Evan Dando Shares on Drug Use: 'Certain Individuals Were Destined to Use Substances – and One of Them'

Evan Dando pushes back a sleeve and points to a line of faint marks along his arm, subtle traces from decades of heroin abuse. “It takes so much time to get noticeable track marks,” he remarks. “You do it for years and you believe: I can’t stop yet. Maybe my complexion is especially resilient, but you can barely see it now. What was the point, eh?” He grins and emits a raspy laugh. “Only joking!”

The singer, former alternative heartthrob and leading light of 90s alt-rock band his band, looks in decent shape for a man who has used numerous substances available from the time of 14. The songwriter responsible for such exalted songs as It’s a Shame About Ray, he is also recognized as the music industry's famous casualty, a celebrity who seemingly achieved success and threw it away. He is warm, goofily charismatic and completely unfiltered. Our interview takes place at lunchtime at a publishing company in Clerkenwell, where he wonders if it's better to relocate the conversation to the pub. Eventually, he orders for two pints of apple drink, which he then neglects to consume. Frequently drifting off topic, he is likely to veer into wild tangents. No wonder he has given up owning a mobile device: “I struggle with online content, man. My thoughts is too all over the place. I just want to absorb all information at the same time.”

He and his wife his partner, whom he wed recently, have flown in from São Paulo, Brazil, where they live and where Dando now has a grown-up blended family. “I’m trying to be the foundation of this recent household. I didn’t embrace domestic life much in my life, but I’m ready to try. I'm managing quite well so far.” Now 58, he says he is clean, though this turns out to be a loose concept: “I’ll take acid sometimes, maybe psychedelics and I’ll smoke pot.”

Clean to him means not doing heroin, which he has abstained from in almost three years. He concluded it was the moment to give up after a disastrous performance at a Los Angeles venue in recent years where he could scarcely perform adequately. “I thought: ‘This is unacceptable. My reputation will not tolerate this type of behaviour.’” He credits Teixeira for helping him to stop, though he has no regrets about his drug use. “I think some people were meant to take drugs and one of them was me.”

One advantage of his relative clean living is that it has made him productive. “During addiction to heroin, you’re like: ‘Oh fuck that, and this, and the other,’” he says. But currently he is preparing to release Love Chant, his first album of original band material in almost 20 years, which contains glimpses of the songwriting and catchy tunes that elevated them to the indie big league. “I’ve never really known about this kind of hiatus between albums,” he comments. “It's some lengthy sleep shit. I do have integrity about my releases. I wasn’t ready to create fresh work until the time was right, and at present I am.”

Dando is also publishing his initial autobiography, named stories about his death; the name is a reference to the stories that intermittently circulated in the 90s about his early passing. It’s a wry, heady, fitfully eye-watering account of his experiences as a performer and user. “I authored the first four chapters. That’s me,” he says. For the rest, he worked with co-writer his collaborator, whom you imagine had his work cut out considering Dando’s haphazard way of speaking. The writing process, he notes, was “difficult, but I felt excited to get a good company. And it positions me out there as a person who has authored a memoir, and that’s all I wanted to do since childhood. At school I admired Dylan Thomas and literary giants.”

He – the youngest child of an lawyer and a ex- model – speaks warmly about school, maybe because it symbolizes a time prior to life got complicated by substances and celebrity. He attended Boston’s elite Commonwealth school, a progressive establishment that, he says now, “was the best. There were few restrictions aside from no rollerskating in the hallways. In other words, don’t be an jerk.” It was there, in bible class, that he encountered Jesse Peretz and Ben Deily and formed a band in 1986. The Lemonheads began life as a rock group, in thrall to the Minutemen and punk icons; they agreed to the Boston label Taang!, with whom they put out multiple records. Once Deily and Peretz departed, the group effectively became a solo project, he recruiting and dismissing bandmates at his discretion.

During the 90s, the band contracted to a major label, Atlantic, and dialled down the noise in favour of a more melodic and mainstream folk-inspired sound. This change occurred “because the band's iconic album was released in 1991 and they had nailed it”, he explains. “Upon hearing to our early records – a track like an early composition, which was recorded the following we graduated high school – you can hear we were trying to emulate their approach but my voice didn’t cut right. But I realized my voice could stand out in softer arrangements.” The shift, humorously labeled by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would propel the band into the mainstream. In the early 90s they released the album It’s a Shame About Ray, an flawless showcase for Dando’s songcraft and his somber vocal style. The name was taken from a newspaper headline in which a priest bemoaned a individual called the subject who had gone off the rails.

Ray was not the only one. At that stage, Dando was consuming hard drugs and had developed a penchant for cocaine, as well. Financially secure, he enthusiastically threw himself into the rock star life, associating with Johnny Depp, filming a video with actresses and seeing supermodels and Milla Jovovich. People magazine anointed him among the fifty sexiest individuals living. He cheerfully dismisses the idea that My Drug Buddy, in which he sang “I’m too much with myself, I wanna be a different person”, was a cry for assistance. He was having too much fun.

However, the drug use got out of control. In the book, he provides a blow-by-blow account of the significant Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he failed to turn up for the Lemonheads’ scheduled performance after two women suggested he come back to their accommodation. When he finally did appear, he delivered an impromptu acoustic set to a unfriendly crowd who booed and threw objects. But this was minor compared to what happened in Australia soon after. The trip was meant as a break from {drugs|substances