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

Evan Dando rolls up a sleeve and points to a line of faint marks along his arm, faint scars from years of heroin abuse. “It takes so long to get decent injection scars,” he says. “You do it for years and you believe: I'm not ready to quit. Maybe my complexion is particularly tough, but you can barely notice it now. What was the point, eh?” He grins and emits a hoarse chuckle. “Just kidding!”

The singer, former alternative heartthrob and key figure of 1990s alternative group the Lemonheads, appears in reasonable nick for a person who has taken every drug available from the time of his teens. The songwriter behind such acclaimed tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray, Dando is also recognized as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a celebrity who seemingly achieved success and threw it away. He is friendly, charmingly eccentric and completely candid. Our interview takes place at lunchtime at a publishing company in central London, where he questions if we should move the conversation to a bar. Eventually, he sends out for two pints of cider, which he then forgets to drink. Frequently drifting off topic, he is apt to veer into random digressions. No wonder he has stopped using a smartphone: “I can’t deal with online content, man. My mind is too all over the place. I just want to read everything at once.”

Together with his spouse his partner, whom he married last year, have traveled from their home in South America, where they live and where Dando now has three adult stepchildren. “I'm attempting to be the backbone of this new family. I avoided domestic life often in my life, but I’m ready to make an effort. I'm managing quite well so far.” At 58 years old, he states he has quit hard drugs, though this turns out to be a loose concept: “I occasionally use acid sometimes, maybe psychedelics and I’ll smoke marijuana.”

Clean to him means not doing heroin, which he has abstained from in almost three years. He concluded it was time to quit after a disastrous performance at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in recent years where he could barely play a note. “I realized: ‘This is unacceptable. My reputation will not tolerate this type of conduct.’” He acknowledges his wife for assisting him to cease, though he has no regrets about using. “I think some people were meant to take drugs and I was among them was me.”

One advantage of his relative clean living is that it has made him creative. “When you’re on heroin, you’re all: ‘Forget about that, and that, and that,’” he explains. But currently he is preparing to launch Love Chant, his first album of original band material in nearly two decades, which contains glimpses of the songwriting and melodic smarts that elevated them to the mainstream success. “I’ve never really heard of this sort of hiatus between albums,” he comments. “It's a Rip Van Winkle shit. I maintain standards about what I put out. I wasn’t ready to do anything new before the time was right, and at present I'm prepared.”

The artist is also releasing his first memoir, titled Rumours of My Demise; the title is a nod to the stories that fitfully spread in the 90s about his premature death. It’s a ironic, heady, occasionally shocking account of his adventures as a musician and user. “I wrote the first four chapters. It's my story,” he says. For the remaining part, he collaborated with co-writer Jim Ruland, whom one can assume had his work cut out considering Dando’s haphazard conversational style. The writing process, he notes, was “challenging, but I was psyched to secure a reputable publisher. And it positions me in public as someone who has authored a memoir, and that’s all I wanted to do from I was a kid. 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 his education, perhaps because it represents a time before life got difficult by drugs and fame. He attended the city's elite private academy, a liberal establishment that, he says now, “was the best. There were few restrictions except no skating in the corridors. In other words, don’t be an asshole.” It was there, in religious studies, that he encountered Ben Deily and Ben Deily and started a group in the mid-80s. His band began life as a rock group, in thrall to Dead Kennedys and Ramones; they signed to the Boston label Taang!, with whom they put out three albums. Once Deily and Peretz left, the group effectively became a one-man show, he hiring and firing bandmates at his discretion.

During the 90s, the band signed to a large company, Atlantic, and reduced the noise in preference of a more melodic and accessible folk-inspired style. This was “because the band's Nevermind was released in ’91 and they perfected the sound”, Dando explains. “If you listen to our initial albums – a track like an early composition, which was laid down the following we graduated high school – you can hear we were attempting to do what Nirvana did but my vocal wasn't suitable. But I knew my singing could stand out in quieter music.” This new sound, waggishly described by reviewers as “bubblegrunge”, would take the band into the popularity. In the early 90s they issued the album their breakthrough record, an impeccable demonstration for Dando’s writing and his melancholic croon. The title was derived from a news story in which a priest lamented a individual named Ray who had strayed from the path.

The subject was not the sole case. By this point, Dando was using heroin and had acquired a penchant for cocaine, as well. With money, he eagerly threw himself into the rock star life, becoming friends with Hollywood stars, filming a video with actresses and dating Kate Moss and film personalities. A publication anointed him among the 50 most attractive individuals alive. Dando good-naturedly dismisses the idea that My Drug Buddy, in which he sang “I'm overly self-involved, I desire to become a different person”, was a plea for help. He was having a great deal of fun.

However, the substance abuse became excessive. In the book, he provides a blow-by-blow account of the significant Glastonbury incident in the mid-90s when he failed to appear for his band's scheduled performance after two women suggested he accompany them to their accommodation. Upon eventually did appear, he performed an impromptu acoustic set to a unfriendly audience who booed and threw bottles. But that proved small beer compared to the events in the country shortly afterwards. The trip was meant as a respite from {drugs|substances