Thursday, May 3, 2012

Other Voices, Part 4 (Stupid Bloody Tuesday?)

The next song I found with a backmasked reference to Paul is the Marianne Faithfull/Rolling Stones song, Sister Morphine.  Originally released as a single by Marianne Faithfull in 1969, it was included in the Stones' 1971 album, Sticky Fingers.  According to my research, the Stones recorded the song in March or May-June, 1969 (depending on the source) during their Let It Bleed album recording sessions.  The forward lyrics are grim and ominous:

     Here I lie in my hospital bed.
     Tell me Sister Morphine
     When are you coming 'round again.
     Oh, an' I don't think I can wait that long.
     Oh, you see that I'm not that strong.

     The scream of the ambulance
     Is sounding in my ears.
     Tell me, Sister Morphine,
     How long have I been lying here?

     What am I doing in this place?
     Why does the doctor have no face?
     Oh, I can't crawl across the floor.
     Ah, can't you see, Sister Morphine
     I'm trying to score.

     Well, it just goes to show
     Things are not what they seem.
     Please, Sister Morphine,
     Turn my nightmares into dreams.
     Oh, can't you see I'm fading fast?
     And that this shot will be my last.

     Sweet cousin cocaine
     Ah, lay your cool, cool hand on my head.
     Come on, Sister Morphine
     You better make up my bed.

     'Cause you know and I know
     In the morning I'll be dead.
     Yeah, and you can sit around, yeah,
     And you can watch all the
     Clean white sheets stained red.

I went looking into this song because of the allusions to hospitals and ambulances.  (In England, nurses are called sisters.)  I didn't find any backmasking in the Marianne Faithfull version, but when I reversed The Rolling Stones track  (listen to the forward track at:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IWF509L3H4 ), I found the following line beginning at 1:15 in the reversed song:

     Paul looking dead.  Ahhh, [mumbled] looking dead.

The Rolling Stones knew The Beatles and were rivals of them.  Marianne Faithfull was a friend of Paul.  In her autobiography, Faithfull (with David Dalton; 1994:  Little Brown), Ms. Faithfull said of Paul:  "Paul and I had a very close and unique friendship.  He helped me on a lot of my work.  He always had a special kind of vision."  (P. 159.  Note how Faithfull refers to Paul in the past tense.)

This is the first time I have ever heard of anything connecting Paul with a drug addiction and I'm not convinced that the song is totally autobiographical concerning Paul, but it is another indication that Paul WAS involved in some sort of accident and the "stupid bloody Tuesday" line in I Am The Walrus might have been a comment on a bloody accident that Paul had.
    

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