Amy Lee and Shaun Morgan interview @Lycabettus 2004 - Greece #ROCK ON MAGAZINE

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Introduction
Evanescence is one of those bands who are right now having great success with their debut album "Fallen", which has reached 5 times platinum in the US, 2 times here in Greece. They have also won 2 Grammys and have sold over 11 million copies of their album. Personally that doesn't say to me anything. But that doesn't concern you a lot, right? Rock On magazine was one of the few who could get close to them because of their first live performance here and Greece, and I guess that this fact does concern you. We got close to the bands young front woman Amy Lee (interviewer's note: her eyes are extraordinary but otherwise her face looks like Sailor Moon, for everyone who knows Greek he described her as feggaro!!!!!!!!) although she forced us to also take an interview of her new lover, who is no one else than Shaun Morgan, singer-guitarist of Evanescence’s support band Seether. What else are we going to see....




The Interview
How do you like Greece thus far?
Amy: It is very beautiful. The food is good. Everything's nice.

Do you have plans on a follow-up to "Fallen" in the immediate future or are you going to continue promote "Fallen" touring and releasing more singles or videos?
Amy: We are ready to work for our new album. We will have another small tour in the US with Seether for five weeks and the rest of the year we are not going to tour at all, and we will start to write some new stuff. We will try to be as creative as we can and we aren't afraid of experiments. We can't wait to get into the studio again. 

You are participating in the soundtrack of the movie "Punisher" with the song "Broken" with Amy's vocals. How did this collaboration occur?
Shaun: We wrote this song 3 years ago. During the recording of our first album we wanted Amy to participate, who came into the studio and sang her part, but due to some problems with the song it didn't make it to the album. In January we were in L.A. and the producer of "Punisher" contacted us and gave us the opportunity to put this song in the soundtrack. We suggested that it should be recorded again and they said that would be fine. And when Amy came, we added some strings without hurry and the result was very good. In the beginning it was going to be only for the soundtrack but the song did so good that we decided to also release it. Our company wanted to put it in our forthcoming record but we wanted it to be in the re-release.

Do you believe that your participation in this soundtrack will give you the same opportunity which Evanescence had with "Bring me to life" which was in the "Daredevil" soundtrack?
Shaun: I think the same thing happened to Creed. I hadn't heard of them in South Africa until "Higher" came out and they became known through the soundtrack. In general the recognition a band has through such a record is very high, and that's why companies often try that route. Except for being in the soundtrack of "Daredevil", "Bring me to life" was a very strong song 
which made a big impression and stayed with you. "Broken" is a more quieter song and I don't know if we are going to have the same success as Evanescence. Time will tell....
Amy: To participate in a soundtrack helps you a lot to get noticed in a worldwide level. The promotion needed to be done from a company for a band to become internationally known requires a lot of work and isn't usually done. But if the song is already on a soundtrack, everything becomes easier and it is easier for a song to be successful. The truth is that this gave us the chance to get known to the entire world. 

Your guitarist, Ben Moody, isn't a member of the band anymore. What will be the consequence of that, since Ben was also one of the major composers of Evanescence's music?
Amy: He wasn't the major composer, we were both equally responsible for the composing of the songs. The fact that Ben left the band is going to, obviously, change our sound a bit, but we are very happy with this change, because Ben was moving into an entirely different musical direction than the rest of the band. Right now we all have come closer as a group, we communicate better with each other, we enjoy playing live, while Ben had begun to negatively affect the band. 
Shaun: The best way for someone to understand this is to listen to the instrumental piece Ben has written for the soundtrack, it really sucks. He tries to be like Evanescence, but to no avail. It is totally different.

European bands like The Gathering, Lacuna Coil, Nightwish, had combined a few years earlier before of you heavy guitars with female vocals, but they stayed in a more underground level. Maybe the fact that they didn't had a big company behind them and that they don't come from the US plays a part in this?
Amy: Look.... I don't think that this has anything to do with it. To tell you the truth, I haven't heard of any of these bands before the recording of "Fallen" and when I heard them, I can't say that I was moved by them. That they haven't had a bigger success is based on other reasons. I don't to which extent the music of those bands comes from their hearts, but I can say that this is definitely true for us. Also we have totally different influences and backgrounds, since we don't show up dressed with Matrix style clothes in our personal lives and we have different topics in our songs. A lot of things play a part.

Thanks to the user who originally translated this from Greek and posted it on evboard.