Evan Dando is best known as the frontman of the Lemonheads. Here, the 58-year-old talks about the important women in his life, including his tumultuous first marriage, and how he has found lasting love with a woman he first dated briefly 28 years ago.
Evan Dando: “Being in a band meant
there were always girls around. It didn’t matter what they looked like, I liked all kinds of girls.”Credit: Antonia Teixeira
My maternal grandmother, Hazel, was born in Sweden and migrated to the USA before she had children. She loved to tan at the beach and would drink beer at home after a day in the sun. She was tough, had a funny side, and was a little crazy, too. She died in 2000.
My paternal grandmother, Margaret “Peg” Dando, was a talented painter who lived to 104 and died in 2015. She taught drawing and history of art and her brother was a famous painter, Ray G. Ellis. I started painting because of my grandmother and get my artistic side from her. She was a Christian, very conservative in her views, and into eating well and health food before it was a thing.
My mother, Susan, was a fashion model who appeared in Vogue Italia. She started modelling after she had kids and is an incredible physical specimen – pretty and athletic, a natural beauty. She never wanted to do cigarette ads though – a very principled woman.
Mom started surfing in the 1960s and whenever I wanted to go skiing, surfing or do any sports as a kid, she was the one who took me. When I was 18, we’d walk the street together and people thought we were a couple. She is 86 and still looks great.
My parents met in their 20s. Mom, who was a few years older, was the hot art teacher at Alfred University my dad, Jeffrey, fell in love with. They separated when I was 10. I wrote a song about them called Confetti.
I’ve had my share of dalliances – it was fun. Sometimes it was only about sex, and sometimes about the companionship of a woman.
Mom never really wanted me or my sister, Holly, to go away to summer camp when we were kids. She would take us on adventures herself instead – I went to Aspen twice with her in the 1970s.
Holly’s three years older than me and came on the road with the Lemonheads and to Glastonbury with her boyfriend. But she grew out of the scene and became a social worker, while I got f—ed up for years. Our relationship was dynamic, then difficult for a while.
