I got my nickname from this song.
When I was in the Army they used to
mispronounce Segerman as Sugar Man.
And then they just started calling me
Sugar and that became my nickname.
It's 40 years since this LP called
Cold Fact by Rodriguez was released.
And in South Africa
it was a very popular album.
It was one of the biggest albums
of the day.
But the thing was,
we didn't know who this guy was.
All our other rock stars,
we had all the information we needed.
But this guy? There was nothing.
And then we found out
that he had committed suicide.
He set himself alight on stage and
burnt to death in front of the audience.
It was the most incredible thing.
It wasn't just a suicide.
It was probably the most
grotesque suicide in rock history.
The first time that I remember
actually recognizing him is
Mike Theodore called me
on the phone one day and said,
"I have this artist
I want you to come see with me.
"This guy's name is Rodriguez,
"he's working down by the Detroit River.
"There's a bar down there,
"down by the wharf riverside district.
"Let's go see him tonight.
"I think you'll really like him."
So that night, I remember,
we pull up...
away in this kinda isolated
part of Detroit
right on the side of the Detroit River,
and you could see the mist in the air
coming off the river. We could feel it.
And we went inside there,
and as we walked in the door,
we could hear behind us
the sound of the freighters
as they're going down the river,
and so it's like you're walking out
of a Sherlock Holmes novel.
You walk out of the mist
and you go into this place,
and inside the place,
it's all full of smoke,
so there's a mist inside there.
Boom, hey, you know,
it's a wall of smoke.
Beer all over the place. Peanut shells.
It was just a mess.
And then you hear this strumming sound.
Strumming and batting the guitar.
And then you hear this voice.
Strange voice.
Finally, we walked
through the smoke, and I looked,
and there in the far corner I saw...
I could see the shadow of a man
and I couldn't see his face.
I said, "What's the deal?"
So we got a little closer...
And you see this guy
with his back to you.
So all you see is his back
and he's in a corner, singing.
It was an ethereal scene, if you will.
Foggy night, foghorns, smoke so thick
you couldn't see through it.
And here's this voice.
Maybe it forced you
to listen to the lyrics
'cause you couldn't see the guy's face.
That's when we talked to him and figured
we needed to do an album on him.
The only writer that I had heard of,
of that time period,
was maybe Bob Dylan,
that was writing that well.
He was this wandering spirit
around the city.
And, uh, sometimes
I might catch him in the corner.
You know, Detroit's got its share of,
uh, burned-out, desolate areas
and I would occasionally see him, um,
far away from The Brewery,
and I wondered,
and it just added
to this mythology of him.
Like, what is he doing?
What is he doing? What does he do?
I heard he did a little roofing,
some construction work.
Um, I think that's how he got his money
at the time.
He just was, you know,
and I say this with love,
I say this with respect, but,
I thought he was just a...
just not much more than a kind of
a homeless person, you know?
He just was a drifter.
He was just... Um...
I didn't know if he had a home,
you know?
He'd look like maybe he'd go
from shelter to shelter or something.
Detroit in the '70s was a hard place.
Well, it's still a hard place.
Lot of decay, lots of ruined houses.
Real poverty exists in this city.
And those streets
were Rodriguez's natural habitat.
Any time we met him
to talk about what we were doing,
he would always meet us on a corner
somewhere in his neighbourhood.
Most of the time
he wasn't coming to my house.
He'd say, "Meet me on the corner
of this street and that street,"
and we would be there.
Uh, Mike and I would get out of our cars
and park our cars,
so we'd be standing on the corner,
and then we'd look round
and he'd be there all of a sudden.
He'd just show up.
We thought he was like
the inner city poet.
You know? Putting his poems to music
of what he saw.
And it was definitely a very gritty look
at what he saw
on the streets of Detroit.
What he saw in his neighbourhood.
Who was walking around the streets.
And the way he presented it in a song,
I thought was very, very interesting.
We were working
at Tera-Shirma recording studio.
When he opened up and sang,
you went, "Whoa, this guy's got it."
Rodriguez, at that time,
had all the machinery in place.
Big names, big money behind it.
Circumstances were right.
Why didn't it make it? That's the
big question that today still haunts me.
Did he get enough promotion?
Did he do enough performances?
Was he too political?
Was there this or was there that?
Should it have been green
instead of orange?
Should it have been a violin
instead of an oboe?
On and on you can go.
But the end of the day is, if you
listen to the stuff now, you'd say,
"I don't understand it, he's right-on."
I only heard him play once,
and one of the songs that
he had on his album, it was called...
The Sugar Man? Was it Sugar Man?
Is that the name of the song?
Um, I knew that guy, the Sugar Man.
And his name was Volkswagen Cha...
Volkswagen Frank!
And he lived right around the corner
and you used to go over
to Volkswagen Frank's.
You'd go in and get a little "sugar,"
if you know what I mean.
I got some photos here
that I'd like to show you
that I've kept since my days in England
with Rodriguez.
Let me see.
Possibly it's in this book,
I don't know where.
These are all my photos
from when I was acting.
That's me, and that's Jimmy Dean.
That was in 1955.
Hang on, I think I've found them.
Think they're in here.
Yeah, here they are.
Wow. Good Lord, here they are.
You know, I haven't seen these pictures
in almost 35 years.
He's my most memorable artist.
You know, I've produced
a lot of great ones, but...
he's my most memorable.
It's not just a talent.
He's like...
He's like a wise man, a prophet.
He's way beyond
just being a musical artist.
And he probably could have done
fantastically well
if he had have continued.
When I met him, they said,
"Rodriguez, this is Steve Rowland.
"He really likes your album."
And Rodriguez said to me,
"Well, did you like Cold Facts?"
