March 4, 2005 On tour it's all real, Ashlee Simpson says
She promises: Absolutely, positively no lip syncing.
"There will be no backing vocal tracks at all," Ashlee Simpson said of her current tour. "No Pro Tools computer-programmed music. Nothing. There's just me and my band."
Excuse Simpson if she seems defensive. She has become the punch line for more jokes in the past four months than any music figure this side of Michael Jackson.
Not to worry, says Simpson, whose debut disc "Autobiography" went to No. 1 last summer and has sold more than 3 million copies, making it the ninth-biggest seller of 2004. At age 20, she has thick skin - and a spin-control machine operating at full force.
During a recent phone interview, a publicist served as chaperone, twice jumping in to steer questions away from touchy subjects.
"That's not appropriate," the publicist said when a reporter asked Simpson how much time she and her people spent talking about how to handle questions about her "Saturday Night Live" lip-syncing fiasco in October and the booing she got at the Orange Bowl in January.
"That's fine," Simpson countered. "Not much time at all. I know what I want to say and what not."
Nor did she hesitate in answering a question about the Web site StopAshlee.com, which has posted a petition asking her record label to stop marketing her.
"An 18-year-old girl started it," Simpson said. "And that's cool. You don't always have to be a fan of everybody's music."
She added, "I'm lucky that I have amazing fans by my side who've started a new Web site with only positive things. That doesn't really bother me because I'm not going to stop even if the 18-year-old girl gets her petition done."
The real question has become: Can Ashlee Simpson sing?
"Is she a Celine Dion?" mused John Shanks, who just won a producer-of-the-year Grammy for his work with Simpson, Hilary Duff, Kelly Clarkson, Alanis Morissette and Sheryl Crow.
That's a rhetorical question, of course, which Shanks didn't even bother to answer. Instead, he said:
"When I met her, she reminded me of Marianne Faithfull, she reminded me of Joan Jett, she had a little Blondie, a little Chrissie Hynde (of the Pretenders). There was a tone in her voice that I really enjoyed. That was the reason I wanted to do the record."
The younger sister of pop pinup and reality-TV star Jessica Simpson, Ashlee was trained as a dancer, and she was acting on the TV series "7th Heaven" when she began writing songs.
People encouraged her to seek a record deal.
"I went in and made a record not knowing that my album would be a success at all. I did it just for fun," said Simpson. "It's been a definitely crazy year."
That would be an understatement. But Simpson said she doesn't like to dwell on the past: "I'm one of those kind of people that likes to move forward. I don't really get upset with what people say about me."
She shrugs off the "SNL" and Orange Bowl snafus, saying, "It's like somebody has a bad day -- it's that feeling -- and you move on. For me, I've luckily got this tour. There are so many great things coming. I'm lucky to be in this position. Those 1/8bad3/8 things only make you a stronger person."
Coming up are the second season of her MTV reality series, "Ashlee," and a theatrical movie, "Wannabe," due this summer, in which she plays an aspiring actress. "It was fun. It was a great cast: Carrie Fisher, Kip Pardue, Shannyn Sossamon. It was a great experience."
So what will Simpson be singing on her first-ever concert tour?
"I'm going to do some new songs that aren't on my album," she said. "There's a little bit of a different rendition of one of my songs that I think some people will be shocked by. I'm doing three bits and pieces of a few of my favorite artists. And I'm doing like an acoustic set in the middle of the show."
The acoustic set will have live vocals by Ashlee. Promise.
