Morphine’s Mark Sandman (1952-1998) became a rock star at
the age of 40. He was at least 10 years
older when he achieved artistic peak and commercial success than anyone else in
history before or since. In this respect
and in many others, the man was truly unique.
The band that finally broke for him— Morphine— was a power trio comprised of a drummer, a
baritone sax player (who sometimes doubled to tenor, putting both horns in his
mouth at once), and Sandman himself on a self-designed, self-built 2-string
slide bass and singing in a low, smoky tenor.
They called it “Low Rock,” and although connected to many musical
tributaries and contemporaries, they sounded like no one before or since—funky
and earthy and modern and dark and funny and literate and grimy and smooth al
at once. These were badass motherfuckers
possessed of a sound unlike any before, led by a frontman who arrived at his
late success with an advanced artistic vision, sensibility, and wisdom forged
through a long life of hard experience.
Morphine was a remarkable band, and Sandman’s story (yes, that’s his real
name) is incredible and worthy of contemplation.
As usual, I am late to the Morphine game. Mark Sandman has been dead almost 20 years,
and I just got introduced to the band a couple of months ago at a poker game. The moaning sax and funky bass riff (“how the
hell is he getting that weird slidey sound?”) opening the Cure for Pain
album grabbed me immediately and I’ve been hooked ever since, listening
endlessly for a good 60 days and counting now.
As for Sandman, although his story is remarkable and, as
noted, truly unique, some details of his biography remain elusive, despite the
proliferation of internet resources and a 2012 documentary (Cure for Pain—The
Mark Sandman Story, apparently not in legit American release). Although as noted, he arrived at his late
success with an advanced artistic vision, sensibility, and wisdom forged
through a long life of hard and varied experience, he himself was reluctant to
discuss his age or biography, directing conversations in interviews to the
bands work, period. There are some odd holes in the documentary that don’t
square or address info circulating elsewhere, and my research is certainly
incomplete, but here’s the story, as best as I can gather it:
Mark Sandman grew up the oldest of 4 siblings (a sister and
two brothers) in an upper middle-class Jewish home in suburban Boston. From an early age, he displayed an artistic
streak and strongly independent temperament.
Upon graduating high school (circa 1970), his plan was to live at his
folks house and hang out with arty folks around town, playing music, painting,
writing, etc. His folks said, basically,
“We’ll send you to college, we’ll send you to trade school, you can get a job
to pay some rent here, but just hanging out and making arty stuff ain’t
enough,” and so Mark Sandman split. He
spent the next 10 years or so knocking around the world: from canning factories
in Alaska to fishing boats operating out of the Bay area to driving cabs here,
there, and everywhere, he worked and rambled.
He wrote stuff down, messed with various kinds of art along the way. Some internet sources indicate that at some
point he was stabbed while working as a cab driver, although the documentary
makes no mention of this incident. Sometime
in the mid 1980s, (would’ve been in his early 30s), however, Sandman wound up
seriously ill in South America and had to come home for medical care and
recovery. Shortly after his arrival home,
his youngest brother died of complications from cerebral palsy, and roughly 18
months later his other brother died in a freak fall. At that point Sandman decided to stay with
his family and go to college (art school in the Boston area), after which he
spent several years trying to get a successful band together around town. One band—Treat Her Right—came close to making
it, getting briefly signed but then quickly dropped by a major label. Sandman can be clearly heard developing his
low rock musical vocabulary on the bands lone album, though, and this kind of
work shows up on a few other odds and ends recordings by bands he was involved
with at the time.
After many years and many bands, Morphine, formed in 1989
broke circa 1992-1993 as part of the indie-rock movement led by Nirvana. Mark Sandman was forty— 15 to 20 years older
than EVERYONE in the indie-rock movement. While connected in various sonic and
literary ways to contemporaries like Soul Coughing, Cake, Los Lobos, and
Pavement, Sandman’s unique bass sound, beatnik-descended lyrics, and dark, brooding
delivery, and Dana Collley’s dark, soulful, deep sax sounds carve out a low end
sonic space that no one else has ever really occupied before or since. Over the course of about a half dozen more years
and about a half dozen albums, Morphine toured the world and playing venues
holding thousands, even tens of thousands of people. Sandman died of an apparent heart attack on
stage at a festival in Italy. The cause
of death was never medically confirmed because Sandman was buried in the Jewsih
tradition, which views autopsies as a desecration of the body. Sandman was a heavy smoker. A quick survey of
other biographical sources turns up, despite the band’s name, no reports of heavy
drinking or hard drug use on the part of Sandman, and family and friends in the
doc state that he did not use drugs. The
documentary does include a single interview with another musician who lived
briefly with Sandman and says that he smoked weed heavily. And so we don’t know for sure, medically,
what happened. Colley describes looking
over to stage right as “Super Sex” kicked off early in the set, seeing Sandman’s
legs buckle, and then that was it. By the
time the sax player made it over to Sandman’s side of the stage to help, he was
gone, the sound of his bass hitting the floor still reverberating through the
PA.
Sandman’s life story, like the music which he created, is truly
unique and powerful. He was, as noted,
reticent on the subject of his own biography.
One can understand his discomfiture and appreciate his point. He was a middle-aged man playing a young man’s
game with a different generation—enough to make a fella feel old, despite any
bravado— and it didn’t fuckin’ matter anyway ‘cuz the music’s the point, not
the ages of the people who are making it.
None of it matters if the band isn’t great, which it was, and it doesn’t
matter to the music, anyway. However,
consider: during his ride with Morphine, rockstars his age had been out of
fame, fashion, and cool for a decade and a half or were already touring as
nostalgia acts rather than important musical forces covering new musical ground
(Rod Stewart or the Allmans come quickly to mind, among dozens of others). And so, hopefully, Sandman also had some time
to laugh his ass off to himself at the washed up old rock and roll farts his
age entering geezerhood irrelevance while he was working at the cutting edge of
rock and roll. I also think Sandman’s
reluctance to discuss the remarkable road that led him to success with Morphine
was unfortunate. Denying the importance
of the many years of relentless kinds of work and persistence and widely and
wildly varied experiences undersells the value of the wisdom and creative
energy drawn from those experiences.
Certainly, Morphine’s music is great, period. Certainly, also, Sandman’s
biography is of much less interest if the band wasn’t so great. The band IS great, however, and I believe
that the power of their music is enhanced, and certainly not diminished, by the
power of its creators biography, which was unlike anyone else’s in his line of
work, and resulted in a unique and powerful musical vision.
And so, talking, or writing, it through, I guess I feel like
the maybe the lesson of Mark Sandman is not merely that you’re never too old to
achieve greatness, but that, indeed, in music as with so many other things, a
long struggle enriches creative output and success (as well as one’s appreciation
of that success) when it finally arrives.
With much gratitude, Mark Sandman RIP.
