Evan Dando talked to Clash Magazine for the ‘August 2009’ issue; Find out what he had to say about collaborating with Gibby Haynes and others for the mix-tape album ‘Varshons’
Those were the days. Making a mix tape to keep you going on a long drive with friends. A way to tell your girl or boyfriend how you feel without opening your mouth. Or just your own biography in other people’s pop. It’s a joy you never grow out of.
None more so than the beautiful wild child of Nineties country punk pop Evan Dando, front man of The Lemonheads, a band known by everyone, but which seemed to hover on the edge of true success.
The band had many ups and downs in its twenty-year or so existence. Bandmates came and went, but Dando remained. Whether it was to revel in the spotlight he so frequently got or because he loved the music is anyone’s guess. One thing that is as clear as day is his own personal love for music.
Sitting in a typical rock star’s hotel room in west London, bed strewn with stale tobacco and crumbled hash, he reaches for his guitar and strums a few lines of his favourite songs.
“Have you heard this one?” he asks, then, “What about this one,” but I’m almost embarrassed that some of these life-changing melodies had escaped me.
It’s why his new album, under The Lemonheads band name, is such a little gem. It’s nothing to take too seriously, he says, just a bit of fun to prepare him for his next big musical venture – as yet unplanned!
‘Varshons’ is not even a mix tape from Dando to his fans, friends or family. It’s more like a collaboration with one of his closest mates: their ultimate mix tape, recorded for themselves, but it just so happens others may enjoy it too.
The mate is Gibby Haynes, lead singer with The Butthole Surfers and obviously a massive influence on Dando, not just musically, but on his whole grown-up life (even Dando suggests this ‘grown-up’ him is still a pretty new revelation).
Together, they compiled a list of songs from all eras, all walks of life, all moods, but a collection that summed up their friendship and Dando’s life.
“It’s sort of biographical for me because these are the songs we used to listen to,” Dando says, flitting from one song to another, just to tell the tale behind it. “Gibby is a genius – he has a diagonal brain. We like the same stuff and he chose most of the songs on the album. And he produced it. I’d never had a producer like him before. He told me how to sing it and instead of arguing, I just did it the way he wanted. It just sounds amazing – I don’t know how to do that.’
Dando and Gibby found each other in the summer of ’93 – an epic year for Dando which saw him hanging out with the likes of Johnny Depp, a former P band mate of Gibby.
“He’s one of my best friends,” Dando says so endearingly. “We spent a summer cementing our friendship when I was staying with Johnny. Me and Johnny were like five-year-old kids, just inseparable. People thought we were a couple. They were great days. There were a lot of drugs.” A serious expression falls on his face, recalling the happy days marred by the death of friend River Phoenix outside Depp’s club The Viper Rooms while Gibby was on stage.
‘Varshons’, apparently said with a southern twang, is like that summer – a bit of everything and a whole lot of fun with a few moments of darkness.
It starts so soft and gentle with a dose of Gram Parsons, an artist that has been close to Dando in his musical career, even though he says he came to him “backwards”. “It wasn’t that I listened to a lot of Gram Parsons. I didn’t even know who he was when I started writing songs. But I wrote this one called ‘Ride With Me’ and someone said, “That sounds just like Gram”. We must have a musical affinity.”
It’s a misleading start to ‘Varshons’ though. The sweetness is soon turned to sour with songs from such artists as the “insane mad fucker from New Hampshire”, G G Allin. He would beat people on stage, rape women and tell everyone at his shows he was going to kill them.” Nice. “But I think it’s important not to link the person and the music,” says Dando, maybe because he’s ashamed of some of his own past antics back in his crackhead days, but probably more likely that he wants to be able to record a song about killing his girlfriend because he got bored without too much vindication.
Saying that, Allin’s ‘Layin’ Up With Linda’ is a great track. Hilarious (until you realise poor Linda probably did get violently murdered because she didn’t make her man chuckle enough) and strangely upbeat. It went down a storm at an intimate gig in London’s Macbeth, which was more of a live karaoke sing-a-long to the hits of The Lemonheads than a ‘here’s the future Dando’. Not even a grimace appeared when he staggered on stage an hour late, cheering up his awaiting crowd with his ten-second soundcheck and tales of back in the day.
The mad fucker antics continue on the album with a cover of ‘Waiting Round To Die’ by cult country musician Townes Van Zandt, notorious for his drug taking and drinking. “He fell off a roof just to see what it felt like.” Amazingly, he lived to the grand old age of fifty-two.
