs that boy blood. You can say you are beautiful, you are enough; when are you going to claim it? You are on the hunt. He doesn’t give fuck about you; he might have cared about some parts of you but this is not about you. He doesn’t want to work this out with you, your neediness is disgusting him, and you sit around going ‘oh no, no, no, I’ve gotta have it. It’s out there, he has something.’ Anything to just keep it going.”

 “I can write from an emotional level - knowing instinctively, the craft of sensing when a melody doesn’t work, In Caught a Lite Sneeze, I wanted to take the whole rhythm because we’re moving we’re trying to get rid of the possession. The track just stops for a minute and it goes ‘Right on Time’ and then right on time our rhythm comes back.”

“Just trying to negotiate on any level - ‘Mr. St. John, just bring your son.’ You know you will not gain strength from this path. You know you will not get peace from this path. But you are addicted and on this path. You just know you need energy from an outside source because you don’t know how to access it for yourself. Now, there’s some energy that I did know how to access, and men would be drawn to me for that.”

“It’s definitely the bad side. It wasn’t the one that won. My point of view was not the side that won in this song. I think where it shows up on the record, and the whole reason Sneeze is where it is is because, well, obviously, it was definitely malaria. It’s one of those things where you know this isn’t good for you. You know that anything any of your friends say to you just doesn’t mean anything. ‘Don’t do this Tori. You’re crazy. Don’t do this. Why are you doing this?’ You just look at them and say, ‘Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing. Don’t worry. Everything’s just fine.”

"I wanted to take the whole rhythm because we're moving we're trying to get rid of the possession. The track just stops for a minute and it goes 'Right on Time' and then right on time our rhythm comes back."

"...actually, he was Malaria. That whole idea of, you know when you're crawling to a telephone that isn't ringing? You know that one? Well, I was at a state after my separation from a soul mate when I started to try and pull in energies to fill this empty space. And I was chasing after all sorts of energies to the point where I was crawling after boy blood, shall we say. And my girlfriends will tell you I was trying to match the lipstick, Shisiedo, with the blood stains in the corner of my lips, right? And at a certain point, I knew that this wasn't good for me and it wasn't good for them, but I didn't know how to stop cause I didn't know how to find my own fire at this point in time. And Caught A Lite Sneeze is just letting you know that I got it bad."

"It's definitely the bad side. It wasn't the one that won. My point of view was not the side that won in this song. I think where it shows up on the record, and the whole reason 'Sneeze' is where it is is because, well, obviously, it was definitely malaria. It's one of those things where you know this isn't good for you. You know that anything any of your friends say to you just doesn't mean anything. 'Don't do this Tori. You're crazy. Don't do this. Why are you doing this?' You just look at them and say, 'Oh, I know exactly what I'm doing. Don't worry. Everything's just fine.'"

“Muhammad My Friend surprised me too. I was singing in Christmas services. I was with my parents. I was watching the Nativity, and after a while I said to myself, ‘Wait a minute. There’s something wrong here.’ We were singing Away in the Manger. I kept getting more and more into the perfect little love with the lullaby of Away in the Manger. I started to get husky in the throat. I started to wonder who, with everybody speaking of the baby Jesus, should come up to the cradle. And I found that, of all people, I wanted to have a chat about it with Muhammad, because the Prophet is the one who supposedly knows the Law. So I decided that they needed to talk about the Law - the Law of the Feminine that had been castrated with the birth of Christ. I believe that Magdalene was the Saviour’s bride, the High Priestess. And that Magdalene was not a blueprint for women - meaning that this was a woman who was honoured as the sacred bride, not a virgin. We’re talking about a Woman. We have a Virgin matrix, but they needed the Woman blueprint: the compassion/passion, wisdom, wholeness. But this blueprint was not a structure that one could relate to Woman - until now. Think about it. It’s just been uncovered in the past twenty-some years. Even though women have been given power to be heads of corporations, we’re talking about not just power within the hierarchy but access to the different fragments that make up the whole of Woman.”

“And then when you are so sure it’s with the boys, we both know ‘it was a girl back in Bethlehem...’ what am I doing? You are beginning to remember the blueprint, you are beginning to remember that this is not just because boys laughed at you when you were 13, this is a program that is going back very far.”

“I was having a cup of tea with Muhammad and saying that there are as many belief systems as there are people; to not acknowledge that means chaos, really. Of course, I had to bring Gladys Knight into it. She’s a bit of a goddess.”

