EVANESCENCE : FISHNET’S TALKING

-Ben : Actually no, we formed a band like the first week we met...

-Amy : But it took us a long time to actually put out the album, because we’ve been writing for eight years now, but Ben and I just locked ourselves up and wrote for the first six years we know each other and finally we started to make a real album once we’ve signed to Wind Up : so, it’s eight years in the making !

-Were the songs on the album already written before or did you write special songs for it ?

-Ben : Some of each ; there’s some of the songs that we never recorded before this and some songs were some of the first ones we ever wrote together, they were just reworked and rewritten over the years, so it’s kind of a compilation of our entire writing experience together, the whole time we’ve been together : there’s a lot of history in that record !

-Amy : Yes, for sure ! Many of them were written over the past few years, the majority I would say. But pieces and ideas from ages ago are definitely made for this record.

-What bands did you like before you started ?

-Amy : That’s a long time ago ! Tori Amos...older Michael Jackson, Bjork, Danny Elfman...

-Ben : And still inspire us ? Korn, Tool, Chevelle, but I’ve always been inspired by Metallica.

-Amy : And also, obviously, we have a classical influence, and not soundtrack but score movies influence too, like Danny Elfman and Hans Zimmer, and in fact all genres of music.

-How did you meet your producer, Dave Fortman ?

-Ben : Dave Fortman was in New Orleans, he produced other records on our label and our label suggested to go there and meet him, hang out with him, so we came for an evening and a diner, and it clicked, just like that !

-Amy : The truth is, of any producer we could have chosen, Dave Fortman, from the very beginning understood where we wanted to end up with this record, he understood the vision far beyond, just as the two of us understand each other from the beginning of songs to the end of it. I’ve never really met anyone that completely understood the vision of where it’s coming from beside the band. And when we met Dave, we sort of discussed ideas for the album and he told us his ideas and we instantly knew that he got it ; and if we worked with him, we would end up with the record we wanted. He’s a good guy and an hilarious comedian, everyday was like a stand up comedy !

Ben : I’m very picky about people who do things like that, but he’s just a genius, I would work with him...

(both) : ...any day !

-Will you work with him on a next record ?

-Amy : We would love to !

-Ben : Obviously, it’s up to him, and scheduling and things like that, but I honestly can’t imagine finding another person that we’d have been connected like that.

-Amy : We’re open minded to try new things always, but the truth is we know we’ll work with him on a great record.

-So it’s important for you to form a kind of family with a producer who knows you very well ?

-Amy : Yes : find the right producer and stick with him !

-Ben : You’re right, because it’s an intimate process to create something like that, and it’s good when you have a family atmosphere and of course an atmosphere of trust.

-Did you or do you have a model role as a female singer ? Bjork ? Tori Amos ?

-Ben : As far as singers are concerned, if I could sing, one of my favourite vocalists in the world is the Hootie and the blowfish singer ! And Seal.

-Amy : That’s random ! I am very inspired by Bjork and Tori Amos, Tori Amos being my newer favorite, mostly, honestly, because of her lyrics even more than her vocals, but Bjork influenced me over the past like seven years : I love her because she doesn’t seem to be trying to sound good, the sole purpose of her singing is to express these so strong emotions, as to me as well music is emotion, passion, feeling, I wanna feel like the artist feels and Bjork has brought me so much emotion that he drove me to tears, so she’s very inspirational to me. I’m also very inspired by Jonathan Davis of Korn, because again his vocals and lyrics are very emotional and passionate.

-Talking about Bjork, would you like to do as much experiments as she does on record and on stage ?

-Amy : That’s a lot of experimentation !

-Ben : It’s fine as far as like putting it out of Evanescence, I don’t know about going as far she gets to go, but in our own time for our own enjoyment we love to experiment and go way out there.

-Amy : I think we do experiment that much. Obviously we haven't been doing it for as long, but I'll never censor myself or stop myself from doing something because I'm afraid of what somebody might think of the way our music sounds, we simply write to please ourselves. So I’m all about experiment, it feels good to do all kinds of music, but it’s true, it just depends whether or not it ends up good enough to make it to another album !

