epic haiku

Tori on being a mum and rock goddess

These are my favorite questions from a rollingstone.com interview with Tori. She answers questions about her process for her next album and about being a rock goddess and being a mum.


Just before the release of The Beekeeper, you lost your brother in a car accident. Is that loss finding its way into the new material now that some time has passed?

I think on [the title track] "The Beekeeper" it was addressed, because the song itself speaks about loss. I was drawn to the idea that in the bee colony, the drones are the ones that go first. I thought that it was nature's parallel for the loss of this man before his time. It was originally written about my mother -- she was critical, and she flat-lined and came back. That's the last time I saw my brother. But after his accident, I finished [the album] with an ode to him. "Toast," the final song on the record, I wrote on the plane coming back from the funeral. I think that this new work -- it's too early to say -- but this is a very different chapter. Certainly, since I've been a mother. You haven't really felt this Tori in a while.

How is the role of mother affecting the work now, versus when your daughter was first born?

I didn't want her looking and hearing me and thinking, "Oh my God, that's a scary lady!" There are enough scary rock & roll mothers in the world. I'm able to explain now that the woman who comes and reads bedtime stories and hangs out with her is different than the woman who walks behind that piano. I think this is the first time she's able to differentiate that. Now that there's that buffer, there are things in the world it's time to confront. There is an energy that you carry when you're nurturing another life where you're protecting first -- and once you know that cub is out of the way of the hunter's gun, you can be a little more daring.

So, hopefully this means we will be getting a little more of this

and this

in the future. One last excerpt:

Do you get frustrated with the labels that have attached themselves to you -- like "Queen of the Fairies" or New Age-y? Do you feel they undermine what it is you're trying to say?

I find it amusing, and my very cynical British husband finds it extremely amusing. He's basically said, "If anybody badmouths a fairy, they'll get their dick cut off in Cornwall." You just don't do that. It's like insulting cab drivers in New York.