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Most current music interviews are held in sequestered quarters like recording studios and conference rooms, sometimes in the presence of record label or industry personnel. In a refreshing and liberating twist, Evanescence singer Amy Lee freely conducts a recent batch at a well-known coffee shop nestled alongside Union Square in Manhattan, unaccompanied by any publicists. Shortly after my arrival, the 24-year-old star politely wraps up her current discussion, then switches booths to commence her Metal Edge dialogue. However, the hostess evidently becomes irked by Lee’s unauthorised seat change – despite the fact that this is a diner, not a five star restaurant, and there are almost no customers – and requests us to retreat to the bar in the back, which has yet to open. So much for drinks.
It’s a decidedly un-rock star-ish moment as we comply, but Lee shrugs it off. Whether or not the crabby hostess knows whom the singer is or not seems unimportant. Unlike many rockers or celebs, Lee chooses not to make a scene or shriek, “Do you know who I am?!?” It doesn’t seem to be here style. “I don’t care enough to be mean,” she admits. “At the same time, I just don’t want to be that person. I just want to be normal and stay grounded.”
It might be hard to consider staying grounded after her group’s mainstream debut album Fallen rose to the top of the charts three years ago and has since sold a staggering 12 million copies worldwide, half of them in America. But Lee – who is casually dressed in a blouse and skirt with her long, flowing, dark hair tied back, in contrast to her more dramatic stage persona – does not exude the pretentiousness or sense of self-importance one might associate with a rock star who has made her fortunes writing epic, soul baring songs. She comes off more like a good friend who just wants to kick back and chat. Indeed the backstage DVD footage on the Anywhere But Home live release reveals Lee to be not only intelligent and artistic but also mischievous as she gets drunk, trashes one backstage area with her bandmates, moons after a show, and makes as much of an ass of herself as the boys on tour.
“Yeah, I know, I’d dumb,” quips the classically trained vocalist and pianist. “I look at it now and go ‘ohhhh,’ but I had to do it. My Dad and I were watching it together and we got to the part ‘Evanescence Unleashed’.” Then she politely excused herself and went to bed while he continued watching. “I didn’t bring it up in the morning, and he never brought it up.” Even though the footage is not shocking, she emphasizes that “it’s hard to watch with your Dad when you’re a girl.”
Her father should not be too surprised by his daughter’s shenanigans, considering that 25 years ago he was singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter for a country rock act called The Hard Luck Band. He aspired to develop a music career, but when his wife became pregnant with Lee (followed later by four other kids), the game plan changed, and he returned to more stable employment. “I took the torch from there,” remarks Lee. “He’s living vicariously through me.”
There has been plenty for him to experience through his daughter’s rise to stardom. Since she was an early teen, Lee and guitarist Ben Moody wrote and performed a slew of original tunes, resulting in their self-released 2000 album Origin. Already collaborating six years by then, the Arkansas-based duo developed a local following and caught the attention of Wind-Up Records, who had been experiencing massive success with Creed and Drowning Pool. Wind-Up’s A&R guru Diana Meltzer took the band under her wing, which then included keyboardist David Hodges, giving them a year to polish their songs and spend time in L.A. By March 2003, the Dave Fortman-produced Fallen appeared on CD shelves nationwide.
Fallen immediately soared to #6 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart— thanks to the emotionally wrought single “Bring Me To Life,” which featured an exchange with rapper/vocalist Paul McCoy from fellow Wind-Up act 12 Stones – and quickly catapulted the band to stardom. By late 2005, Evanescence had toured the world for a year and a half, sold six million copies of Fallen domestically, made four videos, and won two Grammies, not to mention a plethora of international awards.
There was a downside to this accelerated ascent to superstardom. Moody had grown increasingly unhappy on the road – he later revealed that, beyond artistic differences with Lee, he was battling drug addiction and bipolar disorder – and decided to quit the band in the middle of their European tour. Former Cold guitarist Terry Balsamo replaced Moody as guitarist and co-songwriter. Lee did not lament Moody’s departure too heavily, relieved that the tense environment on the road had dissipated. But she now faces the daunting task of writing a follow-up album to one of the biggest rock debuts in history without her chief collaborator by her side.
It has been said that you have your whole life to prepare for your first album and then one year to make your second. Lee ignored that when she was writing and recording The Open Door and chose not to rush the creative process, which took two years and allowed her to progress her vocal abilities and explore new songwriting ideas. While the new Evanescence album is less overtly metal than Fallen, it’s a worthy follow-up that carves out its own distinct niche.
