Books
Tori Amos memoir ‘Resistance’ both profound and opaque
Singer/songwriter writes movingly of LGBT issues, family death while keeping the curtain closed on some aspects of her life and passions
‘Resistance: a Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change and Courage’
By Tori Amos
Atria Books
Released May 5
272 pages
$26
A somewhat common — but far from universal — observation in Tori Amos fan circles is that her newer albums just aren’t as good as her definitive ‘90s masterpieces.
This isn’t unique to Amos. Some artists only have one or two good albums in them total (Alanis Morissette, Jewel) but keep issuing new albums that feel creatively spent. Some, like Lauryn Hill, don’t even bother to try. How many artists can keep a decade-long, white hot streak going indefinitely? And continue blowing the minds of fans who just get more jaded and less easy to impress as they, like the artist, age?
But even Amos herself has seemed curiously uninvested in later albums like “Native Invader” (2017) and “Unrepentant Geraladines” (2014). Her last tour was dubbed the “Native Invader Tour,” yet at her last area appearance in 2017, she played only two songs from the “Native Invader” album (and one was a bonus track at that!). That was typical of her shows that year. This is drastically reduced from her earlier practices. There are always a few standout tracks on each, but the overall impact has felt curiously clinical, musically bloodless. (If you want a super deep dive on this topic, Matthew Barton wrote a brilliant essay this week for The Quietus.)
What has become almost more interesting, though, is what she’s had to say, not sing. She’s always game to do a bounty of press — print and video/TV — with each new cycle (radio, of course, hasn’t played her for ages and never did much anyway) and the Amos we’ve gotten to know in these exchanges (a 2017 Vulture chat is especially good) is wise, illuminating, kooky and engaging.
Thankfully, a lot of that translates into her new memoir “Resistance: a Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change and Courage,” out this month from Atria Books. It follows her 2005 memoir “Piece by Piece.” Its main thesis — that artists have a social responsibility to combat mercenary forces both political and systemic — is reasonably supported but far from what’s most interesting about it.
Although Amos has always had queer sensibility (she’s straight), what’s pleasantly surprising about the book is how much queer content it contains. In Amos’ mind, sexism — she argues convincingly it’s rampant in the music industry — and homophobia are twin sins and that’s linked her cozily with gay men since her early days playing at Mr. Henry’s a gay bar in Georgetown where Amos got her start at age 13, an experience the daughter of a United Methodist pastor describes in religious terms.
“Perhaps because it was gay men who took me under their wing when I was 13 and taught me how to survive — even at times through a large dose of reality, spelling out how a teenage girl in Washington could be manipulated — well, that’s its own song and those rivers run deep. Those fairy godfathers trying to teach me a drop of grace can go a long way, a lesson that my inner lioness needs reminding of a lot, but they gave and gave and gave and did not give up on me. Praise Jesus. So they led me, baptized in the barroom, to strength, to visibly blossom.”
She also writes of a 2014 concert she gave in Moscow on a stage at Crocus Arena where Putin was to appear the following day. Outraged by a 2013 “gay propaganda” law Putin had signed that made it illegal to tell LGBT Russian youth they were normal and give them reliable information on sexual orientation and gender identity, Amos tailored her set list to reflect her inner protest.
“The persecution of the LGBTQ community was — and is — real and terrifying,” she writes. “My set list in Moscow would speak loud and clear.”
Amos also writes briefly of a similar experience at at 2014 concert she gave in Istanbul.
Throughout the book, Amos-penned songs are shared that dovetail the various topics she covers. “Ophelia” closes a section about the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and “Cornflake Girl” is placed with a painful essay on female genital mutilation (it’s way more common in parts of the world than you’d guess).
