Evanescence: The Future's Endless PossibilitiesBlack Velvet Magazine, February 2013
Words by Shari Black Velvet
Photos by Chapman Baehler & Shari Black Velvet
~BREATHE~In November 2012, the Evanescence World Tour came to a close. It was the third worldwide tour by the American band led by Amy Lee - a tour that followed those of previous albums, 'The Open Door' and 'Fallen'. The tour saw the band visit countries far and wide, everywhere from Costa Rica to Lebanon, Mexico to Paraguay. The tour saw the band perform old favorites as well as newer numbers in as beautiful way as any band could. Frontwoman Amy has put everything into these songs, making them artistic and creative, both onstage and offstage. Evanescence are much more than just a band - being a dramatically inspiring creation that continues to impress and evolve.
Growing up, Amy's dad was a DJ and musician. In the early years he gave her lots of help and tips as far as arts and creativity. "He was always very supportive and still is," Amy tells Black Velvet. "One of the funny things..." she laughs. "When I was younger I remember he used to say that I should smile. When he was coming to our first shows. We were taking ourselves much more seriously back then in a lot of ways because we were trying to prove who we were and that we were a serious band with serious songs and deep meanings and I'd stand there and be very serious. Nowadays you see me onstage and I'm smilling all the time, but I remember my dad was like 'It was a great show, a really beautiful performance, I wish I could see you smile a little more.' I was like 'Dad, you don't understand, it's not that kind of band'. But he always gave me good, helpful advice and made me very familiar with recording studios and radio stations. I'd been around that all my childhood and stuff, so it was never intimidating to me, so that's cool too."
These days many bands are in a rush to release new music - especially with less fans buying CDs. Because they make less money via recorded work, many bands go back into the studio quicker to give fans something else to listen to. Maybe the attention span of fans is shorter these days with the internet making everything THERE already. With more bands fighting for your attention, it's no wonder they often feel the need to release new work. Evanescence on the other hand take their time with their albums. The gap between 'The Open Door' and their self-titled 'Evanescence' album was five years. This was due to the band taking a little time off, as well as making sure their latest full-length was perfect. Amy thinks you shouldn't release work too quickly, and you shouldn't be rushed. "If you force something out before it's time it's just not gonna be as good as it is if it's truly inspired," she says. "And I guess I have to admit I sort of have the luxury of being able to do that. We have our fans and we've made some albums that have sold a lot of copies and that's given me the ability in the beginning after Fallen to go away and really spend the time on the second record that I wanted to and love it the way I wanted to love it. Everybody spends a ton of time on their first record, it's usually after that that there's so much pressure to hurry up and come up with something. It IS a lot of pressure and it's from people that you care about, it's from fans, y'know. It's a good thing that our fans are dying to know what's next but it's hard because I don't know what's next right now. And I think that that's good. I think that's healthy. I think that's important. We've been totally focused on this album and this tour for years now and it's time to let my brain breathe a little, all our brains breathe before we figure out what's next."
After a long tour in support of 'The Open Door', Amy realized she wanted to take some time away from band duties. She had gotten married and wanted to spend a little time with her husband at home, out of the spotlight. While this time off was good for her and she enjoyed married life at home, she eventually realized and decided that she was born to be out on stage performing and that part of her was missing. The song 'Lost in Paradise' is about her existence back then. She sings 'And all I feel is this cruel wanting, we've been falling for all this time and now I'm lost in paradise'. Amy explains why the wanting is 'cruel'. "It's a struggle. Every time we've made a record, every thing what we do, it takes so much that people don't see behind the scenes. Between fighting for your rights with the label about every creative thing that you feel passionately about to just getting permission to make a record in the first place - believe it or not, we have those things going on behind the scenes sometimes, to just the personal struggle between being in the spotlight and being under such crazy scrutiny and pressure and not freedom. The problem with freedom is it's not free completely if I'm not getting to do everything my heart really wants to do. So I guess the song to me is about that struggle. And in the end it is really me making the decision to do the harder thing, climb the mountain for the pay-off at the end and here we are. And I love the song, I'm very proud of it."
The album that followed came to be the most band-orientated album with Evanescence writing as a band, something they'd never done before.
"With all the changes and everything over the years you just can't write with everybody, you have to have some special connection, at least I do, to really create something great with somebody," Amy says. "It can't just be someone who's a good musician. It's gotta be deeper than that. Both of the other Evanescence records were really just written with me and one other guy: 'Fallen' was me and Ben's thing, and 'The Open Door' was me and Terry's thing. And then we toured so much with Will and Troy and Tim and spent so much time together and had so many creative conversations together as well that by the time I was ready to write I was like, 'Let's try this. Let's get together and see what happens'. I knew it was me pushing myself to do something that I'm not comfortable with because writing is very intimate, one on one's almost all I could handle before but Nick Raskulinecz, the producer, was a big part of this. The pre-production was even more of this, we'd done it a little bit before, sitting in a circle, facing each other with our instruments, playing together. It was sort of a form of communication because everyone was just playing kind of at the same time, stepping out for a moment, hearing what was going on, stepping back when they have something to contribute. We came up with some of our favourite songs that way there in the last couple of months, it was such a good experience because I felt like we were all really pushing ourselves and pushing each other to be better musicians and better writers as well."
