Last-name formality feels strange when referring to people I’ve loved for over half my life, as well as had the privilege of meeting, however briefly. First-name basis throughout. Although I am a writer of book things, I must confess that I know far more about Neil Gaiman’s friendship with Tori Amos from the Tori side. When I was a teenager, she understood my plight, you know? She’d felt my pain and gotten through it. Despite my sometimes-disappointment in some of her output from the last decade, I remain a devoted fangirl. Were I a betting woman, I’d be willing to wager that quite a few Neil Gaiman fans, obviously including myself (aged 14), first learned of his work via a Tori Amos song, interview, or album credit. (For me, it was the line from “Hotel” about the Velvets that got me to read Neverwhere.) And maybe some Tori fans came to love her music because of a character, acknowledgement, or other shout-out from Gaiman. At any rate, particularly in the 90s, the two were frequently linked via their work. It all began prior to the release of Amos’ first album, Little Earthquakes, which came in the US in 1992. The song “Tear in Your Hand” contains her first Neil reference. Her friend, Rantz, identified as the “Sandman comic supplier” in the Little Earthquakes liner notes, had turned her on to Sandman; she sings, “If you need me, me and Neil’ll be hanging out with the Dream King/ Neil says hi, by the way.” (When Neil wrote bits and bobs for Tori’s tour books, he often began them with “hi, by the way.”) A Little Earthquakes demo reached Neil at Comic-Con in San Diego, and he dug it.* Once he and Tori started corresponding, she swore they’d known each other in a past life, and so began their friendship. Tori mentions Neil several more times in her songs: For Tori’s covers album Strange Little Girls, released in 2001, Neil wrote a series of character descriptions—later to appear in Fragile Things—for each of the women she portrayed on the album of songs originally written and performed by men. Seems I keep getting this story twisted/ So where’s Neil when you need him? – “Space Dog,” Under the Pink, 1994. And if there is a way to find you, I will find you/ But will you find me if Neil makes me a tree? – “Horses,” Boys for Pele, 1996. This line refers to a deal that Neil and Tori made: she lent him a house to write in; he transformed her into a copper beech tree in the novel he was working on, Stardust. Got a sister named Desire [ . . . ] Teach me about them old worlds, big brother – “Sister Named Desire,” b-side, 1996. Delirium from Gaiman’s Sandman is loosely based on Amos, and Desire is another of the Endless. Though Delirium came before his friendship with Tori, Neil acknowledges that the two “steal shamelessly from each other.” The “big brother” she mentions is possibly Dream but may also be Neil himself since Tori has referred to him as her “spiritual brother.” (Song also appears on the musical tribute titled Where’s Neil When You Need Him?) Where are the Velvets when you’re coming, coming down? – “Hotel,” From the Choirgirl Hotel, 1998. The Velvets are vampiric characters, guides of a sort, from Gaiman’s Neverwhere. This line is the reason I picked up that novel, my first Neil. So we go from year to year with secrets we’ve been keeping – “Wednesday,” Scarlet’s Walk, 2002. The title and this line are likely references to Mr. Wednesday from American Gods. Get me Neil on the line/ No, I can’t hold/ Have him read “Snow Glass Apples,” where nothing is what it seems – “Carbon,” Scarlet’s Walk, 2002. “Snow Glass Apples” is a short story that appears in Neil’s Smoke and Mirrors. It is a retelling of the Snow White fairy tale. Neil is thrilled, he can claim he’s mammalian/ But the bad news, he said, girl, you’re a dandelion/ Dandelion, hey, I need to think about that/ Yeah, I thought about that and I said What the hell?/ He said, Nope, you are earth bound/ Blow them seeds away/ Maybe one will make a sound – “Not Dying Today,” Abnormally Attracted to Sin, 2009. Seems to be a reference to what Cory Doctorow discusses here and here. At least, I couldn’t find another source for it. In that context, I’ve always considered it a comment on her prolific output in the last decade, in the span of which she’s released several albums in a row with 20+ tracks: “blow[ing] them seeds away,” trying to create a hit. Almost all of Tori’s liner notes contain brief thank-yous or hellos or little references to Neil’s works. Around album-release time, her fans get notoriously crazy-bananas, and Neil has always been incredibly gracious in fielding questions on his website about whether he’s heard the new material, and what he thought, and when will it come out, and what color shoes was she wearing last time you saw her? Crazy. Bananas. Delirium, as mentioned above, transformed after Neil and Tori became friends to loosely resemble her. This resemblance is most striking in The Sandman: Brief Lives, and some lyrics from “Tear in Your Hand” also appear in a couple of panels. See them here. A poster for Tori’s 1994 album, Under the Pink, appears in Death: The Time of Your Life. In addition to providing a blurb for Neverwhere, and later a house for Neil to write in (for which he thanks her in American Gods) Tori wrote a typically-Tori/Delirium intro for Death: The High Cost of Living: Here are a few bits from the copper beech tree, which used to be a wood nymph, in Stardust: (copied from here) Neil is also “fairygodfather” to Tori’s daughter, Natashya “Tash” Lorien Hawley, whom he mentions in the acknowledgements for The Wolves in the Walls. His much-beloved children’s book, Blueberry Girl, was written as a prayer for Tori when she was pregnant. Hear him read it here: “I didn’t always used to be a tree,” said the voice in the rustling of the copper beech leaves. “A magician made me a tree.” “I was pretty cute as a nymph, too,” she admitted, coyly. [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH4lyJWa_84[/youtube] Finally, I recently stumbled across this adorable video of Natashya Hawley reading from Coraline for its tenth anniversary: [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJOIicJWSd8[/youtube] I’m sure I’ve missed something. Fill me in! If you’re a fan of both Neil and Tori, which fandom came first?
- ETA: Some anecdotal evidence states that Neil later confessed to never having listened to the demo, but I couldn’t find an official quotation to that effect to reference. Still, since a few folks in the Tori fan community mentioned it, I thought it was worth including.
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