Things lag a bit in a lengthy passage about the 1979-1981 Iran hostage crisis in which 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days during a diplomatic standoff. Amos, still a D.C. piano bar regular at the time, writes of the change in the air when Reagan took office. Then Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill even joined her once at the piano to sing “Bye Bye Blackbird,” which she writes of fondly. Although always interesting to hear about, it at times feels like Amos is trying to play up her inside-the-Beltway locale to be of more import than it likely was. She writes of observing Hill movers and shakers conducting business over cocktails but how much could she really have overheard belting away at the ivories?
For me, the most gripping passages were the ones from Amos’ own life such as the initial rejection of her debut solo album “Little Earthquakes” by Atlantic Records in 1991, her experience being in New York City on 9-11 and her mom’s 2019 death following a debilitating stroke.
Other standout passages include fresh perspectives on Amos’ fraught relationship with Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory (she was kicked out as a teen but invited back in 2019 to give a commencement address) and descriptions of her artistic process where she’s at times ethereal (she speaks often of the muses that bring her inspiration) and practical describing the often painstaking process of culling her musical noodlings and fragments into usable sonic wheat.
Her observations are at times profound. She writes of what she believes is the fallowness of the notion of artistic barrenness: “People who are addicted to power … can weaponize the thought of being creatively barren in order to debilitate the artist. They target artists specifically because they know that artists have the ability to reach the public in ways no one else can.” Ever worked with a narcissist? Those words ring true.
There are handfuls of “Gold Dust” (to use one of Amos’s songs) scattered piquantly throughout “Resistance.”
Despite the sometimes heavy topics, the essays are fairly short and tight. It feels like a nice, long visit with a trusted ally but she’s sharing not just off the top of her head, but on topics she’s in many cases spent a lifetime pondering — grief, honoring one’s instrument and inspiration, the price of selling out, how to stay in the game when the straight, white old boys’ club hold all the good cards and so on.
My quibbles are that I was hoping her husband and musical partner Mark Hawley — an artistic enigma who seems to not just enjoy but practically demand staying in the background — had emerged as a more fully formed figure. So little is known about him, yet so heavy has his influence been on Amos’s career, that he looms like a specter over the Amos universe.
It’s also highly odd that Amos mentions the death of her sole brother only in passing (were they simply not close? If so, why?) and that former boyfriend Eric Rosse is mentioned just once. He was the co-producer of her career-defining first two solo albums; their breakup, which Amos has never said much about, in part inspired her masterwork “Boys for Pele” (1996). They’ve been apart long enough now, surely she can assess his contributions to her formative works more unemotionally now, one presumes. So why does she barely acknowledge him?
And while Amos does write movingly of how mortifying the Y Kant Tori Read (her first band, which bombed with one 1988 album) era was, she’s frustratingly scant on details — did she feel musical kinship with her bandmates? How did they form? When did they officially disband? Did they provide any solace in the failure or accept any of the responsibility? Where are they now? And perhaps, more metaphysically, could there have ever been a “Little Earthquakes” if Y Kant Tori Read hadn’t happened? Amos blames herself for sinning against her art and her instrument and selling out but without sin there’s no redemption, artistic or otherwise.
That, perhaps, is what’s missing from Amos’ later work. Even with the usual struggles life eventually brings us all — the death of a parent most pronouncedly — Amos is almost too wise, too mature, too stable, too grounded to conjure up the woozy heat of earlier songs like “Bliss,” “Spark” or “Blood Roses.” It’s unfair, one must acknowledge, to expect her to maintain the kind of white-hot streak she had going ’til about “To Venus and Back” (1999). What would a 2020 Kurt Cobain album sound like had he lived?
Still it’s a bittersweet aftertaste “Resistance” leaves — as warmly as it goes down — that these are considerations a long-time fan can’t help but ponder.
Santa will be very relieved.
You’ve taken most of the burden off him by making a list and checking it twice on his behalf. The gift-buying in your house is almost done – except for those few people who are just so darn hard to buy for. So what do you give to the person who has (almost) everything? You give them a good book, like maybe one of these.
