Back in the 1980s, before she became the beguiling singer-songwriter that fans know today, Tori Amos fronted a synthy pop-rock band called Y Kant Tori Read. The title was supposed to be a play on why was allegedly kicked out of the famed Peabody Conservatory—for not reading sheet music. As she has admitted, this album was her rock-chick phase that tied in with what was going on in Los Angeles at the time when she signed with Atlantic Records in 1987. The band’s self-titled debut album emerged in 1988 and, as Amos once noted, “died a horrible, miserable death.” She has also said that some industry insiders did not take her seriously then either. But the album provides interesting insights into the artist that she became.
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Amos formed the band in 1984, and it went through different permutations. The lineup that recorded the Y Kant Tori Read album was guitarist Steve Caton, who became a musical ally in the ’90s, bassist Brad Cobb, and future Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum. Studio musicians also factored in, including guitarist Steve Farris, drummer Vinny Coliauta (on one track), and percussionist Paulinho DaCosta. Fun fact: Background vocalists Zobbin Rander and Rick Nelson were actually Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen from Cheap Trick.
An Uphill Battle
Y Kant Tori Read’s debut album included the lead single and lone video for “The Big Picture.” In the video, shot in an alleyway, Amos vamped it up in any number of sexy outfits including tight leather pants and wielding a saber to tie in with the song “Pirates.” This was, after all, the big hair era. It’s not that Amos planned it to be this way. But at the time, a woman and her piano was not considered commercial enough for the masses. And given that the digital music revolution had begun, it would be an uphill battle.
“If you can go back with me to 1987, that was when the L.A. rock chick scene was happening, and the Rainbow and that whole life was happening with big hair,” Amos told VH1. “Now across town, the executive producer of my record was doing this girl who happened to be called Tracy. For some reason, they thought that the singer/songwriter thing would work if you were a folk person, but the girl and her piano thing, this was just not going to happen. They weren’t going to support it. So I’m staring back down at the Sheraton Lounges of the world or … I can compose anything. So even if this isn’t necessarily my heart and soul, I can do this. And Tracy Chapman, of course, was being produced across town. I would go in my knee thigh boots and tromp around thinking, ‘Well, I guess everybody has to be slotted in somewhere and that just isn’t my destiny.’”
It may not have been her destiny, but Amos did the best she could with the material. She wrote a bulk of the songs, and also collaborated with Kim Bullard on four others and Cobb on one.
It’s interesting to hear Amos apply her distinct vocal stylings applied to a more rigid form of music. A lot of her solo piano work, particularly in concert, often changes in dynamics and tempo to suit her mood when she’s performing them. A lot of people have said that this album was a musical disaster, but that’s predictable hyperbole. It’s like when many people said that the Attila metal band featuring Billy Joel is the worst rock album ever. It isn’t.
Sure, “The Big Picture” was typical of the bright pop anthems of the time, but it’s fun to hear Amos sing it. “Cool on Your Island” was a moody track with tropical vibes, “Pirates” was an upbeat pop-rock anthem that could easily be reworked on a Tori solo album, and the orchestrated pop of “On the Boundary,” with sprinkles of bouzouki, made for a pretty good ballad. Now the rap-laden dance-pop of “Fayth” – OK, skip that.
Foreshadowing the Future
Then there was the closing “Etienne” trilogy—”The Highlands,” “Etienne,” and the traditional “Skyeboat Song.” That gorgeous, heartfelt middle section totally foreshadowed the Tori Amos who would emerge on her first solo album, Little Earthquakes, in 1992. Amos echoed those sentiments in a past interview.
“I hooked up with [producer] Kim Bullard, and he worked on the Y Kant Tori Read album, and we wrote a couple of things,” Amos told Performing Songwriter in September 1998. “Whether you like Y Kant Tori Read or don’t like it, it wasn’t really representative so much as what the band was doing. You would obviously recognize my voice in it and maybe some of the writing, but it was a really different direction, and once the band broke up that direction was completely like: stop in the middle of the road and don’t continue on this path anymore. … But I do think that ‘Etienne,’ as a song, was more of what I was doing before I came to L.A.”
One can easily write this album off as a curio. Indeed, its original CD issue quickly went out-of-print until 2017 and fetched exorbitant prices from Amos fans until then. But the album itself was a decent release for the time. It didn’t really fit Amos, and fans likely would not be listening to it now if she had not made it. But she did and they have. An artist has to start somewhere, and in the entertainment business one does not always get to pick that beginning. Think of all the famous actors who appeared in movies that they either chose to forget or felt were not representative of who they became.
Amos seems to have have come to peace with that album since she has performed at least three of the songs live over the years. According to Setlist.fm, she has played “Cool on Your Island” live 67 times, “Etienne” 60, and “Fire On The Side” a dozen. And when she finally mashed up a mellow vocal and synth version of “The Big Picture” within a cover of The Cure’s “Pictures For You” at a concert in 2014, fans went crazy. They recognized it pretty quickly, which says that many of her followers like the album too.
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