The Lemonheads' frontman Reflects on Drug Use: 'Certain Individuals Were Meant to Use Substances – and I Was One'

The musician pushes back a shirt cuff and points to a line of small dents running down his arm, subtle traces from decades of opioid use. “It requires so much time to get decent track marks,” he remarks. “You inject for a long time and you believe: I'm not ready to quit. Perhaps my complexion is particularly resilient, but you can hardly see it now. What was it all for, eh?” He smiles and emits a hoarse chuckle. “Only joking!”

Dando, one-time alternative heartthrob and key figure of 1990s alternative group the Lemonheads, looks in reasonable nick for a person who has used numerous substances available from the time of his teens. The songwriter behind such exalted songs as My Drug Buddy, he is also known as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a celebrity who apparently achieved success and threw it away. He is warm, charmingly eccentric and completely candid. We meet at lunchtime at his publishers’ offices in Clerkenwell, where he questions if it's better to relocate our chat to a bar. In the end, he sends out for two glasses of apple drink, which he then forgets to drink. Frequently drifting off topic, he is likely to go off on wild tangents. No wonder he has stopped owning a smartphone: “I can’t deal with online content, man. My mind is too scattered. I just want to read everything at once.”

He and his wife his partner, whom he wed recently, have flown in from São Paulo, Brazil, where they reside and where he now has three adult stepchildren. “I'm attempting to be the foundation of this new family. I didn’t embrace family often in my life, but I'm prepared to try. I'm managing quite well so far.” At 58 years old, he states he has quit hard drugs, though this proves to be a flexible definition: “I’ll take acid occasionally, perhaps mushrooms and I consume marijuana.”

Clean to him means not doing opiates, which he has abstained from in nearly a few years. He decided it was time to quit after a disastrous gig at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in recent years where he could scarcely perform adequately. “I realized: ‘This is not good. My reputation will not bear this kind 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.”

A benefit of his comparative clean living is that it has made him creative. “When you’re on heroin, you’re like: ‘Oh fuck that, and that, and the other,’” he says. But currently he is about to release Love Chant, his first album of new band material in almost two decades, which contains glimpses of the lyricism and melodic smarts that propelled them to the indie big league. “I’ve never truly heard of this sort of hiatus in a career,” he comments. “This is some lengthy sleep shit. I do have standards about my releases. I wasn’t ready to create fresh work until the time was right, and now I am.”

Dando is also publishing his initial autobiography, titled Rumours of My Demise; the title is a reference to the rumors that fitfully circulated in the 1990s about his premature death. It’s a ironic, heady, fitfully eye-watering narrative of his experiences as a performer and user. “I authored the first four chapters. It's my story,” he declares. For the remaining part, he collaborated with ghostwriter his collaborator, whom one can assume had his hands full considering his haphazard way of speaking. The composition, he says, was “challenging, but I felt excited to get a reputable publisher. And it positions me out there as someone who has authored a memoir, and that’s everything I desired to accomplish since childhood. In education I admired James Joyce and literary giants.”

He – the last-born of an attorney and a former fashion model – talks fondly about his education, perhaps because it represents a period prior to existence got complicated by substances and celebrity. He attended Boston’s prestigious private academy, a liberal institution that, he recalls, “was the best. It had no rules except no skating in the hallways. In other words, avoid being an jerk.” At that place, in bible class, that he encountered Jesse Peretz and Jesse Peretz and started a group in the mid-80s. The Lemonheads began life as a punk outfit, in awe to the Minutemen and punk icons; they agreed to the local record company their first contract, with whom they put out multiple records. Once Deily and Peretz departed, the group effectively turned into a solo project, Dando recruiting and dismissing musicians at his whim.

During the 90s, the band signed to a major label, a prominent firm, and dialled down the noise in favour of a more languid and mainstream folk-inspired style. This change occurred “since the band's Nevermind came out in ’91 and they perfected the sound”, Dando says. “If you listen to our initial albums – a song like Mad, which was laid down the following we graduated high school – you can hear we were attempting to emulate what Nirvana did but my vocal wasn't suitable. But I realized my voice could stand out in quieter music.” This new sound, waggishly described by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would take the act into the popularity. In the early 90s they issued the album It’s a Shame About Ray, an flawless showcase for Dando’s songcraft and his somber vocal style. The name was taken from a news story in which a clergyman lamented a individual called the subject who had gone off the rails.

The subject wasn’t the only one. By this point, Dando was using heroin and had developed a penchant for cocaine, too. With money, he eagerly threw himself into the rock star life, associating with Johnny Depp, filming a video with Angelina Jolie and dating Kate Moss and film personalities. A publication anointed him one of the 50 sexiest people living. He good-naturedly rebuffs the idea that his song, in which he sang “I’m too much with myself, I desire to become a different person”, was a cry for assistance. He was enjoying too much enjoyment.

However, the substance abuse got out of control. His memoir, he provides a blow-by-blow description of the fateful festival no-show in the mid-90s when he did not manage to turn up for the Lemonheads’ allotted slot after acquaintances suggested he accompany them to their hotel. When he finally showing up, he delivered an impromptu live performance to a hostile crowd who booed and hurled bottles. But this was minor next to the events in the country soon after. The visit was meant as a break from {drugs|substances