Memoir and biography
The person who loves digging into a multi-level memoir will be happy unwrapping “Blessings and Disasters: A Story of Alabama” by Alexis Okeowo (Henry Holt). It’s a memoir about growing up Black in what was once practically ground zero for the Confederacy. It’s about inequality, it busts stereotypes, and yet it still oozes love of place. You can’t go wrong if you wrap it up with “Queen Mother: Black Nationalism, Reparations, and the Untold Story of Audley Moore” by Ashley D. Farmer (Pantheon). It’s a chunky book with a memoir with meaning and plenty of thought.
For the giftee on your list who loves to laugh, wrap up “In My Remaining Years” by Jean Grae (Flatiron Books). It’s part memoir, part comedy, a look back at the late-last-century, part how-did-you-get-to-middle-age-already? and all fun. Wrap it up with “Here We Go: Lessons for Living Fearlessly from Two Traveling Nanas” by Eleanor Hamby and Dr. Sandra Hazellip with Elisa Petrini (Viking). It’s about the adventures of two 80-something best friends who seize life by the horns – something your giftee should do, too.
If there’ll be someone at your holiday table who’s finally coming home this year, wrap up “How I Found Myself in the Midwest” by Steve Grove (Simon & Schuster). It’s the story of a Silicon Valley worker who gives up his job and moves with his family to Minnesota, which was once home to him. That was around the time the pandemic hit, George Floyd was murdered, and life in general had been thrown into chaos. How does someone reconcile what was with what is now? Pair it with “Homestand: Small Town Baseball and the Fight for the Soul of America” by Will Bardenwerper (Doubleday). It’s set in New York and but isn’t that small-town feel universal, no matter where it comes from?
Won’t the adventurer on your list be happy when they unwrap “I Live Underwater” by Max Gene Nohl (University of Wisconsin Press)? They will, when they realize that this book is by a former deep-sea diver, treasure hunter, and all-around daredevil who changed the way we look for things under water. Nohl died more than 60 years ago, but his never-before-published memoir is fresh and relevant and will be a fun read for the right person.
If celeb bios are your giftee’s thing, then look for “The Luckiest” by Kelly Cervantes (BenBella Books). It’s the Midwest-to-New-York-City story of an actress and her life, her marriage, and what she did when tragedy hit. Filled with grace, it’s a winner.
Your music lover won’t want to open any other gifts if you give “Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur” by Jeff Pearlman (Mariner Books). It’s the story of the life, death, and everything in-between about this iconic performer, including the mythology that he left behind. Has it been three decades since Tupac died? It has, but your music lover never forgets. Wrap it up with “Point Blank (Quick Studies)” by Bob Dylan, text by Eddie Gorodetsky, Lucy Sante, and Jackie Hamilton (Simon & Schuster), a book of Dylan’s drawings and artwork. This is a very nice coffee-table size book that will be absolutely perfect for fans of the great singer and for folks who love art.
For the giftee who’s concerned with their fellow man, “The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family and Second Chances” by Kevin Fagan (One Signal / Atria) may be the book to give. It’s a story of two “unhoused” people in San Francisco, one of the country’s wealthiest cities, and their struggles. There’s hope in this book, but also trouble and your giftee will love it.
For the person on your list who suffered loss this year, give “Pine Melody” by Stacey Meadows (Independently Published), a memoir of loss, grief, and healing while remembering the person gone.
LGBTQ fiction
For the mystery lover who wants something different, try “Crime Ink: Iconic,” edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West (Bywater Books), a collection of short stories inspired by “queer legends” and allies you know. Psychological thrillers, creepy crime, cozies, they’re here.
Novel lovers will want to curl up this winter with “Middle Spoon” by Alejandro Varela (Viking), a book about a man who appears to have it all, until his heart is broken and the fix for it is one he doesn’t quite understand and neither does anyone he loves.
