6:47 AM EDT March 28, 2024:

The Rolling Stones - "Sister Morphine" From the album Sticky Fingers (April 23, 1971)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Tumblr's community standards appear to be back in the toilet, where they belong, so get a load of this album cover people

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Sylvia Black - Sister Morphine

Sister Morphine - The Rolling Stones - 1971

ROLLING STONES ON VIDEO: SISTER MORPHINE 'Live From 10 Spot' 1997

sister morphine live Rolling Stones on video: ‘Sister Morphine’ on Live From the 10 Spot 1997 *Click for MORE STONES ON VIDEOFrom MTV’s ‘Live From 10 Spot’, Capital Theater, Port Chester, USA, Oct. 25 1997 About The Rolling Stones on Live From 10 Spot (1997)(from the IORR site) The Rolling Stones performance at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, New York will be remembered as one of the…

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52: Marianne Faithfull // Broken English

Broken English Marianne Faithfull 1979, Island Broken English is the best album you can get for $5 at any used record store in North America. I can guess why that might be—that sweet spot of having sold well enough to be well-circulated in its day, but lacking that recognizable hit that perennially re-introduces it to new generations through adverts and soundtrack licensing. (Though I would love it if “Why’d Ya Do It” had a moment on Tik Tok.) Still, in an era where the work of female artists is under intense reconsideration, I’m surprised there hasn’t been more of a move to give the 76-year-old Faithfull her due for this singular testament to resilience.

Broken English is the ideal of ‘living well is the best revenge’ in action, though of course Faithfull had famously not been living very well in the years prior to its release. Like Marilyn Monroe, there was something unique about her appearance-affect that breathed the word “money” in that coded language ambitious men in the entertainment business speak. In an industry with no shortage of blondes with husky voices, producer after producer made the effort to pick Marianne up from whatever hotel room or Blitz-ravaged squat her last go-round with fame had left her in because she had an indefinable it.

Though she never had the vocal power of a Dusty Springfield, she was no blank muse for boyfriend Mick Jagger or the Stones’ conniving ‘60s manager Andrew Loog Oldham either. Few if any of her teen idol peers of either sex could’ve evoked the fever-weak dolour and vampiric yearning she brings to her 1969 version of “Sister Morphine,” including Jagger. By the time she was ‘rediscovered’ in 1978 by guitarist (and subsequent long-time song-writing partner) Barry Reynolds and Chris Blackwell of Island Records, years of abuse had reduced her voice to a scabrous caw. On the re-recording of “Sister Morphine” cut during the Broken English sessions (but relegated to a B-side), she sounds like she’s been writhing in that same hospital bed a long time indeed.

Lurid as the details may appear from the outside, the cycles of addiction and rehab and relapse can be fatally tedious for a person with any brains, and you don’t survive them without developing a certain gallows humour. Chainsmoking in the blue shadows, on Broken English Faithfull observes Cold War brinksmanship, domestic alienation, and the hustle for a fix with the same crooked smile. Her wracked new voice makes each performance grippingly personal, though only about half the lyrics came from her own pen. She’s aided by superb production and performances. In the late ‘70s, every label tried to squeeze a little extra mileage out of their rust-bitten pop stars by slapping on a disco or new wave paintjob, usually to embarrassing results. But the rhythmic tension and chilly synthesizers of new wave fit Faithfull perfectly, perhaps because she had so recently lived the industrial British squalor that was in the process of birthing post-punk.

On the blackly hilarious “Why’d Ya Do It” she acts both parts of a domestic incident for the ages, getting to play both a jilted woman’s tearful rage and the sour, sarcastic cocksmanship of a cheating man. The band could’ve chosen to read the tune as a dirge, but instead they serve up seven-minutes of irresistible, skanking rhythm, topped by a slithering lead guitar, organ, and sax. (The nearly nine-minute original mix proves they could’ve filled a whole side of vinyl with it as far as I’m concerned.) The combination of Faithfull’s nostalgic murmur and Steve Winwood’s glossy synths turn Dr. Hook’s “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” into a Euro sci-fi dream, like an elderly woman forced to relive her own unsatisfied youth while she dies in a Holodeck.

