Patient Questionnaire Number 02 x 26
San Isidro Psychiatric Hospital
Cali, Colombia
Questionnaire to be completed by the patient and/or the accompanying person.
Patient History No. 1
Name, Surname:
Ricardo Sevilla, aka ‘Misery Guts’
In respect of the reason for this visit to hospital, have you previously consulted a:
Psychologist …
Healer …
Friend …
Doctor …
Pharmacist …
Priest …
Psychiatrist …
No one …
With an (X) mark YES to those that apply to you now or have applied in the past 30 days. For those that do not apply, mark (X) NO. Have you …
Felt happy
YES [X] NO [ ]
Participated in sporting or other recreational activities (football, cinema, swimming, walking, dancing, etc)
YES [X] NO [ ]
Listened to the radio or read newspapers daily
YES [X] NO [ ]
Had problems with work or studies
YES [X] NO [ ]
Had difficulty sleeping
YES [X] NO [ ]
Had frequent headaches
YES [X] NO [ ]
Experienced loss of appetite
YES [X] NO [ ]
Suffered weight loss
YES [X] NO [ ]
Suffered fits or convulsions which made you collapse, caused jerky arm or leg movements, made you bite your tongue or lose consciousness
YES [X] NO [ ]
Suffered from a dry mouth
YES [X] NO [ ]
Had tremors or twitching in the arms, hands or mouth
YES [X] NO [ ]
Suffered from dizziness
YES [X] NO [ ]
Felt restlessness, inability to remain still
YES [X] NO [ ]
Noticed your vision become cloudy or blurred
YES [X] NO [ ]
Noticed excessive salivation
YES [X] NO [ ]
Felt ‘wound up’ or ‘stiff’
YES [X] NO [ ]
Noticed feelings of sadness, weakness or felt the urge to cry
YES [X] NO [ ]
Experienced feelings of nervousness, anxiety, fear or dread
YES [X] NO [ ]
Used cocaine/heroin
YES [X] NO [ ]
Smoked marijuana
YES [X] NO [ ]
Taken LSD (acid), mushrooms
YES [X] NO [ ]
Seriously contemplated killing yourself
YES [X] NO [ ]
Attempted suicide
YES [X] NO [ ]
Do you hear voices other people do not hear
YES [X] NO [ ]
See things others do not see
YES [X] NO [ ]
Have you seriously thought about killing someone else
YES [X] NO [ ]
Physically hurt someone else
YES [X] NO [ ]
Experienced sexual problems or difficulties
YES [X] NO [ ]
Had difficulty concentrating or thinking clearly
YES [X] NO [ ]
Suffered from paralysis in an arm or leg, been unable to speak
YES [X] NO [ ]
Feared losing your mind (going mad)
YES [X] NO [ ]
Have you felt others are criticizing or making fun of you
YES [X] NO [ ]
Felt that someone or something is magically controlling you
YES [X] NO [ ]
Felt someone is trying to kill or hurt you
YES [X] NO [ ]
Do you feel you are important or possess special powers
YES [X] NO [ ]
Information supplied by:
Patient [ ]
Relative [ ]
Other [ ]
Oh, Misery Guts Ricardo, this was your downfall; you took upon yourself all the symptoms of my generation! Some people claim that marking YES to every question was Ricardo’s attempt to dupe the doctors. Even in the depths of his torment, he still had gallows humour.
I wasn’t going down to Avenida Sexta much any more. Leopoldo was always introducing me to his intriguing friends. They’d come down from the USA and we’d throw huge parties for them. We listened to music 24/7, because when you’ve got coke you don’t need to sleep. I learned a lot of stuff about a lot of stuff. You can’t tell me that Brian Jones died because he was rash, or lazy, or even that he died of a broken heart. It’s not as simple as that. He died of disillusionment. Brian was the one who brought the band together, he was the one who could read music, the one who taught the others, the one who was photogenic; he was the one obsessed with weird instruments – zithers, harps, marimbas, strings and brass, Mellotrons and cellos – while that dickhead Keith Richard13 was only interested in chaka-chaka-chaka. He wanted to sing, this beautiful nobody. It was Jagger who stopped him, Jagger the eternal exhibitionist. After that, he found it impossible, the writing of songs for some usurper to sing, the gruelling tours, the constant gigging because it’s gigs that bring in the cash – Jagger spent a couple of years studying Economics, don’t forget – and then the unkindest cut of all: one night Keith Richard hooked up with Anita Pallenberg, Brian’s girl, the girl he loved. You know what she looks like, big white teeth and that expression like she’s mocking everyone. I don’t know what she saw in Richard with his rotten teeth, but, well, some women are really dumb. The next day the two of them went round to Brian’s place to tell him that Anita was dumping him. Brian wasn’t there. They looked for him in London, searched all over and finally caught up with him, in some forest on the outskirts of London playing the flute.
