After beginning as the girl who brought an Alice Cooper CD to a Backstreet Boys-filled sleepover in nondescript Pennsylvania, Lzzy Hale has stepped into being an icon of embracing your authentic self. The lead singer (and partial namesake) of Grammy-winning band Halestorm showcased her “no holds barred” style personality with Playboy as we wove through the story of progress on the new album, terrifying her bass player before he even joined the band, and a glimpse into how she has accepted and harnessed who she truly is.
Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity – watch the video clips to see more detail!
Playboy: I heard that you used to be really shy while performing but then you started staring fans down until they looked away. Why the change?
Lzzy: I forget who suggested this to me but they had suggested that because I was terrified, I couldn’t look anybody in the eye. I’d play guitar and I’d be afraid to play with my left hand, I might mess up, so I would grip the mic and then say [to myself] “don’t look at anybody” and just sing the songs. I don’t know why that particular advice really clicked, but it was almost a little win every single time. You could stare someone down … they would look away and I’d say “okay I win, next one”. Apparently I did that to our bass player Josh. Before he joined the band, he would come to see shows and he said, “this the first thing you did to me when I came to see you for the first time”.
I think it’s still inherently part of who I am, but now instead of it being an intimidation thing, it’s more of a connection. Once you lock eyes with someone and you start kind of doing what they’re doing, it’s wild — they know you’re looking at them and then it makes their world, which then makes me happy so I do it selfishly because I want to have a good day.
Playboy: I need to know what it is about Pennsylvania that keeps making such good artists. Breaking Benjamin, Poison, Cinderella, Motionless in White, Halestorm what is happening?
Lzzy: It’s desperation! We all need to find a way out. No, I digress — I love Pennsylvania, it’s deeply ingrained in who I am. My accent is still rampant and it’s become a problem in the studio! What I will say is that the house that I’ve built from that foundation has incredible bones and these are the men and women that raised me. There’s a very good chance that if I had been born and raised somewhere else I wouldn’t be doing this. When I was a teenager and first getting into rock music, my dad’s friends and my mom’s friends said, “Oh here listen to this, listen to that listen,” so I grew up on ‘70s and ’80s rock. I scared the bejesus out of my little friends when I tried to introduce them to Alice Cooper!
I can trace back all of those little influences and those little moments into what has become my manifesto and my mission statements in this band. There would not be songs like “Freak like Me” if it wasn’t for Pennsylvania. There wouldn’t be “Ms Hyde” if it wasn’t for my stuff in middle school. There’s a lot of things that would have gone so differently. I don’t know, there’s something about Pennsylvania that sticks with you, but the rest of it you have to escape from!
Playboy: Everyone’s always going to ask about the next album, so…?
Lzzy: Yes! We’re very close and we’re doing things a little differently this time. We’re thinking of it less like a race and more like how far can we peel back the onion that is Halestorm. We’re doing it with Dave Cobb, he’s made his name with a lot of artists like Randy Carlile and Chris Stapleton and he’s such a big rock fan that he wanted to work with us and we wanted to work with him. Now how it normally goes with Halestorm is that I’m writing constantly, everybody has their toy chest of misfit things and half choruses, and we have a meeting, we pick our favorites, and we record them.
Photo by Melinda Oswandel
This time, we didn’t do any of that! The first day in the studio with Cobb, we brought all of our stuff and he said, “Oh no we’re not doing any of that, let’s just get on the instruments”. Every day from 11:00 a.m. through 4:00 a.m. it was the four of us unsupervised. He wanted to get the honesty, so we are writing and recording at the same time — which is terrifying. I would love to have some time with something before I’m doing melodies, but it’s so beautiful because you don’t have time to think about whether it’s good or not. The most important thing about the album is that the four of us have been best friends and the same four members for 21 years this year and it feels like we’re all like 19 again making this record… I’m going to love it no matter what.
Playboy: How do you take the emotion and rawness of those first demos and bring that vulnerability out onto the stage?
Lzzy: I’m so glad you asked, that’s such an amazing question because I’ve been thinking about this this entire tour. It’s actually really easy because the song is no longer mine, it’s theirs. I’m watching people sing it. I’m watching people cry. (We’ve gotten a lot of criers lately, it’s been a right of passage. We have to have tissues in our meet and greets. Thank you for your beautiful words everybody).
Anyways, I get to almost relive the song but through the crowd’s eyes and I get to learn something new about myself and my emotions. I think that there are songs that stand the test of time and it doesn’t matter when they were released, it’s when someone discovers them in the right time and in the right moment. It’s it’s one of the big joys of my life being out here and getting to lob those feelings back and forth
Playboy: You have legends you look up to. When is the first time you realized that you were a legend to someone?
Lzzy: I think I realized it a while ago, but I didn’t believe it. I’m happy to say I’m in the sunset of a decade-long impostor syndrome situation. It’s always been hard for me to think that anything magical can come from me and not feel like I’m egotistical by saying so, but I think I think it’s beautiful and it blows my mind. I have this conversation more with my inner child than I do with my adult head because her little mind is just very confused at the fact that it actually worked out.
I know so many talented bands that never even make it past their first record, that never even get noticed, that never make it out of their hometown – so the fact that I’m able to sit here and meet people every day that tell me their their deepest darkest secrets or the fact that I’m on those lists of iconic singers, or the fact that I’ve been compared to some of my idols… It’s just such an incredible gift and it’s such an incredible right of passage and it’s something that you never think is going to happen. There’s a difference between believing you’re capable of great things and then those things actually working out within your lifetime.
Playboy: You have this fantastic quote that when the lights go down and you’re shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, you all become a family.
