Alexakis Can See Clearly Now

A strip of photo-booth pictures in the booklet for Everclear’s CD “Sparkle and Fade” shows the group’s leader Art Alexakis at age 9--a sweet-looking boy with a half-smile on his face. The reason for the playful expression? He’d just smoked pot for the first time.

Alexakis had started drinking a year earlier, and when he reached 13 he turned to heroin, beginning a dark decade during which his parents split up, his brother and his girlfriend died of overdoses, and he tried to kill himself by jumping off the Santa Monica Pier.

These days, the words “Santa Monica” are more likely to evoke Everclear’s bouncy hit song than the singer-guitarist’s suicide platform. His Portland-based trio--Alexakis, drummer Greg Eklund and bassist Craig Montoya--is currently a band on a roll. With “Santa Monica” a fixture on both alternative and rock radio, and with the album in the national Top 30, Everclear will be the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live” tonight, and headlines the Roxy Wednesday through Friday.

It’s a triumphant homecoming of sorts for the Los Angeles-bred Alexakis. At 33, with a wife and a 3 1/2-year-old daughter, he is a world away from his drug habit, but its residue persists.

“Obsessiveness, depression,” says the singer, ticking off some of the issues he continues to deal with in therapy. “I just felt like a kicked dog my whole life, pretty much.”

Alexakis grew up in a Mar Vista housing project. The youngest of five children, he became immersed in all sorts of music early on, from the Beatles to bubble-gum, Motown to metal, folk to funk, singer-songwriters to punk bands.

“I never wanted to do anything else,” he says of music. But his addiction kept him from getting anything going. At 22, he decided enough was enough, and he made it stick.

“I was just miserable, and I considered suicide,” he says during a phone interview from his home in Portland. “I looked at my life and I wasn’t doing anything. I felt like I was better than what I had become.”

Alexakis moved to San Francisco, playing in bands and running his own independent label. The next stop was Portland, where he formed Everclear in 1991. The band’s blend of singer-songwriter observation and punk- and grunge-inflected rock caught on in the Northwest, and the local Tim/Kerr label released the group’s first album, “World of Noise,” in 1993.

Capitol signed Everclear and re-released the album in ‘94, followed by “Sparkle and Fade” last May. A relentless touring schedule and the college-rock popularity of the album’s first single established the momentum that’s still building.

That first single was called “Heroin Girl,” one of several songs on the album that allude to the drug experience. But the collection’s real thematic core is its depiction of the struggle to take control and reach an accommodation with life.

“I don’t think this is my heroin album,” Alexakis says, referring to a common description. “I think this is a record about adaptation. Like that line in ‘Heartspark Dollarsign’--’a power bigger than the pain.’ That’s what ‘Sparkle and Fade’s’ about. It’s about good things and bad things . . . and coming to the emotional age where you’re able to accept that.

“People ask me, ‘Once you write about all the drug stuff what are you gonna write about then?’ I’m like, ‘Well, I’ve been on my own since I was 15. I’ve done a lot more things than just drugs.’ It’s just life. Either you’re sensitive to what goes on around you and you can write about it, or you’re not and you can’t.”

Alexakis finds Everclear’s success “intimidating, but it’s something that I’ve wanted, I’ve worked for my whole life, and I’m learning to juggle and balance.”

Still, the demands can be stiff. He’s at home for just one day, between the end of a European tour and the beginning of “Saturday Night Live” rehearsals in New York. He’s also keeping tabs on his mother, who’s recovering from recent open-heart surgery.

That pace could be a drain on the most solid constitution. What about one that’s been as battered as his? Does Alexakis have it all under control?

“I feel like I got a good handle on the bumper as the car is speeding down the road,” he says with a laugh. “But that’s better than running behind it, or being dragged.”

* Everclear performs Wednesday through Friday at the Roxy, 9009 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood, 8 p.m. Sold out. (310) 278-9457.