Halestorm’s Lzzy Hale performs in July 2022
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It’s easy to assume that conversations about mental health would be off limits in the hard rock and metal community. Lzzy Hale, leader of the Grammy-winning band hale stormHe says think again.
“I have seen both sides of this. This community, on the one hand, is literally a holy place for the downtrodden. Metal and hard rock music has always been a champion of people who are different, people who don’t fit in, people who have mental issues. This is the genre where we can talk about those things,” he says.
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“At the same time, it’s like a tough guy business and there are certain members of the community that say, ‘I would never meet with a therapist because that means I’m really crazy’ and that sort of thing. But that too is beginning to disappear at a very rapid rate. I love the fact that today we’re talking more about breaking that kind of stigma.”
Hale is one of the reasons the stigma is beginning to crumble. Following the suicide death of Jill Janus of the metal group Huntress in 2018, Hale wrote a letter that she shared on Instagram urging the community to speak more openly about mental health, acknowledging her own “dark labyrinth” and assuring fans who fight that they are not alone. . “Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re broken,” she wrote.
“It was more or less a way for me to create an example that none of us are alone, and to see how many people, just by raising your hand, or as I said, ‘Raise your horns, take a picture’ — would respond,” she says. .
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“And the number was obscene, how many people said, ‘Thank you.’ It was almost as if he was giving them permission to talk about it. There comes a time in everyone’s life, regardless of their position, when they have had enough of the veil, and by sharing my own journey and the way I deal with depression, anxiety or panic attacks, I have received much love . because I think most people need to hear that someone else is going through that, especially someone in my position where it can seem like everything is fine and dandy all the time.”
While the moment was a standout for Hale, it wasn’t the first time he had addressed mental health. Those conversations date back to high school, when he formed what would eventually become Halestorm with his younger brother Arejay.
“Before we started the band, I used to have panic attacks at school. I had intense anxiety and depression when I didn’t even know what it was. I was going through these waves of feelings that I didn’t necessarily know how to get out of and I quote music like the one that gave me this corner of the world that I could call my own, helping me own who I am and own my weirdness and what makes me different,” says Hale. “And I started talking to my peers about it, telling them that you need to find something that is yours.”
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The years of fandom and critical acclaim that followed gave Hale a platform to speak out about mental health, and she jumped at the chance. “You don’t necessarily decide to embark on these things, you just move to defend certain things. I am very proud to be in a position where I can,” she says.
But when the pandemic hit, he found himself back in a very vulnerable place: the place that Halestorm’s latest album came out of. back from the deadwas born.
“All of a sudden I was faced with, ‘Oh, I’m not Lzzy Hale anymore, the rock star. I am Elizabeth Hale in her pajamas on the couch with an unforeseeable future,” she says. “So I had to write through it. I feel like I connected with a different kind of truth. It was important to me to get a lot of these things out, write a lot of these songs almost as a pep talk to myself and try to project a future because there was no real plan. Shall we go into the studio? Are we going to put out a record? Are we ever going to tour again? It was this moment of, what can I do? I can write, and it was the first time in many, many years that I wasn’t doing it for anyone but myself.”
“I cried several times because I felt like I needed to get it out,” adds Hale. “There’s a lot of darkness on this album, but it’s very important to me to always find that ray of light, that hope and hold on to that because if I allowed myself to spiral out and go deeper down that dark path, I don’t know if I would have made it out the other way.” side. It became very confusing for me. I had kind of an identity crisis, searching for a purpose and almost had to remind myself who I really am. You don’t realize how much you use not only your personality on stage, but also the camaraderie you have with your bandmates, the advancement of tours and album releases, not to mention that the live show is just the drug of choice. . Without any of those things, it slowly wears down and you have to find new ways.”
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Now that the album has been out since May and Halestorm is back on tour, he’s enjoying even deeper connections with the community.
“What I realized writing from that core truth is how much I was never alone in any of these feelings. I’m watching these moments happen in real time with the people listening to these songs and now it’s not my song anymore, it’s theirs. There are lines that are tattooed on these people’s arms and I get letters from people about how much this line or this song is changing their lives,” she says.
“It’s been such a beautiful time, when you have these songs that were very personal to you that you had to create to get over something and then all of a sudden you’re passing that message to people who maybe don’t have the tools or the skills to say these to each other. things to themselves. They can own it now, and that’s what it’s all about.”
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