I said, "Man, I thought
it was absolutely brilliant.
"Absolutely brilliant.
"I can't believe that this album
didn't do anything.
"It's just a fantastic album."
So he played me...
Well, his next album was on...
In those days you had cassettes.
He had demos of this next album that
he was gonna call Coming From Reality.
And I said, "Wow, man,
this has got to be a smash.
"These are great songs.
"Little bit... Little bit different from
the others," I said, "but great songs."
I said, "And a couple of them
were so sad." You know.
There's one in there
that's absolutely a killer.
It's one of the saddest songs that...
I'm laughing, but it's one of
the saddest songs that I've ever heard.
And it's a very simple song.
Hang on, I wanna play this. Hang on.
Okay, listen to these words.
Oh, man.
And it really makes me sad, because...
that was the last song that we recorded.
And that was the last song
that Rodriguez ever recorded.
And what makes it even sadder
was the album was released
in November of 1971,
and we expected big things.
And it did absolutely nothing.
And then, two weeks before Christmas,
Sussex dropped him off the label.
And the very first line in the song,
as if premonition,
was, "I lost my job
two weeks before Christmas."
Oh, man. I just think about that.
This guy deserves recognition.
Nobody in America had even heard of him.
Nobody...
Nobody even was interested
in listening to him.
How can that be? How can that be?
Guy that writes like this.
I mean...
It's still a bit of a mystery
how the first copy of Cold Fact
actually came to South Africa.
But one of the stories I've heard
is that there was an American girl
and she came to South Africa
to visit her boyfriend and brought
a copy of the record with her.
And her and him and all their friends
really liked it
and went out to try and buy it
but you couldn't buy it.
So they started taping copies
and passing copies along.
However it got here,
however it germinated here,
once it got here,
it spread very quickly.
I remember I was in high school
and we heard this song, "I wonder
how many times you've had sex?"
And at that time South Africa
was very conservative.
It was the height of apartheid,
and there wasn't television here.
That's how conservative it was,
'cause television was communist.
It was really... You wouldn't believe.
Everything was restricted,
everything was censored.
Everything was...
And here's this guy singing this song.
"Who's that?" Said, "That's Rodriguez."
And he became something
of a rebel son' of icon.
But the strange thing was
that we all bought his records.
Everybody I knew had his records.
I Wonder,
that was the big song
that everybody was singing
and we all bought a record.
And there he was on the cover,
sort of a hippy with shades.
But nobody knew anything about him.
He was a mystery.
Unlike other artists
that you could read about from America,
get to know something about them,
there was zilch. Nobody knew anything.
It was a mystery. We only had
his picture on the cover of the record.
The album was exceptionally popular.
To many of us South Africans,
he was the soundtrack to our lives.
In the mid-'70s,
if you walked into a random
white, liberal,
middle-class household
that had a turntable
and a pile of pop records
and if you flipped through the records
you would always see
Abbey Road by The Beatles.
You would always see
Bridge Over Troubled Water
by Simon and Garfunkel.
And you would always see
Cold Fact by Rodriguez.
To us, it was one of the most
famous records of all time.
The message it had was:
"Be anti-establishment. "
One song's called
Anti-Establishment Blues.
We didn't know what the word
"anti-establishment" was
until it cropped up on a Rodriguez song
and then we found out,
it's OK to protest against your society,
to be angry with your society.
Because we lived in a society
where every means was used
to prevent apartheid from,
you know, coming to an end,
this album somehow had in it...
lyrics that almost set us free
as oppressed peoples.
Any revolution needs an anthem
and in South Africa
Cold Fact was the album
that gave people permission
to free their minds
and to start thinking differently.
It may seem strange
that South African record companies
didn't do more
to try and track down Rodriguez,
but, actually,
if you look back at the time
we were in the middle of apartheid,
the height of apartheid.
South Africa was under sanctions
from countries from all over the world.
South African musicians
were not allowed to play overseas.
No foreign acts
were allowed to visit South Africa.
It was a closed-door situation
between South Africa
and the rest of the world.
The countries around
the world were saying horrible things
about the apartheid government
but we didn't know
because they controlled the news.
The majority of the population
had been marginalized
and forced out of the commerce in areas.
It was what had happened
in Nazi Germany.
It was a spin-off from Nazi Germany,
but if a newspaper published it,
they'd get prosecuted.
So, because of that, South Africa had
achieved a pariah status in the world.
There were cultural boycotts.
There were sporting boycotts.
It was a very isolated society.
So we were cut off.
We all knew apartheid was wrong,
but living in South Africa,
there wasn't much, as a white person,
you could do about it,
'cause the government was very strict.
It was a military state,
to a large degree.
If you spoke out against apartheid,
you could be thrown into prison
for three years.
So although a lot of whites
were part of the struggle,
the majority of whites were not.
You were watched. There were spies.
It was scary and people were scared.
But out of the Afrikaans
community emerged
a group of Afrikaans
musicians, songwriters,
and for them, when they heard Rodriguez,
it was like a voice spoke to them
and said, "Guys, there's a way out.
There's a way out.
"You can write music.
You can write imagery.
"You can sing, you can perform."
And that was where, really,
the first opposition to apartheid
came from inside
the Afrikaans community.
It was these young Afrikaans guys
and, to a man,
they'll tell you
they were influenced by Rodriguez.
Koos Kombuis. Willem Moller.
The late Johannes Kerkorrel.
The guys who were regarded as the icons
of the Afrikaans music revolution
will all tell you,
"Rodriguez was our guy."
We call it the Voelvry movement
of Afrikaans artists
singing against apartheid.
All of us listened to Rodriguez
at some point. All of us.
It had an enormous impact.
It made you just think
that there's another way.
