QUOTES >>

"I did the song [Smells Like Teen Spirit] because when I heard it the first time the piano said to me, 'I want to do this, and when the piano tells me it wants to do something, she rules the roost. I'm just really her servant. It was the anthem for the decade, the rage coming from men and I wanted to hear it the way women rage. I do know that Nirvana heard it, I was told by a journalist who spoke with Kurt and called me to tell me that he listened to it a lot to feel good when he woke up in the morning."
-- Tori; One On One w/ Lisa Robinson

"Nirvana, Heart-Shaped Box - Amazing art direction in that video. People are afraid of beauty and don't associate beauty with rawness. This video was exceedingly tough, yet astounding."
-- Tori; Rolling Stone, May 5, 1994

"For American guys, it's a little easier socially for them to be vunerable, because, you know, therapy's a very big thing over here. And with the guys here, well, there's so much violence in this country and yet so much nerdy-ness. I mean a lot of the big heavy metal violent guys were all nerds. Kurt Cobain (of Nirvana) could've told you. He was a nerd." On Cobain's fans, "Anger is natural. It's part of the force. You just have to learn to hang out with it. I find it all quite exciting, those guys screaming their heads off. But you know (laughs) I think all they really need is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a little blankie."
-- Tori; Interview in Campaign (Australia), Dec 5, 1994

Tori spoke out for a certain Kurt Cobain after a knee-jerk reaction from rape pressure groups to the song Rape Me, which refused to accept a donation from the song's royalties. "I spoke publicly about that because I thought it was very clear what it was about. It was like 'Go on, hit me! Rape me! You cross this line, motherfucker, and I'll kill you...you'll never break my spirit.' It's a defiant song. But the scariest thing to a rape victim are the words 'rape me'. When I first heard it I broke out in a cold sweat, but when you get over that you realize he's turning it back on people."
-- Tori; New Musical Express, Dec 17, 1994

"When I heard it [Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit] I was in Sweden, and the song had just come out. I remember watching it on this, I don't know what it was, some new rock show in Sweden. And I'd never heard of this band. And I saw it amongst other things that were kind of, I don't know, made me giggle. 'Cause you just had to figure that, I don't know, these guys, really, wish they were Kiss and weren't. And then I saw Nirvana, and I said 'Oh my God, this is the real thing,' and the piano kind of looked at me sideways and just said 'you know what, we have to do this. You have to put some high heels on me, Tori, and let me have some fun.'"
-- Tori; Love Lines, June 27, 1996

MTV: What did you think of the Tori Amos cover of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"?
Cobain: Flattering.
MTV: Is it true that you and Courtney Love used to wake up and dance around to it?
Cobain: Yeah. We used to put it on every morning and have breakfast and dance around. We'd turn it up really loud and do interpretive dancing to it. It's good breakfast music.
MTV: It's funny to listen to. The mulatto and albino part.
Cobain: [Singing] "I'm mulatto." I know. [Laughs] For a while we were using it as an opener before we came out onstage, too. We would play that song and then we would come out doing dances to the song.
-- Kurt Cobain; MTV Interview

When she was told that its [Smells Like Teen Spirit] author, Kurt Cobain, used to play it [her cover of it] every morning full blast, Amos was gratified. "That means a lot to me," she says from Washington on the eve of a 110-show U.S. tour. "What a great talent," she says of Cobain. "The night after we heard he had died, I played Berlin in a church. And it's funny because I didn't know Eddie Vedder was doing this the same night, but we did American Pie." The 1970 hit about "the day the music died" was played in conjunction with Teen Spirit, Amos says. "I do it sometimes on the tour now. I did it in Dublin a few weeks ago and 2,000 were singing. There's just a moment sometimes when I just go, 'God, I don't know if people realize the musical mind that we lost.' I can't speak of the friend that he was because I didn't know him on that level. But there was a respect from the music side that I had for him. And I feel like I understood what he was doing. And it would make me smile when I heard something of his. I'd say, 'Thank you! For taking me out of this boredom.' And I can't say that now."
-- Tori; Hartford Courant, 1994

"When I was in Dublin in 1994, right after Kurt Cobain died, I'd just recorded a cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit and when I started it, all the lighters came out and everybody was singing. You'd have thought that it was planned. Thousands of people were singing softly, like a lullaby. It was beautiful. It was almost like we were singing Kurt to bed. It was quite a moment and it was really out of my control. I was a part of something with them."
-- Tori; Q Magazine, Nov 2001

"When they [Nirvana] came on-stage that night, Tori Amos' cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit was playing on the PA, and they pirouetted to their places like ballerinas. Very funny. It was a great show."
-- Tori; Dave Cavanagh - Freelance journalist, Nirvana concert

COVERS
Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana