Tori Amos on In Times of Dragons: "High concept comes with high risk and high rewards"

Tori Amos has never been one for straightforward answers, and In Times of Dragons, her audacious new concept album, is anything but straightforward. A mythological road trip through a crumbling democracy, it's angry, tender, and a little queer. We sat down with her to make sense of the dragons.

In Times of Dragons is Tori Amos's most politically charged work to date, a mythological road trip through a crumbling American democracy. The album's protagonist, voiced by Amos, is fleeing a powerful "Lizard Demon", an amalgamation of the tech billionaires and Dark Enlightenment ideologues quietly dismantling constitutional democracy from behind the scenes. Along the way, she discovers she's slowly transforming into a dragon herself: a metaphor for menopause, shifting gender identity, and the painful reckoning of becoming who you truly are.

The new album is a concept album, an allegory. Why choose myth over direct political commentary?

“There are better people than me who can do straight political commentary. I'm a storyteller, so I stick to my strengths. And high concept comes with high risk and high rewards. But please never forget the emotional power of pain, betrayal and love. Why do we do battle? It's either for power, greed, or for love. I had to find the love.”

The protagonist finds refuge in the queer community: gay bears, a lesbian biker gang called the Gasoline Girls. Does that reflect your own experience?

“Yes. And it mirrors my experience now. There are bears in my life. The 'gay witch from Brooklyn' I sing about in the song 'Provincetown' is Noah Michelson, a writer at Huffington Post. He's been casting spells for me for about eight months. The 'lizard demons' are based on real people, clearly. They’re an allegory of big super tech billionaires, the powerful men behind the scenes in the US. Not overt. More covert, behind the scenes. The only untruth on this record is that in real life, I married a rock & roll roadie, not one of the ‘lizard demons’. The album explores what would have happened if I'd taken a different path in the nineties, not married a rock and roll roadie, maybe explored other options, chosen luxury over art. But to document America at this time, I needed an allegory, an emotional story. Which meant I had to look at my own flaws too.”

The album ends with the protagonist visiting the Ancient Order of the Dragon and being told she has to accept becoming a dragon herself. Is this ultimately a record about integration rather than escape?

“It's about accepting who you actually are. And that can be painful. Whether it's a metaphor for a teenage girl turning into a woman, a change in gender identity, a change in your fundamental belief systems, going through menopause. My husband can sire a child today. I can't. That's a fact. 'Turning into a dragon' is all the questions: Why did I choose this path? Am I the parent I want to be? Who am I attracted to, and why? All those questions at once, that's the dragon.”

The song 'Veins' is a duet with your daughter Tash, and she sounds remarkably like you. Did you ever consider taking her on tour with you?

“She's in her third year of law school right now, studying criminal law, with a job lined up at a DA's office. So she's a little busy.”

You’re bringing backing vocalists on tour though, for the first time ever. Does that change how you approach arrangements of your songs?

“Yes. They have a vocal range I don’t have anymore. With age, my range has shifted lower. On tour, the background vocalists will cover those notes. It opens up arrangements I simply couldn't do alone anymore.”

You kept adding songs to the album close to the deadline. Where was that energy coming from?

“I needed to tell the story as accurately as I could, and it was a moving target. The album was being written and recorded simultaneously, which is a dangerous game. But I trusted that having Matt Chamberlain, one of the greatest drummers in the world, sitting around the recording studio watching vampire movies would push me and the muses to show up. The pressure changes how I hear. I'm more ruthless with myself. Matt would walk past the piano in the hallway where I write and go "what you got going?" and that made me make choices on a knife's edge.”

The final song, '23 Peaks,' made me tear up. When that organ kicks in...

“You're actually hearing it as I heard it for the first time. It was recorded as I wrote it, a direct ‘download’ from the muses. I tried to record it again afterward and could never replicate it. I was sitting with arranger John Philip Shenale, the tape was running, and that was the moment. Just like when I recorded the song ‘Marianne’ back in 1996. Some things only happen once.”

Before your 2021 album Ocean to Ocean, you were reportedly working on a political album that was eventually disregarded. Did any of those songs end up here?

“No. I was angrier then, and anger wasn't the right emotion for this. What I found instead was trauma, shock at the constitutional crisis we're living through. My daughter reminds me about it daily, they discuss it in law school. This experiment of democracy in America, we don't know how it's going to turn out. The song ‘Ode to Minnesota’ was the very last song to make the deadline, about the bravery of Minnesotans taking to the streets, trying to give us a template for asking the questions that need to be asked.”

Quick question: you’ve been reissuing previous albums on vinyl, some for the first time ever. From the Choirgirl Hotel from 1997 still hasn't had a vinyl re-release. Is that ever happening?

“We're trying. I don't like throwing people under the bus, but the people at my former record company who managed their library could have done a better job keeping the recordings safe. I blame Napster. They just didn't have the staff to store master recordings properly. So we're having to wrangle on our side. It's not easy. But we're working on it.”

And the rumored compilation of old B-sides and unreleased material you joked about during your last tour?

“[laughs] The question is whether I'll still be married if I make my husband [Mark Hawley is Tori’s husband and sound engineer - ed.] do all that work. This record alone took a lot to bring to life. Whether the B-sides thing was a joke or not, I genuinely need to check in with myself. Some unreleased stuff does exist, especially from the early 2000s. But there was a reason those things weren't released at the time. So I need to check with myself if I was joking or not.”

In Times of Dragons is out on May 1st.