HALESTORM's LZZY HALE On Growing Number Of Female Rock Musicians: 'My Only Responsibility Is To Try To Make It A Little Easier For Whoever Comes After Me'

In a new interview with Carl Craft of the New Jersey radio station 95.9 The Rat, HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale was asked what changes she, as one of the leaders of the female rock movement, hoped to see in the next few years. She responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I've had conversations with my counterparts, with Amy Lee [of EVANESCENCE] and my friends, about this, and the women that came before me and we're talking my parents' generation, what I grew up on, which is HEART and Pat Benatar and Joan Jett and Lita Ford and all of those women, who I've actually met and gotten the opportunity to say, 'Hey, thank you for not giving up,' because I feel like if they had said, 'Oh, well, it's too hard,' that might've been my rhetoric as well. So they had it a lot harder than I had it, so they took some of the burden off of me by just existing and by passing the torch and keeping on keeping on. And so for me, my only responsibility is to try to make it a little easier for whoever comes after me. And that really — it's the simplest and the hardest thing to just exist as your truest self, be as honest as you possibly can and keep doing the work. No matter how weird things get or hard things get, don't roll over and die because of it, because that gives a signal to the next generation of female rockers saying, 'Oh, well, Lzzy did it, so therefore I can too.' And then hopefully as we pass the torch, it just gets a little easier and easier as we go along."

Lzzy continued: "No one generation can win the whole war, but we can win a lot of really tough battles and pass on some advice and just be an example."

After HALESTORM guitarist Joe Hottinger noted that HALESTORM will headline one of the stages at this year's Louder Than Life festival in Kentucky on a bill with several other female-fronted rock acts, Lzzy said: "And, again, that's a credit to all of us here, all the girls that came before us, for standing our ground, because now women feel like it's even more possible than even when I was coming up in the scene. And there's always gonna be misogyny and there's always gonna be roadblocks, and there's always gonna be these times where you feel, like, 'Oh, well, do I really belong here?' Yes, you do. And a lot of these women, these young women, just those layers of burdens are just kind of shedding away. And I feel like these young girls are just so much more confident in the fact that they know that they can do it and they can make it."

Hale added: "The misogyny roadblocks that I came up, for every one guy that was, like, 'Well, but you're a girl doing this,' for every one guy that did that, there were five or six other guys that were, like, 'Dude, there's something special going on. You gotta keep going.' So you have to choose what you believe as well. You can't let the opinions of one person or a handful of people direct your dream, because ultimately that's up to you. It's, like I was born a girl. I happened to like hard rock, and all I've ever wanted to do is be in a band with my buddies and see how far we can take it."

Back in 2019, Lzzy said that she didn't mind being asked questions about being a female in a rock band. "I've been talking about this a little bit lately, about the importance of bringing that up," she told Concert Addicts. "'Cause there's a lot of my female counterparts that are very upset about being asked that question. And I never get upset about it. I think that there is one specific moment in my life where you have to kind of embrace the fact that you're a girl.

"I grew up with my dad's music, so my introduction to rock was ALICE COOPER and CINDERELLA and DIO and BLACK SABBATH, so I was listening to a lot of dude bands — GUNS N' ROSES and METALLICA, all that stuff," she continued. "And then I remember when I heard Ann Wilson [of HEART] sing for the first time. My mom got me this live CD, 'The Road Home'. So I hadn't actually really heard a lot of their recorded stuff; I heard this live CD. And it blew my mind, because there was a small adjustment in my brain. It wasn't, like, 'Okay, I wanna be a rock star,' 'cause I wanted to be a rock star. But then also, like, 'Oh, a girl can sing that way.' And also I was, like, 'It's not so unreachable.'

"So I think that it's important to bring that up," she added. "Because some girls are, like, 'Oh, it's great, and I love rock music. But who's doing something that I wanna do? Who sounds like something that I wanna sound like? And who is in my gender?'"

HALESTORM's sixth full-length studio album, "Everest", came out last August via Atlantic Records. HALESTORM worked with producer Dave Cobb, after making three records with Nick Raskulinecz.

Fronted by Lzzy with drummer Arejay Hale, guitarist Joe Hottinger and bassist Josh Smith, HALESTORM's music has earned multiple platinum and gold certifications from the RIAA, and the band has earned a reputation as a powerful live music force, headlining sold-out shows and topping festival bills around the world, and sharing the stage with icons including HEAVEN & HELL, Alice Cooper, Joan Jett and JUDAS PRIEST. Additionally, Lzzy was named the first female brand ambassador for Gibson and served as host of AXS TV's "A Year In Music".

"Love Bites (So Do I)", from HALESTORM's second album in 2012, won the Grammy Award that year for "Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance".

In 2019, HALESTORM was nominated for "Best Rock Performance" Grammy for the song "Uncomfortable".