On July 21, 1994 – just three months after Kurt Cobain‘s suicide – a photo of Courtney Love kissing. Lemonheads frontman Evan Dando in a hotel room bed ran in the New York Post and quickly spread across the globe. “Merry widow Courtney Love was recently photographed sharing a passionate kiss with singer Evan Dando of the Lemonheads,” read a report that week in the National Enquirer. “As Courtney kissed Dando, she was clutching a teddy bear [filled] with Kurt’s ashes.”
The provocative image created the perception that Dando and Love were having an affair. The rumors continued once Dando was photographed wearing some of Cobain’s old sweaters onstage at Lemonheads concerts.
In his new book Rumors of My Demise: A Memoir (out October 7 via Simon & Schuster), Dando finally puts the issue to rest by detailing the full context behind the notorious photo, and that extremely tumultuous time in his life when the Lemonheads were pegged as the next Nirvana. “His memoir will remind readers what was so great about the pre-internet Nineties: the innocence, the access, and the anonymity,” reads.a synopsis. “Reclaiming the purity and exuberance of his early days and encapsulating the spirit of the era, this candid autobiography presents a portrait of an artist who lives wholly for his music, and one that makes no apologies for doing so.”
In this exclusive excerpt, Dando reveals the true story of his relationship with Love, how the rumors spread, and the regrets he holds to this day.
Things got warped beyond belief after Kurt’s death. A lot of people thought that something was going on between me and Courtney, including many of our mutual friends, which fanned the flames of the rumor. If even my friends thought we were having an affair, then the rumors had to be true, right?
Wrong. A lot of people thought we slept together while we were on tour. Courtney tried to make that happen, but I didn’t go for it. Nothing happened between us, but she told people that it had, and they believed her.
I reached out to Pat Smear, who’d been brought in to play with Nirvana, to ask him something that had been bothering me.
“Did Kurt think Courtney was cheating on him with me?” I asked.
“Yeah, man,” Pat said. “He thought you and Courtney were having an affair.”
“He didn’t really think I’d do that to him, did he?”
“Afraid so.”
Oh god, I thought. Kurt went to his death thinking I’d slept with Courtney.
Pat was a friend of mine. I was in awe of him. He told me he’d tried to reassure Kurt there was nothing going on, but apparently Kurt wasn’t convinced. Even though things got weird toward the end, deep down I think Kurt was a good person. Just knowing Kurt was carrying that with him when he died was deeply upsetting to me.
***
Courtney was fixated on me, but she wasn’t the only one. It was always strange. It happened again when Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill put out a zine called My Life with Evan Dando, Popstar. The zine reflected her frustration with the media, to which I could certainly relate, but I wasn’t offended by it, but her fans thought it was an attack on me and felt obligated to take action and mobilize a protest against me. Riot Grrrls would come to my shows and not enjoy themselves as a statement. They’d stand around in groups and yell, “Evan Dando sucks!”
The funny thing was they didn’t do this outside. They bought tickets and did it during the show. As long as you pay your way in, you can protest all you want.
Kathleen and I actually knew each other. We’d met by chance at the Portobello Road market in London. We literally bumped into each other and hung out for a while. It was totally cool and completely innocent, but you’d never know that reading the zine. She was using her imagination. It just had very little to do with our encounter that day.
By the way, My Life with Evan Dando wasn’t the only anti–Evan Dando zine on the market. Die Evan Dando, Die beat Kathleen Hanna to the punch. When people don’t like me, they go out of their way to make their feelings known. I can relate. Sometimes I don’t like me either.
***
The second time I didn’t sleep with Courtney, I was hanging out with her the summer after Kurt died. She was supposed to go on the aptly titled Live Through This Tour, but the death of her bass player, Kristen Pfaff, made that impossible.
People in the scene kept slipping away, mostly from drug overdoses. In terms of my own drug use, I was very much in denial. I did a lot of drugs with Courtney the summer after Kurt died.
I’d say something like “We’ll party after the show.”
“What we’re onto is way beyond partying. You shouldn’t even call it partying,” Courtney said.
She was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit that I had a habit, that I looked forward to that first shot of the day a little too much, that the only time I felt right with the world was when I was high. Those realizations were coming, but in the summer of 1994, they were still a long way off.
Courtney kept trying to make something happen between us. I would tell her no and she would sulk about it for a while and I’d avoid her. Then she’d ask me for a small favor, the kind that any friend would do, especially after what she’d been through, and I’d do it. I felt bad about rejecting her all the time considering the terrible situation she was in.
