At the height of his success, Evan Dando was notorious for his good looks, heavy drug use and flaky personality. As his memoir, Rumours of My Demise, effectively attests, the Lemonheads frontman was also a shameless rock’n’roll caricature whose addictions and puerile hedonism repeatedly sabotaged his friendships and relationships, along with his career.

In 1992, on the way to a recording studio in Los Angeles, he took acid at the airport and subsequently tried to open the emergency exit mid-flight. A year later, he missed his band’s first appearance at Glastonbury festival because he was holed up in a hotel with a couple of women and had to endure being bottled and booed throughout a rescheduled acoustic set.

Arising from Boston’s white, wealthy, college rock scene, The Lemonheads morphed from their punk origins into a melodic indie band who broke into the mainstream with their fifth album, It’s a Shame About Ray.

Review: Rumours of My Demise by Evan Dando (Faber); The Uncool by Cameron Crowe (Fourth Estate); Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna (HarperCollins)

Dando’s book, co-authored with ghost writer Jim Ruland, chronicles their chequered journey, capturing the last raw, pre-internet era of the music industry. It also charts the singer’s misadventures with heroin, and ridiculously indulgent lifestyle.

Such tales of rock’n’roll excess are hardly original but Dando’s repetitive and disjointed accounts of drugs, drugs and more drugs, and his incoherent narrative style make the memoir frustrating – and at times, boring – to read. Recalling events through a piecemeal string of anecdotes, he often struggles to maintain a consistent perspective.

He says he tried to make the most of being a rock star but never wanted to be famous. He claims he did heroin because he was sad and angry, but also that partying and doing drugs meant being true to himself – and, besides, everyone else did them too. He believes the music press punished him for not being “mysterious and edgy”, but he was happy to regale journalists with drug stories and to get his kit off and gaze dreamily at the camera.

As a music writer in the 90s, I remember him being regarded as a pretty “pick-me” boy who flopped around a lot, trying to be cool. Frankly, we all thought he was a bit of a buffoon.

For perspective, it’s worth considering Dando’s book alongside two other recent music memoirs. One is The Uncool by Cameron Crowe, which recounts the author’s career as a teenage Rolling Stone journalist, originally dramatised in his 2000 film, Almost Famous. The other is punk singer and feminist activist Kathleen Hanna’s whip-smart memoir, Rebel Girl (published last year).

Both books take an intimate look at the realities of life for performing artists, whether on the road or behind the scenes, but swap out the drug jumble for more meaningful context. This gives their stories a wider depth and purpose than the age-old, entitled white boy meanderings of supposed rock’n’roll rebellion.

To be fair, Dando’s book has its moments of insight. The singer’s thoughts on the structural injustice of the music industry are perceptive and astute, revealing a healthy combination of pragmatism and integrity.

He’s also brave enough to paint an unflattering image of “chaos agent” Courtney Love, who he says desperately tried to seduce him on tour, and who upset her husband, Kurt Cobain, by spreading rumours she and Dando were having an affair. Worse, shortly after Cobain died, Dando claims that Love persuaded him to kiss her while lying on a bed for a photograph which ended up in the New York Post.

Having met and interviewed Love in the 90s, I can fully endorse Dando’s portrayal of her from that time, though it’s hard not to wonder about his complicity. Maybe it was all down to the drugs, like everything else.

When it comes to other women, Dando’s book is lazy and unthinking. He lists a handful of lovers by name, including singer-songwriter and occasional Lemonhead, Juliana Hatfield and novelist Tatiana de Rosnay. Both, he insists, featured him in their work.

He misinterprets Kathleen Hanna’s fanzine, My Life With Evan Dando........

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