Carlos Lopez has survived Franco, drugs,
jail, HIV, hepatitis, attempted suicide and his baby’s death. He talks
to Martin Flynn about his life and using his musical talent
to promote
HIV awareness
Photos Alex Caballero
By
all accounts, Carlos Lopez should be dead. He has survived 23 years of living
with HIV, co-infection with the worst strain of hepatitis C, years of drug
addiction and imprisonment in some of Spain’s most notorious jails.
Even when his child died and he was in the depths of despair his suicide attempt
proved unsuccessful. It seems he has the luck, and maybe the nine lives, of
a cat. It is almost as if he has not been allowed to die because he still
has something important to do.
From jazz to funk...
After years of drug abuse and despair Carlos is rebuilding his life through
making music in the leafy suburbs of Sheffield.
His band of musicians and singers, appropriately called CD4: The Band and
his CD4 Community Project, tell the truth about living with the highs and
lows of HIV in all its gory glory.
Raising awareness and promoting HIV prevention is now his cause, and he does
this with writing and music.
Mixing styles from jazz to blues and from rap to funk, Carlos has a message
of hope out of hell. He writes about how HIV changed his and others’
lives; how we all need to take responsibility to be safe and how people can
live in peace with this incurable disease.
Last World Aids Day he released a CD called Nothing is ever Black and White
to raise funds for Sheffield HIV charity SHIELD. This autumn he releases Red
Ribbons in my Heart to spread the HIV prevention message to young people.
“We hear about the promiscuity of the nation’s youth and we wonder
if they are really are as clued up as they say about sexual health,”
Carlos explains.
“Many don’t know the risks and think epidemics only happen to
other people and in other countries. We reach out to all young people with
our music. HIV doesn’t discriminate so why should we.”
Ziggy and the fall of Franco
Born in central Madrid in 1963, Carlos has the characteristic passion of that
city’s inhabitants. Perhaps he is a typical gato (cat) of Madrid, a
city that comes to life after midnight, or maybe he just has a cat’s
luck.
Carlos was brought up in a strict family in the shadow of the final years
of Franco’s dictatorship. Even in the late 1960s and early 1970s Spain
was still a country living under fear, where any change was stamped on.
After rows with his father and after being bullied at school where he was
training as a ballet dancer, Carlos became a runaway teenager.
“My father was a dreamer but he put his own dreams on hold to bring
up the family. I rebelled against everything; my parents, the system, everything.
“In those days the police were scary. Once, on the street, they pulled
off my earring with a knife.”
With Franco’s death in 1975, Spain changed quickly; political democracy
and personal freedoms blossomed for the first time in 50 years and there was
burst of creativity. The underside was a proliferation of heavy drug taking.
“I was free from Franco’s regime and searching for my dreams -
dancing and music. I ran away to Ibiza to live with the hippies.
“I lived on the streets, busking, looking for new musical experiences
and I started taking drugs with friends in the park. David Bowie and Ziggy
Stardust changed my life. I was fascinated by the music and my other heroes:
Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Hendrix.
“I didn’t communicate with my family for four years until I met
my father by accident while walking along a street in Valencia. I was dressed
in red trousers and with long hair and wearing an earring.
“He went crazy, pulled out a knife and dragged me to his car, saying
‘I’m going to kill you’. He cut off my clothes on the street
and said he was taking me to buy some ‘decent’ ones.
“For my father to see his son with brightly coloured clothes, long hair
and an earring, meant I must be a maricon (queer). Even before I ran away,
I used to take my camp friends to the house and he’d say ‘Why
do you mix with these sort of people?’
“He took me to a hairdresser to cut off my long hair. I persuaded him
to have his cut first and while he was in the chair I ran away.
“I didn’t see him again for years, until I turned up and told
him I was becoming a father. And then he forced me to get married”
Teen
diagnosis
By the 1980s, Carlos was becoming quite successful, playing with bands Indeseables
(The Undesirables) and The Assassins.
At that time Madrid was a melting pot of creativity; a heady mix of sex, drugs
and rock‘n’roll.
“I even worked with Pedro Almodóvar when he had his band Almodóvar
and McNamara, before he described those crazy days of liberation in his movies.”
“The Assassins had an English singer and were very big in Germany. We
played at festivals and recorded pirate albums. I took lots of drugs like
marijuana, speed, cocaine and LSD, everything.
“I was diagnosed with HIV when I was doing military service in 1983
and I’ve tried every different treatment since. I also was told I had
hepatitis, not A or B; this was before there was a specific test or name for
hep C.
“Most of my friends who were doing music and drugs with me in the 1980s
are dead. I don’t know why I survived; maybe I was saved for a reason.
“I believe in God but I don’t like religions. Maybe I’m
alive because although my body is weak, my heart and mind are strong. In 1985
my doctor told me I only had six months to live. I expected to die and 21
years later I’m still here.
“I was 19 when I was diagnosed. I was a young man just learning how
to live and at that moment I suddenly had to learn how to die. I had to grow
up very quickly. But I also began to lose my values.