-The songs are very diverse in ‘Fallen’ : metal, gothic, pop sometimes : how would you definite your style if you had to?

-Amy : It’s many things combined into one...

-Ben : It’s hard, I don’t know how to call it...

-Amy : You would probably have seven words to define a genre to call us ! We are played on rock radio stations...

-Ben : So first and foremost, we are a rock band, but there’s so much more to it : we have orchestra and choirs...

-Amy : ...programming, loops, tribal, everything. We don’t care to stick to a particular style.

-Ben : We’got to a point now where whatever we do is going to sound like us, we have a definable guitar sound, and a definable vocal sound, you know Amy’s voice when you hear it and it’s kind of like you know the guitar sound when you hear it, so now It’s just like we can go all over the map or whatever and I think it still gonna sounds like us, but we don’t really stick to one like if we had to be this way and if we write a song and it doesn’t fit into metal or gothic, then we can't use it.

-Amy : It’s just whatever fits into what we love, which just happen to be a very broad spectrum of musical styles.

-And how is your audience ?

-Ben : It’s really broad, which is surprising, it’s really all ages and all types of people.

-Amy : The age spectrum is huge and it’s so flattering to see that people who like all kinds of different music and people of all ages would come and enjoy our music because it’s genuine, I think everyone that hears our music can feel that we’re speaking about our lives and we genuinely feel something and we're artists not marketable puppets ! So that’s a great thing we do have a broad spectrum of fans, that’s a great feeling.

-The tracks are always very melodic, catchy, very song oriented ; is it your preference instead of long pieces of music ?

-Amy : It’s hard for me to say what was intentional, because honestly we just write to please ourselves, we write music that feels good to us, that sounds right, I don’t know really how to explain that, but we’re not trying to make it so that people could sing along with it, but it’s so that I would like to sing along with it, that’s all I can say.

-Ben : It comes out that way.

-It must be good for you on stage ?

-Amy : Things have been so great at our shows !

-Ben : it’s fun to perform this record live.

-Have you been surprised by this success ?

-Ben : I was very quick !

-Amy : It came very fast : I don’t know what to say about it, except that I was totally excited, everybody want to be successful and it’s been so...

-Ben : We’ve got an E-mail the other day, saying : ‘Congratulations, you’re the number one song in America’, they showed the BTS charts and we were just over Linkin Park, we were the number one most played song in America, and it doesn’t seem real !

-Amy : It’s wonderful, honestly, it really hasn’t sunk in, which is kind of a good thing, you don't want to take it all too seriously. You don't want to depend on all the good things happening because good things don’t happen like this forever. We’re just enjoying every day. Who knows ? But you just can’t plan that.

-Ben : You don’t want to become dependent on it, but it’s been awesome. We're taking it all in stride but it’s cool because what it does is, what success translates to is people coming to the show like knowing the words of the songs, wanting to have a great time, people singing along and everybody have a good time and that’s the best part for us, because it’s very cool when people show up and you can see on their faces that they’re excited to be there, it makes you feel better, makes you perform better, makes you feel that you’re doing a good job.

-Amy : You feel their energy.

-How did you choose the name of the band ?

-Amy : Ben showed up one day at my house with a dictionary and said we had to find a name because obviously every band, or most bands, ponder over the name forever like it’s so important. And in the end, I think it really is. It all depends of the music that you write, but anyway we decided on ‘Evanescence’ because it was a beautiful and unusual word as we hope our music will be, and in the end it dissipates like vapor, and I like Ben’s interpretation of the meaning :

-Ben : I just think that Evanescence best sums up the way we are as human beings, their life is very frail, temporary, and from the day you’re born, you’re sort of fading away so everything you do should matter and you should seize the moment.

-You released yourself several Ep, and then you’ve been signed to Wind UP records, Sony records : how did it happen ?

-Ben : Just some local things...

-Amy : It’s very small and, honestly, we didn’t really release that...

