EVANESCENCE Singer Says Being Band Leader 'Has Never Been Easy'

August 27, 2012

Althought EVANESCENCE's early commercial success was an amazingly fulfilling experience, the band's lead singer, Amy Lee, is quick to point out that it did come with some drawbacks.

"The success has been a wonderful thing, and I wouldn't want to change it," Lee tells The Dedham Transcript. "But I wasn't really ready for it. The picture on the cover of [EVANESCENCE's seven-times-platinum debut album, 2002's] 'Fallen' is actually my 21st birthday, and everything was going so fast and so crazy. It was hard to be 21 or 22 and just living life and learning things and making mistakes and knowing the pressure's so much greater because you're in the public eye. There's a lot of responsibility there. We have a lot of young people that look up to us, and I don't want to hurt them. I'm a big sister from a big family, and I want to be a good role model. So there was definitely a lot to adjust to right away."

After EVANESCENCE co-founder, and Lee's songwriting partner, Ben Moody, quit the band in 2003, she was forced to assume the leader role, which she now says "has never been easy. It's something you really have to care about to keep it going, and I do love it. There has to be some point where somebody's got to be able to say, 'OK, this is what we're gonna do.' And that covers all manner of things. It means the responsibility of when anybody screws up, when anybody leaves, when anybody does anything that looks bad. It's all on me. You have to take the high road, stand for the band, and be able to speak for us in a way that's positive and good and gonna keep us motivated and going and keep our fans believing in us. But the most important thing is the music. I always want the music to be the focus, and I always want the music to be growing and evolving. And the fans are the biggest motivator on the road because their happiness totally feeds us."

EVANESCENCE is touring behind its self-titled third major label album, which came out last October — five years after 2006 sophomore effort "The Open Door".

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