Tori Amos Covers Nirvana in New York City

Tori Amos' career is ripe with full-circle moments. On Thursday night at New York City's Radio City Music Hall, the singer-songwriter shared, in her fine humor, one from the stage about a then Tori Ellen Amos venturing to New York from Washington D.C. with her minister father, trying to break into the biz.

"I have this memory," Amos -- who is touring behind her new album, 'Abnormally Attracted to Sin' -- recalled. "I'm going to tell you. I can't stop myself -- I've had three f---king cupcakes. I have been passing the f---ing [New York] Sheraton [hotel] since f---ing 1980 whatever. Anyway, my dad came up with his little preacher's thing and his Bible and said, 'You know, you've been working really hard in these piano bars in Washington, Tori Ellen, you're good enough for New York.' So we came up here and I had been learning all these crazy cover songs as you do. But the [Sheraton] manager said, 'Yeah, we don't need any young teenage piano players here.' I thought tonight, I'm going to Radio City to play for my friends and play a little cover for them. I didn't get to play it at the Sheraton but I guess the manager wasn't a Methodist or ... a gay Methodist."

Amos, without missing a beat, launched a poignant cover of Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' The Amos faithful recognize the cover as a B-side from her 1992 single, 'Crucify,' off the album that, just 10 years after her Sheraton dismissal, would launch her to stardom. The album in question is, of course, 'Little Earthquakes.'

"I want to thank everyone from the bottom if my Big Apple heart," she said early in the show. "Many of my friends are here -- many friends of the song girls and of course my friends on the stage with me." Amos called attention to her band -- drummer Matt Chamberlain and bassist/guitarist Jon Evans -- who needed little introduction among the piano provocateur's devotees.

The evening would range as far in emotion as Amos' musical dexterity, which is to say, seemingly infinite. Amos switched from five different keyboards (the Hammond and her signature Bosendorfer, among them) as she went from breathy ballads ('Winter' -- also about her father, during which Amos teared up) to pummeling barnburners, including 'Precious Things' and a new song, 'Strong Black Vine,' which found a seemingly possessed Amos screaming "She can push that motherf---er/She is my mother, f---er/She can push that evil from you."

Twenty-plus years on, Amos sounds better than ever, exuding a cool confidence and enthusiasm throughout the concert that was as endearing as it was contagious. She departed the stage with a familiar message, courtesy of the song 'Big Wheel': "I am a M-I-L-F, don't you forget." One look at those black leather tights and come hither heels? As if we could.