1996-Amy LeeLead vocals
Ben MoodyGuitar, bass, drums1996–2003
David HodgesKeyboards1999-2002
Terry BalsamoGuitar2003-2015
Will BoydBass2003–2006
John LeComptGuitar2003-2007
Rocky GrayDrums2003-2007
Tim McCord Bass, guitar2006-
Will HuntDrums2007-
Troy McLawhornGuitar2011-
Jen MajuraGuitar2015-2022
Emma AnzaiBass2022-
The band take a lot of time between albums, partly because logistics are tough, but also because Amy Lee likes to pursue other interests to goose inspiration. In between their albums
The Open Door (2006) and
Evanescence (2011), she learned to play harp and used the instrument to write the song "
My Heart Is Broken."
Evanescence won the Grammy for Best New Artist of 2003, beating out 50 Cent, who
went on stage anyway and walked past the band while they were accepting their award.
Their song "
Bring Me To Life" was first heard in the 2003 movie
Daredevil and featured on the soundtrack. "
My Immortal" was also in the film and on the soundtrack, but that song had appeared on various EPs and demos. Exposure in the film gave the songs a big boost and helped spur sales of their debut album
Fallen, which was released a few weeks later.
Few female-fronted bands were having success when Evanescence emerged. The last group with a female lead singer to have a string of hits was No Doubt, which had been extant for over a decade.
By the time their first album, Fallen, was set for release, Evanescence had issued some material on their own (sometimes sold at shows) that had made its way onto the internet. After their music appeared in Daredevil, many folks downloaded this older material from peer-to-peer sites. The band endeared themselves to fans by encouraging it, since they wanted to get their music out there.
They formed in Little Rock, Arkansas. Ben Moody and Amy Lee met at a Christian youth camp in 1996 (he was 14, she was 13) and started working on songs together. Moody and Lee dated for a time, but found they were better suited as friends (she refers to him as her "best friend" in the Fallen liner notes).
In their early years, David Hodges, Ben Moody and Amy Lee were very close and even lived together for a while. Hodges and Moody remained very close, but as they reached the cusp of stardom, tensions with Lee escalated and Hodges left four months before their debut album,
Fallen, was released. Moody found himself miserable even as the album was selling millions of copies, and abruptly left in October 2003 in the middle of a tour, leaving Lee the only original member.
Hodges and Moody later teamed up to write and produce the Kelly Clarkson hit "
Because Of You."
"Evanescence" is a real word - it means vanishing quickly, like vapor.
Amy Lee wanted music to be her career from an early age. She told Teamrock:
"My earliest big memory of what made me go, 'I want to be a musician, I have to be,' was when I saw the movie Amadeus and I was completely obsessed with Mozart. I was like, 9. I wanted to be that, a composer. It wasn't about being in a rock band, it was about making that music that made me feel so passionately."
Amy Lee has one tattoo. It's on her wrist and is a set of three "life hearts" from the Legend of Zelda video game series. It is primarily a tribute to her late brother, Robby Lee, who loved playing Zelda with Amy.
Amy Lee's dad worked in radio, and she grew up around studios. As a kid, she amused herself by spinning old audio reels with a pencil until they exploded into a "bird's nest" of tape.
One of her childhood thrills was when her dad brought home promo CDs from the radio station he worked for, like Aerosmith's Get a Grip. To young Amy, this was treasure.
Amy's first original song, "A Single Tear", was written for a middle school English assignment. Too nervous to sing live, she recorded the track in a school breezeway with good acoustics. Although she was new to the school and didn't have many friends, her classmates were blown away by her performance, an early glimpse of her future stardom.