Every song on the 'Evanescence' album turned out to be a winner. One song, 'My Heart is Broken', became a special song that was inspired not by Amy's own life but by something happening in other's. It is a song based on human trafficking. Amy tells us that her thoughts on human trafficking were consuming her heart, so she felt compelled to pen some lyrics. "I was thinking about this organization, Restore, in New York, that's about human trafficking. We'd been having all these conversations about that. I realized it was the heaviest thing on my heart at the moment." Despite not being focused on her own life, the feelings she had from hearing of what was going on in other's lives made the song as personal as any other.
Amy, who resides in New York when she's not on the road, explains how she discovered Restore NYC. "I met an incredible woman, Faith Huckel, and we became friends, and I more than anything became incredibly inspired by her work. She founded the whole company and started the whole thing on her own and it's become this very inspiring organization in New York that's developed the first safe house... safe houses now... ever. There's never been anywhere for anyone to run to after escaping from the brothels or wherever, it's like 'OK, now, where do I go?' Just back in the system. It's just jail, there or homeless. And I just found the whole thing extremely inspiring. Inspiration can come from anywhere, I guess."
Amy has since met the women that live in restore safe house(s). Amy tells us that it's awesome but hard to talk to them. She explains that she feels a similar feeling when meeting her fans. "We have a lot of fans who are hurting that we meet every day. Something that's really cool about our music, I guess... I think... I know... is that people that are suffering use it like a therapy, which is exactly what I've done. I'm in a good place, I'm a healthy person, I've been through a lot in my life and I'm sure there's plenty more to come, life's not that simple, but a bug part of my health, my mental health, has been my songwriting - just letting out all those feelings, turning something painful into something really beautiful, processing what I'm going through in general and sharing it openly in a big, crazy way. And I've discovered over time that our music provides a service like that for people all over the world that have been through things that are really hard to deal with and they feel like the music is the one place where they are understood and they feel safe because it's not like they're all alone. We meet people every day that have been through all kinds of different things in life that are just hard for them, whether it's something common like divorce or paralysis, loss, people that have lost people and it's heartbreaking but also very, very beautiful. I'm so proud to have a place in the art world that means something more than just glorifying myself. It makes me want to hang on longer. At this point, especially after a year and a half on touring and talking about myself, at this point I'm sick of hearing about me, to be very honest. Sick of me. But the fact that it's able to be about so many other people and what they're going through and that connection that we've built together, that means something and gives me the inspiration to go on."
Amy was also inspired after the tsunami in Japan captured the news and wrote the song 'Never Go Back' about those in Japan that were dealing with this catastrophe. Recently of course, there was a hurricane in USA. Amy's home in the US was in an area that was hit by Hurricane Sandy - although the band were away on tour at the time. She tells us, "I felt like I had no control. It's very hard. We were really far away and just kind of watching and praying and hoping that our family and our home would be OK and they were. But yeah, there was definitely a bit of an exercise in 'OK, gotta let go, I don't have control here in Costa Rica, so if everything blows away we're going to have to take a deep breath and deal with it'."
At the end of October Amy tweeted a picture of Garbage from the side of the stage and wrote: 'So inspired right now. So honored. My heroine!' Amy has been a fan of Shirley Manson and Garbage forever. She remembers, " I was really inspired by Garbage when I was 15/16/17 bigtime, maybe even a little younger than that. And I remember 'Stupid Girl' was always one of my very favourite songs. I really related to it because I felt different to the other kids in school. You have so many strong, passionate feelings about calling people on their bullshit when you're young and she in so many ways was that thing. There wasn't anybody else around me, it was 'Yes, I can relate to the things that you're saying.' It's cool now, really cool, to see her still rocking it, still beautiful up there, just being awesome on the stage and owning it, and also being able to meet her and have her be a really cool down-to-earth person, that's really inspiring to me as well. I was standing there on the side of the stage watching her knowing every song and really happy, thinking 'Wow, I can't believe we're on the same stage together!' My fifteen-year-old self is totally freaking out. And also she said something really sweet to me or about me from the stage and that was kind of mind-blowing as well. Real cool."
Amy has been inspired by some very creative musicians - two of which she's met - Bjork and Danny Elfman. Her encounters with both were also positive. She says, "It makes me really happy, super-happy when I have met my idols that I grew up loving and see them be kind and professional backstage beyond everything else that they already do. That's something that I've always aspired to do - to be really cool to people in real life. That's become more important to me than the performance and all the other stuff - and it makes me really happy when I meet someone that I really, really love musically and they're also a cool person. I like that a lot."
