On Little Earthquakes

"I hope that these songs on Little Earthquakes will enter people's lives and make them realize that they are not alone."

"I started making Little Earthquakes with a bag full of memories and experience I had to get rid of."

"I think Little Earthquakes was really about looking at things I had to look at, my first door opening up to things I'd closed off since I was a little kid. I'd numbed parts of myself so they wouldn't get hurt."

"I was a rock chick for years. About a year after that, I ran into this journalist who wrote this big 'expose.' I said: 'Why couldn't you give me credit for putting those snake pants on of my own volition? What did you think the words on Little Earthquakes were about? I whored myself, and it horrified me. After that record I threw out everything. My piano, even. I chucked it!' But not because of the clothes. There's nothing wrong with snakeskin trousers and hairspray. It was because the music wasn't honest."

"Um, it's kind of like trying to stay alive. At that point, Little Earthquakes was my first, um, attempt at getting out of the egg. You know that little chicken that kinda kicks out the egg [imitates chicken] and says, 'OK, um, what have I really not been saying all these years?' You know you can wear the plastic snake pants and put 15,000 holes in your body, which is fine. Enjoy it. But what am I saying? I'm just saying absolutely Nothing. So I started to think about... what is the most powerful thing I can do for myself. The Truth is actually the most shocking thing you can do because nobody really hears it much. So when you start saying things truthfully, and I mean truthfully, there's no greater... Freedom than that, and I was really dying. So I had to find out, I had taken on all of these belief systems. Whether you go from... Christianity, to Buddhism, to God... I'm going to be one of those Mary Magdalenes, YES. I mean, to finally say, 'No, wait a minute, I'm just, who's this redhead?' Dyed of course. But, you know, what are my beliefs? Not what you want me to believe. Or what I should believe. But what do I Really, Really believe? And if there are a million people telling me I'm out of my mind, that should really be inconsequential. Because it's not your truth, it's gotta be mine. And same with you, you know?"

"I don't find my record depressing. There are moments of incredible acknowledgement of when I've been not true to myself - when I listen to everybody else. But I gotta take responsibility for that."

Little Earthquakes, in truth, was much more like a diary form of things that have happened in my whole life, finding my own voice."

"Queen Elizabeth I and peeping Tom were the buzz words I was hearing from Cin when we were chatting about Crucify.  Cindy's visual sense never ceased to surprise and generally make me belly laugh.  She's a bit of a Devil.  Cindy was always weaving in a sub text -- Elizabeth the first getting Baptised and then doing her saucy strumpet Shimmy after being blessed of course."

“Bells started going off every time I wouldn’t stick up for myself. I accepted Quasimodo was a squatter in my cerebral area. A rhythmic pattern kept chasing me around. I dug out the drum machine and put the pattern down. I would leave that pattern on for hours while I just sat and argued with myself about stuff. The first music to get put to the pattern was the ‘B’ section, ‘I’ve been looking for a saviour’... a door opened and the demons started to show up.”

"I have that guilt still. I'm still working through this idea of giving myself completely to this man I'm with because he is my best friend and someone I respect. Yet he is also someone I need to slam me against a wall and fuck me. And love me as well. The concept of both being part of the one relationship is still hard for me to accept. Because I've been taught that being fucked against a wall, or anywhere, is not love...Who the fuck thought up that idea? That notion has kept marriages from working, people from giving to each other and both sexes under control for centuries."

"A lot of guilt. Well Protestants have guilt just as much as Catholics. I mean it's all about shame shame shame, I'm so bad that I had that thought of that choirboy. But I was always having those thoughts."

"Now I don’t want to say that electronic instruments are anything bad. For example: the electronic arrangement for Girl is mine. Eric made the sounds on the Kurzweil and programmed everything, since I don’t have a clue."

"The beginnings were composed on an old upright piano in Virginia. It’s horribly out of tune, which is one of the things I love about it. The chorus was written but that’s about it. I threw it down on tape and forgot about it. Months later, I was cleaning the house and was throwing tapes away. Eric intercepted this one out of a pile. I was chopping onions in the kitchen, he brought it in and said, ‘Listen’ - I did."

