At what point does a lyric become a mantra? “Eleven O’Clock” might be the best example, but other songs like “Good” and “Yes” perform a similar function: repeating one word or phrase over and over again until it takes on the quality of a prayer, a wish, or even a kind of hypnosis. There’s a similar thing at play in “French Fries with Pepper” where not only are all the dates mentioned based on the repetition of one digit, but the second verse is the same as the first. “French Fries with Pepper” feels like a rarity in the Morphine catalog. It is a happy, hopeful imagining of a content future filled with simple pleasures. The song seems to answer the question, what’s the simplest possible thing that could represent a happy ending? At live shows, it became an unlikely sing-along with an entire audience happily shouting, “French fries! With pepper!” back at the band.

The fact that Mark Sandman didn’t live to see his “French Fries with Pepper” destination date of 9/9/99—he was only 69 days shy of it when he collapsed on stage in Palestrina, Lazio—is inarguably tragic; it adds a layer of melancholy to an otherwise funny, hopeful song that you would never expect to take on such qualities. This is a good example of how the events of the future can often become the final co-author of any creation. When you put a piece of art out into the world, its eventual context could very well change its meaning in ways that neither artist nor audience could have anticipated upon its initial release.

MARK SANDMAN reluctantly holds up a French fry and a pepper shaker as MIDDLE EAST owner JOSEPH SATER looks on.

Like Swimming concludes with the most hypnotic, subtle song Sandman ever released. “Swing it Low” is only three minutes and sixteen seconds, but you could play it on repeat for hours, and you might not even notice. It has an odd history: this recording consists of a drum machine, organ, guitar, and vocal all done at home by Sandman and released on a 7” in 1996 under the band name… Like Swimming. Which is confusing, I agree. He liked it so much, it migrated from side project to the closing slot of a proper Morphine album.

SABINE HRECHDAKIAN and MARK SANDMAN.

The confidence and swagger of the rest of the album is still present on “Swing it Low,” but now it’s much softer. Suddenly, he’s singing about keeping his sweetheart safe, a clear indication that he’s moved beyond seduction into something deeper.¹¹ It’s no longer just a cavalier flirtation; this sounds like commitment. “You especially,” he whisper-sings, “you have my loyalty.” For anyone close to the band, it was crystal clear where these new themes originated. Sandman’s relationship with Sabine Hrechdakian had solidified and deepened in so many ways since they began dating in 1993. While Morphine manager Deb Klein is comfortable saying that certain songs are about Sabine, Sabine herself is not, perhaps not wanting to reduce the universal appeal of Sandman’s lyrics down to any one particular thing. She deflects with a sweet, hilarious memory. Hearing one particular line in a new song, she once asked Mark if it was about her. “He looked at me and said, ‘They’re all about you, baby,’” she recalls, laughing, doing a spot-on impression of Sandman. Shortly after the release of Like Swimming, they put a deposit on 48 Line Street in Somerville.¹²

Turns out he didn’t need that potion after all.

If the songs on Like Swimming were smooth, confident, and felt effortless, the release of the record itself was the opposite. Salem, MA's Rykodisc label had released all of the band’s discography thus far; they were best known for quality CD reissues of legacy acts like David Bowie and Frank Zappa, but Morphine, along with Bob Mould’s Sugar, was one of the few modern, active acts on the label’s roster.¹³ At first, it was a good fit for all, but there was a growing consensus in the Morphine camp that the label was not doing everything it could to help them reach the next level. Paul Kolderie recalls, “I think Mark felt, justifiably, that Ryko had dropped the ball. Cure for Pain should have been a platinum record. They couldn’t get their shit together. Mark would call me from an in-store appearance at a record store in Cleveland furious that they didn’t even have the album in stock.”¹⁴ Band manager Deb Klein recalls,

     "So, we started to say, 'What are our options?'"