If any song here is ripe for rediscovery by a pop audience, I’d put forth the crystalline ballad “Witches’ Song,” which could’ve been a Stevie Nicks-Christine McVie cowrite (it’s like “Rhiannon” crossed with “Everyday”). It feels like both an escapist fantasy and a nourishing statement of sisterhood, with a beguiling mysticism to its lyric: “Danger is great joy / Dark as bright as fire / Happy is our family / Lonely is our ward.” (Queue me making these noises.)

Broken English gave Marianne Faithfull’s career a new lease on life, and while she’s seldom seen quite the same level of critical or commercial attention since, she’s also been able to hang on to what she has this time. So, in that sense, it’s done plenty for her already—but as a record, I think it stands with the best music of its time, and I probably should’ve had to pay a bit more at the shop to take it home with me.

52/365

honestly writing morphine is so much fun she's so amazing & i love their personality and what if the fic is now called seven stages of morphine and we just follow them around and–

7:48 PM EDT September 24, 2023:

The Rolling Stones - “Sister Morphine” From the album Sticky Fingers (April 23, 1971)

Last song scrobbled from iTunes at Last.fm

Tumblr’s obscenity clerks have ludicrously decided that the cover art here exceeds a reasonable community’s standards, so I’ll put it over here, just in case you haven’t seen it, or for some reason would like to see it again: http://www.lahistoriadelamusicarock.com/Music/sticky-fingers.jpg

File under: Bands who at one point or the other were the best in the world

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@66yfze said: “you’re going to have some serious bruises for a while.” melone patching her up im so sick im so

the millennium series by stieg larsson // accepting.

With some effort, Fran can put the pieces back into order. An unfortunate combination of a brute-force attacker and too green of a Passione escort to counter it effectively, the new start wheezing wet around a mouthful of blood and saliva before she could put enough distance between herself and the attacker. She remembers being dragged across the concrete by her hair, hands ringing around her throat. Pressure. Grit your teeth. Bear it. Wait for your chance. A strand of Sister Morphine looped around her finger and severed by her thumbnail. An opening.

The loose, draping loop of a continuous stitch, hanging limp like the silk strands of a severed spider's web. Until all at once she pulls it taut. Until Sister Morphine finds disparate flesh--arm and midsection, midsection and arm between the webbing of sutures, and does what it does best. It mends. So seamless a knit it's as if there was never any distinction between appendage and torso at all. It forces his hands from her burning throat at last, sends him tipping to the side, and once again there is an opening. She remembers sprinting on wobbly legs until she finds herself doubled over with the edge of her turtleneck yanked away from her throat, gasping for breath, heartbeat hammering. Remembers the deceptively-grand loom of a shadow across the pavement, but not its source. Remembers thinking, disjointed and hysterical, about the terrible symmetry of it all--surviving in one alleyway against all odds, only to die in another.

Nothing after that, for a while. Then, Melone's voice sounding from one side of her, jolting her back to the present. The background-noise sting of antiseptic. The ring of dried blood around her nostrils as she sucks in a breath.

Her hand is still prying her collar away from her scarred throat (finger-shaped bruises slowly darkening over the skin there) as she swallows sandpaper-rough gulps of air--she wonders how long she's held it like that in a white-knuckle grip as Melone did... what, treated her? She casts a glance over to him, her brows furrowed. Fran opens and closes her mouth to speak, but only laboured breath rattles from her throat those first few times. Melone is under no obligation to do this. And even if he was, he needn't be so thorough about it. Fran doesn't know what to make of this, so used to experiencing a one-way street in the opposite direction--only being of note for as long as she's needed. The sort of person you can put on the backburner until you need her again--who will mend herself because she has little other choice.

"...This isn't your job, Mr. Melone," she rasps, around syllables that have dug their nails into the back of her throat in protest. It's almost an accusation, but not quite. Why waste your time?

My life has gone to such shit I feel compelled to become an ao3 writer so I cam put this wild stuff in the notes

Sister Morphine - The Rolling Stones - 1971

CANCIONES DE LOS ROLLING STONES: ‘SISTER MORPHINE’ (1971)

Canciones de The Rolling Stones: Sister Morphine*VER MÁS CANCIONES*Click for English version What am I doing in this place?/ Why does the doctor have no face?… Escrita por: Jagger/Richard/FaithfullGrabada: Olympic Sounds Studios, Londres, Inglaterra, 13 de mayo-junio de 1968Músicos invitados: Ry Cooder (guitarra slide), Jack Nitzsche (piano) Del libro Rolling Stones – La Historia Detrás de sus…

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