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Evan Dando pushes back a shirt cuff and points to a series of small dents along his arm, subtle traces from years of heroin abuse. “It requires so much time to develop noticeable track marks,” he remarks. “You do it for a long time and you think: I can’t stop yet. Perhaps my complexion is particularly resilient, but you can hardly notice it today. What was it all for, eh?” He grins and emits a raspy laugh. “Only joking!”

Dando, one-time alternative heartthrob and key figure of 1990s alternative group his band, appears in reasonable nick for a person who has used every drug available from the time of 14. The musician behind such acclaimed tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray, Dando is also known as the music industry's famous casualty, a star who seemingly achieved success and threw it away. He is friendly, charmingly eccentric and completely candid. We meet at midday at his publishers’ offices in central London, where he wonders if it's better to relocate the conversation to a bar. Eventually, he orders for two pints of cider, which he then forgets to consume. Often losing his train of thought, he is apt to veer into wild tangents. No wonder he has stopped using a smartphone: “I struggle with online content, man. My mind is too all over the place. I just want to read all information at the same time.”

Together with his spouse his partner, whom he wed recently, have flown in from their home in South America, where they reside and where he now has three adult stepchildren. “I'm attempting to be the backbone of this recent household. I avoided domestic life much in my life, but I'm prepared to make an effort. I’m doing pretty good up to now.” At 58 years old, he says he has quit hard drugs, though this turns out to be a loose concept: “I’ll take acid occasionally, maybe mushrooms and I’ll smoke marijuana.”

Sober to him means not doing opiates, which he has abstained from in nearly a few years. He decided it was the moment to give up after a catastrophic gig at a Los Angeles venue in 2021 where he could barely play a note. “I realized: ‘This is not good. My reputation will not tolerate this kind of behaviour.’” He acknowledges Teixeira for helping 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.”

One advantage of his relative sobriety is that it has rendered him creative. “During addiction to smack, you’re all: ‘Oh fuck that, and this, and the other,’” he explains. But currently he is about to release Love Chant, his first album of original band material in nearly two decades, which contains glimpses of the lyricism and catchy tunes that propelled them to the indie big league. “I’ve never really known about this sort of hiatus in a career,” he says. “It's a Rip Van Winkle shit. I maintain standards about my releases. I didn't feel prepared to create fresh work before the time was right, and now I'm prepared.”

The artist is also publishing his initial autobiography, titled stories about his death; the name is a nod to the rumors that intermittently circulated in the 1990s about his premature death. It is a wry, heady, occasionally eye-watering account of his experiences as a musician and addict. “I authored the first four chapters. It's my story,” he declares. For the rest, he worked with co-writer Jim Ruland, whom one can assume had his work cut out given Dando’s haphazard way of speaking. The writing process, he notes, was “challenging, but I was psyched to get a good company. And it gets me in public as someone who has written a book, and that’s everything I desired to do from I was a kid. In education I was obsessed with Dylan Thomas and Flaubert.”

Dando – the last-born of an lawyer and a former fashion model – talks fondly about his education, maybe because it symbolizes a period prior to existence got difficult by drugs and celebrity. He attended the city's elite Commonwealth school, a progressive institution that, he says now, “stood out. It had no rules except no rollerskating in the hallways. Essentially, don’t be an asshole.” It was there, in religious studies, that he met Jesse Peretz and Jesse Peretz and formed a band in 1986. The Lemonheads began life as a rock group, in awe to the Minutemen and Ramones; they agreed to the Boston label Taang!, with whom they put out three albums. Once band members left, the group largely became a solo project, he hiring and firing musicians at his whim.

In the early 1990s, the band contracted to a large company, a prominent firm, and dialled down the noise in preference of a increasingly melodic and mainstream country-rock style. This change occurred “because the band's Nevermind came out in 1991 and they had nailed it”, Dando says. “Upon hearing to our initial albums – a song like Mad, which was recorded the day after we graduated high school – you can detect we were trying to do their approach but my voice didn’t cut right. But I realized my singing could cut through quieter music.” This new sound, waggishly described by critics as “a hybrid genre”, would take the act into the popularity. In 1992 they released the LP It’s a Shame About Ray, an flawless demonstration for his writing and his melancholic croon. The name was derived from a newspaper headline in which a clergyman lamented a individual named the subject who had gone off the rails.

Ray was not the only one. At that stage, the singer was consuming hard drugs and had acquired a penchant for crack, as well. Financially secure, he eagerly embraced the rock star life, becoming friends with Johnny Depp, filming a video with Angelina Jolie and seeing Kate Moss and Milla Jovovich. A publication declared him one of the fifty most attractive people living. Dando good-naturedly dismisses the idea that his song, in which he voiced “I'm overly self-involved, I wanna be a different person”, was a plea for help. He was having a great deal of fun.

However, the substance abuse got out of control. His memoir, he provides a blow-by-blow description of the fateful Glastonbury incident in the mid-90s when he failed to appear for the Lemonheads’ allotted slot after two women suggested he come back to their hotel. Upon eventually showing up, he performed an impromptu live performance to a unfriendly audience who booed and threw bottles. But that proved minor next to what happened in Australia soon after. The visit was intended as a respite from {drugs|substances