Evan Dando Shares on Substance Abuse: 'Some People Were Destined to Use Substances – and I Was One'
Evan Dando pushes back a shirt cuff and points to a line of faint marks running down his arm, subtle traces from decades of opioid use. “It takes so long to get noticeable track marks,” he says. “You do it for years and you think: I'm not ready to quit. Maybe my skin is particularly resilient, but you can barely see it now. What was the point, eh?” He grins and lets out a hoarse laugh. “Just kidding!”
Dando, one-time indie pin-up and key figure of 1990s alternative group his band, looks in decent shape for a man who has taken numerous substances going from the age of 14. The songwriter responsible for such acclaimed songs as My Drug Buddy, Dando is also recognized as the music industry's famous casualty, a celebrity who apparently had it all and threw it away. He is warm, charmingly eccentric and completely candid. We meet at midday at a publishing company in Clerkenwell, where he questions if we should move the conversation to the pub. In the end, he sends out for two glasses of apple drink, which he then forgets to consume. Frequently losing his train of thought, he is likely to veer into random digressions. No wonder he has given up using a smartphone: “I can’t deal with the internet, man. My thoughts is extremely all over the place. I desire to absorb all information at the same time.”
He and his wife his partner, whom he wed last year, have traveled from São Paulo, Brazil, where they reside and where he now has a grown-up blended family. “I'm attempting to be the backbone of this recent household. I avoided family often in my existence, but I’m ready to try. I'm managing pretty good so far.” Now 58, he says he has quit hard drugs, though this proves to be a loose concept: “I occasionally use LSD sometimes, maybe mushrooms and I’ll smoke marijuana.”
Clean to him means avoiding heroin, which he hasn’t touched in almost a few years. He concluded it was time to give up after a catastrophic gig at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in recent years where he could scarcely perform adequately. “I realized: ‘This is not good. My reputation will not tolerate this type of conduct.’” He credits his wife for helping him to cease, though he has no regrets about his drug use. “I think certain individuals were supposed to take drugs and I was among them was me.”
A benefit of his comparative sobriety is that it has rendered him productive. “During addiction to smack, you’re all: ‘Oh fuck that, and that, and the other,’” he explains. But now he is about to release his new album, his first album of original Lemonheads music in almost 20 years, which includes glimpses of the songwriting and catchy tunes that elevated them to the mainstream success. “I haven't really heard of this kind of hiatus in a career,” he comments. “It's a Rip Van Winkle shit. I maintain integrity about my releases. I wasn’t ready to do anything new until I was ready, and at present I am.”
Dando is also releasing his initial autobiography, titled stories about his death; the name is a nod to the rumors that intermittently circulated in the 1990s about his early passing. It’s a ironic, intense, occasionally eye-watering account of his experiences as a performer and addict. “I authored the first four chapters. It's my story,” he says. For the remaining part, he collaborated with ghostwriter Jim Ruland, whom you imagine had his work cut out considering his disorganized conversational style. The writing process, he notes, was “difficult, but I was psyched to get a good publisher. And it gets me out there as a person who has authored a memoir, and that’s all I wanted to do since childhood. In education I admired James Joyce and literary giants.”
He – the youngest child of an attorney and a former fashion model – talks fondly about his education, maybe because it symbolizes a time prior to life got complicated by substances and celebrity. He went to the city's elite Commonwealth school, a liberal establishment that, he recalls, “was the best. It had no rules except no rollerskating in the corridors. Essentially, avoid being an jerk.” It was there, in religious studies, that he met Jesse Peretz and Jesse Peretz and started a group in the mid-80s. His band began life as a punk outfit, in thrall to the Minutemen and punk icons; they signed to the local record company their first contract, with whom they put out multiple records. After Deily and Peretz departed, the group effectively turned into a one-man show, Dando hiring and firing bandmates at his discretion.
During the 90s, the group contracted to a major label, a prominent firm, and dialled down the squall in preference of a more languid and accessible country-rock style. This was “since Nirvana’s iconic album was released in ’91 and they had nailed it”, he explains. “Upon hearing to our initial albums – a track like an early composition, which was recorded the day after we finished school – you can hear we were trying to do what Nirvana did but my vocal didn’t cut right. But I knew my singing could cut through softer arrangements.” The shift, waggishly described by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would propel the band into the mainstream. In the early 90s they issued the LP It’s a Shame About Ray, an flawless showcase for his writing and his somber vocal style. The title was taken from a news story in which a clergyman bemoaned a individual called the subject who had strayed from the path.
Ray wasn’t the sole case. At that stage, Dando was using hard drugs and had developed a penchant for crack, as well. Financially secure, he enthusiastically threw himself into the rock star life, becoming friends with Johnny Depp, filming a music clip with actresses and dating Kate Moss and film personalities. People magazine declared him among the fifty sexiest people living. He good-naturedly dismisses the notion that My Drug Buddy, in which he sang “I'm overly self-involved, I desire to become a different person”, was a cry for assistance. He was having too much enjoyment.
However, the substance abuse became excessive. In the book, he provides a blow-by-blow account of the fateful Glastonbury incident in the mid-90s when he did not manage to appear for his band's allotted slot after two women proposed he accompany them to their accommodation. When he finally showing up, he delivered an impromptu acoustic set to a hostile crowd who jeered and threw objects. But this was small beer compared to what happened in Australia soon after. The trip was meant as a break from {drugs|substances