An option would soon present itself. In 1996, David Geffen, Steven Spielberg, and Jeffrey Katzenberg founded DreamWorks Records, putting two industry vets from Warner Brothers Records’ glory days in charge—Lenny Waronker and Mo Ostin. They needed to build up an artist roster quickly from scratch, which would require both acts that were likely to sell lots of records as well as respected bands that radiated artistic integrity whose presence would attract others to the label—Waronker called those “statement signings.” Morphine seemed like they could potentially be the best of both worlds. The only problem was that their contract guaranteed two more albums to Rykodisc. In the end, Morphine signed to DreamWorks while still under contract with Rykodisc, which is unusual but not unheard of. “With Morphine’s significant fan base and the resources of DreamWorks, we believe we can take the band to the next level,” Ostin told Variety upon signing Morphine in 1996. Everything that happens after this point depends on who you ask.

DreamWorks didn’t want a new Morphine album three years from now—they wanted the one they were currently making at Fort Apache. Mo Ostin traveled to Salem, MA to try to convince Ryko president Dan Rose to cut a deal allowing Like Swimming to be released on DreamWorks.¹⁵ According to Rykodisc, Morphine had declared that the album was complete, so the label began to plan a marketing budget and produce advance copies for press. According to Mark Sandman, that was all a charade.¹⁶ The album was not finished, and Ryko was bluffing in order to get a more favorable deal from DreamWorks. There are rare copies of this “charade” advance CD floating around out there—it lacks the opening instrumental and features an additional song titled “In Your Shoes” along with different mixes of “Early to Bed,” “Murder for the Money,” and “Eleven O’Clock.” Whatever the exact truth of the matter is, the end result was that Like Swimming would be a co-release from Dreamworks and Rykodisc, and the band would finish their Ryko contract by delivering two archival records for later release. Relations between Rykodisc and Morphine became extremely chilly from that moment onward.

When the album was finally released in March of 1997, the fan reception was positive— some of these songs were already live show favorites—but reviews were definitely mixed. The Chicago Tribune called it “strange, sensual, and slightly unsettling,” which is an example of the kind of measured language that was found even in the most positive reviews. Elsewhere, if critics weren’t focused on the major label angle, they were hitting the same old talking points about the band’s signature sound containing built-in limitations. Some did both in one fell swoop: “Fans of Morphine will likely sigh with relief to hear that the band’s move to a megalabel hasn’t changed its raunchy sax-bass-drums sound at all,” the CMJ review began. The band is then accused of becoming “too efficient” at what they do in the following sentence. Rolling Stone gave it 3/5 stars. Pitchfork, a website less than two years old at the time, saw founder Ryan Schreiber turning in a scorcher take-down that was so poorly written it’s one of a handful of deeply embarrassing reviews that has been entirely scrubbed from the publication’s history.¹⁷

The DreamWorks marketing budget was indeed substantial—large lightbox displays in several record store chains was a brand new level of visibility for the band, for instance—but sales were similar to Yes, and the more mainstream radio stations weren’t putting “Early to Bed” into their rotations. Someone at DreamWorks felt that a professional remix of the single might be the grease needed to slide the song into the mix.

At first, Sandman indulged the idea. He flew out to L.A. to work on a remix with the Dust Brothers, a producer duo that seemed to be able to bottle the mid-90s Zeitgeist upon command. Kolderie recalls Mark coming back from the trip complaining that nothing much had been accomplished, that they had just hung out for a couple of days, and worst of all, it added a significant amount of money to the band’s recoupment total at DreamWorks. “That weekend cost me $40,000!” Sandman humorously griped to Kolderie. By all accounts, the Dust Brothers treatment did not transform the song entirely, but it did alter the beat, add atmospheric samples, and generally nudge it closer to sounding like something Beck would have released at the time. We don’t know, exactly, because almost no one’s ever heard it. Mark hated the final product. He felt acquiring new fans via a sound that was not the true sound of the band was disingenuous, rejecting any plans made for its release. Deb Klein begged him, DreamWorks begged him, but he would not budge. The same artistic integrity that made Morphine appealing to DreamWorks was now, in their view, hindering the band’s success as well.

It didn’t matter. Everyone in Morphine wanted to be as successful as possible, of course, but above all, they were in love with and stayed true to their vision of music. “It was always about the songs,” Billy Conway recalls. “Look, Mark and I would not have been friends if it weren’t for both of our commitment to this music. You know, he was a hipster; I was not. I was pretty outdoorsy, and that wasn’t really his thing. You might have idiosyncrasies or be difficult sometimes, or you might wanna be in the limelight, but at the end of the day, the most important thing’s gotta be the music, and I never doubted that with Mark.”

