‘He buckled. I could hear his bass ringing out ...’ The luminous rise and tragic end of US alt heroes Morphine
It’s early 1998, and at Fort Apache recording studio in Massachusetts, Mark Sandman, the suave frontman of Morphine, is nearing breaking point. Morphine’s four enigmatic and blackly humorous albums have won critical acclaim and, lately, unexpected commercial success considering their uncompromising creative vision. After the excesses of grunge, Sandman considered their idiosyncratic blend of sophisticated storytelling, prowling slide-bass and Dana Colley’s atmospheric saxophone a kind of “palate cleanser”.
In 1997 Morphine had signed to DreamWorks Records, founded by industry bigwigs David Geffen and Mo Ostin. Now, working on Morphine’s first LP for his new paymasters – a batch of songs finally seeing release almost three decades later – Sandman was consumed by doubt over their direction. “For the first time, Morphine were trying to please someone other than just ourselves,” remembers Colley.
“DreamWorks wanted to make the ‘big Morphine record’,” says Paul Q Kolderie, who had produced all of Morphine’s albums and was overseeing the sessions. “But the label didn’t know what they wanted. And Mark didn’t know what he wanted. He wasn’t happy.”
The pressure built until DreamWorks ho-hummed over the latest demos, and Sandman had “a particularly bad fight” with Kolderie, ditching the producer and Fort Apache. Soon, he would write and self-produce a whole new batch of songs, later released as Morphine’s fifth album, The Night. But by the time it hit the shelves in February 2000, Sandman was dead.
Though only 46 when he died, Sandman was “a guy who lived nine lives”, says Kolderie. “This was not his first go-round – he was an old soul.” His partner, Sabine Hrechdakian, says Sandman “was not someone who liked to dwell on the past”. No Reason, a 1989 track by his rootsy pre-Morphine vehicle Treat Her Right, saw him indulge in uncharacteristic autobiography. Describing foundational real-life losses and near-death experiences, Sandman concluded: “There’s no reason in this life / someone lives and someone dies.”
Raised in a middle-class home in Massachusetts, Sandman was a rebel whose parents were “lovely people, but they just didn’t understand their bohemian, rule-breaking son”, says Hrechdakian. At 18 he left for Alaska, and then South America, where he worked as a fisher. His travels ended after an early brush with death: having contracted kidney-damaging intestinal problems, Sandman flew home for urgent treatment and recuperation.
He returned at a dark time for his family. His youngest brother Roger, who had cerebral palsy, had died in 1978; 16 months later, his brother Jon died after falling from a window at a party. Sandman was distraught, and while he would rarely discuss it, Hrechdakian says these losses acted as “a call to action, to live the life he wanted and pursue it with determination. Mark knew how temporary life was.”
Kolderie met Sandman in the early 80s, on Boston’s music scene. “Mark had a great time. He was completely nocturnal – all he wanted was to hang out and make music with friends.” Sandman also worked in construction and catering, and drove a cab, until – in another near-death experience – he was stabbed in the chest by muggers and left for dead.
His next close shave set Morphine in motion. Treat Her Right were splitting up, Sandman having realised he needed to “be the leader and have a band that followed his vision”, Kolderie says. As Sandman drove home after a farewell show, another car totalled his 1964 Plymouth Barracuda. He ended up in hospital but won a $20,000 settlement and quit work to focus on his next project. “His material suddenly got much better,” says Kolderie, “marrying introspective, thoughtful songwriting to these cool grooves.”
Colley had befriended Sandman when his previous band supported Treat Her Right. “Mark invited me to his loft because he had this one-string bass he’d been working with,” says Colley. “We jammed, and it was like a lightbulb went on for Mark. We got a drummer, Jerome Deupree, and immediately started recording Morphine’s debut album.”
Morphine arrived fully formed on their debut, 1992’s Good, calling their sound “low rock”. Sandman’s murmured voice injected his beat poetics, noirish intrigue and blackly comedic stories with ineffable cool. It seduced everyone who heard it – like Rykodisc president Don Rose, who signed Morphine for their second album, 1993’s Cure for Pain. After their debut appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Colley says, “every show we played sold out, until our very last gig,” while Morphine’s music added sulphurous mystery to movies including Get Shorty and Wild Things, plus an early episode of Sex and the City. Being some years older than the typical indie-rocker – Sandman was 40 when Cure for Pain dropped – the success hardly went to their heads. “We weren’t throwing televisions out of hotel windows,” says Colley. “We loved what we were doing, and didn’t take it for granted.”