Then there’s the defining moment on ‘Varshons’, the end of side one, as Dando puts it. ‘Yesterlove’ is by Sam Gopal, a British psychedelic band whose second coming was led by Motorhead frontman Lemmy. “What a gentleman,” Evan says. “It’s a trip-out song, but with humour. It’s the sort of song I would listen to on the way to the grocery store over and over. It’s the centre of the album.”
And it stays pretty true to the original: plodding in a druggy haze, yet full of life. The similarities between Lemmy’s voice and Dando’s are uncanny. In fact, Dando changes his vocals throughout ‘Varshons’, flitting from the soft and serene to the more husky and lived in. It’s not so much an impression as an homage and the laid back Dando magic still shines through.
So, he said he wanted to make something odd and that’s what he’s done, but strangely, this weird collection of songs – The Green Fuz side by side with Leonard Cohen – work wonderfully together. Maybe it’s the production, or the mixing from ex-Cornershop guru Anthony Saffrey, or Dando’s bandmates Vess Ruhtenberg and Devon Ashley. It’s probably more likely to be that this is a Dando break, something to do between projects and something to focus on during binges. He confesses that he’s been having a rough ride recently after “a month in Australia where I had an amazing time and then back home to a bad time”, dabbling in things the papers thought were behind him and trying to keep his marriage going.
But what really gels this album together is Dando’s sweet dulcet tones, heartfelt like Lee Hazelwood singing to his Nancy. In fact, he’s occasionally joined by his Nancy on ‘Varshons’ – old friends Kate Moss and Liv Tyler.
Moss, pretty yet tuneless on Arling & Cameron’s ‘Dirty Robots’, has been close to Dando since they met at Eartha Kitt’s birthday – Dando was Kitt’s date for the evening. And “such a sweetheart it’s ridiculous” Tyler is wonderful on Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’. “I would never do a Leonard Cohen [song] by myself. We were going to do ‘So Long Marianne’, but we just gave this one a try and it was so much fun, but it was way too pretty sounding for a while.” It remains pretty, but there is a certain over-the-topness added by The Only One’s John Perry.
“My favourite bit is the solo. It reminds me of Marilyn Monroe singing to JFK,” he says, still in awe that Perry graces his album and friendship.
But the biggest surprise would have to be closer ‘Beautiful’. Any trace of Christina ‘I hate that bitch’ Aguilera has been zapped away and Dando has brought his own subtleness to the Linda Perry penned emotional tearjerker. Fear not though, as John Perry brings his own personal touch in the form of some floaty, foresty feedback, “just like Scorpion”. “It’s recorded the way it should be recorded and done in one take so it wasn’t pressured.”
Even with the effort not to take ‘Varshons’ too seriously, it’s still an immensely pleasurable listen and it’s sure to have some bearing on whatever Dando chooses to do next, although he already says “the next one is going to be fucking great, one side loud and one side quiet.”
It’s great to hear and even better that Dando is so full of inspiration and praise for his own – and others’ – music. He picks up his guitar again as soon as he’s asked what songs would be on his perfect soundtrack, not content with just listing them but needing to show why his chosen ones are so special. Even when he listens to his own covers, he stops, almost presses his finger against your lip to hush you, just so you can hear the one chord or one word that makes the song so amazing to him.
“I would always put on The Only Ones’ ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ and Blue Oyster Cult’s ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’, then a bit of Paul McCartney and one of my favourite people in the world, Ella Fitzgerald, and I always have to have ‘Dirty Old Man’ by The Fugs,” he says, scribbling down more songs in purple crayon for me to take home and explore and lapping up every new artist given to him in exchange.
Charles Wright And The 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s ‘Express Yourself’, The Bevis Frond’s ‘Lights Are Changing’, Edwyn Collins’ ‘Low Expectations’ and Holy Modal Rounders’ ‘Euphoria’ are just a few listed on the ultimate Dando collection, or the ultimate Dando shuffle.
“It’s the best present you could ever give. A shuffle with three hundred of your favourite songs on it, given to someone you love. What could be better than that?”
Let’s hope ‘Varshons’ gives a little bit of that love to Dando-ites out there, anxiously waiting for their next band or solo record. “It’ll be worth waiting for. I want to make haste with deeds of great honour.”
Words by Gemma Hampson