“I didn’t give myself a time limit at all,” Lee declares of the creation of The Open Door, predominantly co-written with Balsamo. “I think it definitely took longer than most people when they’re making their second album. I just started writing and thought to myself, ‘I don’t care if this takes five years. I want to make an album that is awesome, that I love, and that I feel is worthy of being a full piece of art.”
Lee credits producer Dave Fortman, who also worked on Fallen, with being the “missing link” in the studio, challenging her to further develop, change and rearrange songs. His sense of humor also eased any tense moments in the studio, this is a man who has said that a reunion of his former band Ugly Kid Joe probably couldn’t happen because there wasn’t enough hair left in the group.
“It’s just stand-up comedy in the studio every time,” enthuses Lee. “And he gets it. I feel a lot of people get certain aspects of our sound, who we are, and where we’re going, but not a lot of people get the whole thing. I really feel like he gets it. I feel like he gets me, which is important.
In the past, Lee felt constrained by Moody in terms of songwriting, and the duo also had to worry about their label looking over their shoulders on the first album. “It was harder because we couldn’t say ‘No, we’re gonna do this’ about anything really,” she recalls. “Luckily, they didn’t try to completely change songs.”
There were minimal compromises this time around for bandmates Balsamo and John LeCompt (guitars), William Boyd (bass), and Rocky Gray (drums). When told that the original, rap-free demo of “Bring Me To Life” from Fallen is better, she concurs. “It wasn’t our choice”, Lee reveals of the song’s final and most famous version. “That’s all I say. I didn’t want to do it, and we kind of had to do it. It was the only thing on the last record where I felt like I sacrificed something, and it wasn’t my original vision. I hated myself for it for a while, but then I said, ‘Whatever, we’re doing really good, so okay.’ I’ll never do it again. We had to do [only] one thing that we didn’t want to do to get Fallen out.” And it was not the only hit single.
That said, fans might be surprised by the R&B-flavoured vocal melody and piano chords that introduce the lead single “Call Me When You’re Sober”. But it’s not really a stretch once those crunchy guitars kick in, and the soulful chorus breaks new ground for the band without straying from its signature style. “I don’t think it represents the sound of the whole album, because all the songs are different. They all have a different feeling. That one has more soul. I remember thinking when I was first writing the melody that it wasn’t for our band. But it said what I wanted to say so well, and it was so fresh and different. Terry wrote a badass riff, and we made a rad song out of it.”
The music on The Open Door spans the R&B feel of the rocking lead single to the crunching, Goth-flavored metal of “Cloud Nine” to the Tori Amos moments of “Lithium” to the reinvention of “Lacrymosa” from Mozart’s Requiem, which utilizes choral loops from one performance of the piece meshed with rock instrumentation and new lyrics by Lee. There are plenty of heavy guitars on the album, although Lee’s piano plans a more prominent role now, and her current melodies tend to focus on piano and vocals. There are still orchestral strings and choir present on some tracks, just as on Fallen, but they are not as bombastic and dominant as they were before. Thus all the requisite Evanescence ingredients are to be found, but this time, they serve up a tasty concoction of a different flavour. And the group even recorded enough material for three planned B-sides – “Together Again,” “If You Don’t Mind,” and “The Last Song I’m Wasting On You”.
The earlier Tori Amos comparison is an appropriate one. That now legendary performer has inspired young women with her empowered, feminist lyrics. When asked if she feels any sense of responsibility in terms of performing to her own female fan base, Lee – who, like Amos, dresses girlishy but stylishly, without bearing cleavage or exposing thongs like many other female pop/rock singers – is mixed on the idea.
“It’s hard, because I don’t write music to get a message out there, to get somebody or something or tell somebody how they should live,” Lee asserts. “I’m writing about my own life and trying to solve my own problems, and in the end, I think that helps some people solve their own. During that song [“Lithium”], I was definitely thinking about my personal life, which I always do. I’m trying to tell myself stuff, to tell myself to myself to get out of it and let it go. I never really try to hurt myself. I try to get better.”
Despite all that has transpired in her life (more on that below), Lee seems like a happy person today, although she uses the word “stable.” “I did the therapy thing, used it, and I don’t need anymore,” she discloses. “It’s good for you. Some people really need it and don’t use it, and other people use it and rely on it and don’t even get better. There are times in life when people need it, and I needed it when I went. I’m glad I did it. I learned about myself. Now I’m dating a therapist,” she adds with a laugh. “He’s awesome. He’s very stable. We talk about stuff, and I let him talk to me about his stuff too. That’s new for him.”
