Tori Amos has pretty much the very best lessons on how to survive as a woman artist. Unfortunately, if you can't fight the administrative and political battles as well as plug into the big creative stuff, you're toast. (If you're rehashing books that a bunch of dudes have already written, you might not have to do this. But if you're really getting to the good, fresh art, then it's necessary to be this prepared.) When guy friends or corporate types roll their eyes when you say "Tori Amos," just smile and let them buy you another drink. It's better that the ferocity and genius involved is invisible.
"There was no way that these piano parts were coming off, but they held the master tapes," she explains. "I said 'If you do that, then I won't be part of the project. You will have no artist to promote or perform these songs.'" In the end, some songs were removed and replaced by new ones, but the piano stayed.
When, for the follow-up LP, 1994's In the Pink, Atlantic Records were keen to bring in their own producer, Amos threatened to burn the tapes. "They wanted a repeat performance of the first album, which is very hard to contrive, especially when you're no longer the next new thing."
In 1998 she faced yet another battle, this time over royalties and creative control. "It was a war that went on until 2002," she recalls. "I still created, as I knew that I had to keep my value up on the street. If I had just sat it out, they would have won, so I decided to retain my musical integrity. There's a chess-game that you play when you're battling with a something that is so much bigger than you or your resources. I have seen the lilies trampled in the field, great artists who are back singing tiny clubs because they can't fight this fight."