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The musician pushes back a sleeve and points to a line of small dents running down his arm, faint scars from years of opioid use. “It takes so long to get decent injection scars,” he remarks. “You inject for a long time and you believe: I'm not ready to quit. Perhaps my skin is particularly resilient, but you can barely see it today. What was the point, eh?” He smiles and emits a raspy laugh. “Just kidding!”

The singer, former alternative heartthrob and leading light of 1990s alternative group the Lemonheads, looks in decent shape for a person who has used numerous substances going from the age of his teens. The musician responsible for such exalted songs as My Drug Buddy, Dando is also recognized as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a star who seemingly had it all and threw it away. He is friendly, goofily charismatic and entirely unfiltered. We meet at midday at a publishing company in central London, where he wonders if we should move our chat to the pub. In the end, he orders for two pints of apple drink, which he then neglects to consume. Frequently losing his train of thought, he is apt to go off on wild tangents. It's understandable he has given up owning a mobile device: “I struggle with the internet, man. My thoughts is extremely all over the place. I just want to read all information at the same time.”

Together with his spouse his partner, whom he married last year, have flown in from São Paulo, Brazil, where they live and where Dando now has a grown-up blended family. “I’m trying to be the backbone of this new family. I avoided family much in my life, but I’m ready to make an effort. I'm managing pretty good so far.” Now 58, he says he is clean, though this turns out to be a loose concept: “I’ll take LSD sometimes, perhaps mushrooms and I’ll smoke marijuana.”

Clean to him means avoiding heroin, which he hasn’t touched in nearly three years. He decided it was time to give up after a catastrophic gig at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2021 where he could barely play a note. “I thought: ‘This is unacceptable. My reputation will not tolerate this kind of conduct.’” He acknowledges Teixeira for helping him to stop, though he has no remorse about using. “I think certain individuals were supposed to take drugs and I was among them was me.”

One advantage of his comparative clean living is that it has made him productive. “During addiction to smack, you’re like: ‘Oh fuck that, and this, and the other,’” he explains. But currently he is about to launch his new album, his first album of new Lemonheads music in nearly 20 years, which includes glimpses of the lyricism and catchy tunes that elevated them to the mainstream success. “I haven't truly known about this sort of dormancy period between albums,” he says. “This is a lengthy sleep situation. I maintain integrity about my releases. I didn't feel prepared to do anything new before the time was right, and at present I'm prepared.”

The artist is also releasing his first memoir, titled stories about his death; the name is a nod to the rumors that intermittently spread in the 90s about his premature death. It’s a wry, intense, fitfully eye-watering account of his experiences as a performer and user. “I authored the first four chapters. It's my story,” he says. For the remaining part, he collaborated with ghostwriter his collaborator, whom one can assume had his work cut out considering his disorganized way of speaking. The writing process, he says, was “difficult, but I felt excited to secure a reputable publisher. And it gets me in public as someone who has authored a memoir, and that’s everything I desired to accomplish since I was a kid. At school I admired James Joyce and literary giants.”

Dando – the last-born of an lawyer and a ex- fashion model – talks fondly about his education, perhaps because it represents a period prior to life got complicated by substances and fame. He attended the city's elite private academy, a progressive institution that, he recalls, “stood out. It had few restrictions except no rollerskating in the corridors. In other words, avoid being an jerk.” It was there, in bible class, that he encountered Jesse Peretz and Jesse Peretz and formed a band in 1986. His band started out as a punk outfit, in thrall to the Minutemen and punk icons; they agreed to the Boston label Taang!, with whom they released three albums. After band members departed, the Lemonheads largely turned into a solo project, Dando hiring and firing bandmates at his discretion.

During the 90s, the band contracted to a large company, Atlantic, and dialled down the squall in favour of a increasingly melodic and accessible folk-inspired style. This was “since the band's iconic album came out in 1991 and they had nailed it”, he explains. “If you listen to our initial albums – a track like Mad, which was recorded the day after we finished school – you can detect we were attempting to do their approach but my vocal wasn't suitable. But I knew my voice could stand out in softer arrangements.” The shift, waggishly described by critics as “a hybrid genre”, would propel the act into the popularity. In 1992 they issued the album It’s a Shame About Ray, an impeccable showcase for Dando’s writing and his somber croon. The name was derived from a news story in which a clergyman bemoaned a young man named the subject who had strayed from the path.

Ray was not the sole case. At that stage, Dando was using hard drugs and had developed a liking for cocaine, too. Financially secure, he eagerly threw himself into the rock star life, becoming friends with Johnny Depp, filming a music clip with actresses and dating Kate Moss and Milla Jovovich. People magazine anointed him one of the fifty sexiest people living. He cheerfully rebuffs the idea that his song, in which he sang “I'm overly self-involved, I wanna be a different person”, was a cry for assistance. He was having a great deal of fun.

Nonetheless, the substance abuse got out of control. His memoir, he provides a detailed account of the significant Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he did not manage to turn up for his band's scheduled performance after two women suggested he come back to their hotel. Upon eventually showing up, he delivered an impromptu acoustic set to a hostile audience who booed and threw bottles. But this was small beer next to the events in the country soon after. The visit was intended as a respite from {drugs|substances