The Stories Behind the Photos
Tori Amos, April 1994
Just a couple of weeks after I’d photographed Allen Ginsberg, I got to meet Tori Amos. When I found out she was going to do a concert at the Olympia Theatre on Saint Catherine Street, I contacted her record company, Warner Music, and got my name on the media list, and it was easier than I thought it would be. Tori was already popular at this time—her second album Under the Pink had just been released—but her fan base was still growing. Also, she wasn’t as well known in Quebec as she was in the rest of Canada.
The concert was on a Saturday and I got to the theatre early. The plan was to shoot the afternoon sound check, but Tori was late flying in from Pennsylvania, where she had played the previous night. To my surprise, there weren’t any other photographers waiting, which made me feel pretty good, but also a bit self-conscious. After more than an hour, I forget what time it was, Tori arrived and had to get ready. More waiting. You get used to waiting when you’re doing this kind of photography, which is why a lot of photographers don’t like to do it. The reason is simple: most photographers like to be in control of their photo sessions and in a situation like this, it’s the complete opposite. The celebrity, or rather their people, their handlers, set the schedule. You’re at the mercy of their whims. Sometimes they’re cooperative, sometimes they’re not. But on this day, I was lucky.
By the time Tori was ready to start the sound check, one other photographer had shown up. He was from the Montreal Gazette. He’d been sent there by his editor, and I could tell he wasn’t a fan. In fact, he was a sports photographer. Why they’d given him this assignment was as big a mystery to him as it was to me. “I don’t have much time,” he said. “I have to get over to the Forum for the Canadiens [hockey] game.” He was definitely a hockey guy, not a piano guy.
So Tori started to play a song and we both took our positions at different ends of the stage and started to shoot. After a couple of minutes, having got whatever he thought he needed, he stopped, packed away his gear and left. Now it was just me and Tori. And she was still playing. I couldn’t believe it. I shot quickly, having to stop and reload my camera manually, as I didn’t have a motor drive, which seemed to take ages. At one point, I decided to work with Tori’s reflection in the lid of the huge Bosendorfer piano she always played. So I got close and did a series of shots, playing around with different angles. Since it was a manual camera, I had to advance the film after each shot. I’d never shot so fast in my life. But I just kept on shooting until she stopped playing.
I think I said thank you. And that was that. I didn’t bring anything for her to sign, as I didn’t think it would be professional. The concert that night was spectacular. And, to my great delight, it was later released as a bootleg under the title “Canadian Spring”, which I found in a store in Toronto. So that concert is quite special to me. It was a great way to cap off a great day. I photographed Tori a couple more times after that, in 1995 and 1996, by which time her popularity had grown substantially, but I never had her to myself like that afternoon in Montreal. It was indeed a magical day.