waiting for goddess

rami turk and linda greaves sat patiently outside the congress centre in prague, their eyes on two tour buses parked nearby. the blinds on both vehicles were drawn, and there was no perceptible movement. rami and linda didn’t mind though, not after the enormous amount of effort it had taken them to get there. the former had travelled from ras al khaimah, in the uae; the latter from oldham, in the united kingdom.

as the minutes ticked by, they were joined by david rangel of barcelona, rabih el-khoury of lebanon, marla kendrick of cambridge, steven glatt of london and a few others, including yours truly from mumbai. all eyes stayed on the buses. ensconced within was the musician we had all come from far flung corners of the globe to see: tori amos.

born myra ellen amos to a methodist preacher in north carolina, amos was a piano prodigy who won a seat at the influential peabody conservatory in baltimore when she was just 5. at 11, she was kicked out for preferring rock to rachmaninoff. by 13, she had begun playing piano in bars. following a failed rock album at 24, she released the groundbreaking little earthquakes at 27. the year was 1992 and, within a few months, she had the kind of devoted fans most musicians would give one of their limbs for.

rami, linda and the rest of us were in prague for amos’s 2009 tour promoting her album abnormally attracted to sin. it had begun with a 29-city tour of the united states and canada, and was set to roll across europe for five months before moving to australia. what made all amos concerts different from, say, a janet jackson tour, was the number of familiar faces at every venue. some fans followed her across the us, others across europe, still others across continents. and, many had been doing this for over a decade.

naturally, this gave rise to a few questions from family and friends that we all had to answer at some point: for one, why did we do it? why did some of us put our lives on hold for weeks, to follow a musician around the world? and, why attend 40 concerts when one really ought to suffice?

our defence, this was not a new phenomenon. there had been thousands like us who could have been asked those same questions. like the deadheads — fans of american jam band the grateful dead. by the late 1960s, the band had begun to attract large numbers of people who would travel to see them in as many venues as they could. eventually, a community of sorts developed, with its own language and idiom.

the similarities between deadheads and toriphiles — that’s what we’re sometimes called — are many. we too have our own slang, our in-jokes, concert favourites, even an online bootleg exchange. as for why so many of us often chose to attend 40 performances instead of just a couple, i put the question to some of my companions in prague. for steven from london, a tori amos show could never get boring because “the venue, city and songs changed constantly.” for marla, it was the opportunity to meet new fans that kept bringing her back.

while the concert in prague was my first, the people around me were veterans. they knew amos’s staff, got me front row seats, and introduced me to everyone in the entourage who mattered. what many of them did when amos went on tour — every two years or so, to coincide with new album releases — was follow her across a continent, booking tickets for every date. those who followed an entire tour could end up attending 200 concerts a year! the logistics involved could drive frequent flyers up a wall.

this sort of devotion isn’t easy to explain, considering amos has never enjoyed the kind of album sales that artistes like u2 or madonna can boast of. her fans ensure her concerts sell out though, help her albums go platinum, and create thousands of dedicated sites online. at one level, this passion comes from the fact that she is a musician who stirs things up. her music sometimes reaches a level of emotive rawness that fans of coldplay will simply never know. it explores everything from feminism to self-loathing, religion to rape — not exactly the sort of stuff people like tuning into while jogging.

what was more surprising than fans following her, however, was how amos herself managed to stick to a punishing schedule. at every show, she took to the stage well before her two-hour performance, for a sound check. after playing for around five hours, she would get into her tour bus, travel overnight to another venue and do it all over again. and. like clockwork, fans in every city would assemble before a show in the hope of meeting her — a tradition going back to the early concerts. from manchester to london, basel to amsterdam, they would wait patiently for a few minutes with their favourite pianist.

that morning in prague, amos couldn’t make a pre-show appearance. so, after attending the evening’s performance, we travelled by bus to make it to her concert next day — in austria. there, after a two-hour wait outside the stadthalle in vienna, i managed to do what i had waited 16 years for. i came face to face with tori amos. as fans thrust flowers at her and held up album sleeves for her to sign, we chatted.

later that evening, minutes before amos took to the stage, i turned to rami from the uae and asked how he would describe a concert to someone who hadn’t heard her music. “how can you describe the taste of chocolate to someone who’s never had it?” he replied. and then, the house lights dimmed. as her drummer and bassist plugged in, tori amos stepped onto the stage. there was a deafening roar and, for the next two hours, all was right with our world.