LINEUP CHANGES ONLY MAKING EVANESCENCE A TIGHTER BAND

After multiple Grammy Awards and multiple lineup changes, Evanescence talk about the band becoming stronger on their latest release ‘The Open Door’

After starting Evanescence in 1998 with Ben Moody, Amy Lee has certainly seen the band become a worldwide success and with multiple Grammy Awards, followed by multiple lineup changes, she also feels the band is becoming a stronger and tighter unit because they finally have passionate musicians in the band. After the success of the band’s debut album ‘Fallen’ which spent 43 weeks on the Billboard Top 10 and has since been certified 6x Platinum with more than 15 million copies sold worldwide, the band saw Moody depart due to creative differences and he was replaced by Terry Balsamo, formerly of the band Cold.

We caught up with Amy Lee to get her thoughts on all the lineup changes actually being best for the band as they’ve become a stronger unit with their latest release ‘The Open Door.’

“Oh god, I think it’s made it so much better. It’s hard, of course when you start a band you don’t think about people being expendable or like they’re going to leave or whatever but that’s not really the way it is. You want to be a family and you want to stay together forever but it’s not realistic most of the time. I’ve actually met very, very few bands that have their original line up that have been around for more than a year.”

The most recent additions to the band have been Tim McCord, Troy McLawhorn and Will Hunt who all bring a new energy and sense of commitment the band didn’t have in the past. We also talked with Amy and Terry about how refreshing it is for Evanescence to have passionate musicians dedicated to the cause in the band now.

“Yeah we’ve been through a lot of changes, but so far every change we’ve made ends up being a good thing. If it wasn’t for Ben leaving I don’t think this band would exist anymore. Let alone the fact that we got Terry in his place and we wouldn’t have got ‘The Open Door’ if it wasn’t for him. And then more recently John and Rocky leaving, that was a really difficult one that had been coming on for a long time. They just weren’t into it. I don’t think they were totally into the music.” (Balsamo) “It was a job for them.”rn”Yeah, in the first place it was really like they were wanting to go do their own thing and they were just doing it as a job. So, it’s really cool to have guys in the band now that are passionate about the music, passionate about the way they play and they put their own spin on it and the solos are different every night and it’s beautiful. It’s a different experience on stage and we’re all really happy.”

Evanescene are still currently touring in support of ‘The Open Door’ with dates extending in The U.S. until December 8th in Rhode Island. No further tour dates are booked in 2008 as the band looks to take a well deserved break after their extensive 2007 tour which saw the band perform for over a million fans in more than 25 countries around the world including Israel, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, Greece, and Spain.