The Lemonheads' frontman Shares on Substance Abuse: 'Some People Were Destined to Take Drugs – and I Was One'
Evan Dando rolls up a shirt cuff and indicates a series of small dents along his forearm, subtle traces from decades of heroin abuse. “It takes so much time to get decent track marks,” he says. “You do it for a long time and you believe: I can’t stop yet. Perhaps my skin is especially tough, but you can barely notice it today. What was it all for, eh?” He smiles and lets out a raspy laugh. “Just kidding!”
The singer, former indie pin-up and key figure of 1990s alternative group his band, looks in decent shape for a man who has taken every drug available from the time of 14. The musician responsible for such acclaimed tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray, he is also known as the music industry's famous casualty, a star who apparently had it all and squandered it. He is friendly, goofily charismatic and entirely unfiltered. Our interview takes place at lunchtime at his publishers’ offices in central London, where he wonders if it's better to relocate our chat to the pub. In the end, he sends out for two pints of cider, which he then forgets to drink. Frequently drifting off topic, he is likely to veer into random digressions. It's understandable he has stopped using a mobile device: “I can’t deal with the internet, man. My mind is too all over the place. I desire to read everything at once.”
He and his wife his partner, whom he married recently, have traveled from São Paulo, Brazil, where they reside and where Dando now has a grown-up blended family. “I’m trying to be the backbone of this new family. I avoided family much in my life, but I’m ready to make an effort. I’m doing pretty good up to now.” Now 58, he says he is clean, though this turns out to be a flexible definition: “I occasionally use LSD sometimes, perhaps psychedelics and I’ll smoke marijuana.”
Sober to him means avoiding heroin, which he has abstained from in almost a few years. He concluded it was time to give up after a disastrous gig at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2021 where he could barely perform adequately. “I thought: ‘This is not good. The legacy will not bear this kind of behaviour.’” He acknowledges Teixeira for helping him to cease, though he has no remorse about using. “I think some people were meant to take drugs and one of them was me.”
One advantage of his relative sobriety is that it has rendered him productive. “When you’re on smack, you’re all: ‘Oh fuck that, and that, and that,’” he explains. But now he is about to launch Love Chant, his debut record of original band material in nearly two decades, which contains glimpses of the lyricism and melodic smarts that elevated them to the mainstream success. “I’ve never truly heard of this kind of hiatus between albums,” he comments. “This is a lengthy sleep situation. I do have integrity about my releases. I wasn’t ready to do anything new before I was ready, and now I'm prepared.”
The artist is also publishing his first memoir, titled stories about his death; the name is a nod to the stories that intermittently circulated in the 1990s about his premature death. It’s a wry, intense, fitfully eye-watering account of his adventures as a musician and user. “I wrote the initial sections. That’s me,” he says. For the remaining part, he collaborated with ghostwriter Jim Ruland, whom one can assume had his hands full given Dando’s haphazard way of speaking. The composition, he says, was “difficult, but I was psyched to get a good company. And it positions me out there as a person who has written a book, and that is everything I desired to do since childhood. At school I was obsessed with James Joyce and Flaubert.”
He – the youngest child of an lawyer and a ex- fashion model – talks fondly about school, perhaps because it represents a time prior to life got complicated by substances and fame. He attended Boston’s elite private academy, a progressive institution that, he recalls, “stood out. There were few restrictions except no skating in the corridors. Essentially, avoid being an asshole.” At that place, in religious studies, that he met Ben Deily and Ben Deily and started a group in the mid-80s. The Lemonheads began life as a punk outfit, in awe to the Minutemen and punk icons; they signed to the Boston label their first contract, with whom they released three albums. After band members departed, the group effectively became a one-man show, he hiring and firing musicians at his whim.
In the early 1990s, the group contracted to a major label, a prominent firm, and reduced the noise in preference of a more melodic and mainstream country-rock style. This change occurred “because Nirvana’s Nevermind was released in 1991 and they had nailed it”, Dando says. “Upon hearing to our early records – a track like Mad, which was laid down the day after we graduated high school – you can detect we were trying to emulate their approach but my voice wasn't suitable. But I realized my singing could cut through quieter music.” The shift, waggishly described by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would take the act into the mainstream. In the early 90s they issued the LP their breakthrough record, an impeccable demonstration for Dando’s writing and his somber vocal style. The title was taken from a news story in which a priest lamented a young man called the subject who had gone off the rails.
The subject was not the only one. By this point, Dando was consuming hard drugs and had acquired a liking for cocaine, as well. Financially secure, he enthusiastically embraced the rock star life, associating with Johnny Depp, filming a music clip with Angelina Jolie and dating Kate Moss and film personalities. People magazine anointed him among the 50 sexiest people living. Dando good-naturedly rebuffs the idea that My Drug Buddy, in which he voiced “I’m too much with myself, I desire to become someone else”, was a plea for help. He was enjoying too much enjoyment.
Nonetheless, the drug use became excessive. His memoir, he provides a detailed account of the fateful festival no-show in 1995 when he failed to turn up for his band's allotted slot after two women proposed he come back to their accommodation. Upon eventually did appear, he performed an impromptu acoustic set to a unfriendly crowd who jeered and hurled bottles. But this was minor next to the events in the country soon after. The trip was intended as a break from {drugs|substances