This is all to say that Like Swimming is far, far better than its initial reviews indicated. Removed from its original context—e.g. the baggage of signing to a major label and the ‘how long can they keep this up?’ critic POV that grew in intensity with each release—this is, in broad terms, simply just one of Morphine’s five great, full-length records. It’s not their peak, most would agree, but a mountain can only have one peak, and it still needs everything below it in order to be a peak. Fans who discovered the band’s catalog years later, for instance, don’t usually have the kind of reaction to it that critics had in 1997 because they are largely unaware of that narrative; they simply hear more interesting songs by a band they love. For longtime fans, perhaps this reissue will allow you to hear it fresh again, as if it’s brand new to your ears, as if you’re swimming for the very first time.

It’s not as if Mark Sandman became an open book after settling into the comfortable confidence you hear on Like Swimming, but it was a highly notable change that bandmates Dana and Billy were slowly being let into the world he worked so hard to keep so private for so long. Even more notable may have been the fact that Mark was planning on putting down local roots with Sabine. With all of the Hollywood productions using Morphine’s music in their films, a move to the west coast would not have been too surprising around this time. It seems like there was something about the sum of everything Mark had been through—from his drifter days to his brutal familial tragedies to his terrifying taxi attack to his long, hard-fought road to musical success—that made him feel like he had earned his right to make his home base in Boston without anyone being able to accuse him of being inauthentic or a “never made it” townie.

MARK SANDMAN reads The Boston Globe.

It sounds almost beyond belief in the present moment, but in the 1990s alternative music world, fans cared about an artist’s perceived authenticity to a borderline extremist degree, punishing those they felt had sold out. When it came to Sandman’s age and upbringing—which his mother described as an “ordinary, rather privileged family life in Newton”—he worried it was all undiscovered matches for a fire that would burn everything down that he worked so hard to build up. How terrible would it be, for instance, if a popular consensus had developed that Mark had not earned the right to author and sing a song like “Cure for Pain”? Ironically, if Sandman had let everyone know all of the details of his life, no one would have the audacity to imply that he had not experienced just as much, if not far more, grief and pain than most.

So rather than trust the nuances of his personal history to audiences and journalists, Mark felt it might be better to just act like he didn’t have a past at all. Even his parents, who often seemed bewildered by their son’s choices, understood this.

     "He felt that was not the picture he wanted to present,

his mother wrote, commenting on his Newton childhood.

     "Considering the lifestyle he had chosen, this was understandable.

But for every step forward on this front, there was another step backwards. It’s been said that the DreamWorks staff were surprised—and not in a good way—when they learned that Mark was “on the wrong side of forty.” Local journalist Matt Ashare reported that the only time Sandman ever got upset at him was when he joked that he was going to find his high school yearbook to figure out his actual age. Pursuits to pinpoint this must have felt like they would potentially be used as another way to easily dismiss the band, just as their unique, unusual sound had been turned into a negative by the press over time.

Also, unlike Like Swimming, there was no question that the follow-up album would be released on a major label. DreamWorks had made a substantial investment in Morphine, and especially Sandman, and they were expecting a big return on that investment. You don’t deposit a gigantic check in your bank account without starting to feel some pressure to deliver the goods in a serious way.

By many accounts, Mark Sandman started to feel significant amounts of pressure around this time. It would all lead to complex shuffling around of the band’s lineup, the end of certain working relationships, and entire attempts at a fifth record that would be scrapped and shelved.

The sun was setting over
Central Square, Cambridge. 
It was getting dark out.

The night was on its way.

