Fallen

“Women are not wrong at all when they reject the rules of life that have been introduced into the world, inasmuch as it is the men who have made these without them.”

Michel de Montaigne

Evanescence released their debut album, Fallen, on March 4, 2003. The album was written by founding members Amy Lee (vocals, piano), Ben Moody (guitar), and David Hodges (keyboards). Anyone listening to mainstream rock radio back then would remember the album’s lead single, “Bring Me to Life.” Along with “My Immortal,” the song charted in the top ten in several countries around the world, while the album remains the band’s most commercially successful to date. It is also the only Evanescence album to be written by these founding members, with Hodges leaving after the album’s completion, and Moody’s much-publicised departure in late 2003.

Fallen was the culmination of years of work between Lee and Moody, going back to when they first met as teenagers in 1994, in Little Rock, Arkansas. To the non-insider, Little Rock is a place of little note, except being the hometown forty-second President of the United States and alleged serial rapist Bill Clinton. Situated comfortably in the “bible belt” of the United States of America, it’s the sort of place where every household has a family piano, and every child gets an acoustic guitar for their twelfth birthday. It was into this environment that the founding members of Evanescence spent their formative years. Moody noticed Lee playing a Meatloaf song on piano at a summer camp. The two loved music, had been writing their own material, and had workspaces in their homes, so they got together and quickly became musical collaborators. Gigs at local cafes and stores in Little Rock garnered the pair a solid local fanbase. Like many in the so-called nu-metal scene, Lee had a vision of combining unlikely sounds, in a style that was very layered and structured. But what set Evanescence apart very early on was Lee’s love of music from the classical and symphonic worlds, which she would combine with the requisite hard rock/alternative metal sound. “There was all this music that was inspiring me,” Lee said in an interview with Louder Sound. “And Evanescence was the product of those two extremes combining.” Her influences at the time included Bjork, Tori Amos, Veruca Salt, Portishead, and Garbage. Moody’s style of guitar playing can be traced to his love of Metallica and all things metal.

The release of two independent EPs — Evanescence (1998) and Sound Asleep (1999) — earned the duo some airplay on local radio, which served to broaden their fanbase. Shows got bigger and better, with more musicians joining to round out the overall performance. However, as far as songwriting went, Lee and Moody remained the principal artists, with the former focusing more on writing and recording than the stage. This was the case with the album Origin, released in 2000, but an opportunity for a more ambitious body of work was presented when Wind-Up Records signed the band in 2001.

Origin — regarded by Lee and Moody as a demo and sold only at local shows — has become a sought-after rarity among hardcore Evanescence fans. One could consider it akin to Slipknot’s Mate.Feed.Kill.Repeat, also a demo that went on to become a collectible for the most devoted. It is perhaps most notable for containing early versions of “Whisper,” “Imaginary,” and “My Immortal,” songs that would later appear on Fallen. It was eventually given a commercial re-release as part of Evanescence’s The Ultimate Collection vinyl box set. In 2016, “Even in Death” had been re-recorded for the band’s B-sides and rarities compilation Lost Whispers.

Produced by Dave Fortman (who would also helm Evanescence’s second album) Fallen was recorded in various California studios between August and December of 2002. Moody took the opportunity to play with some of the gear that was lying around. Gibson Les Pauls and SGs ran through Marshall and Mesa Boogie heads and cabinets, generously lent out by additional producer Jay Baumgardner. Taking different high gain amplifiers and combining them in the mix was requisite for heavy bands, and this is precisely what Moody did for his guitar parts. A wah effect is prominently heard throughout the album as well, enough to make Kirk Hammett and Dave Navarro blush. Hodges contributed mostly to the album’s string arrangements, while Lee recorded on a Neumann U47 tube microphone. Specific piano makes and models used are unknown to me. Session musicians rounded out the album’s rhythm section, most notably Josh Freese, who manned the drum kit for several tracks.

