By Kastle

As the saying goes, when life hands you lemons make lemonade. For Evan Dando and The Lemonheads, they did more than that, they made headlines.

The Lemonheads began churning out the tunes around 1986 when Evan Dando was still in high school and found he had a silky smooth voice perfect for their style of bittersweet pop that was almost seductive in its simplicity. But it wasn't until about seven albums later in 1991 with It's a Shame About Ray and Come On Feel The Lemonheads, that they really broke into the public spotlight. And break they did, Dando's face was everywhere, every move he made, every girl he dated and yes, every drug he did ended up in the papers.

That, on top of intense touring and recording, all became too much for Dando. It's no wonder he decided to bow out in the peak of it all and take a long personal hiatus. "It just wasn't fun anymore," he said. "I'd forgotten what it was like to play music and have it be fun so I decided to stop. I wasn't even sure if I was going to make a new record, I was just kinda quitting."

But he says it was about a year ago, "all these songs started coming out of me and I decided to get it together again." He then released Car Button Cloth, a mixture of the Lemonheads trademark sticky sweet pop, a little country and little bit of the dark side. Dando is back to face the music and to answer the question -- what the heck have you been doing for the past three years?

"Basically, between 1989 and 1994 , I hadn't taken a vacation," he said. I made 5 records, toured non-stop and I think the most time I had off was like two weeks. I just completely lost touch with what was going on and lost touch with myself. I was acting like a bad, selfish person. It was really fucked up and I just made the decision to get myself together."

Part of the downtime was spent getting clean. Through all the press and gossip about The Lemonheads' music and antics, ran rumors of Dando's drug use. A habit that got him into a heap of newsworthy trouble. But Dando doesn't see himself as just another clichéd story of rockstars and drugs. Few people understand a musician's lifestyle where success can mean being thrust into a complex maze of exhaustive schedules, industry hacks and adoring fans wanting a piece of you and yes-men giving you whatever you want. Temptation just goes with the territory. "I think people don't understand it when you've got so much time and so much money and you don't know who the fuck you are because of this business that you're doing. Drugs are just a really easy thing to fall into. There's no way you can be in a band and not be exposed to that," says Dando.

While it's easy to lose perspective on reality, escaping through drugs is not highly recommended, at least not by Dando anymore. "It's a really horrible, horrible thing that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It's a nightmare." He added that once he cut drugs out of his life things got remarkably better. "It's been about a year now since he's done any hard drugs aside from drinking and smoking pot, but it wasn't rehab that helped Dando get clean. "Rehab is bullshit!" he said, "the only thing that gets you clean is figuring out why you're doing drugs in the first place. Once you do that, you're fine."

[next]