What's presented to you
by the establishment isn't all theirs.
The biggest hit was a song
called Set It Off
which was when PW Botha
was the president then.
The real bad guy. When he came on TV,
he used to talk like that.
And this song said, "switch it off,
just switch off the TV."
So what lines do you think
were the lines they had problem with?
Ah, gee whiz, it's all of them.
"Sugar Man, won't you hurry
Cos I'm tired of these scenes
"For a blue coin, won't you bring back
all those colours to my dreams?"
The most difficult ones is probably
"Silver magic ships, you carry
Jumpers, coke, sweet Mary Jane."
And what is that?
I'm gonna leave that to you.
- But it's drugs?
- It's certainly drugs.
During the apartheid years,
it was just impossible to play it.
And what happened if you did play it?
Well, you couldn't.
I'd like to show you why.
Right, here we have the album,
the vinyl.
At the back of the sleeve
you'll see a sticker that says "Avoid."
But when you open the album
and take it out from its sleeve,
you would see that they have
scratched that particular song
with a sharp tool to make sure
that it would not go out on air.
And that's the way that they
banned the music which, in my mind,
was quite a brutal way of ensuring the
song would never be heard on the air.
Most of those tracks
were on the banned list at SABC
and they ran
the broadcast industry completely.
There weren't any independent
radio stations or TV stations.
Obviously, when that word got out,
it just made the record more desirable.
You know,
it's like having something banned.
You're 16, 17 years old
and you've got something that's banned.
It was absolutely perfect.
Cold Fact was just one
of the albums we had in our collections,
and for 10, 20 years, it was just
a record we listened to and enjoyed.
But then a pivotal event happened
that changed everything for me.
We were down in Camps Bay beach.
We were sitting around on the beach
and a friend of mine,
a woman, who was from South Africa,
but she had got married
and emigrated to Los Angeles,
she said to me, "Where can I
buy Cold Fact in South Africa?"
And I turned round and I pointed
to a store across the road
that sold CDs and I said,
"You can buy it at that store."
She said, "Really? Because, you know,
you can't buy it anywhere in America.
"I've asked everywhere in America,
no one's even heard of it."
And that was a pivotal moment,
'cause I didn't know that.
I thought everybody knew Rodriguez,
especially in America
'cause he was American.
So my next thought was,
"Ah, Rodriguez, that's interesting. "
I went back... I came back home
and I took out my Rodriguez records
and that's when I realised
there was nothing on the record
to tell us who he was
or where he was from.
On Cold Fact there are four names.
On the front cover
it just says "Rodriguez."
But if we take the record out
and examine the sleeve,
the artist's name is Sixto Rodriguez.
But if you look at the tracks,
six of these tracks
are credited to Jesus Rodriguez,
and four of these tracks
are credited to Sixth Prince.
So who actually wrote these songs
and who are all these people?
We didn't have any more information
than a record
with him sitting on the cover
with a hat and sunglasses on.
We didn't know how tall he was
'cause he was sitting cross-legged.
So how do you solve a mystery?
You use whatever
information's available.
What did we have?
A record cover with lyrics.
So we started looking
quite deeply at the lyrics
and seeing what they said,
and some of them, very few of them,
had geographical references.
The one You Can't getaway starts off,
"Born in the troubled city
"In Rock and Roll, USA."
Born in which troubled city?
Seems all the cities were troubled
in the late '60s.
"In the shadow of the tallest building."
The tallest building, as far as we knew,
was in New York.
And at the bottom of the song
this verse says,
"In a hotel room in Amsterdam."
Then it says, "Going down a dusty
Georgian side road I wander." Georgia?
So we've had Amsterdam,
we've had Georgia,
we've had the world's tallest building.
Not much to go on.
Well, what I heard,
and the story differs a lot,
and a lot of people have different
versions of the story, but what I heard,
he hadn't played a concert
in a very long time.
And a promoter got him
to play a concert,
and he was hoping
it was gonna be a great show.
Of course, the show didn't
work out that way. It started out...
The sound wasn't good.
The venue wasn't good.
A lot of the factors
surrounding the show wasn't good.
And as the show went on and on,
it started going downhill from there.
People started ridiculing him.
People started whistling
or making mention of the fact that,
you know,
the show wasn't going as planned.
And it got to a point where,
just very quietly, very gently,
he just sang his last song.
"But thanks for your time
Then you can thank me for mine
"And after that's said forget it."
And he reached down and pulled up a gun
and pulled the trigger.
And that was the dramatic,
very dramatic ending,
to what was actually a non-career.
In 1996, the South African record label
released Rodriguez's second album,
Coming From Reality,
on CD for the first time
in South Africa.
And because they thought
I knew a lot about him,
they asked if I wanted to co-write
the liner notes for the booklet,
which I did.
And I'll read some of it to you.
They start off by saying,
"if ever there is an air of intrigue
and mystery around a pop artist,
"it is around the artist
known as Rodriguez.
"There's no air of intrigue and mystery
around him anywhere else in the world
"because his two albums,
Coming From Reality and Cold Fact,
"were monumental flops everywhere else."
And this is the important part.
"There were no concrete cold facts
about the artist known as Rodriguez.
"Any musicologist detectives out there?"
And that,
that's the line that changed everything.
I started searching for Rodriguez
when a few of us
were sitting around in the Army
and somebody said,
"How did Rodriguez die?"
And just coincidence,
at the time I was looking
for subject matter to write an article.
I remember having, like, five points
on a piece of paper.
And number four, or something,
was "Find out how Rodriguez died."
I thought it would make a good story.
So that was in the back of my mind
for many years
and then, many years later,
I came across this, um,
re-release of Coming From Reality
and inside, the liner notes said,
"There were no concrete cold facts
about the artist known as Rodriguez.