One inspiration that she didn't meet was Michael Jackson. We ask what Amy's thoughts on him as a person and what he went through were. She replies, "I have so many thoughts, but I don't know him personally. I think that's probably the hardest thing about Michael Jackson, is that it was really hard to know him personally. He lived a very, very extraordinary public life and I think it drove him crazy and it's really sad because we got so much from him, SO much from him. I think he had some times in his life that were really hard and that sucks. He's a genius. A total genius. Made music and art that we'll be appreciating till the end of the earth for sure."
Amy was in New York, walking around, on the day that he was announced dead. "I overheard somebody say his name and I overheard somebody else say his name and then again I heard the name Michael Jackson. I thought, something is going on. And I walked into some business, Best Buy or something, and looked up at the TV, everyone had sort of stopped what they were doing and were watching the news and it was just really sad. My sister started texting me and calling me and going 'Noooo', 'cause we loved him together. We'd all drive to school - I'd drive them to school, my younger siblings in the morning, and we'd jam out singing 'The Girl is Mine' and taking turns, so it was definitely a very sad day."
When the creative singer/songwriter/musician is not playing music, she likes to paint and has a house full of paintings. This summer she joined forces with The Stashbox, giving them a painting for a competition. "I love painting and I just said last night, 'I can't wait to get home and paint some more'." She continues, "I like it because I feel no pressure whatsoever. I like to have a side project always going on when I'm working, especially when I was making the record for example, there was always paintings going on on the side because I'll get stuck in one aspect and really, really feel like I need to get stuff out, I need to keep moving and I need to keep creating, so I'll move over to some completely different thing like a painting or cooking something or whatever just to stay moving even though I'm stuck on the music. I have a lot of partially finished paintings I need to get back to at home. They take me a long time. But it's a nice thing, because I feel like there's no expectation for it to be anything, it's just for me. If I ever want to do anything with them and share them some day then I can but I don't have to and nobody expects me to so it's like I still have a completely free place."
She shows us a picture on her phone of a painting that she's been working on and explains, "They're definitely more whimsical and even child-like and cartoony than my music. It's a different side of me a little bit." The painting we see features many octopuses in water. "I've been working on this one for I guess about, jeez, five years, and I'm close to being finished with it. It's really big. Each one of those little guys [points to an octopus] takes probably half an hour, maybe 45 minutes and there's like... I don't know... 300 of them," she laughs, "so I just go in and do a couple of octopus, then I'm like, 'OK, my hand's tired,' and go and do something else. It's been fun to get at it once in a while. Almost there. I think I'm about 40 hours away."
Amy is an incredibly artistic woman. We wish we had half of her talent (even a tenth of it!). She says art as a whole and the artistic element in music has to progress in the future.
"It must, it has to! People can't live without music, whey won't, it will always exist, it's not going anywhere, so I'm not afraid of the death of art or anything like that. Definitely there's a big problem now about monetizing it. We have the internet so we have information, so anybody can just upload their music and get people to hear it and that's a wonderful thing, especially for new bands, I think. The hard part is trying to find a way to make what you make and then somehow earn the money to cover your costs because people that think music should be free don't understand that it should be, yeah, that would be great, but it's not free to create it. So it doesn't work. Unless we figure out a way to pay for music we can't afford to make the music, but I think it's going to work itself out. I think it probably has to do with branding, just having a little sticker on your stuff, or Pandora's really amazing, I use that all the time to find songs and that does pay a little bit when you listen to things, whatever those type of internet radio stations, I think that's the future of radio. Radio's definitely not going to exist forever. And yeah, you know music videos aren't really real anymore. It's all going to the internet! I think there's definitely a brighter future ahead but I'm not exactly sure how it's going to work. I think it's all about music unfortunately and that's usually the part that I try to ignore."
In 'What You Want' Amy sings 'Your world's closing in on you now'. In her world she's had happiness, sadness, good and bad. She sums up her world and what's to come:
"You can never know what's to come and I am totally open-minded for anything, because I have watched so much change in my life already and I'm only 30, and change is often a good thing. Sometimes it's sad and it's always hard to change. It's definitely a little bit hard this week because we have tonight and tomorrow night's shows and then we don't know what's next. There's no period at the end of the sentence and there's no idea what's up - and I like that, there's so much freedom in that and it's exciting but at the same time it's scary for sure. What have I taken away? An entire spectrum of things... I don't even know how to sum it up. It's been an incredible adventure, it really has and I'm very proud that we've made it so far and that we've touched so many people. I know that we have. I've gotten to meet a lot of amazing people along the way and I'm super-grateful for that. I think I have to always tell myself that everything that's already happened is good enough and everything that happens next is extra, that's something new - because I am very proud of everything we've already done, but I'm excited for the future because there are endless possibilities."