<div>Tori Amos: 'Menopause is the hardest teacher I've met. Harder than fame'</div>

A walk in the Smoky Mountains in the footsteps of her late Cherokee grandfather helped the musician rediscover her muse – and write an album that confronts the US’s rapacious violenceA gargantuan truck fills the driveway of Tori Amos’s Cornwall home. The surrounding countryside is tranquil – verdant hills, stone farm buildings, golden crops swaying in the late August sun – but a throng of activity greets us at the home/recording studio Amos shares with her producer husband, Mark Hawley. The van and attending crew, she says, curled up on the sofa in her library, are here to collect one of her beloved Bösendorfer pianos for an impending European tour. “She’s being put in her case,” explains Amos. “Hopefully with a nice blanket.”Amos was raised in Maryland, a Led Zeppelin-loving daughter of a minister, and self-taught pianist who would jilt both church and conservatoire to forge her own sound in the 90s: wildly original, taboo-busting piano pop. She cut through grunge’s squall, playing two, sometimes three, piano keyboards simultaneously, while wearing 7in stilettos. Her music is celebrated enough to warrant the occasional benevolent ribbing – the animated series Bob’s Burgers recently had an Amos-esque woman using lyrics about an oil spill as a metaphor for her vagina – and has been an indelible influence on today’s musicians, acknowledged by Taylor Swift, Perfume Genius and Annie “St Vincent” Clark. Continue reading...