By his own admission in interviews and his new memoir Rumours of My Demise, Evan Dando of the Lemonheads not only took a lot of drugs but enjoyed them immensely, thank you very much.
“It was part and parcel of the whole [rock ‘n’ roll] thing,” he told me in 2004. “I wanted to do it properly, be in a rock band, get successful and do tons of drugs – and I wouldn’t have done it any other way had I had to do it again,” he laughed.
Educated at the Commonwealth School in Boston, from a privileged liberal background and spending his early years in a village-like coastal town in Massachusetts, Dando knew he was different and lucky.
“The funny thing is,” he says in his freewheeling and increasingly shapeless memoir, “I never wanted to be famous. In my own way I always kind of was. I had an exceptional childhood. Most kids didn’t have long blond hair. Most kids didn’t have a mom who was a model. Most kids didn’t run off every other summer to go surfing in France. This was all kind of exotic for a kid from Boston and was its own kind of celebrity.
“At the end of the day, I think fame is about luck and The Lemonheads were very lucky.”
Dando had plenty of luck but not much self-discipline, as he lurched from place to place. The Lemonheads’ plans often went awry through his indolence or the distraction of drugs.
Influenced by punk, the early Lemonheads covered Auckland band Proud Scum’s I Am A Rabbit, and Dando says the local compilation AK*79 was formative. He also assimilated the country music of Townes Van Zandt and Gram Parsons and was oddly obsessed with Charles Manson.
Blessed with good looks, when the Lemonheads had hits – their biggest a cover of Paul Simon’s Mrs Robinson, which he never wanted to record – he became the “punk pin-up”, according to Melody Maker; “the slacker sex kitten”, said another writer; “Reluctant babe magnet”, blared one typical headline.
Dando hated this and says so at length. It was demeaning, dispiriting, shallow … but, yes, he did pose for those cover shots.
“I thought the whole rock-star thing was a game and I treated it like one. I was comfortable with the cliché because I liked the attention … I was accommodating to anyone who helped me achieve that end. I think people took advantage of my willingness to go along with that …”
The Riot grrrls hated him, and his high profile was anathema to many in the post-grunge community.
His conversational and guile-free memoir is a roll call of naivety, innocence, famous friends, harrowing rehab and drug anecdotes. He was close friends with Johnny Depp, Kate Moss, actress/singer Milla Jovovich, Sonic Youth and numerous other peers; had small parts in movies with Liv Tyler (Heavy) and Winona Rider (Reality Bites); co-wrote with Oasis’s Noel Gallagher; snorted speed with Lemmy from Motorhead and the Pogues’ Shane McGowan; was befriended by Marlon Richards, Keith’s son.
The Rolling Stones’ circle became “a second family” and Dando went to Jamaica with Marlon, who was on his honeymoon. They stayed at Keith’s place, where Dando immersed himself in hours of Stones rehearsal tapes, out-takes and studio remixes.
He had a difficult relationship with Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love because, as Dando tells it, Love told Cobain she’d had an affair with him, and after Cobain’s death pursued him relentlessly. She gave him some of Cobain’s clothes, which he wore and fuelled more gossip.
Inevitably, Lemonheads albums offered diminishing returns, Dando’s gift for a melody eroded by abuse and inertia. The band’s last passable album was Car Button Cloth of 1996. Few bothered with the self-titled 2006 album or two albums of cover versions (Varshons and Varshons 2). Reissues of their best albums came with bonus tracks of little consequence.
But, against the odds, the new Lemonheads album, Love Chant, is respectable in a ragged, post-grunge way.
Given Dando’s gregarious nature it’s no surprise old friends turn up: J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr, Juliana Hatfield, Nick Saloman of Britain’s Bevis Frond, Adam Green from New York’s Moldy Peaches, and more.
Recorded in Brazil, where the somewhat grizzled 58-year-old Dando lives with wife Antonia, the album skims from ragged rock on Wild Thing to the jaunty country sound of 58 Second Song.
His voice is sometimes a burnt-out echo of its former self but there’s Mascis’s stuttering guitar prominent on the drug-referencing Deep End; the jamming pop-rocker Cell Phone Blues with Hatfield; his speak-sing rumbling through whisky-cured reminiscences on The Key of Victory where he was “aiming for a Lou Reed/Street Hassle vibe”.
It’s a pity he didn’t include the duet with Hatfield on the pre-release, Sad Cinderella, because Dando mastered a world-weary, country-influenced delivery. That’s here in Togetherness is All I’m After, with the line “baby don’t blow it”.
This time, Evan Dando, in songs obliquely confessional about past relationships and backsliding into bad habits, mostly doesn’t.