“A lot of people ask me about this song. And what I try to explain to them is, I was writing it for somebody else, actually. Because I was trying to get some of my songs placed with people. I wrote something for Cher. And it got turned down of course. And then I wrote something for Tina Turner. It was really good. The one for Cher was called ‘But I’m Experienced, Babe.’ I thought that was really good.... So then I just sort of tried to make the rounds cause I was getting fired from too many Mariotts. I mean, I kept doing the same thing.... But I did that for like, 13 years, and my leather skirts were getting higher. And then, I got fired again. So finally I needed to like, get work. And I decided, wow, I met this new person who was really nice to me because he looked at me and said, ‘You’ve never had good wine.’ And I went, ‘oh my god, how do you know?’ And he was like, ‘I can tell, it oozes from you, you just don’t know it.’ Oh. You know what I mean? ... It gets a little nerve-racking. You don’t know what you’re doing wrong. And so Al Stewart took me to a restaurant and showed me wine like I’ve never seen wine before. And so um, I wanted to write a song for him. And I started to do this thing. And I went to Eric, who I was with and who partly produced Little Earthquakes, and he didn’t produce this bit so he was totally objective. And he looked at me and said, ‘You’re out of your mind. That’s your life story.’ And I went, ‘Oh.’ So, needless to say, Al Stewart didn’t get that song.”

“It’s about realizing, painfully, you’ve kept that voice inside yourself, locked away from even yourself. And you step back and see that your jailer has changed faces. You realize you’ve become your own jailer.”

“In most people’s songs men are always potent, women never have their period, rape’s inexistent and orgasm vaginal or faked. They’re Barbie doll songs, songs without pubic hair or obvious genitals; they don’t fit anatomically. My songs come rather from my womb than from the heart. You know, there’s some fucking going on in other people’s songs, but no one ever gets into an unwanted pregnancy. I sing, ‘Boy you best pray that I bleed real soon.”

“I am not the kind of woman who takes things sitting down. I wrote Silent All These Years because you can have a big mouth and not be saying anything. I didn’t know how to say ‘fuck you’ to the people who knew every answer about how I should live my life. I would find myself sitting with my hand on a fork and I don’t know why I wanted to go for the jugular of the person across the table. I didn’t understand: What buttons is this person pushing in me?”

“The bumble bee piano tinkle came first. This one evolved slowly but it stayed an obsession until it was finished. I entered boxer occupation - part of me not wanting to hear what ‘I’ was saying, the other part fighting off ‘The Brain Drain.’ I finally distracted The brain Drain with the task of filing chocolate cake recipes.”

“With this record, a song like Silent All These Years has a certain story line going on musically that’s really the antithesis of what’s going on verbally. It’s counterpoint, pure and simple. But instead of French horns and cellos or something, it’s words and music. And I find it very exciting when an acoustic instrument has its knife out. It can take on these different roles. The idea of being a woman ... you come over to my house and I’m serving a fruit plate. That’s not always going to happen. Especially if somebody isn’t being polite, or if somebody’s being a dick. Then I’m going to put the peelings on the floor and watch you trip, and giggle. And that’s the same with the acoustic instrument. It’s not always just about, “I’m vulnerable, I’m sad.” There are many different sides, and the beauty comes in exploring them.”

"It's not a track I like to play live most, but it is one of those songs that I find, in any room I'm in, whether it's a very cynical group of people or, a heartbreaking situation, or a bit cheeky group of people, it's one of those songs that seems to slip through, slip through easily, like water. You know, water doesn't leave that, that sticky feeling on your hands, you usually can have a drink of water and it's not going to bother you too much, and Silent is like water to me.  I think that the idea of Silent all these years is something that a lot of us go through, initially, when we're trying to find our voice. But I also think that it can be something you go through again in life, when you've chosen a path that might not set well with you, and you think you can handle it, just work maybe, and you're quiet about it, and you realise that you can't be silent anymore and you have to make a shift. And I think Silent all these years is one of these songs that always come back to me every few years when I'm making a big change."
(speaking in 2003)

“Precious Things is a song that came to me when I was living behind a church. And I was about 24 years old. I had a roommate that listened to really raucous music and it started to take me into flashbacks of my grandmother. And she used to put me in a corner and she would read me something, I think from Leviticus, I can't remember. But she was convinced that I was gonna give my soul to God and my body to a man that I would marry. But at five years old I knew that we were enemies. So, in my mind I was always trying to find ways to get away from this Creature. So I thought of things and my mother thought I was a demon for thinking them but I think she would smile out of the corner of her mouth because I think she felt the same way. So, behind this church with this music going on and on in my head, I started to really think that maybe just one day I could run faster.”