-Ben : It was just fifty or hundred copies here and there, like baby bands do when you first get started, we were teenagers, we wanted to sell some cd’s at our shows, they weren’t like official releases, they just happen to be early demos and songs, just to spread the word : ‘We’re from Little Rock, Arkansas’.

-It was like business cards for you, but it meant something...

-Ben : You’re totally right, all bands do that ! But people should look for our lp, which is better than the old stuff !

-There’s a nice video for ‘Bring me to life’, but do you intend to put out some videos in the future, maybe on a DVD with live stuff or home videos?

-Ben : Yes, actually I film everyday for a tour DVD, I film everything we do.

-Amy : Eventually, it gonna take a little while, because we wanna put together a lot of footage from our live tour and other stuff.

-Ben : It will be toward the end of the tour : after touring for this record, we wanna make more videos to put together a nice compilation .

-Amy : We love putting out extra stuff !

-Ben : We were planing from day one to do stuff like that, you’re gonna do all that kind of stuff , and here soon, there gonna be more videos contained on the website, if you wanna see what we’ve been up to on the road, we’re gonna start putting clips and funny stuff which happen on the road.

-You participate to the Daredevil soundtrack, but would you enjoy to compose a full soundtrack or a score for a movie ?

-Amy : I would love to do scores someday, but it’s gonna take a while because because both of us will really concentrate on Evanescence right now, but...

-Ben : It would be nice to maybe one day score film as Evanescence, as Amy and I.

-Amy : That could be really cool and actually, before our record deal started, I was in school for it, that's what I wanted to train for, that’s what I was really gonna do, ‘cause no band ever get signed, no band ever puts out a record.

-Ben : I was actually hired to score an independent film, which was delayed for an entire calendar year, and I got called because they're completing it and I can no longer do it, and my uncle is the director, an independent film director, and he hired me two years ago to score his next film and it just happens that we’re too busy to do it now.

-Amy : That’s ok, we’ll get around to doing it. I know that’s something you wanna do !

-Ben : The Daredevil soundtrack went Gold in America, which is big for a soundtrack. There’s a lot of big names on it, Saliva, Drowning Pool with Rob Zombie, Chevelle...Drowning pool are great guys.

-Amy : They’re looking for a singer, attempting to continue.

-Could you tell some records which changed your life ?

-Amy : Pearl Jam's "Ten".

-Ben : Yes, "Ten" was good. I loved "Throwing copper" by Live.

-Amy : Soundgarden's "Superunknown" has been on my top five records of all time for the past five, seven years. There’s so many bands from the grunge period, like Nirvana ?

-Ben : An album which had a big impact on me, but it’s more recent, is the score to Donnie Darko, which is one of my favorite films actually : so for we started today with a photo shoot I watched it this morning and right before we started interviews I was listening to the soundtrack too.

-Amy : Absolutely, that’s my favorite independant film, even more than ‘Dancer in the dark’, which is saying a lot.

And ‘Thriller’.

-Ben : I was going to say that : ‘Thriller’ is an album that has been important to me from day one, because the first music video I ever saw was Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ and it made me obsessed with horror movies, dark music and Michael Jackson in general like I was a huge Michael Jackson fan ; of course, the way Michael Jackson fans go I don’t really count as a huge one, but for me, as far as me actually being a fan, I was very devoted to Michael Jackson in growing up.

-Amy : I will also say Portishead’s ‘Dummy’, like I wore that CD out for sure that influenced me during our first writings together very much.

-Would you enjoy to do something on stage like Marilyn Manson for example does with make up and theatrical stuff and maybe pictures of film ?

-Amy : Oh yeah, we wanna put on a real show.

-Ben : We’re gonna do videos and stuff behind us, in the way Nine Inch Nails do.

-Amy : We’re just waiting to be doing the huge venues, and the thing is right now we’re really loving doing this clubs, big clubs but clubs full of people, really intimate , but we wanna do that as long as we can, because it’s hard to go back ; then we’ll start playing in bigger venues and doing all that fun stuff. I don’t know about the face make up for the guys...

-Ben : I’ve been wanting to do some make up stuff.

-Amy : I'm padding the corset as my trademark.