She was grieving. Maybe she felt the bullshit she had to deal with from the media and the fans couldn’t possibly be worse. People were literally stalking her and showing up at her house at night. It was a horrible situation, and I cared about her as a friend. I wanted to be there for Courtney during this very dark time. That’s how I fell into her trap.
“Here, take this,” she said one night, handing me a bag.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Some of Kurt’s clothes. I want you to have them.”
“Why are you giving this to me?”
“Everything is so fucked right now. Just take it.”
So I did. I didn’t think it was strange at first. I thought Courtney was giving Kurt’s stuff away to keep his possessions in her circle of friends rather than have them disappear and show up for sale somewhere. Everyone wanted a piece of Kurt. I took the clothes, and I wore them occasionally. There was a ratty-looking trench coat that I wore onstage a few times and a blue cardigan sweater. One thing that bands from the Northeast shared with bands from the Northwest was an appreciation for a good sweater.
At the time, I didn’t understand how famous Kurt’s sweaters were. There was a whole field of sweater detectives who kept track of all the different sweaters he wore. Eventually, I wised up to the fact that Courtney wanted me to be seen wearing Kurt’s clothes. I’m pretty sure the sweater Courtney gave me is the one he’s wearing on the back of the greatest hits album. In the pantheon of Kurt’s sweaters, it’s up there. Courtney knew what she was doing when she gave it to me.
Then there was the bear.
Courtney had a stuffed teddy bear in which she kept Kurt’s ashes. It was part teddy bear, part backpack, so she could carry it around her wherever she went. At first, I liked the bear. I liked knowing that Kurt was close, but eventually it started to give me the creeps.
A bunch of us were in Courtney’s hotel room in Manhattan. It was me, Courtney, and some members of Juliana’s band. It wasn’t a party, but people were partying.
“Let’s take a picture together,” Courtney said.
“Okay.”
“Let’s pretend like we’re making out.”
I didn’t want to do it. We were on her bed and even though there were lots of people around and nothing intimate was happening, I knew people would get the wrong idea if they saw the photo. It was just an awkward situation, and I wanted no part of it.
“I don’t want to,” I said.
“Come on, Evan! It will be funny in fifteen years.”
I shook my head, but she wouldn’t let the matter drop.
“Come on, do it!”
Finally, it got to the point where I felt like it would be less strange if I just did it than her asking me over and over again. It was my camera, and I figured no harm would come of it if no one ever saw the photo.
“All right,” I relented.
I pressed my lips against hers and someone took the picture. Our lips barely touched, like the way you’d kiss a close friend or relative.
Anyway, like so many other things, I forgot all about my kiss with Courtney. I didn’t even think about it when my camera went missing a few days later. A bunch of us were staying in the hotel to support Courtney and our stuff was spread out in different rooms. I figured it would turn up eventually.
About a week later the photo of me and Courtney kissing in bed was splashed all over the New York Post. Even though you can tell the photo is posed, there was a huge uproar over it. People were not cool with that photo. Fans felt like it was disrespectful to Kurt’s memory, and it made me look like a sleaze ball who was taking advantage of Courtney during a vulnerable period of her life.
That was the best-case scenario. For some, that photo was proof that the rumors Courtney had been spreading about us were true and that I was a first-class scumbag. I figured it was someone working at the hotel, or someone posing as a hotel worker. Paparazzi spy tactics. Real cloak-and-dagger shit.
Later, someone told me that Courtney sent the photo to the tabloids herself, which made me sad. I wanted to believe that she wouldn’t pull a stunt like that. I think on some level we all care what people think about us.
When you’re the subject of intense media scrutiny, you have to figure out a way not to care or you’ll go crazy. But this was different. Courtney was trying to plant an idea that simply wasn’t true. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t cool and there was no getting away from it.
Unfortunately, I’ll always be a part of the sad, strange story of Kurt and Courtney. That photo implicated me in all kinds of conspiracy theories about Kurt’s death, which persist to this day.
Even Courtney’s father insinuated as much in Nick Broomfield’s documentary.
My real friends know what happened, but Kurt’s fans, Courtney’s fans, and some of my own fans were mad at me. Even though I’ve told the story many times, people still think that I had something to do with the circumstances that led to Kurt’s death. I felt like the only thing I could do was run away.
Copyright © 2025 by Evan Dando. From the forthcoming book RUMORS OF MY DEMISE: A Memoir by Evan Dando to be published by Gallery Books, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC. Printed by permission.
