Myra Ellen Amos was born on 22 August 1963 in Newton, North Carolina, and when she was two years old her family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, where her father had moved his Methodist ministry from its original base in Washington, D.C. Her older brother and sister took piano lessons, but Tori did not need them, as from the time she could reach the piano, she taught herself to play. By the time she was two, she could reproduce pieces of music she had only heard once, and at the age of three she was composing her own songs. At five, she became the youngest student ever admitted to the preparatory division of the Peabody Institute, where she studied classical piano from 1968 to 1974. At thirteen, Amos began playing at gay bars and piano bars, chaperoned by her father, and in 1977 she won a county teen talent contest, singing a song called 'More Than Just A Friend'. As a senior at Richard Montgomery High School, she co-wrote 'Baltimore' with her brother, Mike Amos, for a competition involving the Baltimore Orioles, and although the song didn't win the contest, it became her first single, released as a 7-inch record pressed locally for family and friends in 1980, with another Amos-penned composition as a b-side, 'Walking With You'. It was at this time that she adopted the name Tori, after a friend's boyfriend told her she looked like a Torrey pine, a tree native to the West Coast.
By the time she was 17, she had a stock of homemade demo tapes that her father regularly sent out to record companies, and producer Narada Michael Walden responded favourably, cutting some tracks with her, although none were released. Eventually, Atlantic Records responded to one of the tapes, and A&R man Jason Flom flew to Baltimore to audition her in person, which resulted in her being signed to the label. In 1984, Amos moved to Los Angeles to pursue her music career, and in 1986 she formed the group called Y Kant Tori Read, named for her difficulty with sight-reading. In addition to Amos, the group consisted of Steve Caton (who would later play guitars on all of her albums until 1999), drummer Matt Sorum, bass player Brad Cobb and, for a short time, keyboardist Jim Tauber. The band went through several iterations of song-writing and recording, and in July 1988, the band's eponymous debut album, 'Y Kant Tori Read', was released. Following the album's commercial failure and the group's subsequent disbanding, Amos began working with other artists, including Stan Ridgway, Sandra Bernhard, and Al Stewart, as a backup vocalist. Despite the disappointing reaction to Y Kant Tori Read, Amos still had to comply with her six-record contract with Atlantic Records, which, in 1989, wanted a new record by March 1990.
The initial recordings were declined by the label, which Amos felt was because the album had not been properly presented, and so it was reworked and expanded under the guidance of Doug Morris and the musical talents of Steve Caton, Eric Rosse, Will MacGregor, Carlo Nuccio, and Dan Nebenzal, resulting in 'Little Earthquakes', an album recounting her religious upbringing, sexual awakening, struggle to establish her identity, and sexual assault. This was her commercial and artistic breakthrough, entering the British charts in January 1992 at Number 15, and when it was released in the US in February it slowly but steadily began to attract listeners, gaining more attention with the video for the single 'Silent All These Years', and it was beginning a long and successful career for the singer. Although the producer of 'Y Kant Tori Read', Joe Chiccarelli, stated that Amos was very happy with the album at the time, she has since criticized it, once remarking: "The only good thing about that album is my ankle high boots". However, it's still a decent Tori Amos record, and so for any fans who though that 'Little Earthquakes' was the first record that she recorded and released, here is her actual debut album from four years earlier.
Track listing
01 The Big Picture
02 Cool On Your Island
03 Fayth
04 Fire On The Side
05 Pirates
06 Floating City
07 Heart Attack At 23
08 On The Boundary
09 You Go To My Head
10 Etienne Trilogy: The Highlands, Etienne, Skyeboat Song
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