Recoil: Interview with Amy Lee

[Thomas]

Such a cool and big interview. Check it out!

After selling twenty-five million records and winning two Grammy Awards, Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee had to reconnect with herself. Her band’s first two albums: 2003’s Fallen (which featured the smash singles “Bring Me To Life” and “My Immortal,” and won the Best New Artist Grammy in 2004) and 2006’s The Open Door (which followed the departure of founding guitarist Ben Moody, and featured the hit single “Call Me When You’re Sober”) took her all over the world, playing in front of thousands of adoring fans every night. Yet, in a lot of ways, she was the same little girl from Little Rock, Arkansas that she was when she formed the dark, hard-rock band with Moody in 1995 at the age of fifteen. Now thirty and happily married for the last five years, Lee has found a balance between her private identity and her rocker Evanescence persona. The band’s latest album, last fall’s self-titled Evanescence, debuted at Number One on the Billboard 200, and chronicles Lee’s return to the band after contemplating leaving it all behind her. Talking with Recoil via phone last month, Lee explained why she’s always stuck to her guns when it comes to her songs, why the band leads off their album and live show with “What You Want,” and why she’s never considered Evanescence to be a goth band.

You've had a really short break after playing a bunch of festivals in Europe already this summer. What was it like playing in Europe this time around?
It was awesome. It was a crazy tour that really went so many places. It actually started in Africa. It started in Morocco, and that was the first time we’ve ever played there, and it was such a cool experience. The fans were awesome and we actually got to see Morocco a little bit; spend a few days by the water, and I had no idea how beautiful it was. And then we went into Europe and it was awesome. We went to Ukraine and Romania and Hungary and Germany, and just so many places it’s hard to even name them all. We played quite a few places for the first time. Lebanon was also a huge highlight. It was the first time we played there. The crowd there was completely nuts. I feel like I’m going to be spoiled when we come back and play the States now.

How different is the experience of touring and playing live in Europe from playing here in the U.S. for you?
This is going to be a lot more relaxed, and easier on us to play, when we have a tour bus to go back to. On this [past European] tour we had a bus for two weeks out of the seven-week run, so really what you’re doing is playing a show, and then getting on a plane, and then playing a show, and then getting on a plane... and it gets to be a lot of airports and a lot of delays. You know how frustrating an airport is; just imagine if that was every other day. The shows were rad though! So I think the thing that will be missing is some of that hungry feeling that ends up happening in places where we’ve either never played before or haven’t played in five years or more. We love playing in the States, though, because it ends up being a family run. We’ve all got family all over the country, so we always have little family reunions backstage, hang out with our families, and then we’re able to go to sleep on the bus, and get a real night’s sleep before the show the next day.

You're getting ready to head back out on the road here in the U.S. this time with the Carnival of Madness tour. What are you most excited about getting back out there with that tour?
Yeah! I mean, we love Chevelle. We’ve toured with them before, but it’s been a really long time. We just ran into each other at a show recently, a couple months ago, and were like, ‘Yeah! I like you guys! This is going to be fun!’ They’re a great band. And Halestorm is really great, too. I think she’s got one of the best female voices out there, and she’s a really down to earth, cool person, too. So I think we’re going to have a lot of fun on this tour.

You put so much into each and every one of your live performances. How exhausting is it for you to be out on the road? How challenging is it for you to maintain your voice when you're touring?
It's physically exhausting, but it’s more mentally exhausting than anything. We've learned how to pace it, where, as long as I don't get sick, it's cool. You've got to get your sleep, you can't party too hard, you’ve got to drink a lot of water, a lot of hot tea, even when it’s hot outside, which is the worst. Playing like a summer festival outside in the heat and trying to sip a hot tea, forget about it. But, at the same time, I think it’s just the pressure and stress [Laughs] of all the shit that’s going on all the time that sort of gets to me after a while, where I’m like, ‘OK, I need a whole day where I don’t think about Evanescence.’