"Any musicologist detectives out there?"
Um, was the question,
and I think that to me,
was like an invitation.
I thought, "Well, maybe it's me".
The first way I tried to find him
was to just follow the money.
Normally, you follow the money.
That's how you get
to the bottom of anything.
But where do dead men's money go?
I was astounded that
no one knew anything about him.
I guess it was reminiscent
of how bad the music industry was.
They were renowned
for ripping people off.
And it is one thing,
if they had said to me, "Oh, yeah,
"we send the money
to X place or Y," or whatever,
but they just kept on being very vague.
And, in fact, when l put some pressure
on somebody, I did get an address,
and I called
and, I can't remember
if I spoke to someone or left a message,
but when I called the next day,
the number had been changed.
And that to me was...
I mean, that's a gift
for anyone who wants to be a detective,
is an obstacle,
because an obstacle is an inspiration.
If you just find things easily,
they're not inspiring,
and this was a great obstacle
that somebody had changed their number.
I just smelt a dirty money story
somewhere there.
So, if you compare to other artists,
how big was it actually?
Every month it just sold.
And every party you went to
and every place you went to,
you'd hear that album at least once.
I don't think I could even think
of how many albums he's sold here
'cause it's a long period of time.
What could be probable?
I'd have to guess. Maybe half a million
copies over that period of time.
It's a lot of records,
especially for a small country.
Gold record, ten times over.
Rodriguez never got
to know that he was big in South Africa.
How could that be?
Don't know.
I mean, everything would have been...
I find that strange.
I have no idea.
But you must have sent
royalties somewhere?
Of course we sent royalties.
We sent royalties to A&M Records.
I remember the label. It was A&M Sussex.
Whether they had a partnership,
whatever they had, I don't... You know.
So, my suggestion is, if you
can find out whoever the person was
who owned Sussex Records,
then you will find out
what happened to the money.
Because it's weird, isn't it?
It's very strange. Very strange.
How popular was the album?
Was he as famous as,
you know,
the Rolling Stones and the Doors?
Oh, it was much bigger
than Rolling Stones.
Absolutely, at the time, yeah.
When you released
the record, did you try to contact him?
No, not at all. You know?
Because... because, at the time,
the legend... the legend was...
here was an artist.
This was like Jimi Hendrix.
With Jimi Hendrix catalogues,
you've gotta understand,
if you just got Jimi Hendrix and you'd
got the license for this territory,
you're obviously not gonna go try get
hold of Jimi Hendrix, because he's dead.
- But who did you pay royalties to?
- To Sussex Music.
To Clarence?
Yes. Well, to Sussex Music
which is his company, yeah.
So, I decided to make a diagram.
Write down the whole path
and trail that I was trying to work out.
All the various touch points,
all the record companies,
all the people that had dealings with
Rodriguez and his album at some point.
I made this whole document.
So I found out there were three
record companies in South Africa
that had released Rodriguez's records.
Finally discovering that
led to a record company in America.
It was a company that
had been signing Rodriguez
and creating his first album
called Sussex.
I then did my research on Sussex.
That led me to discovering
who the owner of Sussex Records was:
Clarence Avant.
Clarence Avant,
he'd been the head of Motown,
one of the most prestigious jobs
to have in the record company industry.
So I did my research. I tried everything
to get a hold of Clarence Avant,
but I just got to a lot of closed doors.
I could not get a hold of him.
I don't know
if you've ever seen this picture.
That's him.
That's Rodriguez.
I don't know when this was made.
I have absolutely no idea.
- That's 1970, I think.
- Yeah.
This is my man.
Man, don't get me emotional again. Shit.
You made me emotional once.
I ain't getting emotional no more
sitting here talking to you, man.
If I had to name ten artists
that I have ever been involved with,
Rodriguez would be in the top five,
simple as that.
There's nothing...
You never heard anything like him.
People would say, "Well, Bob Dylan."
I said, "No, no".
Bob Dylan was mild to this guy.
Did it make any money?
We judge singing here in America...
If you say,
"Is it... Was it the top hundred?
"Was it... was it number...
Did it get on the charts as number 12?
"Was there a lot of radio play?"
The answer's, "No, man."
Nobody didn't... Rodriguez?
You know, that name didn't register.
Although he looked like he was
a white guy but, even still, Rodriguez,
everybody knew Rodriguez,
that's a Spanish name.
A Latin name.
Latin music was not happening then.
How many records do you think
he sold in America?
In America'? Six.
Maybe my wife bought it,
maybe my daughter bought...
She couldn't buy it, but maybe
Neil Bogart, maybe Dennis and Mike.
Hey, look, man, you know,
it didn't sell here.
There was some excitement about him.
Couple of agents heard him
and wanted to bring him to California
and, you know, when he came
to California he was nervous,
and he turned his back to the audience
and everybody said,
"Well, what the hell is this?"
But the thing is that the guy sold
hundreds of thousands of records
in another country.
I'm going to South Africa to try
to chase somebody who's selling records?
Shit, no, man.
But did you know
that he was big in South Africa?
Rodriguez, young man, never happened
insofar as I'm concerned.
Period.
But if I'm really gonna try to track
down the money, how should I do it?
Well, is that important, the money?
Or is Rod...
Which is important? Rodriguez's story
or you worrying about the money?
How many people in South Africa?
Well, so they've been freed
for how long? Three hours?
So what the fuck's
that supposed to mean?
You told me at lunch,
they scratch records
because they wouldn't let the lyrics...
So the underground movement,
how big was it'? How big was it?
He sold half a million records
in South Africa.
So he sold half a million records.
So what?
I don't know who he sold them to.
How many distributors did he have?
I have no idea.
There are only...
