Evanescence’s Amy Lee has shared some insight into the rollercoaster that was releasing the band’s debut album, Fallen.
As reported by Blabbermouth, Lee sat down for an interview with Alternative Press and spoke on how their record label was initially pretty hell bent on pitching Evanescence as a “female Linkin Park”.
Lee said, “The original fight was that the label wanted us to hold auditions and bring somebody into the band full-time to sing on most of the songs and make it a thing – try to be the ‘female Linkin Park.'”
“And I was, like, ‘I’ll think about it,’ for, like, an hour, and then we called them back, and I was, like, ‘We can’t do that. It’s not gonna happen. I’d rather start over. It’s just not who we are. And I don’t want that.'”
Lee continued, “And then they took away our funding and I moved back in with my parents. And it was hard after all the buildup – we got signed, I quit school, moved to L.A., and it’s, like, ‘No, actually, we’re coming home.’ We didn’t get actually to do it. It was hard, but in my heart, it was broken, but I knew that it was better than the alternative.”
At the time there seemed like there would be no compromise, but then the stars aligned and as Lee says, “It wasn’t totally selling my soul. And then, a few weeks later, we got a call, and they’d kind of come around to a compromise, and decided, ‘Hey, we have a cool movie placement thing with this Daredevil deal, and we pitched it to ’em as this male-female thing, ’cause there’s a fight scene, and that’s kind of what scored it.'”
“So now there’s a reason. And it’s only gotta be one song, it doesn’t have to be your whole identity changing. That made it okay for me. I tried one last time. I was like, ‘Can we just make the first single ‘Going Under’ first, and then do that?’ And, the rest is history.
Love Classic Rock?
Get the latest Classic Rock news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
For more on this topic, follow the Industry Observer.