Lee and Moody might have looked like a solid writing duo. But the truth was, the two had gotten together to write music only a handful of times, between Evanescence’s formation and their signing to Wind-Up. They have been very forthcoming about this fact, with Moody stating in a 2004 MTV interview that “maybe two or three times in eight years did we actually sit down and write together in the same room.” For Lee, writing was a personal and vulnerable process that she had to approach alone. Her lyrics, her way. In the past, the two would write their parts separately before combining their respective parts for songs.

“But whether or not you can write with someone in the studio, you can never know until you actually get in there and try it,” Lee said in an interview with Revolver. “And I’ve never really written with someone that way. I’ve always written on my own. Even Ben and I would write separately and then come together.”

In other words, things had worked between Lee and Moody back in Little Rock (small scale), but it was during the Fallen sessions (large scale) that tensions between the two began to rise. This was allegedly due to Moody imposing himself on Lee and the writing process, and the two having fundamentally different ideas on what Evanescence was or ought to have been. Or, put more simply, Lee essentially wanted to make art for art’s sake with Evanescence, while Moody wanted to create something commercially viable. Both goals are valid, but utterly irreconcilable together. “Tension” is one word to describe everything that was happening here, but I can’t help but feel like I’d be putting it too mildly. Lee and Moody spent pretty much all of 2002 writing and recording Fallen in this sort of weird, dysfunctional dance. A constant tug-of-war that would have made the album a labour to work on. One example of this was Lee wanting to play organ on some songs, and Moody just wouldn’t have it.

But another example that really jumped out at me would have to be the following:

“At one point, all my piano-playing rights were stripped away from me because Ben felt like I was getting too much attention, so we hired a keyboard player,” Lee later recalled in an interview with Jam!.

Want to see what a band are made of? Give them a record deal, I guess.

At this point, one could be forgiven for painting Moody as an impetuous halfwit with the professionalism of a project-dwelling crackhead. However, he would later concede that they were in very different places then.

“[Amy] is much more creative than I am,” he said in an interview with MTV. “I’ll be the first to admit it. I am a bit more commercial minded, I guess. I like structure in songs, and I like making songs people can adhere to. I still like to be creative, but she is more educated musically, and she wanted to explore that. I wanted to do that, but keep in the confines of what I knew people expected from Evanescence. I think in my immaturity at the time, I did that in just a way-too-controlling manner — it was like my way or the highway. We just couldn’t meet in the middle, so I was like, ‘The hell with it.'” Hindsight is twenty-twenty, after all.

Tensions between founders aside, there was also the issue of fighting with the record label, Wind-Up. First, the pressure to conform to the nu-metal scene, which seemed to be part and parcel for any heavy band entering a musical climate dominated by the Linkin Parks and Godsmacks of the world. Second, the need for a hit single. And third, the cardinal sin of being a rock band with a female singer.

The idea of a female-fronted hard rock band may seem common now, but you have to understand how the music world was in early 2003. Kittie were a minor success on MTV2 at best. Nightwish and Lacuna Coil were barely known outside of Europe, and the success of bands like Halestorm and In This Moment were still a long way off.

This is where the hit single “Bring Me to Life” comes in. Wind-Up wanted Evanescence to be palatable to the masses, and for whatever reason, that meant hiring a male vocalist for at least eight of the album’s tracks. Lee summed it up for The Guardian: “It was presented to me as, ‘You’re a girl singing in a rock band, there’s nothing else like that out there, nobody’s going to listen to you. You need a guy to come in and sing back-up for it to be successful.'”

Lee came up with the following compromise: have male vocals on “Bring Me to Life,” and have that as the album’s lead single. The suits at the label agreed. Crisis averted. That vocalist would be Paul McCoy of Wind-up labelmates 12 Stones. Lee wrote his lyrics, and he did the job.

I’m glad Lee won the day on this, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. “Bring Me to Life” is a solid number, but the thought of some dude rapping over “Hello” or “My Immortal” is incongruent at best, deliberately stupid at worst. And while I actually like 12 Stones and have nothing against McCoy at all, “Bring Me to Life” just sounds better without the “Wake me up!” Watch the band perform the song live at Rock in Rio 2011 and you’ll understand.

