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The musician rolls up a sleeve and indicates a series of small dents along his arm, faint scars from years of heroin abuse. “It takes so much time to develop decent injection scars,” he says. “You inject for a long time and you think: I can’t stop yet. Perhaps my complexion is particularly resilient, but you can hardly see it today. What was the point, eh?” He grins and emits a hoarse chuckle. “Just kidding!”

The singer, one-time indie pin-up and key figure of 90s alt-rock band his band, appears in reasonable nick for a man who has taken every drug going from the time of his teens. The songwriter responsible for such exalted tracks as My Drug Buddy, Dando is also known as rock’s most notorious burn-out, a celebrity who seemingly achieved success and squandered it. He is friendly, charmingly eccentric and completely unfiltered. Our interview takes place at lunchtime at a publishing company in central London, where he wonders if we should move the conversation to the pub. In the end, he orders for two glasses of apple drink, which he then forgets to consume. Often drifting off topic, he is likely to go off on random digressions. It's understandable he has stopped owning a smartphone: “I struggle with the internet, man. My thoughts is too scattered. I just want to read everything at once.”

He and his wife his partner, whom he married recently, have flown in from their home in South America, where they live and where Dando now has three adult stepchildren. “I’m trying to be the backbone of this new family. I didn’t embrace domestic life often in my life, but I’m ready to make an effort. I’m doing pretty good up to now.” At 58 years old, he states he is clean, though this turns out to be a loose concept: “I occasionally use acid sometimes, perhaps psychedelics and I consume marijuana.”

Sober to him means avoiding heroin, which he hasn’t touched in nearly a few 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 barely perform adequately. “I thought: ‘This is unacceptable. My reputation will not tolerate this kind of conduct.’” He acknowledges Teixeira for assisting him to cease, though he has no remorse about using. “I think certain individuals were supposed to use substances and I was among them was me.”

One advantage of his relative sobriety is that it has rendered him productive. “During addiction to heroin, you’re like: ‘Forget about that, and that, and that,’” he says. But currently he is about to launch his new album, his first album of new band material in nearly 20 years, which includes glimpses of the songwriting and melodic smarts that elevated them to the mainstream success. “I haven't truly heard of this sort of hiatus in a career,” he says. “It's some Rip Van Winkle situation. I maintain standards about my releases. I didn't feel prepared to do anything new until the time was right, and at present I'm prepared.”

The artist is also publishing his initial autobiography, titled stories about his death; the title is a nod to the rumors that fitfully spread in the 90s about his early passing. It is a ironic, heady, fitfully shocking account of his adventures as a musician and user. “I authored the first four chapters. That’s me,” he says. For the rest, he collaborated with co-writer his collaborator, whom you imagine had his work cut out considering his haphazard way of speaking. The writing process, he notes, was “difficult, but I felt excited to secure a good company. And it positions me out there as a person who has authored a memoir, and that is all I wanted to accomplish from I was a kid. At school I was obsessed with James Joyce and Flaubert.”

Dando – the youngest child of an attorney and a former fashion model – talks fondly about school, perhaps because it represents a time prior to life got difficult by drugs and fame. He went to the city's elite private academy, a liberal institution that, he recalls, “was the best. It had no rules aside from no skating in the corridors. In other words, don’t be an jerk.” It was there, in bible class, that he encountered Ben Deily and Jesse Peretz and formed a band in the mid-80s. The Lemonheads started out as a punk outfit, in awe to the Minutemen and punk icons; they agreed to the Boston label their first contract, with whom they released three albums. After band members left, the group largely turned into a one-man show, he hiring and firing bandmates at his discretion.

During the 90s, the band contracted to a major label, a prominent firm, and reduced the squall in favour of a more languid and mainstream country-rock style. This change occurred “because Nirvana’s Nevermind came out in 1991 and they had nailed it”, he explains. “If you listen to our early records – a song like Mad, which was recorded the day after we finished school – you can hear we were attempting to do what Nirvana did but my vocal wasn't suitable. But I knew my singing could cut through quieter music.” This new sound, waggishly labeled by critics as “a hybrid genre”, would take the act into the popularity. In 1992 they released the LP It’s a Shame About Ray, an impeccable showcase for Dando’s songcraft and his somber croon. The title was derived from a news story in which a priest lamented a young man called the subject who had gone off the rails.

The subject was not the sole case. At that stage, Dando was consuming hard drugs and had developed a penchant for cocaine, as well. Financially secure, he eagerly embraced the celebrity lifestyle, becoming friends with Johnny Depp, filming a video with actresses and dating supermodels and Milla Jovovich. People magazine declared him among the 50 most attractive individuals living. He cheerfully rebuffs the notion that My Drug Buddy, in which he sang “I’m too much with myself, I desire to become someone else”, was a cry for assistance. He was having a great deal of enjoyment.

Nonetheless, the drug use got out of control. In the book, he delivers a blow-by-blow account of the significant Glastonbury incident in 1995 when he failed to turn up for the Lemonheads’ allotted slot after two women suggested he come back to their hotel. Upon eventually did appear, he performed an unplanned live performance to a unfriendly crowd who booed and threw objects. But this was minor next to what happened in the country shortly afterwards. The visit was intended as a break from {drugs|substances