|
|
Post by bean mood on Dec 2, 2024 1:00:04 GMT -5
here's a text version from OCR, please let me know if there's any typo!
Interview: Amy Lee - My Story, Rock Sound 2021
Text: Maddy Howell
Photo: Jennifer McCord
How well do you really know Amy Lee?
She's lived a life and career full of highs and lows, tests and triumphs, and that's only the past decade, so it felt like high time she was afforded the time and space to tell her story in more depth than ever before.
Here, we're stoked to host Amy's most extensive interview about her journey to date, from her childhood and first steps into music, through success, love, loss, and all the way through to her band's ace new album, 'The Bitter Truth'.
It's all set alongside photos taken remotely at her home in lockdown and picked by Amy herself.
This is Amy's story. In her own words.
So, taking things right back to the start... what was your childhood like? Where did you grow up, who did you grow up with and what was the family dynamic when you were a kid?
"Growing up it was high highs and low lows. In a lot of ways I feel like I have a great family and that is so important, I've always had my family's support through all of this. Through having a crazy, impossible dream of being in a band and having that be my real gig, they always supported me in that and in every other hare-brained idea I've ever had, but we have experienced great tragedies together as well. I grew up in a big family. My dad is a musician who is a multi-instrumentalist, I don't know what the word for it is, but we're a lot alike in that he'll get something in his head and obsess over it until he's mastered it, and then he'll move onto the next thing. Through his life there have been all of these phases, from typical things like drums and guitar to steel drums and banjo. It's gone really far out there. Music was a central theme in who we were and what I grew up around, though.
I'm the oldest child, I lost my sister when I was six years old and that was a huge event in my life and in my family. It was my younger sister, and it was always the two of us, and after she passed away my parents had a lot more kids and we started a new chapter. The music was the thing that brought us together in a very folky, old-fashioned way. It was just something that we always did together. There were times where it was embarrassing and corny, and my dad would always want everybody to grab an instrument and play something when we had guests over, which was mortifying but also fun.
When I look back on it now, I realise how cool it was that he made us all do that, because it was almost like training us to be comfortable performing in front of people. That was something that was really hard for me once we started the band and I was getting up on stage for those first times when I was a very young teenager. It was very hard to open my eyes and I was nervous, but I always had my dad, this pro performer because his main job was being a radio DJ and programme director for 30 years, so he was training me to be comfortable up there. But it was always this funny dynamic because my dad's personality is like a Bob Saget, 'Smile! Give 'em all you got!', positive energy guy... and I was trying to be this brooding artist. I remember his advice after one of our first shows was like, "Hey listen, don't be afraid to smile a little bit out there, just give them a smile'. I just looked at him and was like, 'Dad, you don't understand my music..."
You and your family moved around the US quite a few times when you were younger too, right?
"Yeah, we moved an absolute tonne when I was a kid, but my younger siblings always stayed in Little Rock, which has been nice. It's been nice to have the same place to come home to for all these years. But I was born in California, because my dad was trying to be in a rock band and make a living like that. Then when I was one and a half, he was like, 'This is no life for a family, I'm going back into radio'. So, he, my mom and I moved back to South Florida, where my dad is from. I spent the bulk of my early childhood in West Palm Beach, Florida and then we moved to Illinois for a minute before finally settling on Arkansas as a family, which is where the band started. I only lived there for around six years though, because then I kind of continued the habit of moving around a lot on my own."
When you moved to Little Rock, was there a different feeling about that place? Did it feel like home at the time?
"I was miserable that I was moving to Little Rock. I was 12, I'd just had my first 'boyfriend', meaning that we'd held hands and kissed one time, and I just now had friends and felt like I was cool for a small second, even though we only lived there for a year. When I found out that my parents were moving us to this place, all I could imagine was banjos, rednecks and nothing that I could possibly think was cool. We moved there and I was just an angsty, full angst mode teenager. I discovered grunge, and from there it all snowballed into who I am today. I learned to love the natural beauty of Arkansas though. I spent a lot of time with my siblings, my friends and time alone, but what I loved the most was being in nature, bike riding through the woods and not being around people so much."
You met Ben pretty quickly after you moved to Little Rock too, right? Was there an instant connection between the two of you as creatives?