Of course, the media piled on. Their complete disdain for all things nu-metal was in full swing, with Rolling Stone saying of the single, “Call it a case of mistaken identity. Evanescence’s hit ‘Bring Me to Life’ doomed the Arkansas group to a life of Linkin Park comparisons, thanks to the song’s digital beats, clean metal-guitar riffs, scattered piano lines and all-too-familiar mix of rapping and singing. The gimmick? It’s a woman on the mike, and she’s on a mission from God.”

Despite all of this, “Bring Me to Life” is Evanescence’s most commercially successful single to date, reaching the top ten within the charts of fifteen countries, and the top twenty of others. In Australia, it reached number one on the ARIA chart and stayed there for six weeks. An accompanying video was directed by Philipp Stolzl, reflected the song’s tie-in with the Daredevil film.

“Bring Me to Life” was a hit, and Fallen was enjoying a solid debut at number seven on the Billboard 200. But Wind-Up also took the step of promoting the album in the Christian market, since the label had this thing where they wanted to appeal to both Christian and mainstream musical audiences. A cursory glance at their artist roster around this time reflects this, with Creed, Finger Eleven, and 12 Stones being just few of many. Lee and Moody were both quick to distance themselves from this, stating that they were a secular band. The label then wrote to Christian outlets clarifying this, and the outlets removed the Fallen songs from their playlists.

After this, Evanescence would be promoted like any other rock act. This meant touring, and for that, Lee and Moody needed a band. Looking to the Little Rock scene for inspiration, they recruited John LeCompt (rhythm guitar), Will Boyd (bass), and Rocky Gray (drums). In addition to headlining their own shows, the newly-constituted five-piece played radio shows and festivals across the States and in Europe. But their first large-scale headlining tour wasn’t until August of 2003 when the band headlined the Nintendo Fusion tour, with Cold, Revis, Finger Eleven and Cauterize as openers.

Three more singles were released from Fallen: “Going Under,” “My Immortal,” and “Everybody’s Fool.” With tours, interviews, and an increasing fanbase in the millions, things seemed to be on a good road for Evanescence… except when they weren’t. Relations between Lee and Moody had been shaky at best, and by late 2003, the two had hit a wall. While Lee was dealing with the pressure of being the centrepiece, Moody found himself becoming increasingly alienated from the band he helped build. None of his ideas seemed to stick, and the overall situation was not sustainable for him or the band. As they were preparing for a show in Berlin on October 24, Moody left. He had made the decision two nights before. While bands lose members — whether by choice or by consensus — they usually don’t make their exit until they wrap up their current tour, or studio album. However, Moody’s departure was abrupt that he might as well have jumped out the tour bus and run off into the night. He left right in the middle of a European tour, with no reason given that anyone really knew of at the time, and Lee and band were furious. While they went on to play that night’s show, Moody’s quick exit left them, the fans and the press wondering, “What the hell just happened?”

“You don’t do that to your band,” Lee told Rock Sound magazine. “You wouldn’t do that to your friends or family. You don’t do that to anyone.”

But these things happen, don’t they? Whether it be a personal or business relationship. One minute, it looks like everything is glowing. Then, whether it be one mistake that changes everything, or a whole series of mistakes piling up, it ends. What does one do? How does one heal? How do you minimise the potential damage of a key member of a band just getting up and leaving?

“If you can do no good, at least do no harm,” author Kurt Vonnegut once said. And before him, Marcus Aurelius advised, “How much more harmful are the consequences of anger and grief than the circumstances that aroused them in us!” In a stressful situation for all involved, Evanescence knew they had to move forward. The band needed a replacement guitarist, STAT. Luckily, they found one in Terry Balsamo of Jacksonville nu-grunge outfit Cold. Championed by Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst, Cold were one of many groups in the nu-metal scene that always seemed to be destined for big things but never quite got there. They had earned themselves some mainstream chart success with the albums 13 Ways to Bleed on Stage and Year of the Spider. The two bands met on the Nintendo Fusion tour. Balsamo and Evanescence meshed immediately, and what was initially intended to be a temporary role as a touring guitarist became a full-time position in just a few months. This was made official in January of 2004. Although, Lee erroneously seemed to believe that his recruitment was part of Cold’s dissolution, saying, “They could hire another guitar player and continue, but … I don’t think they’re going to be making another record.”

