LK

Her ability to turn often painful personal experience into universally resonant songs has guided her 12 million album-selling career. And Tori Amos, 54, proves to be at the peak of her rhapsodic powers on her latest offering Native Invader – inspired both by her mother’s incapacitating severe stroke and rapidly unfolding political events in her homeland.

“I took a pilgrimage to North Carolina where my mother’s people are from,” she explains. “Little did I know in a few months time she wouldn’t be able to speak again. She’s been in a nursing home but is back home with dad.

“Music is something she really responds to. She can seem trapped, but there are moments she is back with you.”

Tori’s mum is the subject of the album’s moving closer Mary’s Eyes. “I haven’t played it to her. I’m not playing anything new to her – only things I know she knows. I don’t want to push it on.”

Taking cues from her Cherokee heritage and duetting with 16-year-old daughter Tash on the the album’s Up The Creek, Tori’s songwriting addresses divisions in the wider American family too.

“Mary was attacked by a blood clot and America is under attack – Lady Liberty and the land itself,” says Tori. “Let’s not get distracted by Tweets.

“Things are REALLY happening to the land itself which should belong to the people. Things that should belong to the public are being stolen by corporations – oil, agriculture.

“And I’m saying this not as an extremist, I’m a bridge builder.”

In recent years, Tori returned to the classical world where she established her exceptional skills as a pre-teen. It was a challenge.

“I had pins and needles, asking the ghosts of the masters to come and visit,” she says.

On her early hit Me And A Gun, Tori unveiled a harrowing experience of being raped. Such candour has bonded her tightly to fans, a process which will continue on her current tour.

“In the first couple of shows I won’t change the repertoire too much. But by the time we get to the Royal Albert Hall, there’ll be more songs worked out.

“I meet people after gigs and at soundchecks and they come up with ideas. It becomes very collaborative.

“I’m a recluse but I’m blessed to have clever, thinking people come to the shows.”