"Yeah, I did and there definitely was. I think that we both were into things that weren't mainstream or common, at least for anyone around us. We didn't go to school together but in both of our circles we felt sort of like the loners in a way. It was interesting because we liked some of the same things, but there was a lot of contrast between us. With my musical influences, of course there was the hard rock part of it, but my first influences and the things that really inspired me were more deep, dark, dramatic and cinematic, like all of the film composers I loved at the time, from Hans Zimmer to Danny Elfman, to Beethoven and Mozart and the big, dramatic classics. I was taking classical piano very seriously at the time and I was more on that side of the spectrum. He was into more hard rock and metal, so it was interesting because we started to try making music together and what was so cool about it for both of us was that contrast. It was bringing things together that you wouldn't typically think of as going together, and that can work really well somehow."
Was it obvious to you at that point that the 'band thing' was what you wanted to do, then?
"It's weird, it really was all about songwriting and creation at first. When it was the two of us, it wasn't in my head so much that the most important thing was having a band of more people. It was more about making enough money to buy the gear it took for us to layer ourselves and record all the parts to create the songs. The whole idea of playing live, getting out there and the rock band thing, that was less of it for me. That came later because it became like, 'Hey, this is cool and this is what it sounds like... it's a band. We need to get some guys together and start playing shows'. I guess that's where the stage fright comes in. I was a little bit intimidated by that whole thing at that point."
What were your perceptions of yourself as a performer during those early shows with just the two of you?
"I thought I was terrible. I was fifteen, and I thought I was horrible, I hated the way I sounded, and I remember crying my eyes out about it. I don't remember what it was, but for our first real thing we were playing outdoors, and it was a whole bunch of bands - kind of like a free for all - and we did not know what we were doing. We set up our own junk and I didn't know how to play with a monitor or anything. I don't even know if I had a monitor, but I couldn't hear myself at all. So naturally, your body is just trying to sing over it as loud as you can, so that you can hear yourself when there's all that noise behind you. A friend had brought a video camera and taped us from the crowd, and I remember going back to one of our parents' houses to watch it. I heard myself, burst into tears, and ran to the bathroom. I didn't feel like that every time, and you learn after those experiences how to be better and ask for help too. We started asking friends for help in those situations with things like, 'How do I hear myself? How does this work? How do we put on a show?""
Fast-forwarding a little, you were 19 when you signed your first record deal. Was that whilst you were still studying?
"I had just graduated high school, I graduated in 2000 when I was 18, and then at the end of that year, I left home and went to college in Tennessee, which is where I'm back living now. I went to college for two or three months, and while we were there, we kind of got to a point with the band where we had what I'd call demos, a CD of music that we'd managed to record that was pretty good. So, we were able to not just sell them at shows, but we could use them to send out to people. I remember sending them out to record labels and in our minds the goal was always to try and get a record deal, but also at the same time I wasn't putting all of my eggs in that basket by any means. So, I was going to school, studying theory composition to become what I had hoped would be a score composer. Then we very quickly got called, because somebody heard us doing something and passed it on to a friend, then that friend passed it on to a label, and the label called.
It was really early for us. We were really new especially within the rock band part of it - not in being songwriters and being able to make a song and record it - but to be a band was still really new. That's not where we came from, so that was something that we really needed to learn. When we got signed at 19, the album 'Fallen' didn't come out for another couple of years, and during that time it was a lot of learning. It was a lot about writing songs and all that, but most of it was a case of getting our feet under us in terms of, 'Who are the band members, for real? Who are we going to bring with us? What are we going to do?' In the very beginning, right before the album came out, we had to start playing some shows and learn how to get good at it."
Were you at all sceptical about entering into the industry at that age? Or was it more just a case of, 'Fuck, this is the dream'?
"It felt like the dream at that point, it was super exciting."
Was it a bit of a shock to the system in a sense when you hit that sudden upward trajectory with 'Fallen'? You were pretty much just thrust straight into the limelight right there and then, right?
"The limelight is weird, especially when you're really young. I don't know what I expected, but it's always been really hard to me, and a lot of the themes in the new album are about this still. It's hard to feel one way on the inside and look different on the outside. So, when you're in a position where you need to sell your product, people put a lot of work and money into you. Everybody's counting on you. This is your moment, everybody's looking. You need to look stoked; you need to be grateful; you need to talk about how great everything is and just make people invest in you on every level. In an interview, on stage, in a label meeting... in every area of your life, you need to project success so that people will back you. I found myself in that position on a really, really, really big stage when internally in my life, and also in the band, there was a lot of turmoil. So, I started feeling disconnected from what I was doing in a way that I hate, and I will never let myself feel that way again."
