Evan Dando: ‘I wanted to try heroin because of William Burroughs and Keith Richards’
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Arguably the most gifted melodicist of his generation, Dando was the bronzed, blond pin-up boy of Nineties indie rock – before he threw himself heartily and disastrously into a life of sex and drugs. Now two years clean, he catches up with Michael Hann on what he’s been up to since.
![[Pictured in 1988, Dando in the centre, one of The Lemonheads’ several lineups through the ages]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/03/13/shutterstock_editorial_517615bb.jpg)
Evan Dando, the Nineties grunge heartthrob of The Lemonheads, does not seem to have looked at his life as a tragedy; as a farce, perhaps, because he has never been shy about admitting to his most outlandish disasters – but never a tragedy. For any rock fan, however, it’s hard not to see Dando’s career as one of disappointments.
![[Evan Dando performs on stage at London’s Islington Assembly Hall in 2024]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/16/10/Evan-Dando-Islington-Assembley-Hall-Oct-2024-11.jpg)
In the 28 years since Car Button Cloth, the band’s last album for Atlantic, Dando has released just two albums of original music – one solo outing, Baby I’m Bored, in 2003, and the self-titled Lemonheads in 2006. There have been a couple of covers records, but anyone after Dando’s sublime songwriting is out of luck. The reason for this scarcity is simple: making music was an obstacle to his chosen lifestyle, which might well be summed up as taking as many drugs as possible.
![[Mop-haired heartthrob: Evan Dando on stage with The Lemonheads in 2006]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/16/11/GettyImages-72110969.jpg)
At 57, Dando is two years clean of street drugs, his life saved by moving to Brazil and getting engaged. He tells me this while perched on the steps of a fire escape behind Islington Assembly Hall. But he is unmistakeably a man shaped by using. There is a glint of metal on the right side of his upper jaw, where missing teeth have been replaced, and he speaks in sentences that move between subjects without any apparent reason. Sitting smoking, Dando surrounds himself with objects that may offer comfort – a pile of books, topped by Somerset Maugham’s The Painted Veil, and an old Roland drum machine among them. Later tonight, he will unpack these belongings on stage.
![[‘I play for my own satisfaction and sense of self-worth’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/16/10/DSCF2706.jpg)