There are three record labels.
- I spoke to all the record label...
- Well, great.
...bosses in South Africa who
has released his records. It was...
Go back to 'em and tell 'em
to send me an account.
You think it's something
I'm gonna worry about, a 1970 contract?
If you do,
you're outta your goddamn mind.
Buddha Records out of business.
I'm out of business.
So you think they give a shit
about that? I know I wouldn't.
I've been looking for information
about Rodriguez for a long time.
I've even setup a web page
called The Great Rodriguez Hunt
in the hope that
someone out there in cyberspace
would post a message on the forum giving
us any information about Rodriguez.
But there was nothing.
At that stage I met Craig,
who was the musicologist detective
who had read my liner notes
and who was also
searching for Rodriguez.
And he flew down to Cape Town
and we met in a coffee shop.
And we exchanged
all the information we had.
But unfortunately we had very little.
And at that stage I remember we felt
it was probably best if we just stopped.
So basically I was lost.
I'd come to a dead end.
I couldn't find him.
I didn't know where to look any more.
I'd even visited the places
that he sang about.
I'd been to London. Nothing.
I'd been to Amsterdam.
He sings about Amsterdam. Nothing.
And one day I'd basically given up.
I thought, "Well, this is it. "
And one day, just by accident,
I was listening to the album in the car
and I heard the song Inner City Blues.
Great song. And the line came up.
"I met a girl in Dearborn,
early six o'clock this morn.
"A cold fact."
Then I thought, "Hang on a minute."
I 'd never checked out Dearborn.
I didn't even know if it was a city
but then I thought,
"Actually that sounds
like a town or a city."
And I thought, "Hang on,
let me check it out in an atlas."
So I went through to my old atlas
and pulled it out.
I thought, "Let me see
what I could find here.
"Let me see if I could find Dearborn."
Urn... Dear...
Then I found it.
Dearborn, Wayne, Michigan. F7.
F...7.
Dearborn. Part of Detroit.
That was a huge breakthrough in my mind.
Detroit, home of Motown,
Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder,
and, eventually, Mike Theodore,
the producer of the album.
I was sifting in my condo,
just having a cup of coffee.
I was looking out the window
watching the ocean. Phone rings.
It's a long-distance call
from South Africa...
from a writer whose name's
Craig Bartholomew,
and he starts telling me
this amazing story.
So he said, "Do you know that Rodriguez
"has been selling in South Africa
for 25 years.
"His albums are selling millions."
I said, "What?"
Then he's sitting there and he wants...
he starts telling me some stories.
He said, "How did Rodriguez die?"
And he's telling me information
that he had that Rodriguez had...
blown his brains out on stage,
or set himself on fire
and killed himself.
I had 100 questions I wanted to ask.
I was just hoping I could get
all my questions in, you know.
"Why did he write this lyric?
Why did he write that lyric?
"Where did he record this album?
Where did he record that album?"
And we got talking and I asked him
a lot of questions and it was amazing.
It was a rollercoaster ride
of questions and answers,
and it was a euphoric moment
of just having finally broken through
and discovered something.
And finally I got to the one question
I wanted to know the answer of, was,
"How did Rodriguez die?
Did he blow himself up on stage? Or...
"What is this dramatic story?
"Let's open up the lid on this
right away, and find out what happened."
And Mike Theodore said,
"What do you mean dead? He's not dead.
"Sixto is alive. He's alive and kicking.
"The principal artist known as
Sixto Rodriguez is alive and kicking
"and living in Detroit."
I... I can't remember who
called me and said, "They've found him."
I said, "No. You're shitting me.
This isn't... No."
At first I thought it was a hoax.
I thought somebody was faking it.
You know, it's like going
into Tutankhamen's tomb
and finding the mummy.
You know, it was like, "Wow, he lives."
I remember dancing on the spot
when I was staying on the phone.
And Craig and I were jumping up and down
saying, "We found him, we found him."
It was the most exciting thing.
We'd actually done it.
So that was it.
I'd come to the point,
it was the end of the story.
I was searching for a dead man.
One morning I discovered a living man.
And to me that was the end of the story.
I wrote my article,
I called it "Looking for Jesus."
I faxed it to many individuals,
many people involved,
but somehow this article
made its way across the Atlantic
and into the hands
of someone in America.
And what I thought was the end of story
was actually just the beginning
of another story,
and the best part was still to come.
'Cause I don't know where it is.
It might take a while.
They do have the dates.
"Three-year search for dead singer."
Yes.
August '97. I was in Kansas.
I got a copy of it to me at work.
I was on, like, a 24-hour shift.
And then, I went online
and that's when
I discovered the website.
When I went online there was
this milk carton with a picture.
And it said, "Wanted"
and "Have you seen this man?"
I was like, "Matter of fact,
I have seen him before."
I replied, "Rodriguez is my father.
I'm serious.
"Do you really want to know
about my father?
"Sometimes the fantasy
is better left alive."
I don't know why I said that,
but anyway I did.
And then I gave them e-mail address,
phone numbers,
anything that they wanted to contact me.
And he phoned me.
Well, we'd found out
that Rodriguez was alive.
I'd spoken to Craig.
I came to work and Alex McCrindle,
who was the guy I worked
on the website with said,
"You're not going to believe
what's on the website."
And on the website was a forum
where people could post messages,
and there was a message that said,
"My name's Eva.
I'm Rodriguez's daughter."
She'd left a phone number and she said,
"I'd like to speak to someone
in connection with this."
So that night I phoned her.
I said, "Hi, I'm Sugar,"
and she said, "I'm Eva,"
and we had the most
amazing conversation.
She explained to me who her father was,
what he had done, where he had been.
She asked me who I was
and I explained why my name was Sugar
and how I was involved with the website.