It's a conversation that comes up quite a lot and is really important to understand, this idea of being almost catapulted into fame with no real support system in place. Evanescence came up in that last real wave of bands who were really embraced by celebrity culture, and in a lot of ways you were still a kid...
"It was weird. I mean, it's cool on one level. On one hand, you're like, 'Yes, this is what I expected, we're in a magazine!' But in the day to day, it's hard when you just don't have a lot of time to yourself, you don't have a lot of time to really let down your guard. It's weird to be exposed at a really young age to what it feels like to have people who are unhealthily interested in you. With our music - it's not just us, it's the same for so many people - but I know that our music is a place where people that have been through major things in their life, like great loss and tragedy and brokenness like I have, they find comfort there and they're searching for something. There have been people along the way from the very beginning that have been dangerous and crossing lines. I think that for me, having some of those scares in the beginning where security was breached... it's hard to explain, because I never want to glorify any of those people by telling the story and making them go, 'Oh crap, I made it to the papers. I should do it again,' so I don't talk about it a lot. But that world, the creepy stalker world, that affected me, and it made me shut down more than I would have wanted to. Especially when what I really needed at the time was a true friend just to be able to go through it with me.
That's why just a few months into being out on the road all the time in that first year, I called one of my closest friends from home, Beth. She does my hair and makeup still. I called and was like, 'They tell me that I can afford to bring somebody with me to help me do my hair and makeup, so I don't have to do it all myself...' I really needed a friend. I was the only girl for miles, and I felt really alone out there. It wasn't just about being a girl, but that is part of it. I just needed a friend. I was like, 'Do you want to leave the world behind? I'll take you to see the world!' And she said yes. I've played a total of three shows without her in my life since."
With that sudden popularity, the attention and the expectations that came along with it all, how difficult was it to be the version of yourself that you wanted to be at that point, both as a performer and as a person? Did it feel like there were things or people standing in your way all of a sudden?
"Overcoming is a big thing, and it doesn't happen just one time. I think that these moments of emancipation continue, and you're going to continue to be faced with a lot of the same obstacles. But every time you win a battle, every time you overcome an obstacle, or move past somebody standing in your way that's trying to stop you from standing up and living your full potential... Every time you overcome one of those, it makes you stronger for the next one that's going to come your way. So, as hard as it was back then... I've faced a lot of obstacles since. I hate that it had to be so hard, but baptism by fire, right? I feel like I learned some really important lessons that first time around that made me strong and made me able to handle things that would come at me afterwards and have them affect me a lot less. I know I'm not being super specific, I don't like to drag up a lot of old drama. I feel like a lot of drama was poured into my world and it really made me so angry because it wasn't anything that was about me, it's just something you've got to learn to overcome. But also learning how to choose my own staff and choose to have people around me that love me and support me and want what's best for the whole thing and aren't in it for themselves was a huge, heartbreaking first lesson. I learned to be a good boss, it's just that I learned that I had to fill a lot of roles in those first couple of years that I didn't realise was what I signed up for.
I was thinking I was going to be a singer and a musician and a songwriter and an artist, and that's all true. But if you want to be all those things, you also have to be a boss, a bitch, a businesswoman, a good leader, a fashion designer, a video director and all of these things. If you want your art to really be your own, you need to know how to do all of it. But that doesn't mean not listening. I have learned so much from all the incredible people I've gotten to collaborate with over the years, from directors to visual artists to musicians, all across the board. I love learning, and it's been such an incredible educational experience for me all along the way. I really did learn a lot in that first round."
One of the big lessons in terms of the industry would have been with 'Bring Me To Life' and the rap on that song, right? How did it feel being straight up told that your track needed a male vocalist to be successful? Was that a bit of a reality check in terms of how industry pepole thought of your art?
"It's hard to sum it up. At the time, it felt like sexism for sure, but it also just felt like there was no respect, no control, nothing you could do because you're just a kid. It took me some time to separate when it's that and when it's sexism, but it doesn't really matter. You always have to fight for your rights no matter what. But being made to feel stupid, like, 'Listen, you're inexperienced, you don't know what you're doing, so you're going to just trust us...' I'm not just talking about a label, I'm talking about a whole world of people around you, like, 'Just trust the professionals to do what's best for you'. The problem with that is if the people there aren't out for what's best for you, they're all in on it together and they're out for what's best for them. There are a lot of men that were standing around me, on 'Fallen' and the next album when Ben was gone. On 'The Open Door' it was like, 'Okay, time to do a new record. Now, obviously, your co-writer, who probably did all the work is gone. So, you're going to need one of us to step in and do all the writing for you'. I had to fight that writing fight tooth and nail for way too long. There were too many men - and they were all men - all around me. There was too much money and too much glory to be made by telling me I couldn't do it."