“I sat there and started to think, ‘Alright, I’ve heard all this backwards and forwards from every angle, and fine, I’m into this love your neighbour as yourself, that’s great, but where does all this fear come from about dancing the primitive dance, the concept of woman, their sensuality, their connection with all aspects of the self? I read a bit of mythology, with Isis, etcetera, and said, OK, where did all of this go? Where’s the balance? Where’s the female aspect of God? The fragmentation of the feminine is something that really started to perk my interest. That’s what ‘Muhammad My Friend’ is about, trying to find the female part of God that’s been circumcised.”

"When we hit Muhammad you realize we've just taken a bend in the road. The first half of the record is about her descent in to the horror; she's got to find another way of looking at herself."

"I sat there and started to think, 'Alright, I've heard all this backwards and forwards from every angle, and fine, I'm into this love your neighbour as yourself, that's great, but where does all this fear come from about dancing the primitive dance, the concept of woman, their sensuality, their connection with all aspects of the self? I read a bit of mythology, with Isis, etcetera, and said, OK, where did all of this go? Where's the balance? Where's the female aspect of God? The fragmentation of the feminine is something that really started to perk my interest. That's what 'Muhammad My Friend' is about, trying to find the female part of God that's been circumcised."

"'Muhammad My Friend' is me looking for the seed of that idea: How did I come to think that guys gave me my own worth?"

"People will say things like 'Is 'Muhammad My Friend' about a cat?', and I'll reply with something like 'Well...I'm sure someone has a cat named Muhammad.'"

"I guess it's quite telling when people, especially people you know very well, people who know you'd gobble up Royal Jelly - the most foul of foul - before you'd put a flesh and blood cigarette in your mouth. Anyway, when they never fail to ask you for a light. MTV had a problem with all the pyrotechnics so we had to cut some of the fire sequences down particularly the ending. However, since this is not theirs or anyone else's release I've chosen to stand by the ending that Earl and I really felt was the truth of the woman in Jupiter. A craving of hunger or burning for someone is seduction when she's kind. When she turns, you are truly in hell and the humiliation of your need is the cherry on top for her. Martyrs for a cause are treated quite differently than Martyrs for love. Buddhist monks are immortalized the courage the respect. Rejected lovers, yes immortalized, the pity the loneliness."

“Well, I was really in a bind because I was doing some bad things and I was in a love triangle with these I don’t even know if they were real now, I’m confused about the whole thing. So let’s see I was lying in bed. Strange things happen to you on tour, like strange Englishmen start sitting at the end of your bed, apparitions of dead guys. And they start singing songs to you. And this guy was definitely dead. And he was definitely singing to me so I’m confused about the copyright laws. I’m not sure if I need to call his ex-wife and give her part of the song or not. But why should I do that? She’s rich. She’s not nice. So anyway I kept the copyright. And the guys forgot who I was and the song is mine.”

“The album going into Hey Jupiter is the point where she knows it’s over with this particular relationship, or ships, and it’s not ever gonna be what it was again. It is never going back. That’s where the whole record turns on its axis.”

“Hey Jupiter was especially hard. I’d made 13 calls from all over the world. I was getting ready to catch a plane from Phoenix to do the Vegas show, and I rang his number again, but no one was picking up. And in that moment, after all the you know, the fiery red head behaviour, drawing my lines, making my threats I was lying there alone, feeling incredibly weak. Feeling like there are not enough sold-out shows, like it doesn’t matter that every American show is sold out, because I’m only alive when I’m on a stage with a piano. The rest of the time I’m just this shell. So, when I wrote Hey Jupiter, it was like, how could we have been so cruel? Because when we started out, there was so much love. Real caring. And I sit here hating someone who I had been head over heels in love with. Taking jets to meet up for four hours and then flying back to do a show the next night.”

“On Hey Jupiter, she knows the way she has looked at relationships with men and put them on a pedestal is over. There’s a sense of incredible loss because I knew that I would never be able to see the same way again. It’s freeing, and yet there’s a sense of grieving with that.”

"I was having a hard time with a guy who couldn't decided what he was drawn to. And I mean these are big questions. It's not just do we get on and is there chemistry? It's do I have the right gear? Can I get on this plane with you? And I know he found it difficult too."