Cold had been struggling with their label, Geffen, who had ceased all promotional efforts for Year of the Spider. This, combined with Balsamo’s departure and frontman Scooter Ward entering rehab, did cast some doubt on the future of the Jacksonville group. However, having finished his treatment, the newly sober frontman and his band were ready to continue touring, with former Darwin’s Waiting Room guitarist Eddie Rendini in Balsamo’s slot. Ward took issue with Lee’s remarks, particularly her claim that Cold were breaking up due to his time in rehab.

“I also don’t know why Amy threw my life out there like she did,” Ward wrote in a post on Cold’s official website. “I never did anything but treat her with respect, but this is the life I choose and not everything can be a secret. I just wish she would have let me tell my story when I was ready.”

Upon hearing this, Lee apologised.

“I spoke out of turn about the status of Cold,” Lee acknowledged, in a post on EVboard.com. “I just wanted to say that really sucked of me. I didn’t realise that Cold hadn’t made any statements about the future of their band, and we don’t really know anyway. Cold’s fans hate me now. My bad. … Sometimes you forget you have a microphone in your hand.”

Lee also took the step of heading over to Cold’s (now defunct) official forums to make the following statement:

“Dear Cold fans, I’m sure the last thing you want to hear right now is more of me running my mouth, so I’m going to make this short and simple. It was not my place to make statements about the status of Cold — Cold is not my band. I apologise. I’ve never claimed to be perfect and I’m not too proud to admit when I’m wrong.”

I was a relatively minor poster on the Cold forum back then, but I remember when she made this post and it surprised the hell out of me. It’s common for artists to engage with fans on social media now, but back then, going onto the forums and addressing the community directly was exceedingly rare.

Lee apologised, and it seems Ward accepted, because nothing more was said on the matter.

Evanescence won two Grammy awards: Best Hard Rock Performance for “Bring Me to Life,” and Best New Artist. As Lee and co. took the stage to accept the latter, they were unexpectedly joined by rapper 50 Cent. Like a toddler throwing a fit and hurling his ice cream at the floor, the Brooklyn rapper and former gangbanger had some modicum of bitterness to work through, given that he was eyeing the Best New Artist award as well. His debut album, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, debuted at number one, and the hit single “In Da Club” was a global smash. Because, as we all know, the more something sells, the more artistic merit it has, right?

“Oh, what did I do?” Lee said. “Thanks, 50.” Although, as you can see, he quickly got off the stage and returned to his seat, so it’s not like he went on a Ye-style “Imma let you finish” rant. However, after twenty years of successful albums, hit singles, films, video games, bestselling books and vitamin water, 50 Cent still resents Evanescence for his loss.

“You got the largest debut hip hop album [but] you don’t got no Best New Artist trophy,” Complex quoted him as saying during his Hollywood Walk of Fame Ceremony. “The Best New Artist, they gave that shit to Evanescence. Can you find fucking Evanescence? I ain’t seen Evanescence since that night. Since that night they gave them the trophy.”

The Stoics have a word for this: Opinion. “We make up that the stock market is good or bad, a bear or a bull,” Ryan Holiday says. “In truth, it’s just doing what it does. It’s just a reflection of perceived values at that particular moment.” Maybe 50 could apply this principle to his Grammy loss? He worked with Robert Greene to write The 50th Law, so it’s not unreasonable to assume he got something of a crash course on Stoic philosophy at some point.

The best part: Lee expected 50 to win too. “It’s just one of those things,” she said in an interview with The Daily Beast. “I mean, truthfully, we thought he was going to win too.”

Anyway, with Balsamo in the fold, Evanescence would spend the year touring all across the world. Playing several shows with Korn on the European festival circuit was a highlight, as it gave the band the opportunity to tour with one of their biggest influences. Due to the phenomenal success of Fallen, Evanescence were set to headline the trek, but Lee insisted on taking the stage ahead of Korn. The band would pay homage to the nu-metal godfathers with a cover of “Thoughtless,” which was released on the live CD/DVD, Anywhere but Home.

