Evan Dando\u2019s autobiography opens in early 2021. The singer is\u00a0living in a mouldering trailer on Martha\u2019s Vineyard. He has a\u00a0$200-a-day drug habit and is subsisting off a diet of cigarettes and cheeseburgers that he can\u2019t chew because the heroin, cocaine and amphetamine he\u2019s injecting have caused his teeth to fall out.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all a very long way from Dando\u2019s brief burst of fame as frontman and solitary longstanding member of the Lemonheads: two big albums in 1992\u2019s It\u2019s a Shame About Ray, and 1993\u2019s Come on Feel the Lemonheads, a huge hit cover of Simon and Garfunkel\u2019s Mrs\u00a0Robinson, an era with Dando\u2019s face taking its place alongside the Betty Blue and magic eye posters on halls of residence walls, the Docs-shod female student\u2019s pin-up of choice. But it\u2019s also\u00a0not totally unexpected, at least if you have even a glancing knowledge of\u00a0the singer\u2019s subsequent travails. Mainstream success was short-lived: Dando succeeds in sabotaging his own career in a blaze of hard drugs and wildly unpredictable behaviour. For\u00a0the last 35 years, drugs and unpredictability \u2013 rather than music \u2013 is what Dando has become known for. The book\u2019s blurb mentions \u201cheroin chic\u201d, but in truth, Dando\u2019s dissipation is almost impossible to put any kind of\u00a0romantic gloss on. To his credit, he doesn\u2019t bother, instead recounting one public humiliation after another with a what-can-you-do? shrug. <\/p>\n
A cocktail of heroin and cocaine puts paid to a show designed to impress investors who\u2019ve just bought a share of Dando\u2019s song publishing for $300,000, but it\u2019s just one of many gigs that collapse into chaos: he falls offstage, or the police are called and he\u2019s led away from the venue in handcuffs. The Lemonheads miss their slot at Glastonbury because Dando is holed up in a hotel, doing heroin: when he does eventually turn up, he performs an unscheduled solo set, but the crowd throw bottles and boo him offstage. He hangs around Oasis in their pomp, even writing a song with Noel Gallagher: it has to be removed from a Lemonheads album at the last minute, because Gallagher deems it an \u201cembarrassment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Dando sounds insufferable, but weirdly, he doesn\u2019t come across that way \u2013 he\u2019s a good writer, possessed of a laconic wit<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
You start wondering what his problem is, but there aren\u2019t any straightforward answers: there\u2019s no great childhood trauma beyond his parents\u2019 divorce, which he seems to navigate well, and a predisposition to\u00a0sleepwalking, which he eventually overcomes. Indeed, you get the sense that Dando\u2019s real issue may be that he\u2019s never had to try very hard. His parents are wealthy and he\u2019s educated privately at a school so liberal that the only rule\u00a0involves not rollerskating in the corridors; they nevertheless try to expel him after the first year because of his disinclination to do any work, but his mum steps in and talks them round.<\/p>\n
Long-haired and preposterously handsome, he works as a child model \u2013 his dad invests the money in shares, leaving him a tidy nest-egg \u2013 and from his teens onwards seems basically irresistible to women. When he forms the Lemonheads, consternation is\u00a0caused by their privileged backgrounds\u00a0but it doesn\u2019t seem to impede their progress. They become increasingly successful as they shift from playing hardcore punk to melodic indie rock, garnering themselves a\u00a0major-label deal, and eventually, international success. Understandably so: Dando has a genuine gift for songwriting. It\u2019s\u00a0a Shame About Ray lasted under half an hour, but every one of its 29\u00a0minutes contained a killer\u00a0melody or a\u00a0nagging hook.<\/p>\n
He is uncomfortable with celebrity, particularly the magazines that drool over his looks, and unhappy about being catapulted to fame by a hastily thrown together Simon and Garfunkel cover. But he\u2019s hardly self-medicating to cope with the pressure: he just seems to have really liked taking drugs from the moment he started doing LSD, aged 14, and saw no reason to stop when he became famous. He attempts to blame the press for sensationalising his narcotic habits, but, frankly, if you turn up to an interview to promote your new album with a pad and pen to\u00a0write your answers down because a\u00a0crack-smoking binge has left you unable to speak, what do you expect? He claims his record company lost faith in him when Come On Feel the Lemonheads didn\u2019t outsell its predecessor, but again, it\u2019s hard not to wonder if the whole smoking-so-much-crack-you-lose-your-voice thing might not have caused a certain dip in corporate expectations.<\/p>\n
He sounds insufferable, but weirdly, he doesn\u2019t come across that way in the pages of Rumours of My Demise. You wouldn\u2019t want to be in a band with him, nor sign him to your label, but he\u2019s a good writer, possessed of a laconic wit and, occasionally, bluntly insightful: \u201cIf\u00a0I could go back in time and give a bit of advice to myself, I\u2019d say \u2018Evan, don\u2019t be\u00a0such a dick\u2019.\u201d The book ends with Dando kicking heroin \u2013 although a\u00a0recent European tour was the usual chaos \u2013 and the reader finding Dando hopeless, but strangely charming with it: he\u2019s somehow got away with it, as he seems to have done for the last 40 years.<\/p>\n