"There comes a time when you want to roast marshmallows over your own fire."

"That's where I was literally at the bottom. I was on tour when all this happened and I remember Oklahoma City being totally rock-bottom. 'It was like I was thinking, 'Just you wait, Henry Higgins,' and as I sat there on my knees in Oklahoma City, waiting for the phone to ring needing to feed, I'd reached the end of my rope."

"...I want to play something if I could, that kind of refers to something we've been talking about. Somebody talked about when I was walking in what inspired this record. There's a lot of...when you go after the hidden parts in yourself there's a little giggle to be had, but there's also a little tear. The men who brought me to this awareness...people say, do you hate men? And I go, God, you've missed the whole point. Because there's a lot of big chocolate hearts on this record. And as much as sometimes you know it's over you still...it doesn't mean that it doesn't get your heart sometimes. So I just want to play a chocolate heart song."

"I have a lot of gay friends who have taught me many things. Because of their experiences, they have taught me how to look at life differently. I want to be very open. I think they have gone through a lot to come out. And I really respect anybody who stands by their truth. I just like communicating with people. And I wanted to communicate with people who I think have taken a very truthful stand--in the face of a lot of judgement. Because I wasn't a part of that world that much. I didn't see how fierce it could be in this day and age. It shocks me sometimes. And it comes through in my work--like with 'Hey Jupiter', 'Are you gay/are you blue.'"

"On Hey Jupiter, she knows the way she has looked at relationships with men and put them on a pedestal is over. There's a sense of incredible loss because I knew that I would never be able to see the same way again. It's freeing, and there's a sense of grieving with that."

"I was at my lowest. I was at a hotel in Phoenix, and I realized that for once there wasn't a man I could turn to."

"And the album going into 'Hey Jupiter' and that is the point where she knows it's over with this particular relationship, or ships, and it's not ever gonna be what it was again. It is never going back. That's where the whole record turns on its axis."

"'Hey Jupiter' is me just saying that's it--I've had enough, I just can't continue."

"I was going through something in my life, and I felt the presence at the end of my bed of a ghost of someone I recognized. I was in a hotel room in Arizona during the UTP tour. I followed this ghost into the bathroom. I turned on all the water...the shower. I let the room steam up...the water became part of the sound, almost like an orchestra... and this ghost drew a picture for me in the mirror in the steam. The way I interpreted the picture was that earth and Jupiter were in love billions of years ago, then they were separated, and now they are billions of miles apart, and this is earth's love song to Jupiter."

“As soon as she knows that it’s over, then you do the whole Way Down thing. Go further into the place of the South, the place of the hidden, with Little Amsterdam.”

"And the album going into Hey Jupiter and that is the point where she knows it’s over with this particular relationship, or ships, and it’s not ever gonna be what it was again. It is never going back. That’s where the whole record turns on its axis. As soon as she knows that, then you do the whole Way Down thing." 

“Little Amsterdam, which is all metaphorical, is about wanting to kill people, being angry at people that you feel have done something.. the whole domination thing, the whole hierarchy, patriarchy and her way to fight back and they are blaming her but ‘it wasn’t her bullet’ but she still believes it would have been fine if they lost him.”

“And we travel further into Little Amsterdam, we go down South, which is really symbolic for the primal, the primitive, and the lies and the... really the domination.”

“I’ve set it between two release points, an intro and outro. It helps the smell of this song, so you really get the honeysuckle with the sweet potatoes and the black-eyed peas. And just like you weave down those roads in the South, you know, you’re in swampland, and then you hit water, and then country, and sugar cane. And then you hit a gas station somewhere and you’re in a town, and you’ve gotten into the Christian sound. It’s like those writers I read as a little girl, Faulkner and Williams. This is how I write. It’s not about sitting down and putting 18 bars here or there.”

“I’m a big Faulkner fan, Tennessee Williams fan. How I would get taken into the story, there are so many levels of a story. There are so many levels of a dinner table conversation that’s happening, with the smells against what’s being said, the rhythm of the shuffled feet. Because you’re dealing with the unconsciousness as well as consciousness at every moment. The big thing that started to come to me in Amsterdam was... I mean, I’ll tell you this, just visitations of Sylvia Plath, as I would be singing ‘Don’t take me back to the range.’”

“The struggle of knowing I could kill him, knowing he should be killed, knowing I’m totally fine about it but Mom, that wasn’t my bullet. And I’m paying for it. I get fascinated by boundaries.”