— Ryan H. Walsh
Boston, MA, October 2021

FOOTNOTES

^{1. Originally, Jerome Deupree, who was eventually replaced by Sandman’s old Treat Her Right bandmate, Billy Conway. Both unique, both great drummers. We’ll mostly focus on Conway here, but rest assured, we will return to Deupree in the liner notes for The Night.↩}

^{2. Morpheus is sometimes depicted with his wings attached to his temples, like… a head with wings (see track 6 on Cure for Pain, also the name of Mark’s publishing company). Morpheus’ father is also sometimes depicted this way, too. His name was Hypnos, which is notably part of another Mark Sandman band name, Hypnosonics. Additionally, did you know that the classic 17th century “skull with wings” tombstone etching—the “death’s head” as it is sometimes called—is largely restricted to old Puritan graveyards in New England? The striking image was thought to evoke both “physical death and spiritual regeneration.” By the time graveyards were required further west in this country, the stone imagery had moved on to cherubs and crosses. A cemetery with plenty of “head with wings” gravestones could be found less than three miles from the house where Mark Sandman grew up.↩}

^{3. Sandman also sometimes told journalists that Morphine’s music was “implied grunge,” which is a rare instance of being both abstractly accurate and hilariously nonsensical.↩}

^{4. Once you’ve learned the details, you can’t help but spot the small references throughout his songwriting catalog. A lyric from the 1995 song “Radar,” for instance, takes on an entirely new meaning once you know that Mark’s brother, Jonny, was either pushed or fell out of a window—no one knows which—on March 4th, leading to his death.↩}

^{5. In the spring of 1978, Sandman picked up two teenagers in Dorchester on a Sunday afternoon. One stabbed him in the chest, collapsing his lung, and took his cash, which totaled eight measly dollars. Bleeding and in shock, Mark radioed the cab company dispatch for help. Two years after he recovered, a serious problem arose when it was discovered that the taxi attack had put a hole in his diaphragm, a detail that makes Sandman’s later vocal performances all the more impressive. Dana Colley surmises that Sandman’s fondness for the vocal effect which made his voice sound like it was coming through a telephone traced back to the sound of the taxi dispatcher in his cab. Imagine the lyrics of “Super Sex” as a monologue Mark delivers through his taxi radio to a bewildered but entranced dispatcher on the other end of the line.↩}

^{6. Sandman’s ability to sing about ordinary foods in sensual, intriguing ways is an underreported talent exhibited throughout the Morphine catalog. Behold and enjoy all the Caesar salads, angel food cakes, French fries, candy bars, fresh lime & mint, apples, grapes, and even a bowl of Combos. According to friends, Sandman was a talented chef and took great pride in his cooking.↩}

^{7. The meaning of the name could almost, by itself, function as a description of Morphine’s entire collective output. Sandman’s concept of Lilah will significantly expand in importance on The Night.↩}

^{8. Having a “Part III” on your album without parts I & II on the same LP is a pretty ingenious way of encouraging new listeners to go explore your back catalog.↩}

^{9. The video was nominated for a Grammy!↩}

^{10. Do I need to literally add “It’s like swimming” here, or is everyone locked in with me at this point?↩}

^{11. There’s a few lines here that come off like they could be Mark’s interpretation of the hip hop trope of bragging about all of your fortunes. “I got buttons bursting in the air / I got apple orchards everywhere,” is the weirdest brag I’ve ever heard; I adore it.↩}

^{12. Sabine notes: “Line Street divides Cambridge and Somerville (residents get a coveted parking permit for both cities). Not surprising that we would have found home on a street with two identities.”↩}

^{13. Russ Gershon’s Accurate/Distortion label out of Boston originally released their debut, Good, in 1991, and Rykodisc re-released it in 1992.↩}

^{14. The Rykodisc counterpoint comes from Jeff Rougvie: “[Mark] was implying Ryko hadn’t been able to get Morphine’s records into stores, but that’s not true.”↩}

^{15. It certainly wasn’t Ostin’s first A&R trip to Massachusetts. In the early 70s, former Jug Band leader Jim Kweskin convinced Ostin to visit him at his new home—The Fort Hill Community, a cult led by Mel Lyman—to listen to the new direction his music had taken.↩}

^{16. This account comes from Larry Katz’s published transcript of a 1997 interview with Mark Sandman on his website. Sandman’s “charade” explanation was off the record at the time, but Katz decided to include it in his 2014 posting. The Rykodisc version of the events is largely based on A&R man Jeff Rougvie’s memories of the time, published on his own website in 2015.↩}

^{17.  In a quick assessment of the back catalog, Schreiber writes, “By the band’s third release, Yes, they were quickly becoming a No. And the weird stuff on side two was just plain bad.” Thought-provoking criticism. Why did they take this gold off the site?↩}