THE LEMONHEADS
IT’S A SHAME ABOUT RAY
Atlantic, 1992. Produced by The Robb Brothers
Invigorated by a long recuperation in Australia, Dando assembles his best collection of songs. Somewhat surreal crossover success ensues. People magazine declares him one of its “50 Most Beautiful People”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFYFj5q8_Qk

We first went to Australia on tour with Lovey. I didn’t know anything about it, and didn’t want to go, but I fell in love with it, and I went back after we’d finished in Europe. I’d started doing more drugs, and I met Nic [Dalton, of The Plunderers] and Tom [Morgan, of Smudge], and that made me really excited about music. And you could get clean needles – you’d just call up and they’d throw ’em over your fence. I was impressed with the way they dealt with that, although it had probably the wrong effect on me – I thought, OK, I can do that now, because I’m not endangering myself, apart from the drugs. I was more into speed at this point. Luckily, I didn’t get into the dope down there, because it’s way too good. I mean, you can have an accident with that stuff.
Me and Tom would just stay up all the time and try and write songs. We were really compatible people, really had a blast together. We were able to have impassioned talks about everything from real heavy things to The Love Boat. We could talk about The Love Boat for hours. He’s a wry, intelligent, funny guy. Things didn’t really kick in until “Mrs Robinson”. We were on tour, and we recorded it, and people talked about putting it out as a single, and we were all like “No,” but we weren’t really able to make a case against it. And luckily, people then bought the album. I treated the whole [fame] thing like the joke it is, but that can be dangerous. When you take the piss, people might think you’re being serious, and they’ll think you’re a jerk. You can get hung up on yourself, when you’re popular or famous, and it is a little annoying to observe. I was never a paranoid person, but that made me paranoid. I kept thinking, this is all too easy, and they’re gonna get me back eventually. The focus on my looks around that time… I don’t know where the fuck that came from. Maybe if I hadn’t done those pictures with Bruce Weber… but you’re not gonna say no to the cover of Interview magazine if you’re trying to sell your record. Everyone’s looking for someone to point to and say, “Aren’t they great?”, and they happened to pick on me for a second. I dunno. It’s a good record. It has a cohesiveness we’d never had before.

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THE LEMONHEADS
COME ON FEEL THE LEMONHEADS
Atlantic, 1993. Produced by The Robb Brothers
Half-formed noodlings rub shoulders with mighty pop moments. The Australian connections do brilliantly: Robyn St Clare (ex-Hummingbirds) contributes “Into Your Arms”, Tom Morgan co-writes eight tracks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FJGU0gZOOo

I know. It’s almost a Smudge record. Every time we stopped touring, I’d go to Australia. I got rid of my apartment – I didn’t have a home for about three years. I’d either be on tour or in Australia. We made that album while we were on tour. I should have taken a break. We’d gone from being a bar band to a proper band in half a year. It was that classic thing of people wanting to get as much out of you as possible. I mean, they knew what I was doing, and they thought I might pop off – we had people coming down to the studio saying, get this done, because this guy might die. I never thought that was going to happen. I know nobody ever thinks it’s going to happen, but I was always careful with drugs. Real abuse is when you overdo it, because that’s not respecting the drug. It’s not a very serious record. There are a lot of experiments that are maybe a bit frivolous. Too happy, not quite dark enough in some ways. The title is about Slade, yeah. I had that Sladest greatest hits in high school, and I just thought they were one of the coolest bands!