“Oh, you know very well men sometimes use good sex as a weapon, or as an excuse, like ‘I just made you come, so don’t think I’m also gonna help you do the dishes!’ Hello!”

“Heavily into the Sandman comics by now, the nights were late, candles all over the house dripping where they would. Wax is a bit more fun to play with than bubble gum. The doors were open by now. I could resist, but there’s always air suction.”

“I was always the girl who had friends but did boys like me? Not the boys I liked! They’d say, ‘She’s nice and she plays really good piano but she’s also Sandy Luman’s friend, can we get her number?’ I hadn’t blossomed so I was seen as a rather nondescript nice girl, I guess.”

“Little Earthquakes is all about celebration. Celebrating the ability to laugh, weep, and scream, particularly if you have been silent for years. And so it’s about celebrating sexuality in the widest sense, including the elements of revenge. As in Precious Things where I say to the guy ‘So you can make me cum/that doesn’t make you Jesus’. Just because I’m with a man and because I’m creaming for a man doesn’t make him a master, doesn’t even necessarily make him worthy of love, of my love. And I now realize, maybe for the first time in my life, that my capacity for love is incredibly deep and that for me to give this to a man he has to fully understand, and respect what that means. Too few do. They’re into pillaging, rummaging around, doing a little Viking stuff! But most women these days realize that’s not enough, boys! And if some women don’t then I hope songs like Precious Things will help open their eyes. And, just as importantly, help open the eyes of some men.”

"Without question my favourite time of year.  Strange for a girl who is always cold.  There is something that draws me though, whether it's to catch me watching Torville & Dean, walking down a road so bundled up I look like the Yeti or taste testing Daz's mulled wine I've found myself out, I'm a winter girl"

“I wrote this song for my Dad when he was ill.”

“I was leeching off the men in my life; don’t get me wrong, they were leeching off me, but I didn’t like who I was. So my Dad and I were walking out in the old farm, my grandmother’s farm, she really wasn’t a nice person. Now my Dad, he’s like James Dean or Billy Graham, though there’s no real difference there. I was telling him how bad I felt cause of the first album being so bad and Dad said to me ‘Tori Ellen, When are you going to accept you are good enough for you?’”

“Summoned to the piano, this Russian music box round played me over and over til I was wrapped in a blanket with the memory of cinnamon apples on my tongue and boys that didn’t ‘We.’ Went back to where I felt no time - it was all happening again, presently.”

"Someone said, 'Bury the strings in "Winter" because it won't be commercial.' And now I'm trying to preserve what was on tape, not necessarily what got released because of a decision that was made in 20 seconds at the time." (speaking in 2003)

"When the songs began showing up I wrote their names on separate envelopes and made a faery ring in the middle of the house. I’d sit in the middle of the ring to focus on a song’s direction. All of the songs seemed to work toward the completeness of the other. They decided we needed to hang out with death for awhile.”

"Happy Phantom from Little Earthquakes. When I die, the only sad thing is that I will really miss some of my friends. But I have a lot of friends somewhere else, where I'm going, and that'll be groovy too. If I cruise off, don't mourn, 'cos I'm gonna be somewhere bitchin'."

"So Cindy called me up and said I know what he's building you.  I said Cin who's building me what.  Your lover in the video she said.  As I remember, we started to dive into the idea that creative couples make "things" that can rip each other and their images of themselves - separate and together which makes them separate together  Build walls separately.  Build walls together.  Egos are delicate things.  Unfortunately walls are not misperceptions.  Running fast so fast it helps set the stones in place.  China was shot in North Cornwall.  Strangely enough were we recorded Choirgirl 5½ years later.  As in Spark you are seeing real water in winter's glory in England.  My "love" in the video built me two things which the sea took with her -- an honest to god rock piano and an upside down china teacup in the form of a skirt."

“The fifths in the bass represent the beginning of an ancient ceremony. This ceremony took me to China, took me to the kitchen table where most wars get nurtured. I’ve always felt China and secrets are good friends. This song was the first written on Little Earthquakes.”

"First song I wrote on it, last one to get on the record. It kinda started everything."

"In 1992, I did a video for China, down there around the cove. This is before I knew any of these people I'm living with now. I had no idea then that I would be passing by here all the time. I had a piano built out of rocks and I fell into the sea--the tide came in to where my derriere is and I was trying to avoid it because it was cold, it was January, and I slipped. But there's a romance to it..."