Korn were taken aback by Evanescence and their take on the Untouchables hit. “It’s a huge, huge thing when an artist thinks of doing a cover of one of our songs, it just blows us away, and she does it so beautifully,” Korn frontman Jonathan Davis enthused in an interview with The Blitz 99.7 FM. “She’s told me time and time again that she’s a huge Korn fan. What was really cool was that in Europe, they were supposed to headline over us and she refused to do it and made us headline over them. There’s a just a lot of respect there. I think she’s a great girl and I love that cover — it came out beautifully. The way I hear things in my head sometimes, the more [time I spend] in a heavy band, I’m more about melody and shit like that, so… when I heard [Evanescence’s version], it was really cool. The melodies really pop out.”

Evanescence and Korn formed a friendship that has lasted ever since. They have co-headlined tours together, including the Family Values Tour 2007, and a 2022 venture across North America.

Moody would eventually re-emerge in the media spotlight to discuss his departure, initially shifting the blame onto Lee and accusing her of deliberately playing the part of “damsel in distress.” Elsewhere, he basically said it was creative differences, as many artists do. I have always held that “creative differences” is just code for “we hate each other’s guts.” Every band falls apart because of creative differences. One person pushed too hard, someone else didn’t, nothing is working, and it’s everyone’s fault. You don’t need to get into how or why, because everyone already knows what it means to hate someone. The only reason you stay together for as long as you do is for the product, because it’s awesome. If all else fails, and for whatever issues you’ve had as a group, you have an unbelievable album that you will remember for the rest of your life.

He would also reveal in a Rolling Stone interview that he had been struggling with an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. He was only formally diagnosed after leaving Evanescence. Today, support for people struggling with mental health is growing, but unfortunately, this wasn’t the case back in the early 2000s. There wasn’t much in the way of mental health advocacy or discussions, and many people living mental health disorders experienced some degree of stigma. And while I would never condone Moody’s treatment of Lee, I also couldn’t imagine the struggles he was facing as well. I’m not saying it’s easy, but with greater awareness, better support, and access to treatment, those living with these conditions can at least get a fighting chance.

“Don’t be ashamed of needing help,” Marcus Aurelius said. “You have a duty to fulfill just like a soldier on the wall of battle. So what if you are injured and can’t climb up without another soldier’s help?” That would be a non-professional partial solution, at least.

Resentment at Moody’s departure was still felt for some time, however. His behaviour leading up to it effectively made him a pariah among the band and their fans. There also were rumours that Shaun Morgan of Seether, who Lee was dating at the time, was the catalyst for Moody’s dysfunction. When a fan made a post on this, Morgan issued the following response on his band’s bulletin board:

“Let me tell you, my friend, one day when you’re a little older you might understand,” Morgan said. “Right now you need to A.) Blame Ben Moody’s shitty attitude, and subsequent leaving of Evanescence on somebody, namely me. (Feel free to look up any big words in the dictionary or ask your Mommy), to consider ‘Ben isn’t the greatest guitar player’ and ‘The only person I have to care about in Evanescence is Amy, and I really couldn’t care less about Ben Moody or any of the skanky hoes he bangs on the road.”

On one hand, it’s hard to take Morgan’s statement seriously because of how cartoonish it looks, but it did temporarily satiate the fans’ desire for hot goss, so it has that going for it. His syntax is a bit all over the place, though to be fair, I’ve probably done worse.

From then on, Lee and Moody would give little information in subsequent interviews, usually defaulting to creative differences and swiftly changing the subject. Fans would post on Evanescence forums in threads of endless speculation, and occasionally friends and family members of the band would join in these discussions. Little bits and pieces of information surfaced now and then, as well as Moody’s 2010 open letter, but Lee and Moody have not spoken to each other as far as anyone knows.

With all that, where are the people of Evanescence now?

Dave Fortman returned to produce Evanescence’s second album, The Open Door, released in 2006. David Hodges has remained on good terms with Lee in the years since Fallen, attending her wedding in 2007. Good for him and good for Amy Lee.