It's unfortunately not surprising in the slightest. In terms of not just the sexism of the industry, but like you mentioned there, just simply being told you can't do it, or you're not experienced enough... How did that affect your confidence as a performer?
"It was hard, but it actually lit a big fire in me, it really did. It brought the heaviness to the album every time, I needed the rage and something to fight against. I don't want to say that if everything's perfect, I couldn't write the music that we do, but it might be true. I feel like you have to be up against something, there has to be something to be fighting against or it won't sound the same, it wouldn't have that super honest fight in it."
Yeah, for sure. You touched on it a second ago but just to rewind, I imagine a big turning point in how you viewed Evanescence must have come around the time that Ben left. How were you feeling at that point?
"Yeah, definitely. It's hard to make anyone understand what it meant without telling everything that came before, but I knew that him leaving when he did was the only way the band would have survived. When he did, I saw it as a chance. We had a chance. It was up to me to stand up and really become the leader, take it and put us into a better place, a healthy place. A place of constructive work and respect where we were making great music because we love music and that's what we're supposed to be here for. It was a very empowering moment for us when that happened, and it's hard to explain without telling the whole story, but I don't like to drag up the drama. That wasn't the end of the issues, there was still so much that went on after that, but that was a good moment for us. That was a big moment for all of us to stand up and rise above something, and the fact that it was in the middle of a tour and we continued without cancelling shows... I think that was the idea, that's what he expected and kind of what he wanted when he left. But instead, it was like, 'No, we are going to do this. We have got this. This doesn't hinge on that one person. This is bigger than that. We can do this, and I believe in you'. So, I rented a rehearsal space, we practiced all the songs, and everyone learned all the parts. We fixed it and we finished the tour, and the whole thing was sold out. I don't keep a ton of plaques on my walls, but I have this little plaque from those shows where it says, 'All dates sold out'. That's one of the ones that I keep up on my wall."
Was that sense of empowerment something that bled through into how you were feeling when you went into 'The Open Door', in terms of proving people wrong?
"Yeah, I had a lot to prove and there were a lot of people that really didn't think that I could do it. It's not like I had to tell myself that affirmation, like, 'I know I can do this', because of course that was in me. But there are other voices in my head that you have to continually shut down. I found Terry, and that was an incredible blessing. Terry and I hit it off and chose each other whilst we were both coming out of toxic situations with other band members. We had this beautiful new place to create out of that independent feeling of being given a chance and being set free from something. I loved making that album, and it really was me and Terry, that was our deal. It meant a lot to me that it was well received, it meant a lot to me that we were nominated for a Grammy, it meant a lot to me that I stood my ground at every turn whilst everyone around me was saying that we should hire somebody to write Evanescence songs. That's not what I got into this for. I didn't get into this to be a famous singer. I respect people that are performers, but that's me, that's who I really am. What I wanted from the beginning, before anything happened, before we got that record deal... I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a composer. Being a singer and being in a band and all that became the dream, but the most important part of it to me was about the self-expression, about saying things that were really, really true from my heart. The rest of it is the gravy, the rest of it's cool, but the most important part of it to me is that creation and expression. I was never going to let that go, I wouldn't have kept doing this if it couldn't have been mine."
That's always got to be at the centre of it all, otherwise what's the point? Was this all happening around the time you moved to Brooklyn?
"Yeah, I fell in love. We just finished the album in LA, and I hated LA. I realised I didn't fit in there. I was pretty isolated anyway; it was a great place to be alone. My house was kind of out of the way and for me and Terry to be in there writing music was great, but then when it came to just living there, it wasn't like I had a community, and I was far from my family. It wasn't my home, but I wasn't going back to Arkansas! I met Josh, and we fell in love fast. He lived in New York and he was talking like, 'Maybe I could come out to LA,' and I was like, 'Do not, please. I can live anywhere, let me come to you,' so I just packed up and went. I was done with that house, anyway. It was a chapter that was over, and I wanted to get out. But I was visiting him in Brooklyn and fell in love with Brooklyn too, and then New York after moving there. That was such a beautiful moment of independence too. I felt like when I lived in LA, I was supposed to live there because that's where the managers were and that's where the scene was and that's where everybody was, but New York felt like my choice. It was a beautiful place with so many artists. I met so many people in New York that felt purely organic. I'd meet them randomly through a friend, and then we'd start designing clothes together or making weird music together, being a part of an independent film score... all those things came out of the community in New York that is way beyond my career. I have lifelong friends that I made in New York, but it's all intertwined, so that was super beautiful. It's also the longest I've ever lived anywhere. I lived in New York for thirteen years."