-Ben : She wears very theater like clothing. I could consider it, but at the moment when I'm about to go on stage, I just like pants and T-shirt, be free of all that.

-Amy : Usually wear a hoody where we can't see your face or wrap a handkerchief over your mouth like a train robber !

-Ben : I do stuff like that : I come out with a mask on like a train robber, I do weird stuff but not as extreme as Marilyn Manson !

-Or Mudvayne ?

-Ben : Yeah, no, I wouldn’t do anything quite that much.

-Amy : Or Slipknot !

-It’s not an obligation to wear masks, because when the music is good, you can be on simple shirts and it’s the same...

-Amy : We do more than that, but I don’t want to do so much that I was distracted from my stage performance : if it's hard to move, I can't do it. Hard to breathe.

-About the website, Evanescence.com : is it an important tool for the band ?

-Amy : Very much, yes. It’s successful everywhere.

-Ben : Internet is the single biggest tool, honestly, I love it : when we’re traveling in other countries, one of the first things I ask in the hotel is if they have Internet here, because when I got three days without going on the Internet, I get just obsessed !

-Amy : We also visit our message board as much as we can, we’re connecting with fans. They love that and it’s great fun for us and to go there and see what they’re saying and actually listening to some of their positive criticism, and by positive, I don’t mean people bashing us, but people saying ‘I really like Evanescence, but blah blah blah', and we actually pay attention to that sort of things, it’s important. And like I said, we write music to please ourselves, but it’s good to know how people feel about us.

-Ben : And so Internet is huge tool for us, we love it : pictures, videos, you can stream concerts, like putting a little video together what’s going on on tour, people really love that. I love watching that on other bands, I love going on websites and see what’s going on the road, it makes me feel like I’m up there with them. But you have a lot to learn too, a lot to read, not just going on bands sites and watch pictures all the time : it’s communication too, we can communicate with our fans, and that’s cool.

-As a young band, what are your ambitions ?

-Amy : We would like to do a film like we said before, but also keep writing music that we like. I wanna always be able to branch out and change, I’m always open minded to changes in our music, just for whatever we are feeling, just for whatever is happening, and beyond the band, I definitely would like to really do some classical studies, as far as learning how to write for a full orchestra, learning the basics of the understanding for every instrument, and I’m sure Ben would love to have a lot more to do with movies than just scoring. He would be a great director, I’m sure. He makes his own zombie movies and everything.

We love music and I would like to not only be in a band, I’d like to do a lot of things having to do with music : I used to wanna be a concert pianist. I actually took piano lessons.

-Ben : You did?

-Amy : Yes

-Ben : Cool ! I didn’t know it : you learn something new every day !

-Amy : You knew that, but you don’t remember

-Will we see you on stage in Europe soon ?

-Ben : It’s been worked at the moment for this summer, late summer or late July, nothing is definite yet, but it’s a very top priority to come overseas and tour Europe. The only sure things is that we’re gonna play some festivals, but I don’t know the names !

-Amy : We’re doing an headlining tour in America right now...

-Ben : But we’re trying to fix it to come here this summer, because the entire year is getting booked slowly but surely.

-Amy : It’s surprisingly busy for our first tour, it’s great, we really had no idea that what we do would be appreciated this fast, and we’re constantly booking new dates in America and we’re trying to hold off a part of the block to come to Europe...

-Ben : Because like coming here this week, we’re all over Europe for twelve days and then we go back we have seven days to prepare, the set, the band, the lights, the sound for the whole production for a full new tour, so it’s pretty crazy but we’ll come here and it will be a full on show, a full on tour.

-Something to add for the French fans who enjoy your music ?

-Ben : Keep your ears open because we’re coming back to play !

-Amy : Yeah ! And enjoy the record, and I hope that they know that our music is many things, that the male guest vocalist is only on the first single. I hope they don't expect that sort of sound on every song because our music is different. It's very much like "Real life", it's in the same sort of vein and it’s just me ! Alone !

Interview made in Paris by JP Coillard

Thanks to Mathieu from Sony/Epic for his help and to Amy and Ben for their friendliness

Click here to see Evanescence's Web site.