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| Amy O'Brian, Vancouver Sun interview |
| Tuesday, January 16, 2007 |
Amy Lee has the kind of fame, money and dark persona that would make it no surprise if she were a prickly, reluctant interview subject. In fact, it wouldn't be at all shocking to hear at the last minute that she'd cancelled an interview. It would be just the kind of diva behaviour you might expect from a Grammy-winning, multi-platinum-selling artist.
But the 25-year-old frontwoman for the goth-rock band Evanescence calls directly from her Montreal hotel room not a minute late and doesn't seem to worry for a second about optics or her image. Asked how she's doing, she responds as if no one has asked her that simple question all day.
"Tonight is the first show of the tour. There's multiple stress factors pressing on me right now. We only had one day of rehearsal and there's a lot of new stuff going on," she says quickly and eagerly, in a tone that suggests she hasn't slept in days and, despite her experience, still suffers from opening-night nerves.
"I think my brain's about to blow up."
In addition to worrying about the timing of when the piano is going to rise up out of the floor and when the fake snow is going to fall, Lee and her band will be playing two songs they've never played live. And, until it's time for wardrobe and make-up in a few hours, she'll be on the phone and in front of cameras, answering questions about the tour, the new record and her ex-boyfriends.
It's hard not to ask about the exes. After all, one of them -- Ben Moody -- founded Evanescence with Lee when they were still teenagers and co-wrote the songs that made them international celebrities with their first major-label album, Fallen. He left the band abruptly a few years ago in the middle of a European tour.
And the other, Shaun Morgan of the band Seether, entered rehab just a couple of months before the new album's first single -- bluntly titled Call Me When You're Sober -- hit the airwaves.
It's fair to say the exes have had an influence on the band's music.
But while Lee is more than happy to talk in general terms about the hardship of living with someone who has an addiction, and how liberating it was to write the new album with a new cast of characters, she stops short of mentioning names.
"I'm so tired of talking about old boyfriends, I feel like it's unfair and it makes me look bad," she says when asked if Call Me When You're Sober is about Shaun Morgan.
But she is very comfortable talking about addiction and talking about the writing of the album's first hit single.
"I felt like the album was done after that song was written because I felt purged completely. It was everything that I really wanted to say, even though it was completely blatant and not masked by metaphor or anything like that. It was just real. I felt like I had actually really let it all go," she says. "This is about being the person who has to live with that [addicted] person and I think that's something that really needs to be talked about.
"It's something I definitely dealt with a lot and was dying to get out of my system. It's just so frustrating and angering."
Lee, who hails from Little Rock, Ark., says the writing process for the new album was pleasantly devoid of the hang-ups and road-blocks she encountered while writing Fallen with Moody.
This time around, she was writing with Terry Balsamo, who she says was entirely supportive and open to all ideas -- leading to the title of the album Open Door.
"The doors were open to us to be creative and free and start from scratch. It felt before like there was a lot of pressure and a lot of baggage and a lot of stuff that, I don't know, this time around wasn't there for a lot of reasons," she says.
"Between line-up changes and also the respect we earned from the label and the industry since doing so well the first time -- they kind of left us alone to make our music this time instead of being very controlling.
"So this time we really just kind of turned off the phone and wrote for a year and made our own album. It felt amazing and I love it so much and I think it's more grown-up and better and a more complete piece of art."
Lee's former writing partner Moody is now writing songs for American Idol-turned-Grammy-winner Kelly Clarkson and paparazzi favourite Lindsay Lohan. Lee, on the other hand, moved on to write some deeply dark songs about death, losing control, anger and love. On Like You, she goes so far as to sing that she longs to "lie cold in the ground like" her sister, who died at the age of three.
"With all my lyrics, they're inspired by my heart and my life and my experiences, so that song, like all of them, is just from something that moved me enough to write a song," she says. "It's poetic, but it is based on a real feeling that I had before."
Despite the dark eyeliner, jet black hair and gloomy lyrics, Lee is surprisingly optimistic and almost bubbly during our conversation.
She talks about loving her band and being proud of Balsamo for recovering so quickly from a severe stroke he suffered in late 2005.
But she fails to tell me she's in love.
A couple of days later, Lee announces on MuchMusic that her decidedly un-rocker boyfriend has proposed to her the night before. Certain reports are that he's a therapist.
Maybe that has something to do with her sunshiney attitude and rational outlook on life.
"I just try to see the big picture . . . I love this band and I love our music, but I don't love the industry and the scene and the craziness of it all. It doesn't mean everything to me.
"If there's a mistake in the show tonight, it's not the end of my world and if one of the props fails or whatever, it's like who cares? It's really about the music and more than just being about the music, it's about our happiness and our lives.
"So yeah, I'm stressed but my head's not really going to explode because [life] is a lot bigger than just this."
aobrian@png.canwest.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
source - HERE |
posted by lacrymosa @ 4:20 AM   |
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