Tori Amos Creates 'Little Earthquakes'

Music and Thought-Forms: An Interview From 1992

The other day I heard an advertisement for Tori Amos concert tickets and I thought, time out of mind! It had been almost 31 years since her official debut album, Little Earthquakes, was released, and it appealed to me in a way that musically gifted singer-songwriters usually don't. Not just the confident piano playing, but smart lyrics that straddled confessional and the serious-but-whimsical. She seemed really smart and brave, with songs that touched the heart.

There had been a self-titled album previously by a synth-pop band in 1988 called Y Kant Tory Read, in which Matt Sorum of Guns N' Roses was the drummer: Not a match made in rock and roll heaven. She doesn't disavow it, but said, "it's like inviting the ex-boyfriend to the wedding." The oblique title had to do with Amos, a child piano prodigy, being asked to leave the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore because she refused to learn to read music.

Atlantic Records stuck with her, though, and following a series of living room solo co…