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Evan Dando rolls up a sleeve and points to a series of faint marks along his arm, subtle traces from decades of opioid use. “It takes so much time to get decent track marks,” he says. “You inject for years and you think: I'm not ready to quit. Maybe my skin is especially tough, but you can barely notice it today. What was the point, eh?” He grins and emits a hoarse chuckle. “Only joking!”

Dando, one-time alternative heartthrob and key figure of 90s alt-rock band his band, looks in decent shape for a person who has taken every drug going from the time of 14. The songwriter behind such acclaimed tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray, Dando is also recognized as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a star who seemingly achieved success and threw it away. He is warm, charmingly eccentric and completely unfiltered. Our interview takes place at midday at his publishers’ offices in central London, where he questions if we should move our chat to a bar. Eventually, he orders for two glasses of apple drink, which he then neglects to drink. Frequently losing his train of thought, he is apt to veer into wild tangents. It's understandable he has given up owning a smartphone: “I can’t deal with online content, man. My thoughts is too all over the place. I just want to read all information at the same time.”

He and his wife his partner, whom he wed last year, have flown in from São Paulo, Brazil, where they live and where he now has three adult stepchildren. “I’m trying to be the foundation of this recent household. I avoided family often in my existence, but I'm prepared to try. I’m doing quite well up to now.” At 58 years old, he says he has quit hard drugs, though this turns out to be a flexible definition: “I’ll take acid sometimes, maybe mushrooms and I consume pot.”

Sober to him means not doing opiates, which he hasn’t touched in almost three years. He decided it was the moment to give up after a disastrous gig at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in recent years where he could barely perform adequately. “I thought: ‘This is not good. My reputation will not bear this type of behaviour.’” He credits his wife for assisting him to cease, though he has no regrets about his drug use. “I believe certain individuals were supposed to use substances and one of them was me.”

One advantage of his relative clean living is that it has made him productive. “During addiction to heroin, you’re like: ‘Forget about that, and this, and that,’” he says. But currently he is about to release his new album, his debut record of new band material in almost two decades, which contains flashes of the songwriting and catchy tunes that elevated them to the mainstream success. “I’ve never truly heard of this kind of dormancy period in a career,” he comments. “This is a lengthy sleep situation. I do have standards about what I put out. I didn't feel prepared to create fresh work until the time was right, and at present I am.”

Dando is also releasing his first memoir, titled stories about his death; the name is a nod to the stories that fitfully circulated in the 1990s about his early passing. It is a wry, intense, fitfully shocking 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 worked with co-writer his collaborator, whom one can assume had his hands full given his disorganized way of speaking. The composition, he says, was “difficult, but I felt excited to secure a reputable publisher. And it positions me in public as a person who has written a book, and that’s all I wanted to accomplish since childhood. In education I was obsessed with Dylan Thomas and literary giants.”

Dando – the youngest child of an attorney and a ex- fashion model – speaks warmly about his education, maybe because it symbolizes a period before life got difficult by drugs and celebrity. He went to the city's prestigious private academy, a progressive establishment that, he says now, “was the best. There were no rules except no rollerskating in the corridors. Essentially, avoid being an asshole.” At that place, in bible class, that he encountered Ben Deily and Ben Deily and started a group in 1986. His band started out as a punk outfit, in thrall to the Minutemen and Ramones; they signed to the local record company their first contract, with whom they put out three albums. Once band members left, the Lemonheads effectively turned into a one-man show, he recruiting and dismissing bandmates at his whim.

During the 90s, the group contracted to a large company, a prominent firm, and dialled down the squall in favour of a increasingly languid and accessible folk-inspired sound. This change occurred “since Nirvana’s iconic album came out in ’91 and they had nailed it”, Dando explains. “Upon hearing to our early records – a track like an early composition, which was laid down the following we finished school – you can detect we were trying to do their approach but my voice didn’t cut right. But I realized my voice could stand out in softer arrangements.” The shift, humorously labeled by critics as “a hybrid genre”, would propel the band into the mainstream. In the early 90s they released the LP It’s a Shame About Ray, an flawless showcase for his writing and his melancholic croon. The title was taken from a news story in which a priest lamented a young man named the subject who had gone off the rails.

Ray wasn’t the only one. By this point, Dando was consuming heroin and had developed a liking for cocaine, as well. With money, he eagerly threw himself into the celebrity lifestyle, associating with Johnny Depp, filming a video with actresses and dating Kate Moss and Milla Jovovich. A publication declared him one of the 50 most attractive people alive. Dando cheerfully dismisses the notion that his song, in which he sang “I'm overly self-involved, I wanna be a different person”, was a plea for help. He was enjoying a great deal of enjoyment.

Nonetheless, the drug use became excessive. His memoir, he provides a blow-by-blow description of the fateful Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he failed to turn up for the Lemonheads’ allotted slot after two women suggested he come back to their hotel. Upon eventually did appear, he performed an impromptu acoustic set to a hostile crowd who booed and hurled bottles. But that proved minor next to what happened in Australia shortly afterwards. The trip was meant as a break from {drugs|substances