LGBTQ studies – nonfiction
For the young man who’s struggling with issues of gender, “Before They Were Men” by Jacob Tobia (Harmony Books) might be a good gift this year. These essays on manhood in today’s world works to widen our conversations on the role politics and feminism play in understanding masculinity and how it’s time we open our minds.
If there’s someone on your gift list who had a tough growing-up (didn’t we all?), then wrap up “I’m Prancing as Fast as I Can” by Jon Kinnally (Permuted Press / Simon & Schuster). Kinnally was once an awkward kid but he grew up to be a writer for TV shows you’ll recognize. You can’t go wrong gifting a story like that. Better idea: wrap it up with “So Gay for You: Friendship, Found Family, & The Show That Started It All” by Leisha Hailey & Kate Moennig (St. Martin’s Press), a book about a little TV show that launched a BFF-ship.
Who doesn’t have a giftee who loves music? You sure do, so wrap up “The Secret Public: How Music Moved Queer Culture from the Margins to the Mainstream” by Jon Savage (Liveright). Nobody has to tell your giftee that queer folk left their mark on music, but they’ll love reading the stories in this book and knowing what they didn’t know.
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Books
‘90s club kids will love Mark Ronson’s new book
‘Night People’ part esoteric hip-hop discography, part biography
‘Night People’
By Mark Ronson
c.2025, Grand Central
$29/256 pages
You just can’t hold still.
The music starts and your hips shake, your shoulders bounce, your fingers tickle the sky to match a beat. Your air guitar is on-point, your head bops and your toes tap. You can’t help it. As in the new memoir, “Night People” by Mark Ronson, you just gotta dance.
With a mother who swanned around with rock bands, a father who founded a music publishing company, and a stepfather who founded the band, Foreigner, it was natural that Mark Ronson would fall into a music career of some sort. He says he was only 10 years old when he realized the awesome power of music.
As a pre-teen, he liked to mix music in his stepfather’s studio. As a teenager, he formed a band with Sean Lennon that didn’t quite catch on. In the fall of his senior year of high school, Ronson began sneaking into Manhattan clubs to listen to music, dance, and find drugs. It was there that he noticed the alchemy that the DJs created and he searched for someone who’d teach him how to do that, too. He became obsessed.
Finding a gig in a New York club, though, was not easy.
Ronson worked a few semi-regular nights around New York City, and at various private parties to hone his skills. His mother purchased for him the electronic equipment he needed, turntables, and amps. He befriended guys who taught him where to get music demos and what to look for at distributor offices, and he glad-handed other DJs, club owners, and music artists.
That, and the rush he got when the dance floor was packed, made the job glamorous. But sometimes, attendance was low, DJ booths were located in undesirable places, and that totally killed the vibe.
Some people, he says, are mostly day people. For others, though, sunlight is something to be endured. Nighttime is when they when they feel most alive.
Part esoteric hip-hop discography, part biography, part SNL’s Stefan, and part cultural history, “Night People” likely has a narrow audience. If you weren’t deep into clubbing back in the day, you can just stop here. If you were ages 15 to 30, 30 years ago, and you never missed club night then, keep reading. This is your book.
Author Mark Ronson talks the talk, which can be good for anyone who knows the highs of a jam-packed club and the thrill of being recognized for skills with a turntable. That can be fun, but it may also be too detailed: mixology is an extremely heavy subject here. Many of the tunes he names were hits only in the clubs and only briefly, and many of the people he name-drops are long gone. Readers may find themselves not particularly caring. Heavy sigh.
This isn’t a bad book, but it’s absolutely not for everyone. If you weren’t into clubbing, pass and you won’t miss a thing. If you were a die-hard club kid back then, though, “Night People” will make your eyes dance.
Want more? Then check out “What Doesn’t Kill Me Makes Me Weirder and Harder to Relate To” by Mary Lucia (University of Minnesota Press). It’s Lucia’s tale of being a rock DJ in Minneapolis-St. Paul, life with legions of listeners, and not being listened to by authorities for over three harrowing, terrifying years while she was stalked by a deranged fan.
