THE REAL STORY ABOUT MARK SANDMAN

    Morphine singer-bassist Mark Sandman died of cardiac arrest onstage in Palestrina, Italy, on July 3, 1999.  And that's pretty much everything almost anybody knows about the circumstances of his death.  None of the accounts of the incident ever explained how such a thing could have happened to a vital 46-year-old man.  And so rumors started.
    In light of the fact that there wasn't any official word on why it happened, and the band, friends and family were too grief-stricken to talk, any explanation seemed to be fair game.  Maybe it was because Sandman was a rock musician, maybe because of his preternaturally laconic manner, maybe it was simply because his band was called Morphine, but some people jumped to the conclusion that drugs were involved.  If so, cocaine would be a good guess — too much and it stops your heart. Many musicians have died of cocaine-related heart attacks: the Pretenders' James Honeyman-Scott, soul giant David Ruffin, Quiet Riot singer Kevin DuBrow, the Who's bassist John Entwistle, and on and on. You could probably throw in comedians Chris Farley and Mitch Hedberg too.  It was an educated guess, but it was only that — a guess.
    In the course of reviewing the upcoming documentary, Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story, I noted that the otherwise fine film doesn't answer the most basic question surrounding Sandman's demise, namely, why did it happen?  A work of long-form journalism about a man's life should surely be a little more illuminating about his death.  It didn't address, much less refute, the rumors.  I've since been in touch with Sandman's former girlfriend Sabine Hrechdakian, who's a friend of mine, and his former bandmate Dana Colley.  They're keen to set the record straight, so I offered to tell their story on this blog.  Here it is.
    Both Sabine and Colley say Mark Sandman did not use hard drugs — in fact, Sabine says he despised them.  "Over the course of his life, he'd seen the wreckage drugs cause," she says, "and someone of his intellect and curiosity just wasn’t interested in obliteration.  He wanted to heighten his experience of life, not deaden it."
    And let's face it, to infer merely from the band name that Sandman was a drug user is pretty juvenile and gives little credit to such a sophisticated artist.  In the film, Sandman says he likes the etymology of the word morphine, which stems from the Greek god of dreams, Morpheus.  But the name Morphine surely also refers to the anodyne powers of music, something Sandman leaned on heavily in the wake of the untimely deaths of his two younger brothers Roger and Jon.
    So why did it happen?  Well, Sandman had some classic risk factors for heart attack.  He was a heavy smoker — a pack a day for many years.  (Sandman had been stabbed when he drove a cab 20 years earlier, although apparently the wound was not near his heart.)  And Sandman was also under quite a bit of stress, not just as a middle-aged frontman of a hard-touring rock band, but also because he was the principal songwriter of a band that was trying to rise to the occasion of the major label recording contract they had signed — "I think Mark was under a lot of pressure to really kind of live up to the expectations of the people who gave him a lot of support," Colley told the Huffington Post's Tony Sachs.  "We were in the big leagues, and he was under a lot of pressure to hit one over the fence…  He went through the mill for sure."  Sandman was also basically co-managing the band.  "As someone with strong opinions who liked to exert control over all aspects of the creative and business process, he basically didn't delegate anything, and I mean anything," says Sabine, "so he was under a lot of stress."
    And there had been a serious warning sign.  Two weeks before he left for what was to become Morphine's final tour, Sandman suffered what Sabine feels in retrospect was a minor heart attack.  "We were sitting on the couch together in the evening and he started complaining of pains and shortness of breath," Sabine recalls.  "It only lasted a couple of minutes and then he felt fine. He thought it might have been indigestion.  I asked if he wanted to go to the hospital, but he said no.  When you’re still relatively young, you just don’t assume the worst when something like that happens.  You figure it will pass.  It’s not a big deal.  We’ve all felt weird chest pains from time to time." Sandman promised he'd get a check-up when he got back from tour.
    By the time Morphine's European tour wound around to the hill town of Palestrina, a 45-minute drive east of Rome, it was near the height of the southern Italian summer.  Colley recalls blazing 100-degree heat that day and it was still very hot when the band took the stage that evening.  Several songs into the set, Sandman fell over backwards to the stage floor and never revived.  As noted by the American Heart Association, "adrenaline released during intense physical or athletic activity often acts as a trigger" for sudden cardiac arrest.  So there you go.
    All the ensuing news reports were variations on "Morphine frontman dies of heart attack onstage."  Which left a gaping open question: why such a relatively young man had suffered cardiac arrest.  Cardiac arrest doesn't happen for no reason, but it was never explained, and so the drug rumors flew — after all, so many rock musicians had died of cocaine-related heart attacks — deeply upsetting the band, his family and friends to this day.
    Here's the reason his cause of death was never conclusively established: Sandman was Jewish.  Or, more to the point, his parents were.  (His mother passed away this year; his father is still with us.)  In Judaism, the body is considered the holy temple of the soul.  And you do not desecrate a temple.  So Jewish religious law, as written in the Talmud, prohibits autopsies.  It also urges a prompt burial, within three days.  Perhaps more important was the fact that this happened in a little town in a foreign country, which Sabine says made Sandman's parents uncomfortable with conducting an autopsy.  "None of us," Sabine says, "felt there was a plausible cause to warrant conducting one."  After all, he was gone, and the exact reason was of little importance.  A post mortem at the hospital confirmed it was cardiac arrest, but that's as far as it goes.  So that's why it has never been conclusively determined why Mark Sandman died so young — because there was no autopsy.
    People can speculate all they want, but both Sabine Hrechdakian and Dana Colley are sure it wasn't drugs that killed Mark Sandman.  Now everyone knows the story.  Maybe that will put the whole thing to rest.