Does performing for thousands and thousands of your fans night after night kind of reinvigorate you though?
That’s the best part. It always is. There’s no way you can’t feel happy when you step out onstage and there’s thousands of people screaming along to the words that’s your song. That is always good. That’s my favorite part about touring. [Laughs]

I know that part of the reason why you took as much time off between [Evanescence’s last album, 2006’s] The Open Door and the new self-titled record is that you just needed to take time away from your Evanescence identity to be inspired, and to live your own life outside of the music industry machine, that whole album release tour cycle. How much of a challenge is it for you to maintain that balance, between being able to just be yourself, and still be the lead singer for Evanescence while you're on tour?
It’s a little bit of a challenge. More than anything it’s a little bit of an adjustment, because I live two completely polar opposite lives, and each one lasts for a couple years at a time. So, like, writing and recording, it’s so inward, you know? It’s so private, and I spend so much time indoors, creating and staying up all night, and kind of just being a cave girl zombie. And then we go out on tour and it’s all about the performance and interviews and looking good and sounding good, and getting thoughts across in every possible medium. So it’s weird because you go from being super introverted to super extroverted, and it just goes in a weird cycle. So it’s always an adjustment when we have to do the other thing. I’ve been on tour for a good long time now where I’m missing my family a little bit, and making my own schedule, I think that’s something that gets to me sometimes, because there’s something that I’m supposed to do [while on tour] and I have a little bit of a rebellious heart, and I don’t like doing what I’m supposed to do.

You mentioned missing your family. I know you got married in 2007. How has being married changed the sort of lifestyle you live while on the road, or like you said maintaining the balance between your two lifestyles?
It's definitely a balance. I’m always going to put my family and my husband first, but I do have a really understanding and cool husband, and he loves what I do, and he’s been able to come out on a lot of our tours. He was just on that crazy Euro run with us, which was good, because those can get a little lonely after a while. A lot lonely. But we had a lot of cool, fun adventures together. He’s not going to be coming out on this next one, but we’ll be in America, and it’ll be good. I’ll be seeing a lot of family on the road.

I've read that for a while during your break away from the band you weren't sure whether or not Evanescence would still be something you'd continue to pursue. How much did you struggle to come to terms with what the band meant to you during that point and time?
Absolutely I did, and that’s what a lot of the record is about. I’m singing about relationships, and it crosses over into my relationship with Evanescence all the time throughout the record. [Laughs] And it took some processing for me to synthesize what I wanted for the next chapter in my life, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted an Evanescence record. In fact if you’d have asked me at the right time, I would have said, ‘Absolutely not. I need something else now.’ Because I’d been so oversaturated with it for my whole adult life. But having all the time to myself to get inspired and start writing music, from a natural place, not telling it to be Evanescence. It just came out that way. That was inspiring to me because it kind of told me, ‘Oh yeah, that’s who I really am. That’s not a character I invented.’ So being able to embrace it in a really true and genuine way this time around has been good. And that’s what will end up getting you through at the end of the day, playing all those shows and staying on tour pretty much for a solid year and a half, what’s able to get you through at the end of it is that your heart really was in your work, and your thoughts and your feelings, and everything of you trying to be your best is in those songs. So when we get up onstage, and it’s time to work, and we sing songs, it feels like a great release, a real thing that I need to get off my chest. So there’s a real satisfaction in that, too.

You've said in some other interviews that you're always fighting for your own personal expression in some way. How much does it mean to you to stick to your guns?And how much do you hope that helps inspire your fans to believe in themselves and stick to their guns?
It means everything to me. It’s the one thing that I really have control over. Everything’s always going to get tossed around and kicked around and remixed and redone. Everything is so out of hand once the record’s done and the machine starts turning its wheels, but I’ve always stuck to my guns on the records, and literally that’s what gets me through, is I always have my music. It is a pure, true outlet for me. It’s just like a diary, but with way more production. [Laughs]

You guys led off the album off with "What You Want" and I know you've been starting your live sets with that song as well. When you were writing did you want that song to be a real mission statement about where the band is at now?
I feel like it was the perfect comeback song for this record. I feel like, I don’t know if it’s possible to sum up the whole record in one song, but I feel like it has a good taste of the flavor of the new record. And it’s got that pop hook. I’m a fan of hooks. I don’t care if that means that my melodies are pop. Great, I like good pop. I just think, what’s important for me, is that it’s a mixture between those catchy melodies, and hooks, and deep, real expression in the lyrics, and heavy music behind it, because it’s mirroring the deep feelings that are going on. So, I don’t know, I think “What You Want” is a great song. We all liked it. And you’ve kind of got to go with what you tap your foot to for the first single, at least a little bit. But really the other song that I’ve been most excited about as a single is “Lost In Paradise,” and that’s what we’re coming up on now. I love that song. It’s just truly personal, and I don’t know, it means a lot to me, and I just love singing it and performing it, and I’m excited for that to get some good attention.

I've read that you wrote "Lost In Paradise" partly as something of an apology to your fans for having stepped away from the band for so long. Why did you feel like you owed something like that to your fans?
I wouldn’t call it an apology. I don’t know how I was trying to describe. It’s hard to explain exactly what it is, but it’s sort of… it’s the expression of how I feel about coming back to Evanescence. And then you’ve just got to listen to the lyrics, because it’s too hard to explain. [Laughs] I have these feelings for sure.