Anita said, ‘Brian, I’ve come to tell you I’m moving in with Keith’; Keith just stared at him. Brian stood up and smiled, he didn’t say anything. He hugged them lazily – that’s the sort of guy he was – but he didn’t play the flute any more. He’d just dreamed up ‘Ruby Tuesday’ – not that he got any credit for it, because he didn’t want to shatter the Jagger/Richard image. He got into drugs and partying in a big way, though he always had a minder to look out for him, but I think inside he was a broken man, always brooding over what had happened to him. Keith had been his best mate; they’d just rented a flat together, they’d get together to jam and they were always getting up to crazy shit: once they nearly electrocuted some guy – by stuffing amplifier plugs in his ears – some fat, faggoty guy from the same town as Brian who’d showed up looking for him; because Brian wasn’t from London. People say that, being hypersensitive, he had a bit of a complex about that, he felt like a country boy, still felt like that when the Stones were the best
rock band in London, the best band in the whole world, and Brian was the one who made sure no one missed rehearsals, the one who made the group look good, always wearing the latest threads – he was named ‘Best Dressed Rock Star’ two years running.
All this was way before Jagger came and said they’d decided to tour the States again and Brian apparently panicked and refused to go. He wasn’t into it, he didn’t dig the States the way they did, he hated the fact you couldn’t even hear the music over a bunch of hysterical screaming girls. He picked the most obvious excuse, weakness, but he wasn’t weak, he was playing more than ever. Richard was present at this conversation. Well, he might have been, I’m not sure, I don’t know. Anyway, the stuff Keith came out with later was all lies, about Brian being sprawled on the floor during recording sessions and him having to play both guitar parts. That’s the kind of thing fans notice, man, when one musician dubs another; you hear, like, a scratch and a pause, yes, that’s it, a scratch and a gap. But whenever I listen to them, they’re tight and loud and hardcore. So Jagger said to him, ‘So what? Are you saying you’re quitting the band?’ And Brian, who didn’t talk much and who by now was really intimidated by Jagger, said, ‘Yeah, I’m quitting the band,’ and then added sarcastically, ‘Maybe you should look for a replacement.’
Before he left, Richard was all sweetness and light: ‘I’ll call you in a week to see what you’ve decided, okay?’ ‘Okay,’ said Brian and sat down to think. He knew they wouldn’t find anyone to replace him and even if they did, the guy would be useless; they’d have to beg him to come back and that way he’d be in control of the band again like he used to be. Because Jagger had lost faith in Brian’s genius, and because Brian knew that, he couldn’t find any way to relate to the group that wasn’t pathetic or humiliating.
This was what happened at rehearsals: he’d go over to Jagger, trembling, look him in the eye and say, ‘What should I play, Mick?’
And Jagger would reply, ‘You’re a member of the band, Brian, play whatever you like.’
So Brian would start playing something on the guitar and Jagger would stop him and say, ‘No, Brian, that’s no good.’
‘So what do you want me to play, Mick?’
‘Play what you feel like.’
And Brian would try again, and Jagger would stop him again. ‘No, that’s not working either, Brian.’
So the poor bastard would end up drunk in a corner, tapping the floor out of time, tongue bleeding from playing the harmonica, trapped and unable to change the situation. He couldn’t have imagined what Jagger was plotting. For over a week Jagger had been having little talks with Mick Taylor, this teenage kid who was playing with John Mayall at the time: meetings in places that weren’t too hip, long conversations, notes written on the back of napkins, arrows, guitar tabs, never calling Brian, never getting in touch; I fucking hate them. I wonder how Brian felt when he read about it in the papers? After all he’d been the first to tell everyone this Taylor kid was talented. ‘He even does that chaka-chaka thing you do,’ he told Keith, thumping him on the arm. It was his idea of a joke. All we know for sure is that he heard the news and five days later he was dead.
For the rest, who knows? Personally, I think someone murdered him, but who? It would have had to be someone in their circle. There was a party, things got a bit wild, Brian wandered off somewhere and then there he is: lying dead in the swimming pool, his face flushed and swollen as though letting out that note he’d never sung. They sang and played like shit the day after. Brian’s death made their music harder and I know they were going for a harder sound, because Taylor’s all scowls and ginger hair and moody and silent, Jagger’s mangling his voice more and more, Charlie Watts is spending most of his time biting his nails and Bill Wyman, that lanky streak of piss, doesn’t even tune his axe, just comes out with this solid throbbing wall of bass. What with Keith Richard’s increasingly shrieking guitar, their sound would have unlistenable if it hadn’t been softened by the gentle breezes of Bobby Keys and Jim Price on sax and trumpet, and now here they are, an eight-piece band, with the otherworldly Nicky Hopkins on piano. Summer of ’72, the summer of the heatwave.