Sandman, meanwhile, had just met the love of his life. “He saw me one night and Cupid drew his arrow,” Hrechdakian laughs. Fourteen years younger than Sandman, she bartended at Boston venue the Middle East, where he “would make puppy-dog eyes at me. He was lovestruck, very driven; he pursued me for months. I wasn’t playing hard to get, I just didn’t feel an immediate … ” She tails off. But one night, in her kitchen, Hrechdakian could hear Sandman singing No Reason from his nearby apartment. “I don’t know if it was hearing his vulnerability, but I was like, ‘Oh my God – I think I’m in love with this man.’”
Much of their early relationship would be conducted via fax machine: Sandman was always touring, Hrechdakian pursuing her master’s in environmental studies. “We could not have lived more opposite lives. But in 1997 I decided, ‘this sucks’, and moved in with him.” They shared Sandman’s loft, where he had built his studio, Hi-N-Dry. “That was his cocoon.”
He began work on Morphine’s fifth album in an experimental mood. Deupree, who had left during the Cure for Pain sessions due to an injury, returned to play alongside his replacement, Billy Conway. The new material was strong, but the label’s lack of enthusiasm got under Sandman’s skin. His mood continued to plummet after they relocated to Fort Apache, where Kolderie had recorded Radiohead’s Pablo Honey and the Bends and Hole’s Live Through This. “He would zone out during sessions,” says Kolderie. “His health did not seem good. People would ask me, ‘Is Mark OK? He looks grey.’ He was the heaviest smoker I ever knew. And it took its toll.”
After splitting from Fort Apache, Sandman returned to the loft and self-produced The Night, Morphine’s fifth album, expanding the lineup to include more bass, violin and cello. “My theory is, somewhere inside he knew he was not well,” says Hrechdakian. “The Night is an album of him saying goodbye.”
Sandman signed off The Night in summer 1999 and Morphine readied for dates in Europe. Two weeks before the tour, however, Sandman suffered what Hrechdakian realises now was “the warning”: a minor heart attack. “His arm went numb. The colour drained from his face. I said, ‘Please let’s go to the emergency room’. He refused. So what did I do? I went to fucking Blockbuster to get videos and a pint of ice-cream.”
Morphine arrived in Europe in July during a debilitating heatwave. At the first show in Lisbon, Colley remembers “the air coming through my instrument into my lungs felt like a furnace”. The second date was at a festival near Rome. The heat remained intense, but Colley remembers “a beautiful evening, shining faces looking back at us. Seven songs in, we were playing Super Sex and Mark buckled at the knee and fell down. I could hear his bass ringing out, and put my horns down and ran to him. They took him to the emergency room down the street, but he was already gone.”
After Sandman’s death, Colley “wasn’t sure I’d ever play again”. Over the years since, however, he’s kept Sandman’s music alive via various live projects. Sandman’s estate fell into the control of his father, who “didn’t have any idea what to do with it,” says Kolderie. “He was an ornery cuss. Nike would try to license Morphine songs for an ad and he’d say, ‘Nah, that’s not enough money.’” A posthumous box set of unreleased material, Sandbox, was stymied by an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit from Rykodisc that nonetheless smothered momentum.
Hrechdakian and Morphine’s manager, Deborah Klein, took over the estate after Sandman’s father died, and Hrechdakian began sorting through a huge storage space of Sandman’s artwork, music and correspondence. She contacted Kolderie for help preserving the tapes and realised that the 1998 loft demos that preceded the Fort Apache sessions were a goldmine. “There’s a looseness,” Hrechdakian says. Those recordings are now set to be released, as Cocoon. “You can hear him laughing, his fingers on the strings … I sobbed for a while, listening to it.”
Everyone involved with the project calls it a “healing” experience. Hrechdakian says she “didn’t fully understand the depth of his love for me until after he was gone. Putting Cocoon together feels like a love story, like we’re communicating across time and space. It’s like Mark has come back to life for everyone who hears it, and he has for me as well.”