Doctor, doctor, there's a lime in my coconut...

There are many people in the music business who claim to be doctors – Dr Dre, Dr Fox, Dr Hook, Dr Feelgood – and it is often mentioned (by hilarious wags) that none of these people actually have any qualifications nor put in the requisite amount of time at medical school to justify the title. Everyone laughs at the delightful absurdity of the concept and we move on.
But is it so absurd? It seems to me that the Rock Doctor is a particularly iffy character indeed. You must have noticed that he pops up an alarming number of times throughout the course of rock history and dishes out a lot of, let's face it, crazy advice. You see, the Rock Doctor is a very different beast to the doctors you or I may be used to – the sort that carefully analyse symptoms, run tests, make diagnoses and prescribe courses of suitable treatment – the Rock Doctor seems to work purely on instinct. He makes snap, on-the-spot decisions, thinks outside the box and more often than not puts his faith in nothing more than witchcraft. He is more like an apothecary than a doctor.

Ok, so for starters, there's the Harry Nilsson song, 'Coconut'.

http://youtu.be/9nzRTZvR3M4

Basically, Harry Nilsson goes to his 'doctor' complaining of a belly ache. A fairly standard complaint, you might think, with a fairly standard treatment. So what does our doctor prescribe for the stricken Harry? Antacids? Laxatives? A nice lie down?
Not exactly. He prescribes lime in a coconut. Specifically, 'put da lime in the coconut an' drink 'em both together, put 'da lime in the coconut, then you feel better.'

The doctor, you may have noticed, sounds an awfully lot like the Liltman. He thought coconuts were the answer to everything too.
'So let me get this straight,' says Harry, obviously assuming this to be some kind of wind up. 'You put the lime in the coconut and drink 'em both up?'

The doctor sounds a trifle irritated at having to repeat himself. 'Put 'da lime in the coconut an' drink em bo' down,' he says. 'Put da lime in the coconut an' call me in the morning.'

We never find out if this experimental treatment worked, or, indeed, if the doctor was still around in the morning (though I suspect he scarpered pretty quickly) but we do know that Nilsson died of a 'massive heart attack' in 1994.

I would have said the two events are almost certainly unconnected but then I remembered another doctor who crops up in a Lovin' Spoonful song with similarly suspect credentials:

https://youtu.be/zFDZpzBZR6M

In this instance, it's a lot worse than a bellyache. You see, John Sebastian has been 'down in Savannah eating cream and bananas' and has fainted from the heat. The doctor, apparently, has been brought in to check he's not dying. So, quite a serious situation to be sure. All the limes in all the coconuts in all the world won't solve this one. And what does our magnificent doctor suggest this time? A quick dash to the hospital, perhaps?
Nope, jugband music.
And why?
Because it 'seems to make him feel just fine'.

Jugband music? Flaming jugband music to save a dying man?! The only thing jugband music is a cure for is lack of jugband music! In fact, I think jugband music causes more ailments than it cures!
(I'm almost certain that it was the primary cause of Syd Barrett's 'Jugband Blues' in 1968.)
Nevertheless, our doctor seems to have gone through a phase of thinking jugband music was the answer to every possible affliction that a human can suffer from and throughout the course of this record he goes on to prescribe it for loneliness, dehydration, tiredness, weariness, depression and getting punched in the face on the beach by a cunt. Whether it works or not we don’t know, because, just like last time, the doctor has pissed off before the end of the song and isn’t heard from again.
Sebastian, mercifully, is still with us but fellow Spoonful, Zal Yanovsky, died of a 'massive heart attack' (sound familiar?) in 2002, brought on, we must reasonably assume, by too much jugband music.