"Cornwall is so spiritual, too. It's Arthurian country, full of tales of chivalry and wizardry. Travel down the coast to Tintagel and, on the rocky headland known as the Island, you'll find Tintagel Castle, said to be the birthplace of King Arthur. Locals insist it's the true site of Camelot. The cave at the tip of the island is called Merlin's Cave, and Dozmary Pool, at the heart of Bodmin Moor, is where the king's sword, Excalibur, was received by the Lady of the Lake. I'm obsessed by the sea. For me, writing music is like jumping off a cliff and then deep-sea-diving among new coral reefs. I think women are like water, while men are much more like clay, like earth. Our house is surrounded by farmland, but when you walk out of the front door you can glimpse the sea at nearby Widemouth Bay. I have to know the sea is there. I filmed a video for my single, China, around the cove. I had a piano built out of rocks and I just slipped into the sea as the tide came in."

“Mother came on a bit like a dream sleep. It was early morning when I made the way to the piano. I knew that ‘they’ were trying to show me something. A memory of ‘the fall.’ Not the one we’ve been taught, but the other side of the story, which is the belief of certain ancient mythologies. Mother changed me because I began to remember, where I believe, we come from.”

“He was there when some of the songs were being written. Mother was written at 6:30, 7:00 in the morning. We were on a futon in the little place I had at the time in Hollywood, and I got up really early and started meandering on the piano. I meandered for about 25 minutes and I started to get this and I hear this voice from the futon, ‘What’s that!’ And I said, ‘Oh, it’s shit. Forget about it.’ And he yells, ‘Play it again!’ What happens with each one is that there will be a word that comes with the melody. Then a bridge section will start to work and I’ll know it wants to be there. And then maybe I can’t figure anything else out so I’ll put it aside. Three months later, I’m walking down the street and I’ll come up with four notes, and that’s what I’m going to build the next section on.” Do you write your ideas down on paper before putting them aside? “Well, I’m not very good at writing things down sometimes. Maybe it’ll be on the back of an envelope, a bill, a magazine, or I might record it on a ghetto blaster.”

“Emotionally, all these songs come from experiences that trigger them. I haven’t chosen to talk much about that side of the song writing - the seed for all these songs. On the technical side, I heard the music as a steady motion, no change really from verse and chorus, only the bridge that leads straight back like a loop to the same toll booth where you threw in some change to go around only to end up surrounded by the place you left. The only difference is by taking the loop ride you can see the place you left exactly as it is; some sadness, a whole lotta corn field, and a puddle.”

“Scarborough Fair was a big blueprint for Tear in Your Hand. I remember John Lennon talking about listening to songs that he loved, then changing them to make them his own versions. He would say, ‘God, I love this song. I wish I’d written this song.’ Then it would come out totally different. You might not even know what song it is that inspired you to do something, but there is that ingredient. Sometimes I do think that we’re really just rewriting songs. There are only 12 bloody notes, you know.”

"For many years, I shut down that place inside myself that needed to rage, cry, ask questions and basically just express herself. I made a conscious choice when I put 'Me and a Gun' on the record not to stay a victim anymore."

"Me and a Gun has been my flashlight; the thing that has taken me by the hand and led me down a very, very, very long recovery path."

“I’ll never talk about it at this level again, but let me ask you. Why have I survived that kind of night, when other women didn’t? How am I alive to tell you this tale when he was ready to slice me up? In the song I say it was ‘Me and a Gun’ but it wasn’t a gun. It was a knife he had. And the idea was to take me to his friends and cut me up, and he kept telling me that, for hours. And if he hadn’t needed more drugs I would have been just one more news report, where you see the parents grieving for their daughter. And I was singing hymns, as I say in the song, because he told me to. I sang to stay alive. Yet I survived that torture, which left me urinating all over myself and left me paralyzed for years. That’s what that night was all about, mutilation, more than violence through sex. I really do feel as though I was psychologically mutilated that night and that now I’m trying to put the pieces back together again. Through love, not hatred. And through my music. My strength has been to open again, to life, and my victory is the fact that, despite it all, I kept alive my vulnerability.”

“I was kidnapped and sexually violated. You feel like your boundaries have been crossed to such an extent that there is no law anymore, that there is no God. You feel like the Mother in you will do anything to protect the child in you from being shredded before your eyes. You’re thinking ‘I gotta get out alive, I gotta get out alive.’ With Me and a Gun, I hope that attackers as well as victims are listening. As well as judges, as well as lawyers. I want you to taste in the back of your mouth what it was like to be in the car with that pervert.”

