The Lemonheads

Early years (1986–1991) Evan Dando, Ben Deily and Jesse Peretz formed the Lemonheads as teenagers at the Commonwealth School in Boston. The band was originally called the Whelps, until inspiration came from a brand of candy, which Dando noted was "sweet on the inside and sour on the outside." The band recorded and self-released the 7-inch EP Laughing All the Way to the Cleaners. The band's first show was played on August 19, 1986. After high school, Dando enrolled at Skidmore College but could not maintain his grades and dropped out to pursue a musical career. Having signed to local label Taang! Records, the Lemonheads released the albums Hate Your Friends (1987), Creator (1988), and Lick (1989) with Deily and Dando sharing lead vocals and songwriting duties. During 1992–1993, Dando's face graced many magazine covers, and he was included in Peoples 50 Most Beautiful People list. Now consisting of Dando, Dalton, and Ryan, the band officially renamed themselves from "Lemonheads" to "The Lemonheads" prior to the release of Come on Feel the Lemonheads in October 1993. Dando befriended Oasis and appeared at the band's live shows. The cracks were beginning to show, and after one particularly disjointed interview with Dando almost unable to speak, having lost his voice after smoking crack cocaine, he admitted to having a drug problem. The band went on hiatus and Dando went into rehab. In 1996, Dando re-formed the Lemonheads with a completely new lineup, including drummer Murph (formerly of Dinosaur Jr.), bassist Bill Gibson (formerly of the Eastern Dark), and guitarist John Strohm (formerly of the Blake Babies; Strohm had also played drums with the Lemonheads during their early years). This band produced another Lemonheads album, Car Button Cloth. While featuring jangly guitar songs such as "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You," this set also showed off the darker side of Dando's writing. A deluxe reissue of Lemonheads' 1992 album ''It's a Shame About Ray'' was released in March 2008 (US) and April 2008 (UK) on Rhino Records, On June 23, 2009, the Lemonheads released Varshons – a collection of eleven covers, including tracks by Gram Parsons, Wire, GG Allin, and Christina Aguilera. The album also featured actress Liv Tyler performing a duet on Leonard Cohen's "Hey That's No Way To Say Goodbye". Despite several websites reporting a release date of September 13, 2008, the album was not released on this date. Later, in a blog post on the band's MySpace page, Dando hinted at a March 2009 release. On March 27, 2009, it was announced that Varshons would be released on June 23 on The End Records. In an August 2007 interview, drummer Bill Stevenson stated that he was going to produce the Lemonheads' ninth album of original material. As of August 2010, however, announcements of a new album have not yet been released. In September 2010 the Lemonheads announced an Australian tour playing all thirteen songs from the 1992 album ''It's a Shame about Ray'', plus a selection of songs from other albums. On February 7, 2012, the Lemonheads will release Hotel Sessions on Hall of Records/Breath of Saltwater – an intimate recording documenting a Sunday night that Evan Dando spent recording new songs with just an acoustic guitar (and some revealing commentary) in a hotel room in Bondi Beach, Australia. The 14 songs include some that never made it to an official Lemonheads album, but Dando says, "the "Into Your Arms" I did here is better than the one on the album (I like it anyway)." The Lemonheads completed a 9-week U.S. tour in spring of 2012 playing all thirteen songs from the 1992 album ''It's a Shame about Ray'', plus a selection of songs from other albums. Lead singer Evan Dando recruited drummer Chuck Treece and former Taking Back Sunday lead guitarist Fred Mascherino to play bass. Juliana Hatfield rejoined the Lemonheads for a late 2012 tour supporting the Psychedelic Furs. On September 17, 2012, Ryan Adams tweeted that he would be playing drums on a new 'punker sounding' Lemonheads album as well as producing it. He also announced that Evan Dando would be joined on the record by Juliana Hatfield and, for the first time since 1989's Lick, co-founder and original co-songwriter Ben Deily. Like the earlier Bill Stevenson produced sessions, however, no album was released. The Lemonheads played a seven-date tour in Ireland and the UK in October 2015. On August 14, 2017, Atlantic Records divested the Lemonheads' back catalog to Fire Records, which released several of the band's albums in the UK. A second album of covers (the band's first album in a decade), titled Varshons 2, was released in 2019. In September 2025, a performance by the Lemonheads at the Vintage Industrial Bar in Zagreb, Croatia, was cut short after frontman Evan Dando left the stage mid-set. The Croatian newspaper Jutarnji list described the show as disorganized and reported that Dando appeared visibly distressed and smashed stage equipment before ending the concert. ==Musical style==

