🔗 Share this article

Evan Dando pushes back a sleeve and points to a line of small dents running down his forearm, faint scars from years of heroin abuse. “It takes so much time to develop decent track marks,” he says. “You inject for years and you think: I'm not ready to quit. Perhaps my complexion is especially resilient, but you can hardly see it now. What was the point, eh?” He smiles and emits a hoarse laugh. “Only joking!”

Dando, one-time alternative heartthrob and leading light of 90s alt-rock band his band, looks in decent shape for a man who has taken numerous substances available from the time of 14. The songwriter responsible for such acclaimed songs as It’s a Shame About Ray, Dando is also recognized as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a celebrity who apparently had it all and squandered it. He is warm, goofily charismatic and completely candid. Our interview takes place at lunchtime at his publishers’ offices in central London, where he wonders if it's better to relocate the conversation to a bar. In the end, he orders for two glasses of apple drink, which he then neglects to consume. Often losing his train of thought, he is likely to go off on wild tangents. No wonder he has stopped using a mobile device: “I struggle with the internet, man. My thoughts is extremely scattered. I desire to absorb all information at once.”

Together with his spouse Antonia Teixeira, whom he wed last year, have flown in from São Paulo, Brazil, where they reside and where he now has a grown-up blended family. “I’m trying to be the backbone of this recent household. I didn’t embrace domestic life much in my existence, but I'm prepared to try. I'm managing quite well so far.” At 58 years old, he says he has quit hard drugs, though this proves to be a loose concept: “I occasionally use acid occasionally, maybe psychedelics and I consume pot.”

Clean to him means not doing opiates, which he has abstained from in nearly three years. He concluded it was time to give up after a disastrous gig at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in recent years where he could barely play a note. “I thought: ‘This is not good. My reputation will not bear this type of behaviour.’” He acknowledges Teixeira for assisting him to stop, though he has no regrets about his drug use. “I believe certain individuals were meant to take drugs and I was among them was me.”

A benefit of his comparative sobriety is that it has rendered him creative. “During addiction to heroin, you’re like: ‘Forget about that, and that, and the other,’” he explains. But currently he is about to launch Love Chant, his first album of new Lemonheads music in almost two decades, which includes flashes of the lyricism and catchy tunes that elevated them to the indie big league. “I haven't truly known about this sort of hiatus between albums,” he says. “It's a lengthy sleep situation. I maintain integrity about what I put out. I wasn’t ready to create fresh work before I was ready, and now I am.”

The artist is also releasing his first memoir, titled Rumours of My Demise; the title is a reference to the stories that fitfully circulated in the 90s about his early passing. It’s a ironic, heady, occasionally shocking narrative of his adventures as a musician and addict. “I wrote the first four chapters. That’s me,” he says. For the rest, he collaborated with co-writer his collaborator, whom one can assume had his work cut out considering his haphazard way of speaking. The composition, he notes, was “difficult, but I was psyched to get a good company. And it gets me in public as a person who has written a book, and that’s everything I desired to accomplish from I was a kid. In education I admired James Joyce and literary giants.”

Dando – the youngest child of an attorney and a former fashion model – speaks warmly about school, perhaps because it represents a time before life got difficult by substances and fame. He went to Boston’s prestigious Commonwealth school, a liberal establishment that, he recalls, “stood out. It had no rules except no skating in the corridors. Essentially, avoid being an jerk.” It was there, in religious studies, that he met Jesse Peretz and Ben Deily and started a group in the mid-80s. His band started out as a punk outfit, in awe to Dead Kennedys and Ramones; they agreed to the local record company their first contract, with whom they put out three albums. After Deily and Peretz left, the Lemonheads effectively turned into a one-man show, he recruiting and dismissing musicians at his whim.

In the early 1990s, the band contracted to a major label, a prominent firm, and dialled down the squall in preference of a increasingly melodic and accessible country-rock sound. This change occurred “since the band's Nevermind came out in 1991 and they had nailed it”, Dando explains. “If you listen to our initial albums – a song like Mad, which was laid down the day after we graduated high school – you can hear we were attempting to do what Nirvana did but my voice wasn't suitable. But I knew my singing could stand out in quieter music.” This new sound, humorously labeled by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would take the act into the popularity. In the early 90s they released the LP their breakthrough record, an flawless demonstration for his writing and his somber vocal style. The title was derived from a newspaper headline in which a priest lamented a individual named the subject who had gone off the rails.

Ray wasn’t the only one. At that stage, Dando was consuming heroin and had acquired a penchant for cocaine, too. With money, he eagerly threw himself into the celebrity lifestyle, associating with Hollywood stars, shooting a video with actresses and dating supermodels and film personalities. People magazine declared him one of the 50 sexiest individuals living. He good-naturedly rebuffs the idea that My Drug Buddy, in which he sang “I'm overly self-involved, I desire to become someone else”, was a cry for assistance. He was enjoying too much enjoyment.

However, the drug use became excessive. His memoir, he delivers a detailed description of the fateful Glastonbury incident in the mid-90s when he did not manage to turn up for his band's allotted slot after acquaintances suggested he come back to their accommodation. When he finally showing up, he delivered an unplanned acoustic set to a hostile audience who jeered and hurled objects. But this was minor next to the events in Australia soon after. The visit was meant as a respite from {drugs|substances