I didn’t go out, didn’t go talking about this stuff with Leopoldo’s friends, who were all a bit foreign. Or if I went out, it was at night; this was the only time I’d allow myself the necessary contact with this city’s magical breeze, and I knew that with every step, in the way I tapped on walls and railings, in the tempo of my greetings, I was beating out the rhythm of ‘Salt of the Earth’ or ‘She’s a Rainbow’ or the tricky beat to ‘Loving Cup’. And on every corner people would offer me transistors and cassette players, but what use did I have for them when I’d just come from listening to quadraphonic music from thousand-watt speakers?
Tiquito and Bull would have to forgive me for constantly avoiding them, the two of them passing the transistor radio between them, pressing it to their ears as the batteries ran down, getting used to watching me from far away, but always saying how cool it would be to see me more often, never admitting that it just wasn’t possible any more. I wanted music, and music only existed indoors, between the beautiful walls of that glorious air-conditioned hi-fi.
‘Look after your hair,’ Bull said one day, a black day for me. ‘You need to get out in the sun more, your hair’s starting to look lifeless.’
I trudged back to the house, completely devastated, I who was always so joyful, and Leopoldo was there taking to his guitar because the guitar never really took to him. In his whole life he never actually wrote a song. All he was good at was playing along to a record. We’d pop drugs like candy and rarely move from the apartment to go to a rumba, we’d make our own rumbas, and so long as no one hassled me, as long as they left me to my music, everything was cool, everything was bliss. Except that beneath this sweltering sky Leopoldo still longed for the USA, the land of his schooling and his youthful delights. Coming here he realized it took more than happiness to succeed in life: it took ambition and determination, whereas he spent his afternoons lulled by the pained resignation of the tropics. Slow-hand guitar, slow-burn guitar, livid guitar, plucked strings sinking into the unforgiving sky …
I did my best to follow Bull’s advice, though not because my hair was getting lifeless; I tried to persuade Leopoldo to come out with me, but the minute he set foot on the pavement, he’d be bitching about how there were no beautiful or interesting people, criticizing everybody for their average height, the dark anonymity of their eyes. Whereas I had only to pass a group of guys I knew and I’d instantly be completely alive, blowing air kisses, talking about cool parties, strutting confidently, and the guys would look up and half smile as they recognized me again, an increasingly rare pleasure now that I’d begun to shut myself away.
But I was kidding myself when I suggested they try new things, because the signs that they were trying new things were all there, etched around those eyes that once sparkled with life, around their dry mouths, in the incriminating flecks of yellowish spittle at the corners of their lips. Yet somehow I didn’t mind seeing them diminished, my darling boys – we’ll all be running in the same race, so don’t go hiding on me – and I never stopped showering them with affectionate gestures, though I never touched them, since that would have broken the spell which, by that point, gave me life: the brevity and the distance of these meetings. They knew I’d retreated from the world, that Leopoldo Brook was my whole world now. So I when I passed them on the street, I left them with a memory of me in instalments so that on perilous nights, tossing and turning, lying fully clothed on the bed, throat red raw, brain teeming like an ants’ nest, when I wrestled with memories of my childhood, when I got six diplomas and everyone predicted I’d have a brilliant career, they could fuse that image of me with the vague resolution that, tomorrow morning, they’d give up all this shit, yes, cling to my beautiful image s
o they could to get to sleep.
They saw me appear and asked no questions. They went on their way and I said, ‘See you, see you, guys!’ and they’d all turn, the better to place me now that I’d allowed myself the joy of goodbyes, but by then I was gone: two steps earlier Leopoldo Brook with a look of disgust had forced me back up the steps, complaining about the sugar carried on the wind; then I would scrape together images of the past and wallow in nostalgia while those outside wandered another half a block till they came to the junction that marked the boundary. Then they’d turn back, retracing the same aimless path until the weight of their legs would no longer carry them and they went off to seek refuge in the house of whichever of them still had a spliff primed and ready.
Walking back up the steps with Leopoldo behind me, I flicked my hair, tossed and twirled it to create a cyclone of myriad delights in the narrow stairwell and at least he was capable of identifying them; he had to take a deep breath so as not to miss any as each strand of hair created a kaleidoscope of colours in the twilight; outside the crackle of dust on the trees, the spine of each leaf flashing as it was whipped by the wind. Tico would have grabbed a branch and swung from it ‘Wahaaaa!’, conjuring up his mother’s former pride when she peered into his face, cradled him in her arms and told him he was the most beautiful boy in the world. Music from outside, the fluttering of my hair making the branches on the walls blossom. Oh, the birds pecked and trilled. It was a long, slow climb. And as the stereophonic music rolled out a carpet to welcome us for a long stay in the apartment, I’d be filled with such a feeling of calm; okay, so we couldn’t go out, but as long as we could play ‘On with the Show’ I could bear it, I could even understand Leopoldo’s lyrics: ‘Didn’t I tell you we can’t go out? Doesn’t that humid wind put your bones out of joint?’ And he would open his mouth, heave a deep sigh, his lungs shot: ‘Oh, I miss San Francisco.’
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