Book-It 'o12! Book #50
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one, two, and three just in case you're curious.) This was a secondhand find.
Title: Tori Amos: All These Years: The Authorized Biography by Kalen Rogers
Details: Copyright 1994, Omnibus Press
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "At age five, Tori Amos was a child prodigy on speaking term with Beethoven and in love with the Beatles. At 11, she experienced a musical mid-life crisis and at 13 began her professional career at the piano in the bars of Washington DC. This unique book traces the journey of a minister's rebellious daughter from her rock chick days in L.A. to underground success in London to worldwide acclaim. It details her doomed debut album Y Kant Tori Read, her soul-searching 1992 Little Earthquakes, and 1994's Under the Pink, and includes a complete discography plus full itineraries for both World Tours. Containing over 150 never-before-seen photographs-- many from Tori's own private archives-- and compiled through interviews with Tori's friends, family, management, record company, and featuring many exclusive quotes from Tori herself, this is the one and only fully authorized illustrated story of the girl and her piano."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'm a longtime Tori enthusiast.
How I Liked It: The book reads like a long interview, the subject being Tori's life. The author writes like a magazine writer (in this project I've discussed my bad experiences with magazine writers that try to become authors) for whom the book format is simply too much of a stretch (several bits of clumsy wording trip up several paragraphs, as if this project is too long for the writer's usual editor).
Pictures abound and if the writing is too spare (which it is), several rare photographs captivate. This book was published almost nineteen years ago and since Tori has authorized several other biographies, including the dreadful but book-length Tori Amos: Piece By Piece as well as obviously grown more famous and prolific as an artist, so you have to evaluate the book for what it actually is, a long 1994 interview that's actually a promo piece for Under the Pink (you get the impression that Tori and/or her handlers made a trade-off: she'd cooperate with an "authorized biography" and the author would be sure to promote her upcoming tour).
Does the book offer anything really new about Tori? Maybe a little, if you haven't already seen it by now. But the photographs are where the book is really worthwhile, including childhood and family pictures, "behind the scenes" shots while touring, and some more trafficked stills and portraits. For the aggressive Tori completist, it's notable as an interesting "early" interview and probably her first authorized biography.
Notable: Detailing Tori's growing fan following, the author names several "official fanzines", an "official fan club", and in a hilariously dated term, mentions Tori's "Internet computer mailing list also entitled Really Deep Thoughts founded in early 1992" (pg 65).
Title: Tori Amos: All These Years: The Authorized Biography by Kalen Rogers
Details: Copyright 1994, Omnibus Press
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "At age five, Tori Amos was a child prodigy on speaking term with Beethoven and in love with the Beatles. At 11, she experienced a musical mid-life crisis and at 13 began her professional career at the piano in the bars of Washington DC. This unique book traces the journey of a minister's rebellious daughter from her rock chick days in L.A. to underground success in London to worldwide acclaim. It details her doomed debut album Y Kant Tori Read, her soul-searching 1992 Little Earthquakes, and 1994's Under the Pink, and includes a complete discography plus full itineraries for both World Tours. Containing over 150 never-before-seen photographs-- many from Tori's own private archives-- and compiled through interviews with Tori's friends, family, management, record company, and featuring many exclusive quotes from Tori herself, this is the one and only fully authorized illustrated story of the girl and her piano."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'm a longtime Tori enthusiast.
How I Liked It: The book reads like a long interview, the subject being Tori's life. The author writes like a magazine writer (in this project I've discussed my bad experiences with magazine writers that try to become authors) for whom the book format is simply too much of a stretch (several bits of clumsy wording trip up several paragraphs, as if this project is too long for the writer's usual editor).
Pictures abound and if the writing is too spare (which it is), several rare photographs captivate. This book was published almost nineteen years ago and since Tori has authorized several other biographies, including the dreadful but book-length Tori Amos: Piece By Piece as well as obviously grown more famous and prolific as an artist, so you have to evaluate the book for what it actually is, a long 1994 interview that's actually a promo piece for Under the Pink (you get the impression that Tori and/or her handlers made a trade-off: she'd cooperate with an "authorized biography" and the author would be sure to promote her upcoming tour).
Does the book offer anything really new about Tori? Maybe a little, if you haven't already seen it by now. But the photographs are where the book is really worthwhile, including childhood and family pictures, "behind the scenes" shots while touring, and some more trafficked stills and portraits. For the aggressive Tori completist, it's notable as an interesting "early" interview and probably her first authorized biography.
Notable: Detailing Tori's growing fan following, the author names several "official fanzines", an "official fan club", and in a hilariously dated term, mentions Tori's "Internet computer mailing list also entitled Really Deep Thoughts founded in early 1992" (pg 65).