For you, all along, how much has songwriting just been a way for you to make sense out of things in your own life?
It is, in a big way. It’s extra fulfilling because I see it help other people beyond just myself. In the beginning I would have told you that I just write for myself, but then once we start having people all over the world that are affected by it, and touched by our music, I started to see that they feel the way that I feel about it, and that’s incredible. I really think there’s something magic about music. It’s like a language that everyone can understand and it expresses something deeper than words can say by themselves. And so it gives you a lot of motivation to see that our music is doing good things for other people. You feel like you’re doing something good for somebody, and that feels instantly better than doing something good for yourself, so I’m getting a little bit of both.

You’ve always pushed yourself as a songwriter to expand the range of emotions and sounds in your music, and yet Evanescence still gets frequently described as a goth-rock or goth-metal band. How do you feel about the term goth still being used as much as it is in describing Evanescence?
I never have been [goth]. Our original Web site like in the ‘90s was called ‘We’re not goth.’ [Laughs] But I understand it, and there are plenty of goth kids that are our fans too. I think goth is kind of a silly, outdated word. I think our music is rock, first of all, but then we incorporate a lot elements that make it dark. Nine Inch Nails is a big influence. Depeche Mode. The things I have always been into that have inspired the band have always been a little bit on the darker side. I'll call it dark, but I won't call it goth, because anyone who spends three hours putting on makeup everyday isn't really thinking about anything more than that.

Source

[harridan]

Oh! 0.@ This looks cool. But I'll edit this post with an actual opinion on the interview when I wake up tomorrow

[rionka]

Cave girl zombie ;D
Thanks, it's cool interview.

[princeofpersia]

Cave girl zombie xD I think it really has the potential for some photoshop work.

it was great. but it was also a little sad...
sometimes we completely forget how hard their lives are. everything looks ok on the stage and behind the interviewers cameras but you really should BE there to understand what she is talking about ... and certainly these are just a little part of their problems. + we are talking about a recently married young lady ...
a simple "thank you" is not a good way to appreciate all these. but just want to thank you from the bottom of my heart Amy(and all the other guys) for all these hard work and sacrifices for Evanescence and its fans

thanx for sharing.

[marycourage]

such good questions!! I really liked reading this.
^an ohyes I agree with you princeofpersia.
You think that touring and all that is easypeasy most of the time, ugh I can't imagine being away from home for months at a time. D:

[deadlypoison]

It really is a sacrifice. For all of them. Sometimes we complain because they don't tweet too much or they don't seem happy when asking question in an interview but hey, I don't know if I could walk in their shoes. And I respect that.

[~Blu~Phnix~]

Wow, that was an amazing interview. I love her insight and openness. It really makes me appreciate, even more, what her and the guys (well and all the tour staff) do for a living. Her talking about the 180* between what it's like between records and touring was really interesting. She's talked about it before but they way she worded it here was beautiful and nice. As always, her talking about what drives her passion and how she has to feel it heart and soul is lovely.

[rionka]

Translating this to our native language is exactly whatchu want right now. It's so awesome ;D

[Carved in Stone]

What a brilliant interview!!

Its great to see Amy talking so openly about all the things that matter to her - the band, the music, touring, family, the fans

As others here have said, ther are some really good questions - and Amy's given great in-depth answers as well

Every time I read an in depth interview with Amy, I am very highly impressed with what she says, probably awestruck in fact!!

Well done Thomas for putting this up here - you're a star

[Lost Whispers]

Aug 24, 2012 8:40:25 GMT -5 Thomas said:

You’ve always pushed yourself as a songwriter to expand the range of emotions and sounds in your music, and yet Evanescence still gets frequently described as a goth-rock or goth-metal band. How do you feel about the term goth still being used as much as it is in describing Evanescence?
I never have been [goth]. Our original Web site like in the ‘90s was called ‘We’re not goth.’ [Laughs] But I understand it, and there are plenty of goth kids that are our fans too. I think goth is kind of a silly, outdated word. I think our music is rock, first of all, but then we incorporate a lot elements that make it dark. Nine Inch Nails is a big influence. Depeche Mode. The things I have always been into that have inspired the band have always been a little bit on the darker side. I'll call it dark, but I won't call it goth, because anyone who spends three hours putting on makeup everyday isn't really thinking about anything more than that.

[/blockquote]

Source[/quote]

My favorite part of the interview. I laughed when I read the first line
I never describe Ev as a goth band though. I think dark rock band describes them better.