And then at the end I said to her,
"This has been the most
amazing thing for me,
"and what would be really great
is if I could,
"at some point, speak to your dad.
"I'd love it if I could
just say hello to him. "
Because, for me,
this was son' of the end of the search
and I just wanted to speak to this man.
And then I went to bed.
And 1:00 in the morning that night,
the phone rang.
And my wife answers it
'cause it was her side of the bed.
And I remember she picked up the phone
and her face just changed.
She had this look of awe.
She said, "it's him."
And I was in shock. I'd been sleeping
and I ran into the other room,
into my study,
and I picked up the phone
and she put hers down.
And I said, "Hello?" and a voice said...
"Hello, is that Sugar?"
And I knew, I just knew,
because I knew that voice.
I'd heard that voice so many times
on the records, I knew it was him.
I was talking to Rodriguez.
That, for me, was one of
the greatest moments of my life.
-Whenever you're ready.
- Okay.
Is this all right?
Should I be doing something though?
Should I have a glass of water
or something? Is that right?
- Do you want?
- Yeah. I like that.
Yeah, this is...
I'm supposed to be comfortable.
So run the question to me again.
Just so I can hear it in my head.
In the '70s and '80s, did you ever
get any contact from South Africa?
Uh... No, I didn't.
Maybe they didn't have a contact number
or something but, no, I didn't.
How does that feel?
You weren't aware of something
that would have changed
your life completely.
I mean, probably to the better.
Well, I don't know if it would have been
for the better,
but it's certainly a thought, you know.
But wouldn't it have been nice to know
that you were a superstar?
Uh, well...
I don't know how to respond to that.
After Coming From Reality,
did you wanna continue making albums?
I would have liked to have continued
but nothing beats Reality.
So I pretty much went back to work.
What did you do?
L... Well, I'd do hired labor.
Demolition, renovation of buildings,
of homes, you know. Restoration.
Did you enjoy that'?
I do. It keeps the blood
circulating, keeps you fit, yeah.
But it's quite far away from music.
Uh... Yeah, quite a bit,
quite a different contrast, yeah.
Did you continue
making music on your own?
I do, I play guitar.
I love playing guitar.
But I do love to listen.
I like to go see the shows and things.
But I do get about.
He never said anything
about being disappointed.
He would just move on,
continue to survive
because you can't just give up.
What did he do instead?
He read a lot.
He was involved in politics.
He was involved in the community.
He would attend protests and rallies,
if those were causes that
he believed in. He would take us along.
He was always a proponent
of working for the people
that maybe didn't always have a voice,
or didn't have a chance to speak up,
the working class, the working poor.
He had a lot of experience in that area.
He approached the work
from a different place than
most people do.
He took it very, very seriously.
Son' of like a sacrament, you know?
He was going to do this dirty,
dirty work for eight or ten hours, okay?
But he was dressed in a tuxedo.
He had this kind of magical quality
that all genuine poets and artists have
to elevate things.
To get above the mundane, the prosaic.
All the bullshit.
All the mediocrity that's everywhere.
The artist, the artist is the pioneer.
Even if his musical hopes were dashed,
the spirit remained.
And he just had to keep finding a place,
refining the process
of how to apply himself.
He knew that there was something more.
It was in the early '80s.
He wanted to do something,
do something righteous,
make a difference.
So, lo and behold...
...he told me that he
was gonna run for mayor,
and I thought,
"Well, God bless you, Rodriguez.
"You know, if you can become Mayor
of Detroit, then anything is possible."
Some old items from Rodriguez.
This is his bumper sticker, from
the first time he ran for city council.
And I think this is a copy
of the ballot.
He didn't win an election, ever.
Nine get elected.
They spelled his name wrong.
My relatives on my mother's side
of the family are European
and Native American.
And my father's family is Mexican.
My grandfather came from Mexico.
The Mexican came to Detroit
to work in the auto factories,
so we were working-class people,
blue-collar workers, hard labor.
Um, we lived in 26 different homes
and some houses didn't have bedrooms.
Some houses didn't have bathrooms.
And they weren't homes.
They were just places that we lived.
But just because people are poor
or have little
doesn't mean that, you know,
their dreams aren't big
and their soul isn't rich, you know,
and that's where the classes
and the prejudice come from
is that there is a difference
between you and me,
and there's a difference
between them and us.
He wasn't just doing
your average carpentry, you know,
he was really cleaning out the house.
I mean, doing work that no one else
wanted to do.
Really, no one else
wanted to do that work.
He would come home, he would be covered
in dust and din', paint chips,
from his day's work. Long days.
I saw him take refrigerators
down on his back, downstairs.
It was just a day at work for him,
but I knew he was a harder worker than
a lot of other fathers that I knew of.
It's a city that tells you
not to dream big,
not to expect anything more.
But he always took me to places
that only certain elite people
would be able to go.
So, he kind of instilled in me
that I can go anywhere I want,
regardless of what my bank statement
says, and I'm going, you know.
So, that's kinda how he was.
He showed me the top floors of places.
I said, "I'm just as good as they are,"
you know.
He majored in philosophy
in university.
My dad gave us a lot of exposure
to the arts.
He would let us go into the libraries
and the museums and the science centres,
and where that was our day care,
and we toured the halls of the museum
in San Diego Rivera
and, you know,
all Picasso and Delacroix and...
We began to learn of life
outside of the city,
and that's in books and paintings
and in music.
Well, I started playing
when I was 16,
and the thing is,
it was a family guitar,
and I played a lot of bars in the city
and clubs in the city, small rooms.
And I met Mike Theodore
and Dennis Coffey
and they came to the club
to see me play.
