Evan Dando – I don’t need to be forgiven
The last piece of the “Behind The Music” puzzle was finally in place, or so it would seem. But, even if those who might have been put off by Dando’s unpredictable behavior or the inconsistency of his work in the ’90s are ready to forgive him at this point, it’s not all that clear, when I finally get a chance to chat with him, that Dando’s all that interested in being forgiven.
“I don’t want to be forgiven because I didn’t do anything wrong,” is his first response to the whole idea. “There’s been a lot of talk about forgiving me, and I’m very confused by that because I didn’t really do anything wrong. And, whatever I did do was such a long time ago that I can forgive myself for all of it because I just didn’t know any better.
“If other people can’t forgive me for posing for stupid pictures and doing that stupid cover of ‘Mrs. Robinson’, then it doesn’t bother me because I’ve gotten over it myself. My attitude is very much that I want to keep myself healthy and sane. And the only way I can do that is to make my music in my own little bubble, without caring about what happens outside that bubble.”
If Dando seems a little defensive at first, well, it’s a little hard to blame him. After all, he has had to endure an awful lot of nasty press over the years. And, regardless of who’s to blame for any or all of what happened, it couldn’t have been very pleasant for Dando, especially after It’s A Shame About Ray was greeted so warmly by both the press and the public.
“I hate to say it, but It’s A Shame About Ray was effortless,” Dando professes, though he quickly changes his mind. “Well, it wasn’t effortless the whole time. It took us like six weeks and we were working really hard. But there were moments when it was effortless in the studio. And then there were times when it was really hard.”
I spoke to Dando back in 1991, a few weeks before It’s A Shame About Ray (recorded with Juliana Hatfield on bass and backing vocals) came out. What I mostly remember is the praise he had for the Robb Brothers, who produced the disc, and the excitement he had about the time he’d just spent in Australia, where he’d written much of the album and met a group of supportive fellow musicians.
It also struck me that Dando was one of those natural musical talents who had the innate charisma to achieve rock stardom — the same charisma that made it so easy for him to play the dumb blond underachiever. The Lemonheads wouldn’t have amounted to anything more than an amusing post-punk diversion if Dando hadn’t written such good material on It’s A Shame About Ray. But once those songs had been recorded, he seemed all too willing to get by with as little work as possible.
As he’s now willing to admit, “I used to think if I could get three songs that I really, really, really loved on a Lemonheads record, then I could go take more drugs and fuck off to Australia again or whatever. Because I just remember thinking that most records only had three good songs on them. I mean, the Lemonheads was just something that happened — it was a whirlwind thing. We were in the right place at the right time and we were good, so we did well.”
Their time in the limelight may have been a whirlwind, but the band actually had a fairly extensive history. The first incarnation of the Lemonheads recorded their debut EP the day after graduating from high school in 1986.
“Of course I look back fondly on my days as a Lemonhead,” Dando says. “Nearly all of it was great fun. And we were trying our hardest. We just didn’t have our shit together. That’s why I really do think of the new album as the beginning of my real musical career. The things I did before was just me scratching around, trying to do music. I took charge of this record, and I had a really good time with it.”
The result isn’t just the best album Dando’s made since It’s A Shame About Ray, but one that brings to mind some of that record’s best moments. From the unexpected twists that skew the tunefully chiming guitars of the disc-opening “Repeat” (and the hint of uncertainty that infects his husky croon on the same tune), to the singalong melody and uplifting guitar solo that drives “My Idea”, Baby I’m Bored sounds an awful lot like the album the Lemonheads really should have made after Ray, even if there are also mellower tunes here (such as the almost loungey “Waking Up”).
While some of the new album’s lyrics reveal an older, wiser, ah, adult Dando (“All My Life”, for example), there’s always been a world-weary quality to his delivery that offsets the playful Lemonheads side of his persona — the part that gets a good chuckle out of the fact that the title of the new album was inspired, as he puts it, “by those stickers on cars that say, ‘Baby On Board.'”
It’s not hard to get Dando to agree that things didn’t exactly go well for him and the Lemonheads after Ray. “We tried with Come On Feel…,” he says quite seriously. “I mean, we went right back into the studio while we were in the middle of a two-and-a-half-year tour and tried to make a good record. I suppose if we’d had someone really looking after our best interests, then they would have told us to take a few months off before even thinking about making a new record. But that wasn’t the case. So we ended up with Come on Feel…, which I still really do love, even for all its imperfections and weirdness. But I know that It’s A Shame About Ray is a better album, and I know why.”