“I wrote that song after I saw the movie Thelma and Louise which brought back an experience I hadn’t talked about for about five years. But as I was writing the song other voices rose, other voices that had opinions on what had happened. It was then I realized that the biggest mistake I made was not seeking help from people who understood. But then nobody was there for me on the night it happened. I had to call the East Coast and wake people up to talk. I called 20 people. I talked about it for roughly seven days and then just cut off the experience, not knowing that in doing that, I was letting it take control of me inside. How does a woman re-connect with her own body after rape and not associate sex with violence? That’s the core problem. If I’d sought help that would have been different, I’m sure. That’s what a woman should do. But sexually what happened to me was that I couldn’t respond to a guy at all. I broke off the relationship I was having with a man, the next day. I’d been with him for two and a half years yet I started ranting and raving and telling him I didn’t want him in my life. I then turned to a male friend and though he wanted me to go to the police I said ‘But I’m never going to find that person again.’ I also didn’t think I had a case. I don’t want to go into the details but you’ve read my lyrics, you know I look at things from as many angles as possible. So, even then I could see it from the other side. Nothing would have happened to the guy! And he would have known more about me than he did. Yes that means he’s out there somewhere and yes he may do it with another woman. But he’d have done it anyway. It wasn’t a cut and dried case. With American law as it is and the fact that I’m an entertainer and the kind of performer I was - like Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys - I knew I was going to be set up. And I was not going to be a victim of another experience. But what happened then was that I became a victim of myself. You know I would have killed him if I could have, yes. But I was busier trying not to get killed.. But sure, when she killed him in Thelma and Louise do you think I had remorse? Absolutely none. And if he walked into this room now, would I kill him? No. Because I wouldn’t want to make it that easy for him. But any man who gets killed raping someone has crossed the line... But I didn’t kill him. I finally wrote a song about it instead and that has given me the freedom. Me and a Gun is not about him. It’s more about me forgiving myself. That’s why my music now is so therapeutic, so cathartic for me. I made a commitment not to be a victim again, by writing and by singing as often as I can Me and a Gun. It’s like I refuse now to be a victim of my own guilt. I refuse to be a victim of not having a wonderful sexual experience again. And you are a victim when you can’t allow yourself to have sexual pleasure again. I refuse to put all men in the same category, as I was doing. When something like that happens you do want to punish men, punish the ones that crushed the flower. But no one should choose to hold onto that hatred. It choked me. Sexually, I feel I won’t be able to give completely and love to the extent, say, that I will want to have kids with him, for quite some time yet. I couldn’t even consider that for a few years. I’m only beginning to fulfil myself now because I’m beginning to accept, and love, the parts of me, of woman, that I was trained to hate all my life. Particularly the bad girl I still can be.”

“In America some radio stations didn’t want to play Me and a Gun because of ‘too feministic’ and ‘too realistic’. I sing: ‘Yes, I wore a slinky red thing. Does that mean I should spread for you?’ That’s the way it is, yes? ‘But mister judge, she was hitchhiking in a mini-skirt!’ Bullshit!”

“The rapist knows Me and a Gun. The boyfriend of the girl who was raped knows Me and a Gun, because he’s had to live through it in a different way. The parents of the girl...We could go on and on.”

"The extremes of having "Me and a Gun" and "Bliss" on the record, so there was "Me and a Gun" and "A Man on my Back", the song about the rape, into "Father, I Killed my Monkey". I thought things were improving then and it was important that we take you out of this woman's rape in a way that shows you how she has transcended. It is not a love and let go experience, and I have found over the years, being part of RAINN, the Rape Abuse and Incest International Network, and just hearing the letters from so many people, that you cannot be anywhere but where you are with it. And sometimes you may physically be gone for years, but they're still here. Now, how do you extract that? You can't find it when they probe you then, but it's as alive here, and she had to go inside herself and get out the voice that was subjugating her, and making her feel like that she committed a crime, and that she wasn't able to be passionate again. So she goes after that thinking, that patriarchal thinking, of subjugation, whether you're being raped physically, or whether it's psychologically, because the Church has done that for thousands of years, in all religions. How? They shame you, and they don't hold a place for you to become "whole", you know, they don't want you to become whole, in many cases, and that is what she's striving for." (speaking in 2003)