Songfacts®:

• "Father Lucifer" is a piano song about the dark side of human nature with vivid character sketches. The song is part of Amos' first self-produced album, Boys for Pele, which finds her taking a deep dive into her soul. By this time, Amos had two albums under her belt that had each sold over 2 million copies, but instead of veering in a more commercial direction to expand her audience, she swerved into the fire with an album of 18 unfiltered songs with little in the way of hooks or choruses. Predictably, it didn't sell as well as her previous albums, but it proved to be a lasting work of consequence and it went over very well with her fans.
• The song is not about Satan, as many suspected. It's about the forces inside us and confronting our nature. "It was the transition of womanhood for me, and I had to go visit Lucifer to make a descent," Amos said.
• Tori Amos' father is a Christian minister, so this one got in his craw. On December 29, 2009 at the HMV Get Closer gig at London's Jazz Café, Tori jokingly added that her father believed he had inspired the song. When she told him the song was about taking drugs, he declared, "Praise Jesus!"
  
  The drugs she was taking came from a South American shaman and sent her on a spiritual journey. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  DeeTheWriter - Saint Petersburg, Russia Federation