On the cusp of becoming a rock icon, this budding musician arrived in Saratoga for an ill-fated three months but just couldn’t hang. He disses our fair town — and its music scene — in his brand-new memoir, on Amazon now.
Rock star Evan Dando of The Lemonheads has long appeared on Skidmore’s celebrity list, with the vague “attendee” title instead of graduating class. But in his new memoir Rumors of My Demise, the ‘90s icon finally tells the full story.
And it wasn’t pretty.
About 40 pages into the book, which came out earlier this month, Dando leaves Massachusetts to give higher education a shot, putting on hold his band that would make him a world-famous rock star.
“I was excited about being out on my own, but the thrill was short-lived,” wrote Dando, now 58. “After Boston, Skidmore felt small and dull.”
Ouch.
During his short time in the Spa City — which he told Magnet magazine was “90 days and 90 nights” — Dando had rock music on the brain. “Saratoga Springs is where Don McLean wrote ‘American Pie,’” reads the book. “Other than that, Skidmore didn’t have a lot going for it. There wasn’t much of a music scene in Saratoga Springs.”
A creative soul clearly not meant for college, the only class Dando didn’t fail was acting — and he was ready for the freewheeling rockstar life. “I didn’t buy books, I bought drugs,” he writes. He also cops to a lot of speeding tickets, which he of course didn’t pay for.
On a fun note, Dando gives a nod to his roommates, who have no doubt told more than a few people about that short time in 1986 when they slept in the same room as Evan Dando.
“I had two roommates in my dorm room and one of them was the nephew of the keyboard player in Lipps, Inc., the group that had the hit ‘Funkytown,’” Dando remembers. “My roommate brought the actual keyboard used in that song with him and it was in our room. I got along with my dorm mates just fine. They weren’t the problem; I was.”
Dando’s musings about Saratoga and Skidmore (he lasted less than a semester) go on for a few pages, before the budding rock star takes off to form a now-iconic ‘90s alternative rock band and reach world-wide fame with its cover of “Mrs. Robinson.” The Lemonheads play the Bearsville Theater in Woodstock Nov. 21.
Rumors of My Demise is out now.