Comments

[jon]

I dont blame people for thinking mark sandman used drugs.. his band was called morphine, and songs such as candy, like swimming and cure for pain are obviously about hard/ addictive drugs, which indicates he could have had experiences with them

[Michael Azerrad]

Good thinking. Likewise, I don't blame people for thinking the members of Nirvana were Hindu, or that the members of the Smiths were all named Smith, or that the members of the Eagles can fly.

[Teresa the Nurse]

*LOL* Michael Azerrad

According to the American Heart Association, in 2011, 382,800 experienced sudden cardiac arrest. Only 33% of those people had symptoms within one hour of death. So what happened to Mark is not at all unusual.

Source: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/125/1/e2.full#sec-130

[Adam]

A first-rate singer-songwriter. I played a lot of Morphine, as a college DJ in the 1990s.

For a variety of reasons, including genetically-high LDL levels, people can have heart attacks at an early age. And the symptoms aren't always the textbook severe chest pain. Some other artists who lost their lives to MIs include Joe Strummer, Robert Palmer, and Paul Young.

[antonio]

morphine refers to the god of dreams not the drug,so no,thank you for your attention,good night we love you all,and the milion goes to,nobody of you....hahahahahahahhahhahahahha

[Michael Azerrad]

Well, no, morphine is a drug and that is what the band was named after, Sandman's coy claims to the contrary. The drug itself is named for Morpheus. If the band really wanted to say their music was like Morpheus, then they would have called the band Morpheus, or the adjectival form Morphean.
It's OK, you can name your band after a drug and not actually use the drug. Only literal-minded cretins would believe otherwise. By their logic, one would have to assume that the members of the New Jersey Devils hockey team are satanists.

[JoshCook101]

Nice article. Glad to see that someone has tried to authoritatively set the record straight on his death and the mystery that surrounded it. Mark's presence over the 20 years I've lived and played music in Boston is missed to this day, by many. Its kind of hard to see him heavily abusing substances and being a hardworking as he was, honestly. He clearly partied and enjoyed the nightlife. But,I don't think he had the patience to put up with BS that accompanies fatal narcotic addictions.

[antonio]

good thinking,the drug is named after Morpheus,so its the same it just expands the conversation into something more deep or Joda kind of speech

[MB]

I saw Mark Sandman play about 300 shows in the Boston area over 10 years. I also chatted with him here and there, before and after shows, at parties. Mark was not a druggie. That simple. A drink, a toke, yeah, drug mania -absolutely not.

[RheaS]

Thanks so much for posting this. I saw "Cure for Pain" yesterday at the Brattle in Cambridge, and thought that Mark's death was kind of glossed over. My dad had a cardiac arrest, but he was 73. No one expects it in a relatively young man (and I was stunned that Sandman was in his mid-40s, thinking that he appeared to be quite younger). His former roommate talks of Mark smoking weed throughout the day, and I tried to reconcile that with what his girlfriend said about him not using drugs. I figured it was a one-time habit that he'd outgrown by the time Morphine started getting a lot of attention. You can't front and co-manage a band like that, churn out music and tour while under the influence of hard drugs; you just can't. I never thought that the band name suggested that they were all addicts.

I didn't know that he'd been stabbed in the chest either.

I was lucky to see Morphine play twice before Mark died. There's been no band like them since and it's hard to wonder about what might have been...but that could be said of so many bands too.

[AlD]

I, too, saw the movie at the Brattle. And yes, its treatment of certain topics is...sparse.

Here, I think, is why.

The movie was only made possible by the co-operation of Mark's family. That co-operation was based on a hope that it would help Guitelle Sandman come to terms with the loss of 3 sons at the end of her life.

