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It's a Tuesday night in Milwaukee, and Evanescence singer Amy Lee is dressed like a fairy. Twirling around the stage at the Rave Hall, wearing a small pair of butterfly wings and a large, frilly prom dress, Lee appears oblivious to both the sold-out crowd and her own band, which enthusiastically grinds away on the goth-metal-electronica behemoth "Going Under."
"People told me I can't dress like a fairy," she yells. Silence. Dramatic pause. "I say, 'I'm in a rock band and I can do whatever the hell I want!' " Eruption of applause.
The euphoria that follows her pixie-empowerment speech explains what few people outside of Evanescence's audience seem to realize: that this more-than-slightly anonymous Arkansas band has become the biggest new rock group in America. After arising seemingly out of nowhere (well, Little Rock, Arkansas), Evanescence's major-label debut, Fallen, was recently certified platinum. Their single "Bring Me to Life" -- which mixes Lee's soaring vocals with a rap from Paul McCoy of the hard-rock band 12 Stones -- started out on the Daredevil soundtrack in February and has since taken off in seven different radio formats, including active rock and modern adult contemporary. They are currently headlining their first-ever tour and are selling out most of the shows. As CD sales continue to evaporate,they are moving up the charts, one of the rare music-business success stories of 2003.
But they are not celebrated as such. Critics of the band have vilified Evanescence as either a record-label marketing gimmick (it's Linkin Park with a hot chick singing!) or as Christian soldiers suppressing their religious zealotry in search of increased record sales. Old-school fans grouse about the first single sounding little like the rest of the album. (The band was asked to add more vocals to the song, according to Lee.) All of this has forced Evanescence to become wary and insular.
"They have their own way of doing things," says McCoy, whose band is opening this tour. He had never met Evanescence before rapping on "Life," and he hasn't really hung out that much with the band on tour. According to McCoy, he's been asked only once to join them onstage to perform "Life." He shrugs: "I'm not going to stick my nose into their business."
Which brings up the question: Who the hell is this band, anyway?
Do you know how many times Amy has puked on me?" It's six hours before the show in Milwaukee, and Evanescence guitarist Ben Moody is cutting up on the tour bus. Moody, who recently shaved his head in part to avoid comparisons to Chester Bennington of Linkin Park, is the band's free spirit, the guy most likely to run his mouth in interviews or partake of the occasional party or strip club. We will never know how many times Lee has puked on him. She smiles a sweet shut-up smile at him, then leaves to spend the rest of the day painting by herself and, at one point, roller-skating around the venue.
Moody, 22, and Lee, 21, are Evanescence. They started the group, write the material and do the interviews. The pair met at summer camp in junior high, reportedly bonding over their affection for Meat Loaf's "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)." (Lee hates this story. "It's kind of a joke," she says wearily. "I really don't want to be associated with Meat Loaf.") They became friends, then musical partners, then sweethearts. The last part ended, and now the two are more akin to brother and sister.
Fallen is the product of years of collaboration: The song "My Immortal" dates back seven years. At times the album sounds like the world's biggest mash-up. Lee loves dramatic singers with distinct voices -- Bjork, Chris Cornell, Tori Amos -- and she's got the pipes and lyrical melodrama to back it up. ("I can feel you pull me down/Saving me/Raping me/Watching me," goes one snippet from "Haunted.") Moody loves Eighties metal -- he warms up to Europe's "The Final Countdown" before going onstage -- as well as big, cinematic soundscapes, which is where the album's monster guitar sound and lush orchestration come in. The end result is truly "new" metal -- it's feminine but mosh-worthy, aggressive yet very clean-sounding.
Up till a few years ago, Evanescence were playing as few as two concerts a year, but they were slowly developing a following on the Internet. Some sites celebrated the band's music. Others focused on its spirituality. In 2000, a teenage Moody granted an interview to the online magazine Stranger Things, where he summed Evanescence's message simply: "God is love." Three years later, that and a few similar comments have pegged the group as a modern-day Stryper. It didn't help when Evanescence was signed to Wind-Up, a label best known for its work with another rock band with a spiritual bent, Creed.
Lee blames her partner for the problem but not in an angry way. "He rambles," she says, then sighs. She shies away from the recent controversy, referring to "misconceptions about us, but nothing really harmful." Moody, on the other hand, wants to clear things up. "I may still share those feelings, but that's not the mission of the band," he says. Asked about the cross tattooed on his finger, he pulls up his right sleeve to show off a detailed rendering of the life of Jesus. "I have an intense history with Christianity," he says, shrugging.
Despite that intensity, God shows up on only two tracks on Fallen, "Tourniquet" and "Whisper," and the group's propensity to drink, swear and act like normal, everyday human beings has caused the album to be pulled from Christian record stores. This hasn't hurt sales, though, which continue to climb week after week.
There have been a couple of other road bumps. Lee is a slender and confident young woman -- as Moody puts it, she's "a hot all-American girl." The "show us your tits" guys turn up at shows; when one held up a sign recently, Moody pelted him with an empty water bottle and Lee quipped, "Who's that sign for, your sister?"
For better or worse, Lee is the face of Evanescence. "Yeah, that's an issue already," says Moody, who admits her dominance in the marketing campaign has helped the band. But whatever tension it has provoked, it's just one more way to get the group into the mainstream and get its message across.
And what message does the band want to impart, really?
"You know how you were talking about misconceptions?" Lee says. "We've only just begun. Just be open-minded. You don't know us yet. We hope that you can."
Watch the "Bring Me to Life" video
(June 26, 2003)