The Open Door is definitely an apt title given Lee’s tumultuous life during the past three years. “So many things have changed in my life by now,” she acknowledges. “A lot of things about the band have changed. The writing process was completely different. I felt free to do whatever I wanted, and I felt confident to try whatever I felt. I didn’t feel trapped in a box like I really have in so many areas of my life.”
The past year has certainly been full of drama for Lee. She broke up with her boyfriend of two years, Seether frontman Shaun Morgan, with whom she re-recorded the ballad “Broken,” which became a hit for his band. Then her guitarist Terry Balsamo suffered a stroke, from which he has steadily been recovering. Finally, her former manager sued her for monies allegedly owed, to which she countered with charges of sexual harassment and professional negligence, among other claims. After that list is rattled off, Lee flashes a kind of distressed smile, as if to say, “Heavy stuff, huh?”
Naturally, all of this behind-the-scenes upheaval certainly stoked her creative fires. “It seems like the struggles in my lie make the best music,” contemplates Lee. “I fortunately had plenty of struggle to write about throughout our whole time off. You know what? I don’t look at it like I’ve had a bad year or anything. I’ve just grown and learned a lot. All the lyrics are about personal experience, most of them about what is happening right then.”
While the track listing reflects Lee getting over her previous relationship, starting with “Sweet Sacrifice” and “Call Me When You’re Sober,” then going through the other personal turmoil she recently experienced, the songs were not written in chronological order but fell into place later. Lee dwelled heavily on her relationship for a time and can look back on it with clearer vision.
“It was hard at first, but at least I felt like he could understand and not feel guilty,” Lee recollects of dating the Seether singer. “I didn’t have the guilt that I was used to because it wasn’t like he didn’t know or understand why I couldn’t call if I was busy all day. At the same time, it ended up being hard on my end because he was always busy, and I felt like I wasn’t getting any attention. But then again, we toured together for a long time. We went to Europe, so we got to be together.” She says they have not spoken for a long time.
Many of the songs on The Open Door move past relationship woes. The hard rocking “All That I’m Living For” focuses on the band itself. Its genesis came from a realization Lee had one say that her band was her life. “I don’t do anything else,” she says. “I’m writing for the band, touring for the band, doing an interview about the band, or thinking about the next thing I want to write. It’s my life, and I love it, but it’s a love/hate relationship.”
While The Open Door maintains the dark, brooding vibe that made Fallen so appealing and eerily seductive, the closing ballad “Good Enough” is decidedly upbeat and showcases an Amy Lee that is letting someone in and who sounds happily in love. She thinks it is the bravest track on the album. “It’s totally scary to be so vulnerable when I know however many metalheads are going to diss it because it’s not the exact same thing [as the other songs],” Lee says. “And it doesn’t end with, ‘And then he died’ or ‘I pushed him off a cliff’ or ‘He’s a ghost really.’ It’s so cool to me and weird to me. I’ve never written a happy song, ever.
The idea of an upbeat song closing the dark album actually makes sense. It was the last song written, reflects her current life, and is also a logical extension of “Bring Me To Life,” which was calling out to someone to thaw her from the depths of an emotional iceberg. “Good Enough” also caps off her personal evolution over the last year. “I was struggling with this relationship constantly, then breaking up, and in the end realizing that I’m allowed to feel good,” Lee says. “And it’s such an amazing realization to me because I’ve spent my whole life feeling that I have to be unhappy. I know it’s partially because of music, and also I think it’s my guilt. I have always had guilt and fear that has kept me down.”
When asked to pinpoint the source of her guilt, Lee muses, “The mistakes I’ve made, the people that hate me, just whatever. I think about it too much. I’m finally at the point where I don’t care. I don’t care if you hate me. I don’t care if you hate this song. I love it! I’m allowed to be happy.”
“It’s kind of hard to let go of, ‘What are they going to think of me?’” she confesses. “I don’t care anymore. I’ve gained a lot of confidence just through letting people say mean things to me or whatever behind my back. I’ll just be like, ‘I don’t care about you. You’re a miserable person.’”
The vocalist also tries to stay grounded in terms of her perspective on herself and her art. “I love what I do, I love the fans and I love seeing their reactions,” Lee concedes, “but I’ve never have gotten so egotistical like, ‘Yes, I do deserve all this. You love me for me.’ I think what they really are embracing is the music and a piece of me. You can’t really know someone just from hearing their songs.”