Unfortunately, Guitelle Sandman contracted pancreatic cancer near the end of 2009 and she passed away in March, 2010. After her death, there were some requests made to the directors that they wished for certain interview footage to be removed. And I believe the directors complied with their wishes.

At the same time, the legal ownership of certain other footage was successfully contested...and I believe that this footage was also removed.

I very much doubt that Sandman's stabbing contributed in any way to his death. Physical damage to the heart would have lead to a cardiac event very quickly, and almost certainly would have been assessed during his treatment.

Sandman was a chain-smoker, 46 years old, exhausted, and attempting to perform in 100 degree heat. I traveled to Palestina in August, 2001 and though it is some 50km from Rome the air quality is quite poor. And I believe those were the sole contributors to his death.

Oh...and if drugs had been suspected the police would have ordered an autopsy because that is there mandate from the Ministry of the Interior

[Tony]

I never knew Mark but I knew friends of his, and they told me -- before his death -- that he was a pretty heavy pot smoker in addition to the cigarettes. I have also read that the chances of having a heart attack increase something like sixfold in the hour after ingesting marijuana. So while hard drugs may not have played a role in Mark's death, if he had a pre-show joint in Palestrina on a hot night with lousy air quality, a couple of weeks after a minor cardiac incident... that could have pushed him over the edge physically.

Anyway, thanks for writing this and thanks for quoting my Morphine piece.

[Teresa the nurse from Oregon]

The LOL was for the analogy to thinking that the members of Nirvana were Hindu. Not sure why you think that's weird. Perhaps you thought I was referring to the original post.

You are correct that sudden cardiac death is unexplained, Michael. Except for this: we do know some people with a genetic predisposition and/or lifestyle-related risk factors, in certain circumstances, will suddenly die when plaque in the coronary arteries ruptures, causing accumulation of platelets and thrombus formation, cutting off blood flow to the myocardium, starving it of oxygen. Which leads to a non-viable cardiac rhythm, usually ventricular fibrillation. Few people survive this.

But yeah, otherwise, it's a complete mystery.

[Lulu]

I wish I found him in another life where I could be his Sabine. Damn, he, his voice and all about him was so sexy ...!

[Toni E]

Mark was stabbed while driving a cab. last fare of the night and a bad decision to pick up some shady characters. The wound was in his gut leaving a tear in his diaphragm that ripped open a year or so later and put him back in the hospital for major surgery, but it wasn't related to his heart. However on an energetic level, he had his heart broken by both of his brother's deaths. He turned it all into art and left it for us. What an amazing and uncompromising talent.

[Ben]

I'm sitting here with tears in my eyes after watching Cure for Pain--I was blown away to discover it on Amazon instant play--I still listen to them religiously. I thought the documentary hit a deep emotional nerve, especially when considering the enormous loss Mark had gone through--burying two brothers--and yet he still soldiered on to make incredible, one-of-a-kind music. Sabine, Dana, Billy, Jerome, his folks: so honest and beautiful in their tribute...You can feel that their almost still in a sense of shock...It never ends, you just learn to live with and when it comes up, man, the pain is as sharp as the die you lose someone you love...I really loved that Mike Watt was in the doc too, a great musician but someone with deep sensitivity for what it feels like to lose a band mate brother...Ben Harper too was wonderful in his total honesty and expression of unabashed awe of Mark and Morphine's genius... Man, that sound! That morphine LOW rock sound! Every song is a gem! What a gift their music was to us all...Ever grateful...I'm out

[Anton Verdonk]

In 2000,working as a roadmanager I met Morphine's roadmanager in London.He told me what a nightmare this whole story was and how he flew to the States with the corpse of Mark.If somebody can know what was goin'on that day and tour it is him.For now I will let him have his privacy.After all there is the code of the road....Cheers!

[Roland Rachmann]

I knew Mark in the late 1980's and early 1990's. Saw Treat Her Right about a dozen times and Morphine one or two. Hung out with Mark and other musicians in his circle. It was clear Mark did not do drugs, and people around him who used drugs kept it on the down-low. His disapproval was never spoken, but very palpable. Got to say he always looked very strong and healthy in those years also.

[LindaV.]

Great essay-- thanks so much for sharing. I saw Morphine play at the Middle East the night they signed onto Rykodisc. Happy days, way back when, way back there in Bawwstun. I've been in "a mood" lately and listening to the "Good" album on repeat for the last two days, and this morning I wanted to finally read up about whatever really happened to one of the most unique musicians in rock history-- thanxx for clearing it up. Found your post because of Google-imaging that amazing photograph of the three on the roof. Wow. Love and peace from L.A. xLindaV.