"I grew up in the South, so there's a bit of that happening. As we all know, it's a bit tricky down there. But I always had my piano, and loads to eat, actually, which was really good because of those Southern cooks. Things might be weird, but they can cook up a storm."

"The South represents so much that is hidden. This record is about the fragments that have been hidden. So naturally, I had to follow that and go after that frequency. There is a lot of domination in this song. The idea that you don't follow your heart because you're afraid that if you do that you can't have your family or you can't have your friends or that you'll be outcast. That's very much what the South has been about for me - speaking about that which was hidden could get you really ostracized."

"Go further into the place of the South, the place of the hidden, with 'Little Amsterdam,' which is all metaphorical, about wanting to kill people, being angry at people that you feel have done something... the whole domination thing, the whole hierarchy, patriarchy...and her way to fight back and they are blaming her but 'it wasn't her bullet'..."

"Boy in the Plastic Bubble has always been a cornerstone for me and Miss Karen. If we were freezing, imagine the Harpsie... Battersea Power Station in February -- yick. Talula - the song had two major themes, power and value. Those in power can demand that we see and agree with them by threatening us with a loss of some kind. Here in Talula my character is separated from her primal voice her bloodline which is represented by the Harp. If you don't agree or follow those in power I do believe there will be rejoicing by your own inner child. Loss is a scary thing but what I found to be more scary would be to feel nothing over a loss. Similar to that sentiment I would rather have loved and loss then to never have loved at all."

"I heard stories that they brought in this henchman from France, and I really aligned with him. He had Anne move her hair over and he made her look away. He did it when she didn't know. Even though his job was a bit brutal, he had more compassion than the king. The riddle in 'Talula' is things are not what they seem."

"A name holds an energy, like anything else. Look at 'Ruby Tuesday'. I think Talula is about rhythm and tone and sensuality. It ain't fucking Catherine. There's something in there about West Indian dance. And yet it's a very classic name too. Talula really just started to represent all women to me; women that let themselves dance for themselves."

“Talula is the track on the record that holds the space for permission to dance. And as the record moves on with the story, once we get to Talula, where she’s placed, there’s been so much grieving, there’s been so much acknowledgment, finally after Jupiter, when she knows it’s over, whatever ‘it’ is, but she knows that she can’t go back and things just aren’t gonna... you can’t pretend that certain events haven’t happened once they’ve happened in a relationship. And we travel further into Little Amsterdam, we go down South, which is really symbolic for the primal, the primitive, and the lies and the... really the domination. Little Amsterdam is so essential to release that place before we can finally say... we went back to the childhood, we went back South, to the bloodline, where there is so much hierarchy… and now it’s time to just let her dance.”

“It keeps moving into the dance of Talula, and her desperately trying to dance, desperately trying to figure out the whole idea of loss: it must be worth losing if it’s worth something. So if I feel like I am losing something, at lease I valued something enough to lose it in the first place... it’s going back into that train of thought. Talula is very much a riddle. The sense of loss is such a tricky one, because we always feel like our worth can grow with things we are willing to lose. So there’s a real letting go. Talula is about letting go and getting the dance. I do not want to lose him... The loss of Eric in my life was...it felt like half of me walked out the door. And Talula came as a nursery rhyme, my little dance that I would do when things were so sad. Because I started thinking but ‘God, I have these feelings, which means...’ we shared so many moments that I value, I really valued that, so what a gift that I can feel this loss, that I am not so numb, that I haven’t cut myself off so much, and once I could feel the loss then I started to feel free. I want to dance and go ‘yeah, I want to be with Talula.’ I want to be able to dance through the people that come in and go out of your life. I want to learn how to dance with the gifts when they come and the gifts when they need to take a different route.”

“Talula ... when I wrote this, my mother was sitting in a chair, and I’d been playing for a few hours. She was fading in and out of sleep. I’d been going through some of my blood, guts and widow’s tunes. And all of a sudden I needed to breathe. I started playing Talula, and it became like a breath, ‘cause I needed freedom from all these songs that where showing me my monsters. Talula started to show me how to dance. And my mother began to wake up. The song is really a riddle. Talula just came to me, telling me her name. A lot of the times I’m just trying to interpret what I’m seeing on the other side. A name holds an energy, like anything else. Look at Ruby Tuesday. I think Talula became about rhythm and tone an sensuality. It ain’t fuckin’ Catherine. There’s something in there about West Indian dance. And yet it’s a very classic name, too. Talula really just started to represent all women to me - women that let themselves dance - for themselves.”