Lzzy: Right! Because every time you go out there, you’re building that family — absolutely every single time, and there’s new people I get to meet and it’s wonderful. We are entertaining, there is that element to what we do of course but it goes beyond that. There’s a very blurry line and really, we just want to share the magic. The wonderful thing about being out on this tour with I Prevail and Fit For A King and Hollywood Undead is that everybody understands that we’re a rolling Carnival. Some of us are highflying like trees and some people stick their heads in Lions.
I actually just met a fan today who has an incredible story. She not only lost a couple people during Covid but she lost her home this week and is living within her parents’. She ‘s not sure what she’s going to do, but she said “I wasn’t going to come tonight because there’s too much going on in my life” but she literally grabbed me and said “but I need to be here.” That is the beauty of the rock show and live music. You’re surrounded by people that are just like you, they’re here for the same reason. They just want to lose themselves and for a small moment, everything going on out there, everything in our lives doesn’t matter. It’s so important to have those moments and it’s the reason why we keep touring. We do this very selfishly; it’s the closest thing to magic we have.
Playboy: You’ve been very vocal about bringing more women into rock and metal and finding your sisters. When did the energy in the scene shift?
Lzzy: It got to the point where I was tired of the way things have always been done and I’m tired of having to have an excuse for myself to exist here and to be here. I love all of my boys, my rock and roll boy – I love you so much but you’ve had the floor for a while
What people don’t understand about women, especially women who love rock music, is that we are born from pain into pain, we carry our own pain both physically and mentally. From a very early age we are taught little girls should be seen and not heard. What people don’t understand is that there is a certain hardness, a heaviness, a battle worn quality. We’re not in a race to be first, we are the survivors.We can talk all we want about whips and chains and leather and toughness, but what about the flower that you see growing in a parking lot through concrete, away from any type of nourishment?
Photo by Melinda Oswandel
You get into your teenage years where I have to be thin and I have to be pretty. I can’t cut my hair short because that was a whole debacle. Then you get into childbirth – so we’re doing all of these hard things that are heavy music, that are metal. There is nothing more metal or brutal than living a life where you are constantly being told you’re not good enough but you have to uphold a certain standard. That’s what I love about women who get into rock music and especially this heavy music because we have that perspective we are born with. It is our right to be here and to own this music. It turned into not that I was in a boy’s club in this genre, but instead that this has been our genre the entire time.
I talk with my counterparts, like Amy Lee, and we all talk about our responsibility – you don’t have to be super outspoken if that’s not your thing. Just by being there and existing and fighting through it and again talking about it helps. Women, young women, need to see themselves reflected in someone
(Lzzy continued on with a story from backstage at a large festival.)
There is this intensity that is women in metal music. We were in Japan playing a festival and it was myself and basically just all of the metal girls were there. All of us girls ended up congregating in a corner and they’re all trying to teach me how to scream low. I can scream high, that’s part of my talent, but I can never do the “Cookie Monster thing.” So we’re all going “Huh” (grunting) and they’re telling me to act like I’m taking a sh*t and I’m saying that I’m not going to do that in front of everybody, they’re shouting “just do it” and Cory Taylor walks by the room, pauses, and is like “oh no I’m not going in there at all.”
Playboy: After a story like that, there was really nothing left to ask – so let’s get into something really cliche. Do you think that pain is required to create good art?
Lzzy: I think that we all have pain – whether it is something personal you’re going through, or if you have the ability to observe the pain that others are going through, orit’s somebody that you know, or it’s something that you hear on the radio, or see on TV. I think that that’s part of an artist’s job. When you’re making something you’re putting your whole self into it. Even if I’m writing a love song that has nothing to do with sadness, there is always pain there. I don’t think of it as a negative thing – I don’t need to be depressed or sad. What I need to be is observant and be a sponge.
I think we’re all so scared of pain and we’re scared of loss and we’re scared of being alone and we’re scared of how the world going to sh*t and we’re all going through it,
The weird thing that clicked for me a long time ago with songwriting was that same concept. If it is coming from a pure place, if I’m being honest – even if it’s not my story, somebody else is going to feel that way too. So I don’t have to worry about creating something that someone’s going to like, that radio is going to play, or a hit song because that’s not my job. My job is to absorb and speak the truth. My job is not to know everything, I don’t know everything. I am a dork from Pennsylvania that got her GED to graduate high school. I’m in no position to give anybody advice, but this is something that I can offer.
Playboy: How do you accept your authentic self, and what are you excited to do with it now that you found it?
Lzzy: I think that I’ve given myself grace and permission to be my messy, flawed self. I’ve spent so much of my life striving for perfection and beating myself up over a lot. I’m only just learning now that I’m pretty sure I have some learning disabilities that were hard when I was younger, and I have a lot more acceptance of all the things that I didn’t like about me. For instance, in middle school I was teased mercilessly for being very gangly and I have these long weird ass fingers. Now I’m in a position where I’m those are some of the things that I absolutely love about myself.
I think that what I want to do with my newfound love of me and the things that I do is really just share it in whatever way that I’m capable of doing it. I’ve had some very deep breakthroughs with my parents lately just because I’ve been open. I’ve just had some crying hug fests with some amazing fans today. I think that regardless of whether I know what to do about these things or not, just by working on myself and living it and being an example through it, hopefully we’ll help somebody down the road.
We are in the business of smiles, and we will keep spreading them.
Photo by Melinda Oswandel
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Halestorm is composed of lead singer Lzzy Hale, her brother Arejay Hale on drums, Joe Hottinger as lead guitar, and Josh Smith on bass. They are currently co-headlining a North American tour with I Prevail, supported by Hollywood Undead and Fit for a King. After that, Lzzy and Halestorm will be heading out on a Canadian tour with Evanescence in the Fall.