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The musician pushes back a sleeve and points to a line of faint marks running down his arm, faint scars from years of opioid use. “It takes so much time to get decent track marks,” he says. “You inject for years and you think: I can’t stop yet. Maybe my skin is particularly tough, but you can hardly see it now. What was it all for, eh?” He smiles and emits a raspy laugh. “Just kidding!”

The singer, former indie pin-up and leading light of 1990s alternative group his band, appears in reasonable nick for a person who has used numerous substances going from the time of 14. The songwriter responsible for such exalted tracks as It’s a Shame About Ray, he is also recognized as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a star who seemingly had it all and squandered it. He is friendly, goofily charismatic and completely candid. We meet at lunchtime at a publishing company in central London, where he questions if we should move our chat to the pub. In the end, he sends out for two glasses of apple drink, which he then forgets to drink. Often losing his train of thought, he is apt to veer into random digressions. No wonder he has stopped using a smartphone: “I can’t deal with online content, man. My thoughts is extremely all over the place. I desire to read everything at the same time.”

He and his wife Antonia Teixeira, whom he wed last year, have traveled from their home in South America, where they reside and where Dando now has three adult stepchildren. “I'm attempting to be the backbone of this new family. I didn’t embrace domestic life often in my existence, but I'm prepared to make an effort. I’m doing quite well so far.” Now 58, he states he is clean, though this proves to be a loose concept: “I occasionally use LSD occasionally, perhaps psychedelics and I’ll smoke marijuana.”

Clean to him means not doing heroin, which he has abstained from in almost three years. He decided it was the moment to give up after a catastrophic gig at a Los Angeles venue in recent years where he could scarcely perform adequately. “I realized: ‘This is unacceptable. The legacy will not tolerate this type of behaviour.’” He acknowledges Teixeira for helping him to cease, though he has no regrets about using. “I believe certain individuals were meant to take drugs and one of them was me.”

One advantage of his relative clean living is that it has made him creative. “When you’re on heroin, you’re like: ‘Forget about that, and that, and the other,’” he explains. But now he is preparing to launch his new album, his debut record of new band material in almost 20 years, which includes glimpses of the lyricism and melodic smarts that elevated them to the indie big league. “I’ve never really known about 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 wasn’t ready to create fresh work before I was ready, and now I'm prepared.”

Dando is also publishing his initial autobiography, titled stories about his death; the title is a reference to the stories that fitfully spread in the 1990s about his early passing. It’s a ironic, intense, fitfully eye-watering narrative of his experiences as a performer and addict. “I wrote the first four chapters. That’s me,” he says. For the remaining part, he collaborated with co-writer Jim Ruland, whom you imagine had his work cut out given Dando’s disorganized conversational style. The composition, he notes, was “difficult, but I felt excited to get a good publisher. And it positions me out there as a person who has authored a memoir, and that is everything I desired to accomplish since I was a kid. At school I admired Dylan Thomas and Flaubert.”

Dando – the last-born of an lawyer and a ex- model – talks fondly about his education, maybe because it represents a time before life got complicated by drugs and celebrity. He went to Boston’s prestigious Commonwealth school, a progressive institution that, he says now, “stood out. There were few restrictions except no rollerskating in the hallways. In other words, don’t be an jerk.” At that place, in bible class, that he encountered Jesse Peretz and Ben Deily and started a group in 1986. The Lemonheads started out as a rock group, in awe to Dead Kennedys and Ramones; they agreed to the local record company their first contract, with whom they released three albums. After band members left, the group largely turned into a solo project, Dando recruiting and dismissing musicians at his whim.

During the 90s, the group signed to a major label, a prominent firm, and dialled down the noise in favour of a more languid and accessible folk-inspired style. This was “because the band's iconic album came out in ’91 and they had nailed it”, Dando says. “Upon hearing to our initial albums – a song like Mad, which was laid down the following we graduated high school – you can detect we were attempting to do their approach but my voice wasn't suitable. But I realized my singing could stand out in softer arrangements.” The shift, waggishly described by reviewers as “bubblegrunge”, would take the act into the popularity. In 1992 they issued the LP their breakthrough record, an impeccable showcase for Dando’s songcraft and his melancholic vocal style. The name was derived from a news story in which a clergyman bemoaned a individual called Ray who had gone off the rails.

Ray was not the sole case. At that stage, Dando was consuming heroin and had acquired a liking for cocaine, as well. Financially secure, he enthusiastically embraced the celebrity lifestyle, becoming friends with Johnny Depp, filming a music clip with Angelina Jolie and seeing Kate Moss and Milla Jovovich. A publication declared him one of the fifty sexiest individuals living. Dando cheerfully rebuffs the idea that My Drug Buddy, in which he sang “I'm overly self-involved, I desire to become someone else”, was a plea for help. He was having a great deal of fun.

However, the drug use became excessive. In the book, he delivers a blow-by-blow description of the fateful Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he did not manage to appear for his band's allotted slot after acquaintances suggested he accompany them to their hotel. Upon eventually did appear, he delivered an unplanned live performance to a hostile audience who booed and threw objects. But this was minor compared to the events in Australia shortly afterwards. The visit was meant as a break from {drugs|substances