“That’s my little moment of Ziggy Stardust, my Gary Glitter moment. An homage. It’s one thing to be a glitter girl, but it’s another thing to be all woman. And that’s what Marie Antoinette desperately wanted.”

“In Talula, I’m begging this concept of ideal woman to come alive in myself, feeling afraid of losing someone. If it matters, it must be something worth losing. Each song began to be a piece of claiming myself.”

“It’s the Indian reference. It’s the whole idea of the cycle, the rebirth. There’s something being born within, which is the ability to let go. When a man you love walks out of your life, and you have that ache, you feel not only can you love again, but can love a son. The son or the daughter is the rebirth of the soul.”

“Fig Newton is a term of endearment. It’s not the Oreo Cookie. It’s certainly not the politically correct cookie. It’s not a commercial cookie. It’s the one with the jelly in the middle.”

“As I went back into the bloodline of western women, I began to see the fragmentation. For example, with Anne’s daughter Elizabeth - “The Virgin Queen” - if you had respect and a certain power, you didn’t have your sensuality and sexuality as well. There has been this division in ‘Christian women’. I went after those archetypes that have been so misunderstood. With Anne Boleyn’s relationship with Henry VIII, he’d manipulate the truth. That’s why he says one plus one is three. Whatever the patriarchy says goes, and you’ll burn for it.”

“A lot of writing on this album is about association. Jamaica, to me, represents the mysteries. If you go back to that culture, they had belief in the spirit world. Some call it voodoo. Voodoo became something different once the Christians came in. Before then, there was an understanding of other worlds we have chosen to disrespect. When I say ‘Do you know what I have done’, I haven’t honoured that world.”

“A lot of scholars believe that she was, in her own right, a High Priestess. People believe that Mary Magdalene became the High Priestess when Jesus was being crowned “King” of the Jews. The weave of Magdalene represented woman. Not virgin, not mother, but WOMAN - which wasn’t passed down. Certain fragments have been lost, theologically. There are secrets in the blood that get passed down.”

“Big Bird is a play on what he represents. Whether it’s a Big Cheese, or whether it’s Jesus or whether it is Big Bird. It’s just the big guy. At this point in the song it’s going after that patriarchy domination thing.”

“Not the Red Baron was a B-side, but really got, she slipped in there. She slipped in and kicked another one off because... it was a compassion for the men. Not the Red Baron holds so much compassion for the boys for me because as they’re going down in their planes, and they’re crashing. And as I started to see in some of the relationships with the men, how when it was their turn to crash, their turn to scream, their turn to face the pain. At that point I didn’t want to kick ‘em in the nuts anymore. And there was nothing I could do, ‘cause I was going through mine and they were going through theirs and sometimes all you can do is just pat them on the head and give them a Guiness. Yet this song really became about... ‘and are there devils with halos and beautiful capes, taking them into the flames, taking them into the flames.’ And I saw these lovely women ushering the men with the tears to their next place. Always connected to Fire, always all of us trying to find our own fire.”

"I didn't really think too much about the arrangements. They were dictated by the material. The pilot conversation in 'Red baron', for instance, was introduced when I was playing some piano and Marcel and Rob started talking about frequencies. I said, keep talking and that conversation was recorded together with the piano. I think that marriage worked as well."

“There’s one called Agent Orange. Naturally, if we’re talking about the boy/girl matrix, there’s going to be a war zone at some point in our story. It’s kind of been a war zone from early on in the record. As the record goes on - and on and on and on - the vulnerability starts coming. Then you start sleeping with one of the lieutenants from the other side because you ended up at a country village and you forgot that you were on different sides. You know how it is when war begins: The strangest, craziest things begin to happen. That’s when we start moving into something else with that break on the record after Jupiter, with Amsterdam, with Talula. Now we’re in the South - that whole smell and taste. And we go into Agent Orange. If we’re gonna have a war, we have to bring warfare in. I decided to make him a bodybuilder because that memory has to transmute also - the skin. To become like tango, the idea of Tang, or the idea of Orangina, an Orange muscle secret agent who we love ... That song, Agent Orange, is the one o’clock cabaret moment, where you’ve had a couple of Amarettos on the rocks, and there’s just a sadness. But you know that sadness when you know your relationship is over and you’re still alive? You know you’re not dead. You’ve got all your body parts. You’re all there. You’ve got a date. He’s got a new love. And you go on with it.”

