Tori Tori Tori

In 1991 myself and two journalist friends were invited to have afternoon tea with Tori Amos. We didn't know much about this flame-haired American, but it seemed like a reasonable request and so we steered around to her South Kensington flat and were met at the door by a pair of intense, unblnking eyes.

Tori made us liquorice tea and delivered some small talk. Which was not particularly small, and soon verged on the irrationally tall. There was a gentleman in the room who may have been her producer friend Eric Rosse, He was wearing white, the room was essentially white and so was the baby grand. Without any warning, Tori sat down at the keyboard and started playing. Her first number was 'Silent All These Years' and so we watched impassively as Tori immersed herself. She fixed us with her eyes and she rocked at the piano. It was quite an event.

She'd barely finished when a new song was delivered. This was 'Me And A Gun' a rather harrowing story about rape, violence and a soul in turmoil. Again, we were treated to the fluttering voice and all the drama. We were quite glad when she had finished, but then she wanted to explain the songs. She muttered something about Maryland cookies and how the memory of these had suddenly popped into her consciousness during a moment of physical terror. Crumbs, we thought.

Tori had a weekly residency at the Mean Fiddler Acoustic Room in Harlesden, and I went to see her there a few tiimes. The first time, I sat with her father, a white-haired preacher man who carried a silver-topped walking cane. He listened politely to those fried confessionals and he didn't seem too discomforted by the words.

Withing a few months, Tori was in the charts and sweetly on her way to a career that would shift 12 million records. Any time that I bumped into her, she was welcoming and enthusiastic. I think she knew that I wasn't a big fan of her music but we both recognised that there was a Tori-shaped hole in the universe that only she could fill. She's done that duty well.