I had a gig at a place called The Sewer,
right out by the Detroit River,
and then we got a record deal
from Clarence Avant,
so that's how it started.
But all those early years were,
you know... lot of work.
I was at a Chrysler plant
called Dodge Maine,
and I also worked
at Eldon and Lynch Road in Detroit.
Worked in the heat treat department.
Stuff like that.
A lot of heavy labor.
But it was a good year for me.
This Cold Fact thing.
I had achieved what I was trying to do,
is to get a product, you know.
And it was going very well,
I thought, you know.
How did it feel? A great feeling
of accomplishment. Actualization.
Did you believe
that it was a good album?
I did my best with it.
The reviews were good on it, and...
Yeah, I thought it was good.
I'm not the one to ask that, though.
Ask that question to.
But you go ahead, yeah.
Were you surprised that it didn't sell?
Um...
Was I surprised? It's the music business
so there's no guarantees, you know?
So I told him,
"You're bigger than Elvis, "
and he said, "What do you mean?"
I said, "In South Africa you are
more popular than Elvis Presley. "
And there was this pause,
and I sensed he thought it was
a crank call and he was gonna hang up.
So I said, "Listen, wait.
Listen, listen to me, wait.
"I promise you, just come here.
You won't be disappointed."
He's working his ass off in Woodbridge.
One day, be brought this picture
of himself on a milk carton.
And he'd say, "Emmerson, look at this.
You know, they're looking for me."
I said,
"Really? Why is that, Rodriguez?"
Next day he says,
"Emmerson, I gotta go on tour."
I said, "Come on, Rodriguez,
are you serious?"
Because I'm a journalist,
I doubted it.
That son' of thing does not happen
in the rational universe.
It does not happen.
It's against the laws of God and nature.
This guy is coming to tour here,
he must be an imposter.
It's a clever public relations scam.
Actually, not even a clever
public relations scam. it's a stupid...
'Cause it so obviously can't be true.
Only idiots would believe it. They...
But I was wrong.
We were always anxious,
of course, to get off the plane.
That was a long flight.
But we got off the plane
and we put our bags on our backs
and, you know, they were heavy and
we just kept moving towards the airport.
And suddenly,
three, two limousines pulled up
and we were sure
that they weren't for us.
We were like kind of
walking around them.
Like, "Oh, we better get out
of these people's way
"'cause they're important people
in limos."
But they were for us.
And that's when it began.
It was all another world.
It was another world.
Just like you would see people...
over Madonna or...
Like stepping out into the wind
and the paparazzi and all the...
you know, the production assistants
and everybody are there to welcome him
and take us into the VIP suite.
The white carpeting.
You know, that was something that
never would we ever even dream
of walking on white carpeting,
especially in your shoes.
They put him in a limo
and they drove him into the city.
And along the way, on all the lampposts,
were placards advertising the concert.
And he saw his face on every lamppost
as it sped by
and he'd go,
"There I am, there I am, there I am."
So we came
and we got to meet all the people.
We got to meet Craig Bartholomew
and their family and their kids
and Stephen Segerman.
And everybody was just so happy.
Everybody was thrilled.
We were even happier.
Stephen phoned me.
He said, "You will never believe this...
"but Rodriguez is coming to South Africa
"and we can be the opening band.
"Do you wanna do it?"
I said, "Of course we wanna do it."
"Why? Where is he?"
"Now they found him.
"They found him, he's alive, he's gonna
come and tour in South Africa."
"Are we gonna be the opening band?"
So I couldn't really believe this.
And then I got all the information:
he's living in Detroit and everything.
And then a little while later he said,
"Look, it turns out
he hasn't got a band.
"Could we be the support band?"
I mean his band.
I remember, even then, we were sort of,
"Is this really gonna be Rodriguez?"
We'll only know
if he can actually sing these songs.
I mean, we don't know.
What if it's just some guy?
It was just like
one day we heard about it
and the next day we were there,
trying to believe our eyes,
thinking it was just all very shocking.
I don't know, he took to it really easy.
He just walked in and did his thing
and I was amazed that he did so well.
But he's not all
"head in the clouds" kinda guy.
He's a little bit too much grounded.
He didn't take advantage
of all the amenities and stuff.
He didn't sleep in the big
double king size bed.
He kinda curled up on the love seat
and I found him there and...
Yeah, he just didn't think somebody
should have to make another bed
because he messed it up or...
There was a time
where I stayed in the house we were at
and everyone else had gone out.
The phone rang and it kept ringing,
so I decided to answer it.
And it was a reporter
looking to speak with Rodriguez
and set up time for an interview.
And then, before she hung up,
after I told her to call back later
to talk to someone
'cause I couldn't help her,
she told me that she wanted to know,
between she and I,
if it was the real Rodriguez.
We were rehearsing with a CD
of the songs that we've got
in the studio here in Cape Town
on the day that he came
from the airport, when he arrived,
and we were actually in the middle
of a song when he walked in
and just took over the microphone
and finished the song.
We switched off the CD player
and it was, like, completely seamless.
Completely seamless.
I mean, "OK, this is the guy."
I think we all knew this is
gonna be something really special.
Thank you, Cape Town. Thank you.
When we, uh...
initially got on a plane,
I thought maybe there 'd be, hopefully,
20 people in the audience.
Hopefully.
But it turned out really,
really different than that.
And there's old people and young people
and they're coming to see the show.
And there's my step-dad on the stage...
Before he went on stage,
'cause I wanted to take
a picture of the audience,
since nobody's gonna believe this.
You must remember, this guy,
it's like seeing someone like Elvis
come back from the dead.
People in the audience
still don't believe it.
They're standing there.
They're at the concert.
They've paid their money.
They still don't believe that Rodriguez
is actually gonna walk on that stage.