[James808]

Great post, Mr Azerrad. I remember being aware of one or two of their tunes back in the late 90's that I had heard on classic/alt rock radio here in Nashville at the time, but I wasn't much into them then. 'Morphine' was an intriguing band name though. It seemed to fit their sound perfectly, especially considering the singer's name, Sandman.

I was curious when I discovered that to be his real name... and even more so when I heard that he had died somewhere overseas while on tour. I suppose, based on that little bit of information, I had assumed it to be the result of a drug OD, and didnt think much about it again in the years since.

So, after hearing one of their songs on internet radio this week I was intrigued anew, did some searching and found some fascinating history about Mark and the band, which is how I found this article. I just watched the 'Cure for Pain' documentary, which was fucking great, and ended up listening to 'Candy', 'Buena' and a few more on youtube which I instantly loved. He was a great vocalist and I now fully appreciate that low-end sound they created. He played slide with a 2 stringed bass... no shit, amazing.

I still have more to listen to, as I feel like I've got a 'new' band to delve into now... which is gold to an old, cynical music fan like myself.

Thanks for addressing how he died and what might have caused it. Still intriguing.

[bob]

"The word 'Morphine' comes from the word 'Morpheus,' who is the god of dreams, and that kind appealed to us as a concept...I've heard there's a drug called 'morphine' but that's not where we're coming from...we were dreaming, Morpheus comes into our dreams...and we woke up and started this band...we're all wrapped up in these dream messages, and we were compelled to start this band." [14]

[Jack Mekon]

I never thought "Cure for Pain," despite its title, is primarily about drug use. Mark had many tough times in his life, some of them deeply personal, and he rarely spoke about them. (Amen to him for that.) The way you try to learn about his pain is to examine, really examine, his lyrics. I always believed, and still believe, that "Cure for Pain" is about emotional pain and is in no way merely a "druggie" song. The chorus, with my interpretation added: "Someday, there'll be a cure for [emotional and psychological] pain. That's the day I throw my drugs away." Yes, he figuratively suggests drug use, but it's not drug use for drug use's sake; it's to banish certain, personal, human misery that people--in this case, him--experience. I also suspect that he wrote and sang these songs for personal release. He never seems angry or vindictive through his lyrics--I would guess that it was beneficial to him to get it out and off his chest, like Morissette's "You Oughtta Know."
Look at "You Speak My Language," "I'm Free Now," "In Spite of Me," "The Jury" (brilliant composition), "Radar," "All Your Way," "I Had My Chance," "Gone for Good"--heck, about two-thirds of the album "Yes"--"Take Me with You" and more, and see if there isn't deep pain reflected in those songs. I'm sure Mark didn't object to the drug reference in his band's name, but I doubt it was his primary influence in selecting that name.

[jw]

Cure for Pain was a direct reference to drug use: "Someday there'll be a cure for pain. That's the day I throw my drugs away." It is not at all naive or assumptive to think he did drugs, and it's not an insult. Drugs can be great when done right. Lots of amazing musicians do drugs and write about it such as Layne Staley, Grace Slick, Jimi, Jim Morrison...

Not surprising that he didn't do them though. Lots of very amazing musicians do not.

[Theoprastus Bombastus von Hoenheim]

I don't know if hard drug use contributed to his death, but it definitely contributed to his life.
With a name like Sandman, the band name Morphine makes sense, and I was hip to that as soon as I saw it. Morphine is a distillation of Morpheus, ie dreams. Makes sense for a guy named Sandman to think this way.
But, if you listen to his music, and you hear people close to him saying he didn't use hard drugs, you know at least someone is lying. I would not believe he didn't use unless someone sent me back in time and Mark told me, personally. He did use. He told us. In detail.

[WildStrat]

The last gig MS made from the beginning to the end as by Morphine planned was in Portugal. Two days after that concert he passed away in the middle of a gig in Italy.
In Portugal there is music press, and Blitz is the most distinguished title. It was first a newspaper, but now is a magazine. Almost 4 decades since first publication.
There is a journalist who closely deprived with MS on the last but one time he was in Portugal. They travelled together as MS took somedays off in vacation, because they became friends.
The journalist told then some information to the press, regarding MS, his death and is last days in Portugal. This is the link: https://blitz.pt/principal/update/2019-01-06-Os-amigos-em-Portugal-de-Mark-Sandman-dos-Morphine
«Calado would be with the band on the eve of the departure for the fateful concert in Italy and, when asked about Mark's “consumption habits”, reveals that “he always smoked several things”, but that on the trip through the Alentejo he had confided that he had stopped using drugs. “I wanted to have a clear head to be able to make a change in the Morphine's music”. Even so, and according to Nuno Calado, everything indicates that Mark Sandman used cocaine on the night of the concert at Praça Sony [in 1999, a few days before he died], at Parque das Nações: «As I know, he felt bad tonight".»