At this stage a sudden and shocking realisation dawned on me: this doctor is the reason rock stars die young. I remembered the suspicious deaths of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Brian Jones all within a year of each other. Who's to say the doctor wasn't called in to treat Hendrix's 'Manic Depression' or Morrison's 'Roadhouse Blues' and, feeling bitter and twisted and not in his right mind after his numerous and, frankly, feeble attempts to cure Tommy ('he seems to be completely unreceptive…' Of course he's un-receptive! He's deaf, dumb and blind, you twat! That's why we called you here. '…the tests I gave him show no sense at all.' What did I just say?!), did not switch from prescribing natural remedies like coconuts & homemade music to lethal cocktails of hard drugs & swimming pools with the same carefree attitude and reckless abandon?

Fuelled by this terrifying revelation I began to scour my record collection for further evidence and what I found was shocking indeed. It seems that after the deaths of Messrs. Hendrix, Morrison and Jones the doctor sensibly decided to lay low for a while, changing his name from Dr Robert to Dr Jimmy and not seriously dabbling in medicine again until 1978 when he pops up in the Kinks song, 'Permanent Waves'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr1hj4op-xE

So, Ray Davies has been feeling depressed, in fact he thinks he's breakin'. He can't quite explain, he can't feel any pain, but he knows that this time he's not fakin'.

So the doctor, again displaying his penchant for quick thinking, takes one look at him and immediately orders Ray to go and get a perm.

'Why don’t you put in some permanent waves?' he shouts. 'You'll look smooth, you'll look cool, you'll be laughing.'

The interesting thing is this time the treatment seems to work… for a little while, at least. Davies, armed with his new perm, goes from strength to strength until, that is, it starts to rain and his perm got 'flushed down the drain'. This tragic event leaves him even more depressed than before. 'My neurosis returned, I'm a wreck once again.'
And the doctor? Gone.

Funnily enough, Ray had already had one run in with this fraud of a doctor on the Muswell Hillbillies album, when he was told to 'cut out the struggle and strife, it only complicates your life.' I’ve no sympathy for him. To go and see this daft quack once is bad enough but twice is damn near unforgivable. He's lucky to still be alive.

Keith Moon, of course, wasn't so lucky.

I can only assume that John Entwistle, who’d evidently been looking for a doctor for quite some time…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jsAHbNAmK0

…must have introduced Dr Jimmy to the Moon thinking he might be able to cure his alcoholism and drug addiction...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn8p1Hrc7yI

...the rest, unfortunately, is history.

When I think of all the great talent that's been lost because of this doctor it makes me angry and sad and I wonder why rock stars can't go to real doctors like the rest of us. I don't know, perhaps they bring it on themselves. They do go in with the most vague and unspecific complaints:
'There’s a pain where there once was a heart.' (Mick Jagger)
'I can’t stand up for falling down.' (Elvis Costello)
'There's a slight disturbance in my mind.' (Roy Wood)
'Doctor, my eyes!' (Jackson Browne)
(In this case my sympathy is firmly with the doctor. You see, Browne goes in under the pretence that he's got some sort of eye complaint and then proceeds to spend the next three and a half minutes moaning about the world and his bird and life in general. I mean, he’s a doctor not a psychiatrist!)
'I’m going slightly mad.' (Freddie Mercury)
'Can you see the real me?' (Pete Townshend)

You've got to ask yourself, what would a real doctor make of that lot? Then there's all those odd ailments that only rock stars can contract such as rockin' pneumonia and boogie-woogie flu (a shot of rhythm and blues, incidentally, is the cure for the former); only the Rock Doctor truly understands these conditions. Maybe that's why rock stars place such trust in him and are always so quick to defend him:

'He's a man you must believe, helping everyone in need. No-one can succeed like Doctor Robert,' said John Lennon in 1966.

Of course, that was a good couple of years before the doctor began his terrible killing spree but it still gives you some idea of just how much his patients revere him. Maybe we'll just have to let the case against the doctor lie. Ok, so he killed a few people down the years (who hasn't?) but he did cure Peggy Lee's 'Fever', Dylan's 'Tombstone Blues' and Jerry Lee Lewis's debilitating shaking problem.
And at least he listens… unlike my doctor.

And so I'll leave you with the one piece of good advice this doctor ever gave out. The lucky recipient? Paul Simon. And did he listen? No.

https://youtu.be/bOQupBG7d2g