Are you ready?
Please welcome...
Rodriguez!
It was almost as if he
didn't even have to play.
They were just happy to see him.
So, for a time,
I think they wanted to meet.
It was a reunion.
It was something
completely different.
It was for everybody there, I'm sure,
the most exciting concert they'd
ever been to. Because it was unique.
We'd never seen Rodriguez.
And all you heard
was the bass player just playing...
And Rodriguez wandered out
to the front of the stage
and the bass player
actually just stopped playing.
And it took a while.
There was about five or ten minutes
of just people screaming at him.
Thanks for keeping me alive.
I think to go
from being the outcast
to being, uh, who he really was.
Because it was as though it was him
again... and that was who he was,
a musician on stage,
playing for his fans.
I thought I would see him
being bewildered
at all these people staring up at him.
I saw the opposite.
I saw this absolute tranquility.
There was absolute serenity on his face.
Total.
It's like he had arrived at that thing,
at that place
he'd tried to find his whole life.
Home is acceptance.
Here's a guy who'd lived somewhere else,
on the other side of the earth,
and it was almost as if
he had found his home.
And I looked around at all these people
and I thought, "This is
a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
"This is never going to happen again."
Well, isn't this all
our great fate?
Your dreams of yourself, the higher
forms of yourself is that one day
you will be recognised and that
your talents and everything else,
will suddenly become visible
to the world.
I mean, most of us die
without coming anywhere close
to that sort of magic.
I tried to get him to talk about that
when I interviewed him,
about how strange it was,
and I got absolutely nothing back.
Absolutely nothing back.
And I couldn't tell whether
he was just like son' of cripplingly shy
or whether I was
asking the wrong questions
or there was a language barrier
or whatever. He just...
Maybe that was OK as well
because he preserved his mystery.
I walked away
from that interview saying,
"This is all too strange to be true."
It remains too strange to be true.
"These are the days
"of miracles and wonder."
Oh, they were so sweet.
I didn't believe it.
And I still don't, but the thing is...
So when I went on stage
white seats, and the thing is...
And I said, "This is..."
So when I played a show, they jumped
out of their seats and rushed the stage.
South Africa made me feel like
more than a prince.
And then signing the autographs
for, like, a couple of hours.
I mean, just the line of people
bringing their guitars to be signed,
bringing their CDs and...
The most amazing thing I'd seen
was the man with his tattoo
of the Cold Fact.
He was a Rodriguez impersonator.
That just stoked my fire.
I was like,
"Man, that is just too crazy."
I have with me here,
presented to Rodriguez
for sales of the album Cold Fact.
Now just tell the States that,
OK, will you?
American singer Rodriguez
is certainly alive and well
and with us in the Front Row tonight.
Welcome.
Very kind. How are you?
I've heard some really riveting tales
about your "death."
I mean, they range from you pouring
petrol all over yourself on stage
and committing suicide to taking
a drug overdose and dying in prison.
Yeah, it was a beautiful,
beautiful dream
and then you gotta go back.
My dad said he's got two lives.
The carriage turns into the pumpkin bus
or something. It's like...
Did people in Detroit believe you
when you came back
and told them what had happened?
You know, people in Detroit
need to hear something good.
I'm not sure how much of it
they believed
because it is a grandiose story.
It sounds like something
you would make up
if you were bragging on some dream
or something.
He was really quite famous.
He'd be, you know,
tearing down this old shack
or he'd be sweeping up filth or dirt
and he started to show me one day,
and I didn't believe him,
about the album
and how it got to be so popular.
Somebody had a bootleg copy
of this thing
and it spread around and everyone...
It got to be so popular
that children could recite it
and sing the song word for word...
all of the songs word for word.
And I had never heard of the album
and I said, "Can you get me an album?"
And he couldn't even get me one.
I mean, that's how
obscure of a thing it was.
But he had all these photos and stuff,
with these giant crowds,
like Woodstock or something.
Like, "Are you kidding me? That's you?"
I thought it was Photoshopped
or something. I didn't believe him.
But he had all these giant crowds
and he was quite content
to just go and sweep up people's lawns
or clean up and do manual labor.
He stayed.
He lives a very, very, very modest life.
Definitely.
There's definitely no excess,
and he definitely still works hard
in order to make ends meet.
And there's no glamour to his life
in that sense.
But he must be a rich man today?
No.
Rich in a lot of things
but perhaps not material things.
I guess it just never got to that.
But he's sold
hundreds of thousands of records
in South Africa.
Well, yes.
But I believe there's a great deal
of perhaps bootlegging,
piracy, such like that. Perhaps...
Perhaps other people are rich.
You know,
when I think about that night
when I spoke to Eva on the telephone,
we could not have imagined
how much our lives were gonna change
after that phone call.
Eva came on tour with Rodriguez
and the organizers arranged
a chaperone bodyguard
to drive them around
and they fell in love.
And they have a child.
So Rodriguez has a South African
grandson, a South African grandchild.
For me, I used to be a jeweler
in Johannesburg.
I now live in Cape Town
and have a music store.
Things changed so much for us.
But, except for one person,
and that's Rodriguez.
For him, nothing has changed.
The life that he was living
is still the life that he's living now.
What he's demonstrated
very clearly is that you have a choice.
He took all that torment,
all that agony,
all that confusion and pain,
and he transformed it
into something beautiful.
He's like the silk worm, you know?
You take this raw material
and you transform it.
And you come out with something
that wasn't there before.
Something beautiful.
Something perhaps transcendent.
Something perhaps eternal.
Insofar as he does that,
I think he's representative
of the human spirit, of what's possible.
That you have a choice.
"And this has been my choice,
"to give you Sugar Man."
Now, have you done that? Ask yourself.