"If we're talking about warfare in a relationship, we have to bring in some Agent Orange."

"There's certain times when I wanted the listener to just lay there. With 'Agent Orange', I was hoping you could see this orange-bodied muscle man, and give yourself a giggle so that we'd transform this being from a mutilated skin person to Orangina. It's the idea of becoming Tang - transmuting the chemical effect. You can't forget that happened - you can't forget the warfare. So, of course there's that level. I just had to bring it in. I decided to bring it in as a muscle man."

“There were so many things that I didn’t allow myself to do when I was in this relationship, and I think Eric would tell you the same. All sorts of things you see which you can be finally honest about. Like Doughnut Song, the last I worked on. There’s a bitter sweet quality about it … There’s a sweetness to becoming a woman that the virgins don’t have. They have a physical sweetness, but once you claim the woman... Yes I want to wring their necks sometimes - those I fall in love with -| yet there’s much more of an understanding.”

“Doughnut... that’s so much to me the ache of... I think one of the most important lines in the entire record for me was ‘you told me last night you were a sun now with your very own devoted satellite, happy for you and I am sure that I hate you, too sons too many too many able fires...’ There’s the Cain and Abel reference, there’s the idea that you can’t have two whole beings together. And I couldn’t live like that, and it made me really sad, that whether it’s a female relationship or a male relationship, we’re not supporting each other to make a whole. When I am not happy when you are taking you as far as you can. I can’t support that or I withhold from you because the truth is I am afraid you aren’t going to need me anymore.”

“With Caton we talked about ‘Doughnut Song’ and the swirling, the idea of girls on hands of men and underneath men are slates of material that open up and there are women underneath them on the backs of cattle and above the girls that are on top of the hands of men there’s something pouring into their water jugs. Those are the pictures I get when we’re trying to find a sound, and it’s funny because the guys go, ‘Here we go again - Tori-speak.’”

"This is one of my favs. I'm playing it a lot lately. It's the one that was written last. She just snuck right on in there before that door was closed and said, 'The party ain't over yet!'"

"So all the gear was packed up and the guys were gonna go get shagged and get some Guiness. And, as far as we knew, the record was over and as much as my crew I think kinda likes me...I think they really like me, but they wanted to get shagged. And so, I understand that totally cause they'd been with...cooped up for four months making this record. And, as they were ready to head on out to do whatever they were up to, it was, 'oh my god'. You know, girls, the moment where you just go, 'It's coming'? And it's like, 'sorry, guys. Just ten more minutes.'"

“Doughnut Song leads us into Voodoo. The key for me here is he was going to show me spring. Going to . and so much of my life has been about going to. Instead of what is happening now, it’s what are we going to? Not what are we really giving to each other now. What am I promising him? That whole idea of looking to this, the idea that somebody else carries the voodoo, instead of becoming part of the voodoo and accessing it yourself. That runs through the whole thing.”

"And using only the harpsicord in 'In the springtime of his voodoo' turned out to be too little of an instrumentation, so I asked Manu Katche to play with me. Piano and drums in one take, together with vocals. I'd never tried that, but it worked."

"This song always makes me think about fried sweet potatoes and forget all of my boy troubles."

"...the key for me here is he was going to show me spring. Going to...and so much of my life has been about going to. Instead of what is happening now, what are we going to? Not what are we really giving to each other now. What am I promising him? That whole idea of looking to this, the idea that somebody else carries the voodoo, instead of becoming part of the voodoo and accessing it yourself. That runs through the whole thing."

"Voodoo is a completely different song live. Things are changing because as you play them hundreds of times."

“And of course Damage speaks for itself. The song, being herself damaged, it’s trying to teach myself about graciousness, and I have such a hard time with that. I have a very hard time. Damage was so essential for me to sing, it’s one of the most difficult ones for me. I can look and have love and feelings for some of these people but...”

"You know it's not going to work, you know all these things, but you still have feelings...but it's just not appropriate to acknowledge them. And more than anything I find it interesting what I still find attractive. That's the whole thing that came when I sang that... 'you still look pretty' which...that can mean a lot of things"