The A-side featured their cover of "I Wanna Be Your Dog" with Iggy Pop. Both tracks from the single were later issued on the DVD portion of "Screaming Fields of Sonic Love". The band used acoustic guitars on some songs on the album for "melodic" purposes, one of the first being "(I Got A) Catholic Block". Another was "Beauty Lies in the Eye", which used three or four guitars. "Pipeline/Kill Time", sung by Ranaldo, was written on April 5, 1987, although several lyrics were not included in the final song. "Tuff Gnarl"'s working titles were "Sea-Sik" and "Smart and Fast", but the band ultimately decided to call it "Tuff Gnarl", inspired by the line "He's running on a tuff gnarl in his head". Mike Watt covered the song on his album "Ball-Hog or Tugboat?" with Sonic Youth members Moore, Ranaldo and Steve Shelley performing it with him. For the eighth song on the album, the band covered Crime's song "Hotwire My Heart". "Kotton Krown" (or "Cotton Crown") was the first Gordon and Moore duet, although Moore usually sang it alone during live performances. The last song on the album, "White Kross", was the oldest song on the album and was featured on an "NME" 7". On the band's 1987 European tour, they extended the song, adding five or six minutes of white noise at the end; this outro was later named "Broken Eye". The artwork of the original front cover contained a photograph of 12-year-old Sandra Bennett, taken by Richard Avedon on August 23, 1980, but it was censored for later releases after a threat of a lawsuit. At first the picture was merely covered up with a black sticker, but on later pressings it was removed, only showing a black area. Similarly, a photo of Disney's Magic Kingdom on the back cover was later obscured by a UPC code. Very early promotional posters and pressings of the album did feature these photos, but later ones did not. "Sister" was released in June 1987 by SST (US) and Blast First (UK) on vinyl, CD and cassette. After its release, the band began their European tour, during which a part of the "Master=Dik" EP was recorded at a radio session in Geneva. They toured the US in September and October, replacing their usual encores of "Hotwire My Heart" and "I Wanna Be Your Dog" with four Ramones covers.