Talking about that independence and fast-forwarding a little, in terms of Evanescence around that time, you put out the self-titled album and then obviously there were the legal disputes following on from that. That led to you being an independent artist for the first time since you were a teenager. What was that like?
"It was freeing, it was great. I just wanted my future. I have always believed in our future, and I wanted to have control of our future and not have to fight a fight to go forward. I got my way, but it takes so much energy out of you to constantly be fighting for your way. I don't think it's the way it's supposed to be. I'm not an independent artist now, and I'm not doing this alone but to be surrounded by people that love the band and support and believe in me is just a completely different experience. I have so much more space in my life to create, and that is what's the most amazing thing about it. It's cool because I have a kid now - my son Jack is six and he's fantastic, so much fun but that takes energy and time away as well. So, I can only imagine if I was now a mom and also having to fight the way I used to have to fight to make our music... there's no way. There's just not enough energy in a human."
That feels like a big thing coming into 'The Bitter Truth' too, in terms of that fight and having that perspective on the past. There's very much this idea across the album of using your voice and speaking up about things. Is that a big part of the message you're wanting to get out about everything that you and this band have been through?
"I have been doing it all along, it's just that the people that I was raging against were all around me. For once I'm able to think about other things, from my heart, my experiences in life and what I'm going through now and what I've seen, but also be able to revisit our history. This album isn't just about this moment, it is about my journey. Our recent single is a good example of that, in that where I am now, part of that is where I've been. I'm feeling a sense of being able to be all my selves in one moment. It's hard to explain. I'm sure that's going to sound weird, but in the music, it's possible. Anything is possible, there's this other place that you can go to through music and my music and I have this ancient, forever-relationship. We're able to go to a place that I can't go to anywhere else, and it lets me see myself for who I really am and who I could be, too. I don't pretend at 39 I know everything about myself and everything about who I will become, but the music is another realm to me sometimes, and it's wonderful to have. I'm so grateful for it in this time.
I lost my brother three years ago and obviously it's so hard for my family, but it pushed me into a place past any drama, any fighting about the band or within the band. It's none of that, that doesn't exist in this moment. We have full support and that's wonderful. Now I'm able to focus on something that's so much bigger than that, the meaning of life. What are we? What is our place in the world and in time and in the universe? And what does it mean? That kind of thinking is where I was at before the music industry entered my life, that's where I was at when we were making music for the first time. So, to come home to a place that isn't tainted by any of those outside factors... it's not that it's more pure or more real than before - it was real all along - but there's more room in me to focus on the bigger issues. In the perspective of time, when I look back at my life and go through some of those parts of the journey, I can see it from a more zoomed out perspective and there's not the fear that used to plague me before."
It's something that has been prevalent in Evanescence since the beginning, this idea of taking something very difficult and oftentimes deeply painful and spinning it into something of worth that feels healing, or cathartic. With that perspective on how far you've come, how do you look back on those early moments of the band? Do you think you'd be the person that you are now on this album without them?
"It's hard to say. I know the music would have been different, but my heart and my music are so intertwined. I think that who we are is a combination of a product of our experiences and the choices that we make, and the core person that we are on the inside to begin with. Everybody gets thrown different situations in life, everybody gets thrown different obstacles, everybody gets a different deck of cards, but it's the choices that you make that take you where you go and makes you who you are in the end. I always try my best to make honest and great choices for the future, not the moment. I have a sense now of peace and gratitude about everything, about where we are. Even the people in the past that I'm raging against in these songs, I still see the things about them that were human and the good that they gave to me too. So, it's also good for me to kind of tear down the monsters and remember that we're all flawed. Not to make it any less enraged and empowering, but I made plenty of mistakes too, I'm no superhero. It's in the music that I'm able to be my best self."
Evanescence's new album 'The Bitter Truth' is out now via Sony.
|