Terry Balsamo’s time in Evanescence came to an end in August of 2015. A loss for the band, but he left behind quite a legacy with his work on The Open Door and the self-titled album. Like Hodges, he has remained on good terms with Lee and his former bandmates, coming to see them play whenever they’re in Jacksonville. He even joined them on stage in May of 2019, playing “Sweet Sacrifice,” marking a rare occasion where Evanescence has had three guitarists playing on stage.

And what of Moody? After leaving Evanescence, he continued to build his career as a songwriter, working with the likes of Avril Lavigne and Kelly Clarkson. He would also form We Are the Fallen, with ex-Evanescence members LeCompt and Gray, bassist Marty O’Brien, and vocalist and American Idol finalist Carly Smithson. Their debut, Tear the World Down, was released in 2010 and debuted at number thirty-three on the Billboard 200 chart. That same year, he published a lengthy open letter on why he left Evanescence. While he takes a good chunk of the blame for his departure, he also defends We Are the Fallen as a legitimate musical project, stating that the band was never an attempt to exploit the name or image of Evanescence. It was simply a natural product of the chemistry between himself and his bandmates.

Now, Moody may appear to be a severely flawed human who wanted everything his way or no way at all. And while that may be true to a very large extent, it is important to understand some of the mitigating circumstances around his outbursts, for lack of a better term. After all, this is a musician who has endured years of Evanescence fans piling on, and just general media derision regarding his subsequent projects. The Evanescence comparison will forever remain the proverbial albatross around the neck of We Are the Fallen, and no amount of protestation from Moody will ever convince the haters that the project was or is anything more than an poorly-conceived attempt at reliving former glories.

To say that his life has been up and down would be an understatement, especially given the financial turmoil he’s been in. In a GoFundMe page set up in 2022, Moody appeals for donations to help with get back on his feet after his divorce. The campaign raised just under $30,000, and in May of 2023, we saw some musical activity in the form of some reimagined songs from Fallen, with “Going Under” being the first. Each of these tracks are accompanied by AI-generated versions of the album cover. While some fans might raise eyebrows at reimagining and rereleasing some of Amy Lee’s more personal tracks (“Hello” being sacred ground for more than a few devotees), there are probably some ride-or-die Moody loyalists who think it’s fine. In that light, I can see its value.

That more or less concludes the story of Ben Moody, a man whose life and career has certainly embodied the Chinese saying, “May you live in interesting times.”

Amy Lee and Evanescence continue to be successful to this day. In November of 2022, Fallen was certified Diamond by the RIAA, marking ten million copies sold in the United States. In January of this year, “Bring Me to Life” passed one billion streams on Spotify, putting the band in a very exclusive club indeed. “We cannot thank you enough for joining us on this journey,” a post on their official Twitter/X reads. “Incredibly grateful that Bring Me to Life has reached over 1 billion streams on Spotify!”

And this comes a year after the official music video surpassed one billion views on YouTube. Those are some stats to be proud of. And just in time for the release of a twentieth anniversary edition of Fallen. A deluxe edition has been released, containing a remastered version of the album on vinyl and CD, along with a collection of demos, live tracks, B-sides, photos, a handwritten foreword, a cassette tape and player, and four versions each of “Bring Me to Life” and “My Immortal” just for good measure. I have no doubt hardcore fans will add it to their collection.

For all the struggles she has faced fronting Evanescence, Amy Lee deserves to enjoy the success of Fallen and subsequent albums. Ex-bandmates, critics, and label executives did not make things easy, but you could make the case that these circumstances, and Lee’s adaptation and survival, make for an excellent example of the Stoic practice of turning obstacles upside down.

“While it’s true that someone can impede our actions, they can’t impede our intentions and our attitudes, which have the power of being conditional and adaptable,” the famous quote from Marcus Aurelius goes. “For the mind adapts and converts any obstacle to its action into a means of achieving it. That which is an impediment to action is turned to advance action. The obstacle on the path becomes the way.”

I cannot say if they see themselves as such, but either way, Evanescence’s story stands as a remarkable one, in a musical climate where fifteen minutes of fame is more than most artists get… or deserve.