Musically, the band has been classified as alternative rock, grunge, jangle pop, power pop, and pop-punk. == Personnel ==

During the earliest years, the band consisted of Evan Dando, Ben Deily, and Jesse Peretz. Dando and Deily shared singing and songwriting duties; when recording or performing live each would sing and play guitar on their own compositions while the other would play drums. When the arrangement became unworkable, they hired additional drummers including Doug Trachten and John Strohm. On most of the first three albums (released by independent label TAANG!), songs from various recording sessions and live tracks are mixed, so instrumentation varies considerably from track-to-track depending on who was in the band when the tracks were recorded. CD versions of these albums were also released with bonus tracks from even later lineups of the band. When Deily quit the band in 1989, Dando replaced him with guitarist Corey Loog Brennan and drummer Mark Natola. Natola would be replaced by drummer David Ryan prior to the band's first major label album, Lovey. Following the recording of Lovey, founding bass player Jesse Peretz left the band to pursue a career in photography and filmmaking, and Brennan left to concentrate on his career as a college professor. On their breakout album, ''It's a Shame About Ray, Juliana Hatfield had joined on bass guitar and backing vocals. She would remain the backing vocalist for the follow-up album Come on Feel the Lemonheads'', but would be replaced on bass guitar by Nic Dalton. John Strohm, who had previously played drums with the band during their early years, toured with the band as a second guitarist in support of these albums. Starting with 1996's Car Button Cloth and continuing through the present, the band membership has been fluid, with the name the Lemonheads generally being used by whomever Evan Dando had recruited to record and/or play with at the time. Their last official release was 2019's collection of cover songs Varshons 2, which followed on from their prior release, 2009's Varshons. Several announcements of albums of new material or tours involving any number of musicians have been announced over the years since then, most recently a 2012 project involving Ben Deily, Juliana Hatfield, and Ryan Adams, but as yet no major recordings or substantial tours have materialized. Below is an approximate timeline of membership in the Lemonheads. Other than Evan Dando, the band has rarely had a stable lineup. The timeline below shows only members which were primary recording or touring members. It does not include guest musicians, or ephemeral lineups which only appeared on stage under the Lemonheads moniker for one-off shows or brief appearances. Dates of membership are approximate based on known shows and recordings. ;Current members • Evan Dando – vocals (1986–present), guitar (1986–present), drums (1986–1989) • Farley Glavin – bass (2014–present) • John Kent – drums (2023–present) ;Former members • Ben Deily – vocals (1986–1989), guitar (1986–1989), drums (1986–1989) • Jesse Peretz – bass (1986–1991) • Doug Trachten – drums (1987) • Mark Natola – drums (1989) • Mark Newman – drums (1989) • Corey "Loog" Brennan – guitar (1989–1991) • Juliana Hatfield - bass (1991–1992, 2012), backing vocals (1991–1993, 2012) • David Ryan – drums (1989–1994) • Nic Dalton – bass (1992–1994) • John Strohm – guitar (1994–1997), drums (1988) • Patrick "Murph" Murphy – drums (1996–1998) • Bill Gibson – bass (1996–1998) • Bill Stevenson– drums (2005–2007) • Karl Alvarez – bass (2005–2007) • Devon Ashley – drums (2008–2010) • Vess Ruhtenberg – bass (2008–2010) Membership timeline ==Discography==

Studio albums • Hate Your Friends (1987) • Creator (1988) • Lick (1989) • Lovey (1990) • ''It's a Shame About Ray'' (1992) • Come on Feel the Lemonheads (1993) • Car Button Cloth (1996) • The Lemonheads (2006) • Varshons (2009) • Varshons 2 (2019) • Love Chant (2025) == See also ==