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Evan Dando pushes back a shirt cuff and points to a series of faint marks along his arm, faint scars from decades of opioid use. “It takes so much time to get noticeable injection scars,” he remarks. “You inject for a long time and you think: I'm not ready to quit. Perhaps my complexion is especially resilient, but you can hardly notice it now. What was the point, eh?” He grins and emits a hoarse laugh. “Only joking!”

The singer, former indie pin-up and leading light of 90s alt-rock band the Lemonheads, looks in reasonable nick for a man who has used numerous substances available from the time of 14. The musician behind such acclaimed tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray, he is also known as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a celebrity who seemingly achieved success and squandered it. He is warm, goofily charismatic and entirely unfiltered. Our interview takes place at midday at his publishers’ offices in central London, where he questions if we should move the conversation to a bar. In the end, he orders for two glasses of cider, which he then forgets to consume. Frequently losing his train of thought, he is likely to go off on wild tangents. It's understandable he has given up owning a smartphone: “I can’t deal with online content, man. My thoughts is extremely scattered. I just want to read all information at once.”

Together with his spouse Antonia Teixeira, whom he married last year, have flown in from São Paulo, Brazil, where they reside and where he now has three adult stepchildren. “I’m trying to be the backbone of this new family. I didn’t embrace domestic life much in my existence, but I'm prepared to try. I’m doing quite well so far.” At 58 years old, he says he has quit hard drugs, though this proves to be a flexible definition: “I’ll take LSD sometimes, maybe mushrooms and I’ll smoke pot.”

Clean 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 disastrous gig at a Los Angeles venue in 2021 where he could scarcely play a note. “I realized: ‘This is unacceptable. The legacy will not tolerate this type of conduct.’” He credits his wife for helping him to stop, though he has no regrets about using. “I believe some people were supposed to use substances and I was among them was me.”

A benefit of his relative clean living 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 preparing to launch Love Chant, his debut record of new band material in nearly 20 years, which contains flashes of the songwriting and melodic smarts that propelled them to the indie big league. “I haven't really known about this sort of hiatus between albums,” he comments. “It's some lengthy sleep situation. I maintain integrity about what I put out. I wasn’t ready to create fresh work until I was ready, and at present I'm prepared.”

Dando is also releasing his initial autobiography, named stories about his death; the title is a reference to the rumors that intermittently circulated in the 90s about his early passing. It is a ironic, heady, fitfully shocking account of his adventures as a musician and user. “I wrote the initial sections. It's my story,” he says. For the rest, he collaborated with co-writer his collaborator, whom you imagine had his hands full given his haphazard way of speaking. The writing process, he says, was “challenging, but I was psyched to get a good publisher. And it positions me in public as someone who has written a book, and that is all I wanted to do from childhood. At school I admired James Joyce and Flaubert.”

He – the last-born of an lawyer and a ex- fashion model – talks fondly about his education, perhaps because it represents a time prior to existence got difficult by drugs and celebrity. He went to Boston’s prestigious Commonwealth school, a progressive institution that, he says now, “was the best. It had no rules except no skating in the corridors. In other words, don’t be an jerk.” It was there, in bible class, that he met Jesse Peretz and Ben Deily and started a group in 1986. His band started out as a punk outfit, in awe to Dead Kennedys and Ramones; they signed to the local record company Taang!, with whom they put out multiple records. Once Deily and Peretz left, the Lemonheads largely turned into a one-man show, Dando recruiting and dismissing musicians at his discretion.

In the early 1990s, the band signed to a large company, Atlantic, and dialled down the noise in favour of a more melodic and mainstream country-rock sound. This was “because the band's Nevermind came out in 1991 and they had nailed it”, Dando explains. “Upon hearing to our initial albums – a song like an early composition, which was laid down the day after we graduated high school – you can hear we were attempting to do their approach but my voice wasn't suitable. But I realized my voice could stand out in softer arrangements.” This new sound, humorously described by critics as “bubblegrunge”, would propel the act into the popularity. In 1992 they issued the LP their breakthrough record, an flawless showcase for his songcraft and his somber vocal style. The title was taken from a news story in which a priest lamented a individual called Ray who had strayed from the path.

Ray was not the sole case. At that stage, Dando was consuming hard drugs and had developed a liking for crack, as well. Financially secure, he eagerly embraced the celebrity lifestyle, associating with Hollywood stars, filming a music clip with Angelina Jolie and dating Kate Moss and film personalities. People magazine declared him among the fifty most attractive individuals alive. He good-naturedly dismisses the idea that his song, in which he sang “I’m too much with myself, I wanna be a different person”, was a cry for assistance. He was enjoying too much fun.

Nonetheless, the substance abuse became excessive. His memoir, he delivers a blow-by-blow account of the fateful Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he failed to appear for his band's scheduled performance after two women proposed he come back to their accommodation. When he finally showing up, he delivered an impromptu live performance to a unfriendly audience who jeered and threw objects. But that proved small beer next to the events in the country shortly afterwards. The visit was intended as a break from {drugs|substances