Evan Dando Reflects on Drug Use: 'Some People Were Meant to Take Drugs – and One of Them'

Evan Dando pushes back a shirt cuff and points to a line of small dents along his forearm, subtle traces from decades of heroin abuse. “It requires so long to get decent track marks,” he says. “You do it for years and you think: I'm not ready to quit. Perhaps my complexion is especially resilient, but you can barely see it today. What was the point, eh?” He smiles and emits a hoarse chuckle. “Just kidding!”

The singer, former alternative heartthrob and key figure of 90s alt-rock band the Lemonheads, appears in reasonable nick for a man who has taken numerous substances available from the time of 14. The songwriter behind such exalted songs as It’s a Shame About Ray, he is also recognized as the music industry's famous casualty, a star who seemingly achieved success and threw it away. He is friendly, charmingly eccentric and entirely unfiltered. We meet at midday at a publishing company in central London, where he wonders if it's better to relocate our chat to the pub. Eventually, he orders for two glasses of apple drink, which he then neglects to drink. Often losing his train of thought, he is likely to go off on random digressions. It's understandable he has given up owning a mobile device: “I struggle with online content, man. My mind is too scattered. I just want to read all information at once.”

He and his wife Antonia Teixeira, whom he married recently, have flown in from their home in South America, where they live and where he now has three adult stepchildren. “I’m trying to be the backbone of this recent household. I avoided domestic life often in my life, but I'm prepared to try. I’m doing pretty good so far.” At 58 years old, he says he has quit hard drugs, though this proves to be a flexible definition: “I occasionally use LSD occasionally, maybe mushrooms and I’ll smoke marijuana.”

Sober to him means avoiding opiates, which he hasn’t touched in nearly three years. He concluded it was time to quit after a disastrous performance at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in recent years where he could scarcely perform adequately. “I realized: ‘This is unacceptable. My reputation will not bear this kind of conduct.’” He credits Teixeira for assisting him to cease, though he has no remorse about his drug use. “I believe certain individuals were supposed to take drugs and I was among them was me.”

A benefit of his relative clean living is that it has rendered him productive. “During addiction to heroin, you’re like: ‘Forget about that, and this, and that,’” he says. But now he is about to launch his new album, his first album of original Lemonheads music in almost 20 years, which contains glimpses of the songwriting and catchy tunes that propelled them to the mainstream success. “I’ve never truly heard of this sort of dormancy period between albums,” he comments. “This is some Rip Van Winkle situation. I maintain standards about my releases. I didn't feel prepared to do anything new until I was ready, and now I'm prepared.”

Dando is also releasing his initial autobiography, titled stories about his death; the name is a reference to the rumors that fitfully spread in the 90s about his premature death. It is a ironic, heady, fitfully shocking account of his adventures as a performer and addict. “I wrote the first four chapters. It's my story,” he says. For the remaining part, he worked with ghostwriter his collaborator, whom one can assume had his work cut out given his haphazard way of speaking. The composition, he notes, was “challenging, but I was psyched to secure a reputable publisher. And it gets me in public as someone who has authored a memoir, and that is everything I desired to accomplish since I was a kid. At school I admired Dylan Thomas and literary giants.”

He – the youngest child of an lawyer and a former model – talks fondly about school, perhaps because it symbolizes a period prior to existence got difficult by substances and fame. He went to the city's prestigious Commonwealth school, a liberal institution that, he says now, “was the best. There were few restrictions aside from no rollerskating in the corridors. Essentially, avoid being an jerk.” At that place, in bible class, that he met Jesse Peretz and Ben Deily and formed a band in 1986. The Lemonheads started out as a rock group, in awe to the Minutemen and Ramones; they signed to the Boston label Taang!, with whom they released multiple records. Once Deily and Peretz left, the group largely became a solo project, Dando hiring and firing musicians at his discretion.

During the 90s, the band contracted to a large company, Atlantic, and reduced the squall in preference of a increasingly languid and accessible folk-inspired sound. This change occurred “because the band's Nevermind came out in ’91 and they had nailed it”, Dando explains. “Upon hearing to our early records – a track like Mad, which was recorded the following we finished school – you can detect we were trying to do what Nirvana did but my voice didn’t cut right. But I realized my voice could cut through softer arrangements.” This new sound, waggishly labeled by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would propel the act into the popularity. In 1992 they issued the album It’s a Shame About Ray, an impeccable showcase for Dando’s songcraft and his somber vocal style. The title was taken from a news story in which a priest lamented a individual called Ray who had strayed from the path.

Ray was not the sole case. At that stage, Dando was consuming hard drugs and had acquired a liking for crack, as well. Financially secure, he enthusiastically threw himself into the rock star life, becoming friends with Hollywood stars, shooting a music clip with actresses and seeing Kate Moss and film personalities. People magazine declared him one of the 50 most attractive individuals alive. He cheerfully dismisses the idea that his song, in which he voiced “I'm overly self-involved, I wanna be a different person”, was a cry for assistance. He was enjoying a great deal of enjoyment.

Nonetheless, the drug use got out of control. In the book, he provides a detailed account of the fateful Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he failed to turn up for the Lemonheads’ allotted slot after acquaintances proposed he come back to their accommodation. When he finally did appear, he delivered an impromptu live performance to a hostile audience who booed and hurled bottles. But that proved minor compared to the events in the country soon after. The trip was meant as a break from {drugs|substances