The band emerged from the Boston hardcore underground, but they were never entirely of it. The original lineup included Mr. Dando, the son of a white-shoe lawyer and a model; Jesse Peretz, the son of the longtime editor-in-chief of The New Republic Martin Peretz and a future film and television director for shows such as “Girls”; and Ben Deily, who graduated from Harvard after his Lemonheads tenure . “We were the bougiest punk band ever,” Mr. Dando said.

Mr. Dando had all the obvious privileges — looks, wealth, connections. But those were not necessarily a plus in an era that prized tortured authenticity above all. With his surfer-ish looks, whimsical attitude and taste for LSD, which he said he began experimenting with in early high school, he seemed more like a hippie-era troubadour than a Generation X nihilist.

“He didn’t hate himself and he didn’t want to die, he was a jolly child of the universe!” wrote Sylvia Patterson in New Musical Express in 1996, referring to him as “the pop personality of the decade who walked lopsided and, ‘smiled like a dolphin.’”

Not every critic was entranced. Some wrote off the Lemonheads as “bubblegrunge,” and found plenty of ammo when Mr. Dando, say, posed for the cover of Spin magazine’s “‘S’ is for Sex in the ’90s” issue in 1996, shirtless, tanned and jousting tongues with the actress Adrienne Shelly.

It started dawning on him that he had become a teen idol when he would dive into the mosh pit and the fans would attempt to rip his clothes off instead of ferrying him back to the stage.

With the attention from groupies, he said, he would “just David Cassidy out,” hiding in his hotel room from rabid fans. “It’s an alienating thing,” he said. “I was actually celibate for eight months, at the height of it. It just got to the point where, this isn’t fun, different chicks every night.”