My Drug Buddy by The Lemonheads - Songfacts

My Drug Buddy

Album: It's A Shame About Ray (1992)
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Lemonheads leader Evan Dando, "My Drug Buddy" tells an opaque tale of a couple who take a friendly stroll, making arrangements for drugs along the way. In a Songfacts interview with Dando, he said that his drug buddy was his friend Nicole, and the lyric was inspired by a night they spent together in Sydney, Australia.

    "That's a really good story of a night back in the day when we used to do speed," said Dando. "She was actually my friend Tom's girlfriend. I was trying to tell the story as forthright and as normal as possible, without many rhymes or anything."
  • The female backing vocals on this song are by Juliana Hatfield, who also played bass on the album. She released her first solo album, Hey Babe, earlier in 1992.

    At this point, The Lemonheads were essentially an Evan Dando solo project. On the It's a Shame About Ray album, David Ryan was the drummer.
  • This song lopes along with concern for song structure: there is no chorus and nothing really rhymes. The title doesn't come in until the end, when Dando repeats, "I love my drug buddy" a few times. This straightforward narrative suits the lyric and feel of the song very well.
  • Drugs are intractably intertwined into Evan Dando's story. As heard in this song, he's never been shy about singing about substances, and he's always been happy to talk about his drug use in the press. In the mid-'90s, it seemed he would follow in the path of his friend Kurt Cobain, as Dando developed a taste for heroin and erratic behavior (he spent a lot of time with Oasis around this time, often seen jumping on stage with them). Drugs never killed him, but he has stories to tell about various overdoses and other misadventures. In one of his stories, he felt an overdose coming on while watching Spinal Tap on DVD - he quickly ejected the disc to avoid becoming the ultimate cliché. There is also a trip to Australia where he did speed, ecstasy and acid, then found himself at an airport with no ticket. Through it all Dando insists that drugs and music go well together, a point he makes on ""My Drug Buddy."

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