Day After Day #213: Rudderless

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

Rudderless (1992)

Rock history is filled with privileged kids who were able to parlay their upper-middle class lifestyles into stardom. They sing about struggles and hardships, but they grew up going to art school and getting help from their parents. One of those kids was Evan Dando, who grew up in Essex, Mass., not too far from where I'm sitting typing this blog post. Dando formed the Lemonheads in 1986 with Ben Deily and Jesse Peretz while they were all attending the Commonwealth School in Boston. 

Originally called the Whelps, the band changed their name to the Lemonheads after the candy. The band released released their first three albums on Taang! Records, with Dando and Deily splitting the lead vocals and songwriting while Peretz played bass and they used different drummers on each album. The band played raucous punk-pop, getting some airplay on Boston's WBCN with their punked-up cover of Suzanne Vega's hit "Luka" on their album Creator. Deily left the band in 1989 and was replaced by Corey Loog Brennan and David Ryan on drums before the Lemonheads' major label debut, Lovey, in 1990.

After Lovey failed to generate much interest, Dando flew to Australia and wrote songs with friends Nic Dalton and Tom Morgan. Peretz left the band to pursue a career in photography and film and was replaced by Juliana Hatfield, who left the band shortly after the Lemonheads finished It's a Shame About Ray to start her own band. Dalton replaced her on bass. The resulting album featured a rootsier sound for the band, which was led by the photogenic Dando. I can still remember Dave Kendall, the British host of MTV's 120 Minutes, introducing a video by "alternahunk Evan Dando of the Lemonheads" in his thick accent. Dando landed on many magazine covers and was included in People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People lislt.

Dando was quickly becoming the face of indie rock, even though a lot of people weren't overly familiar with his music. At the same time, Dando's drug problems were well-known and he wasn't shy about including them in his songs, including "My Drug Buddy" on It's a Shame About Ray. The album got more attention when a cover of the Simon and Garfunkel song "Mrs. Robinson" was added to the album; it got plenty of radio and MTV play. Even as grunge was the flavor of the day, the Lemonheads were providing something poppier and more familiar. The title track got some love from radio as well, but for me, "Rudderless" was the best jam on that album.

The song, like the album, features Hatfield on bass and backing vocals. She was close friends with Dando; there were plenty of rumors that they were romantically involved but she always denied them. "Rudderless" was driven by a sharp acoustic riff that slices through the song as Dando sings about that Gen X ennui that was happening for those of us in our early 20s at the time.

"Waiting for something to break/Left my heart out to bake/Nothing there in my glass/Wasn't air meant to last/Hope in my past/Hope in my past/Hope in my past/All the way down to the lake/(Found the lake was wet)/How much more could I take/(Better yet)/Walked back home to my place/(Tired of getting high)/Guess I don't wanna die."

When he wrote the song, Dando was still relatively unknown and perhaps the rudderless ship was his life at the time.

"Waiting for something to break/Left my heart out to bake/Slipped my mind that I could use my brain/I'll stay up all night and crash on the plane/Ship without a rudder's like a ship without a rudder's like/Ship without a rudder."

The album got up to #36 on the Billboard 200 and #33 on the U.K. album chart. Dando, Dalton and drummer David Ryan followed it up with 1993's Come on Feel the Lemonheads, which had a minor hit with "Into Your Arms." The album only got to #56 in the U.S., but hit #5 in the U.K. But Dando's drug troubles, which included smoking crack, led to him going into rehab and the band going on hiatus.

Dando returned in 1996 with a new version of the band, including drummer Murph of Dinosaur Jr., guitarist John Strohm of the Blake Babies and bassist Bill Gibson, and released Car Button Cloth. The album only reached #130 on the Billboard 200 (and #28 in the U.K.) and the band went on hiatus in 1998. Dando released a solo album in 2003 and then reformed the Lemonheads in 2005 with Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez of the Descendents as his rhythm section. A self-titled album was released in 2006, but since then, the Lemonheads have only released two covers albums. 

Dando has been touring with a version of the band for the last few years, releasing a single called "Fear of Living" on Fire Records last year. I saw them open for Dinosaur Jr. in November 2021 and the show was pretty erratic sounding. A few months later, the Lemonheads were opening for Jawbreaker when they were kicked off the tour. Dando posted a bunch of unhinged tweets slamming Jawbreaker and then apologizing and then slamming them again. Whatever all that was about, Dando seems to have bounced back. He has a Lemonheads tour scheduled for August and September, playing both It's a Shame About Ray and Come on Feel the Lemonheads in their entirety.