“I was a wild child. I married but my baby died and then the marriage
didn’t survive. I tried to commit suicide but even that didn’t
work. I jumped from six floors up at two in the morning but a passing car
broke my fall and saved my life. I still have the scars on my eyebrow and
arm.
I also have a lot of other scars from fending off knife attacks in prison.
Suicide, HIV, hep C, drugs - none of these have managed to kill me. So I decided
I had to live and rebuild my life.”
Carlos and the Full Monty
“When I watched the movie The Full Monty in Madrid in the late 1990s
I knew then I would end up living in Sheffield. I knew it was a special place
with special people even though I’d never been to England.
“The doctors and people in Sheffield have been amazing. They are kind
in the north of England and more tolerant than in big cities like London.
“In Spain and in prison I was seen as scum. But the worst discrimination
I saw was in Morocco when a friend and I had to escape quickly after a gang
burned down his house and car when they found out he was HIV positive.
“When I eventually came here, I thought it was just like in the movie.
I didn’t know anybody, I didn’t have any money but I was full
of ideas.
“It is harder to learn to live than to die. People don’t understand
how life can make you lose your values and how easily you can get into drug
addiction and despair, and how difficult it is to rebuild those values again.
When you don’t see any tomorrow and all your friends are dying you can
get very down.
“Once I was in a Spanish hospital room with six other guys with HIV
and every week someone would die. One night we were watching a football match
on TV. It was Barcelona versus Valencia and the guy in the next bed was cheering
for Barcelona. The next morning the curtains were around his bed and he was
dead. He was only about 18.
“I was reborn, but not in the religious sense. From the moment I understood
my addiction, I began to break free from the drugs. I had to move to another
town and restart my life.
“I was full of hate and pain and had to change all that. When I stopped
the drugs I began trying to help others with my music.
“When I was trying to come off drugs in prison, I would work with other
ex-drug users and 12 or 14 of us would meet up in my cell and sing.
“I was one of the first people on AZT and I had nightmares and was shaking
every night. I remember working at a Seville radio station one summer, when
the temperature was more than 40 degrees, and I was shivering and had to cover
myself with blankets.”
Getting prevention wrong (and right)
“The CD4 Community Project started after the concerts in Sheffield last
year. I was playing in Doncaster prison and giving my testimony. The men would
send messages saying ‘Can you speak to my wife/girlfriend about HIV’.
“Afterwards, we had lots of friends in that prison because they connected
with me. It reminded me of when I was in the same situation: locked up with
not much hope.
“It was the first time I’d gone into a prison by myself and the
first time I could leave when I wanted to. I went in as a free man and went
out as a free man.
“It was so different from my years in Spanish prisons where I was with
ETA terrorists, drug dealers and murderers. I was once handcuffed to a well
known ETA terrorist for hours as they transferred us from a terrible prison
in Cadiz to the Canary Islands.
“It was the time I spent in Doncaster prison that made me write the
song Set Me Free - a cry from the heart out of frustration. I understand what
the prisoners were going through because I’d been there myself.
“I’ve got strong views on HIV prevention because I think so much
money is spent on the wrong things when you could do something positive instead.
Money is spent on things that just keep people in the HIV ghetto, like stupid
booklets and leaflets.
“HIV
groups can be like a double-edged sword. Many were started by gay men in the
1980s and they became like ghettoes. Other ghettoes were started by African
and drug users. But if heterosexual people see HIV as part of a gay or a drug
users ghetto they won’t take any notice of the disease. They then think
it’s not their problem. We have to break down the barriers between all
the affected groups and say that HIV is everyone’s problem, not just
the gays, drug users or Africans.
“People think if they are not gay or a drug user they have no need to
use condoms. Now there’s more HIV among straight people in England but
still most prevention is just aimed at the gays and the drug users.
“I don’t agree with charity for people with HIV. We don’t
need charity. We need rights, dignity and respect.”
Going public
The new album Red Ribbons in my Heart is being released this autumn as a plea
for understanding for people living with HIV; for the millions dying, for
the children crying, for those facing discrimination and hatred because of
HIV. It is a message of hope and optimism.
“I like the idea of a future. This is the first time I have gone public
about being HIV positive in the press. It’s a huge step for me to give
my testimony to Positive Nation, and with this interview I want to show people
that even if you’re really low you can still have a dream and still
pursue it.
“You can still find something to believe in and something to fight for.
Many artists now do things for HIV. But there’s not many who are open
about being HIV positive themselves. If you are open about HIV and express
it in your music you can reach out to people and hit home with the truth in
a way words alone cannot.”
• On 29 October, the CD4 Band host a Red Ribbons launch party at Walkabout
in Sheffield: www.thecd4project.org.uk
• www.carloslopezg.com
• CD available from HIV Sheffield: hivsheffield@btinternet.com
• Special thanks to Maria Castelo Branco and Alex Caballero for help
with translation of this interview.