While she thinks that “Good Enough” is the bravest song lyrically, the most personal on The Open Door is “Like You”. “It is about something that’d hard to even talk about but feels good to write about,” explains Lee. “It’s about my sister who passed away when I was a little girl. I was 6 years old and she was 3. It’s affected my life and definitely affected my music writing, and it’s made me who I am. It’s one of those things that happens early enough in life that it forms you. I think in a lot of ways I made it a thing that I can use in a positive way in my life. I’ve learnt from it and grown up, and I’ve always felt older. Twenty-four sounds young to me, it’s weird.”
Having lost a sister at such a young age put things in perspective for Lee, who says she cherishes making music and wants to love. “What else is there?” she ponders. “I don’t care about the stupid things as much as I would if I hadn’t been through that. The song [‘Like You’] is about me from the perspective of a child back then, and I go back to that place a lot of times. I went there and wrote the song that way. It’s not the kind of thing that I would normally say on a megaphone in front of millions of people.”
“It’s something that changes you,” the singer stresses. “I love her, and I will always love her. Her spirit is always with us. I feel like I’ll always want to have a little place for her on every record. On the last record, it was ‘Hello,’ and I wrote that from the perspective of a child. I was talking about it in a little bit of a different way, but it’s the same inspiration.”
One other song that actually did not make the album, but was also written with children in mind, was the unreleased tune that Lee was asked to contribute to the soundtrack for the blockbuster film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. The untitled song was ultimately rejected, although she also wrote “Lacrymosa” for the film.
“I thought it would be awesome for the opening scene, but they wanted something original,” says Lee of the Mozart cover. “I wrote something else that was moody, dark and really cool, and the director wanted something that felt more hopeful. The song was about saying goodbye and moving on, and that’s what they’re doing in [the beginning of] the movie when they’re leaving their parents and going into some scary, unknown place. That’s how I wrote it, from their perspective. I thought the song was perfect. And it wasn’t like I put a bunch of guitars in it. I made stuff that was cool and vibey but was still haunting, and I think that’s the part they didn’t like.”
On the other hand, there are probably millions of fans dying to hear it, and it will be interesting to hear what they think of The Open Door once it is released. Lee has been anxiously awaiting the album to surface, but she is also being patient in terms of Balsamo’s recuperation and physical therapy following his stroke. He needs to regain his guitar chops, and his progress has been positive. He should be ready for battle by the time the band commences their world tour, which is scheduled to start the day of the album’s release, October 3rd. Balsamo’s stroke certainly surprised everyone, especially as it struck someone so young. “It’s really been an eye opener for all of us, not to party so hard for one thing,” remarks Lee. “But also, life is short. It was a shocker for all of us.” Such real-life drama has certainly provided fodder for Lee’s dark music. Indeed, one might coin her a “closet Goth,” perhaps by her outlook more than her lifestyle, since she never dove too deeply into that shadowy musical world and has never called herself a Goth, despite a childhood fascination with Halloween. “This is a horrible thing to say, but I’ve never been one of those people that searched really hard for some random, indie thing and gotten into a genre so much that you’re just all about these little new bands,” remarks Lee. “I loved certain things that touched me and have held onto them and still listen to a lot of the same CDs I’ve always listened to. I love Depeche Mode, they’re Goth to me. And I love Portishead, they’re Goth to me.”
Evanescence does share some of the goth angst generated by such European headbangers as Nightwish and Within Temptation. One band that they have been routinely compared to is Lacuna Coil, the Italian band that some metalheads have accused Evanescence of ripping off. “When we started touring, I [first] heard Lacuna Coil,” recalls Lee. “I’d never heard of them, ever. I don’t listen to them or have their CDS. But I guess they’ve been around for a while, and then we were in Europe, this Italian fan gave me a CD, and I listened to it. I think it’s good.”
The Evanescence singer has become familiar with the aforementioned Goth-metal bands and respects them, even if she is not really a big fan. “I like them, but all of them to me, and this is just me, go a little bit further beyond the line of cheesy Goth,” Lee believes. “I embrace certain elements of gothic music, but I’m not trying to play a part. I don’t want to become a character. I still want to write about me and be able to write ‘Good Enough’ – and have that okay because that’s who I really am – instead of dressing like a vampire all the time and playing a part of someone who’s singing from a tomb. I want to be real.”
When told that she seems so upbeat for someone who writes such sad songs, Lee cheerily counters, “But I have so much fun being dark. I have so much fun being sad.” Upon being teased about the next album turning into a happy pop record since she seems more at ease, she vigorously denies the possibility. “I feel like I’ve got that out of my system. I’m happy. I feel good now. I feel free. That’s why the album is called The Open Door because I feel like all the doors in my life I pushed open, and now I can do whatever I want.”
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2 September 2006, 12:30
Rioterra 