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Books
Pioneering gay journalist takes on Trump 2.0 in new book
Nick Benton’s essays appeared in Fall Church News-Press
Nicholas Benton is a well-known local LGBTQ advocate and journalist and the longtime owner and editor of the Falls Church News-Press, a weekly newspaper.
In his eighth book out now, Benton offers a new set of remarkable essays all crafted in the first eight months of Trump 2.0 and its wholesale effort at dismantling democracy and the rule of law. Most were published in the Falls Church News-Press, but he adds a new piece to this volume, as an addendum to his “Cult Century” series, revealing for the first time his experiences from decades ago in the political cult of Lyndon LaRouche, aimed at providing a clearer grasp of today’s Cult of Trump.
His “Please Don’t Eat Your Children” set takes off from the satire of Jonathan Swift to explore society’s critical role of drumming creativity out of the young.
Below is an excerpt from “Please Don’t Eat Your Children, Cult Century, and other 2025 Essays.”
Please Don’t Eat Your Children
In his famous short essay, “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public,” author and Anglican priest Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) uses cutting satire to suggest that cannibalism of the young might help solve a battery of social ills.
As we examine our broken society today, it seems to me that reflecting on Swift’s social critique can be quite useful. Now we face a nation filled with anger and division and there is little to suggest any real solutions other than insisting people “don’t do that!” We can start out with the observation that young children, left to their own, are neither hateful nor cruel. How do they get that way later on in their lives? What drives them toward such emotional states and behaviors? It is not a problem only for the margins of society, for the extreme misfits or troubled. It is defining the very center of our culture today. Our divisions are not the cause, but the result of something, and nobody is saying what that is.
Swift doesn’t say what it is in his biting little essay. But it is implied by a context of a lack of bounty, or poverty, on the one hand, and an approach to it characterized by obscenely cruel indifference, on the other. He coined the phrase “useless eaters” in defining his radical solution. In Hitler’s Germany, that term resonated through the death camps and some in our present situation are daring to evoke it again as the current administration pushes radical cuts in Medicaid funding.
But while that refers to the old and infirm, mostly, it is the young we are talking about here. The problem is that our society is structured to devour our young and as they begin to find that out, they rebel. Not in all cases is this the practice, of course. Where there is little or no lack, things are different. We nurture our young, as we should, and we love them. Lucky is the child who is born to parents who are of means, and in a community where nurture is possible and valued. But even such children are ultimately not immune from facing a destiny of pale conformity battered by tightly delimited social expectations and debt slavery. If they have enough ambition, education and doors opened for them, some can run the gauntlet with relative effectiveness. Otherwise, our young are raised to die on battlefields, or to struggle in myriad other painful social conflicts aimed at advancing the world of their elders. In the Bible, there is a great admonition against this process that comes at the very precondition for the tradition it represents that begins with Abraham.
It is in the book of Genesis at the beginning of the Biblical story when, as that story goes, God commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac, as a sacrifice. As Abraham is about to obey, God steps in and says no. The entire subsequent eons-long struggle to realize Abraham’s commission by God to make a great nation that would be a light to the world would have been cut short right then if Abraham had slain his own son. The message is that all of the Abrahamic traditions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, owe their source, and in fact are rooted, in God’s command to reject the sacrifice of children to the whims of their elders. The last thousands of years can be best defined in these terms, where nurture is pitted against exploitation of our young with, at best, vastly mixed results. Scenes like that at the opening of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the World War I novel and film where a teacher rallies a classroom full of boys to enlist in the war, is bone chilling. Or, the lyric in Pink Floyd’s iconic song, Comfortably Numb, “When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now. The child is grown, the dream is gone.”
Nick Benton’s new book is available now at Amazon.
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