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GOD was the first video from the album, Under The Pink. Tori returned to America in mid-December to shoot the video with director Melody McDaniel, also responsible for music videos for the Cranberries and Catherine Wheel.
The resulting work was perhaps the strongest statement Tori had made yet about organized religion. In the arresting video Tori sings, "God sometimes you just don't come through do you need a woman to look after you" while a multitude of live rats crawl over her body (inspired by a religious ceremony in India) and participates in a ritual involving large snakes practices by a Fundamentalist religious sect. Tori's father feels that the song is "theologically very sound," but admits to feeling a bit unsettled about the snakes. -- All These Years Biography
I ran into the Rat Wrangler as soon as I got out of the car on the God lot. The first words out of his mouth were "Hi Tori, I've got all the critters here for you and I assure you, the rats are cleaner than your mother." Hmmmm. Hey. I believe in faeries. I believe in many things, but there were 70 right phrases to describe rats and I didn't believe that was one of them... Many hours later in the temple; freezing, half-naked and smelling like a rat sewage plant, I say, "Hey buddy, my mother is kinda cleaner than this." He said, "Yes, Tori, but remember, rats shit but they don't fart."
-- Tori; Pink Tour Tourbook
"Yeah, the big boots. Cindy found them and brought them to the set. They came and went really quick."
-- Tori; Shuz Magazine, Spring 2000
"I felt very primitive, which was a new feeling. The snakes were great but they just thought I was a big rat because I hadn't taken a bath and had 140 rats crawling on me. I'll tell you a secret about rats: they eat and they crap. That's all they do, right? So I smelled like a rat sewage plant. But I felt comfortable and sensuous about it actually. I always felt like, you know how the male deities come from the sky? Then the female deities should come from the earth. If you're coming from the ground up you have to dirty your feet a little bit."
-- Tori; The West Australian, Aug 11, 1994
"It's about rituals, different rituals. The rats ritual is East India, where the rats are considered sacred, so when they run across somebody, it's the god Dharnish traveling on the rats, and that means you've been blessed when the rats come to you. And it actually happens: we tried to document it correctly."
-- Tori; The Tori Papers #2 - Alternative Nation, Oct 5, 1995
"I have rats and snakes crawling all over me in the video. The rats are for an East Indian ritual. The snakes are from the Appalachian Mountains."
-- Tori; The Washingtonian, Feb 1994
God was definitely high drama. I chose Melodie, confidant, and confident - She had a wealth of rligious perceptions. Rituals became the key word as well as dangerous -- The different ways people worship. What is sacred to one person would be insulting to another, which is why so many people have been tortured and tortured others over "My God's Bigger than you
Dog." The Realism of God juxtaposed with the 'fantasy gone wrong'. Happening across town of Cornflake kept me, Karen and Leslie constantly having to refocus ourselves.
I learned specifically 2 things on the God shoot: 1. Rats shit but they don't fart 2. Never handle snakes after cavorting with 150 rats without sterilizing yourself in Clorox first. Obviously there's always a p.s. to this -- not everyone will see the art form in us pairing the junkie with the Hasidic wrapping ritual.
--Tori, "Tori Stories, her take on the videos" promo booklet
God was released in collectible form in the Tori Amos Video Compilation.
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