#Sugar man song manual#

'In the music business, there's a lot of criticism and rejection. 'I was too disappointed to be disappointed,' the 71-year-old Rodriguez says now. The musician was dropped by the label two weeks before Christmas. 'Cold Fact' was released in 1970, and 'Coming from Reality' was issued the next year. Rodriguez recorded two albums for Sussex Records. He spent four years putting together 'Searching for Sugar Man' at his kitchen table on a budget of $1 million.Д¬larence Avant, former chairman of the board of Motown Records, is quoted in the documentary as saying that Rodriguez was among the five most memorable artists with whom he's worked - a list that includes Michael Jackson and Miles Davis. 'A lot of people thought he was going to be the next Bob Dylan,' first-time director Malik Bendjelloul says over the phone. He wrote his own songs, and the lyrics were evocative, elliptical and politically charged. In 1970, Rodriguez was poised for stardom. It's an unfinished story, and I'm thinking of taking another look at it.' When I try to call telephone numbers that are disconnected the next day, when the moneymen shut the interviews down, it was like a red flag to a bull. 'No one's really gotten to the bottom of the money yet,' Strydom says. If Rodriguez's records went platinum in South Africa, why, Strydom wants to know, did the artist never receive even one penny of the royalties due him? Who got rich off Rodriguez's songs, while the man who wrote them was raising three little girls in homes that at times lacked a bathroom? 'The little man gets shafted, sons and moneys drafted вЂ¦ ' On Thursday, he will play a concert at the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington.Д«ut it's the case of the mysterious vanishing royalty checks that most intrigues Strydom. Hints to the musician can be found, perhaps, by watching Rodriguez perform live. 'Searching for Sugar Man' won an audience award at Sundance. In the past two weeks alone, Rodriguez has been interviewed on CNN and performed on 'The Late Show with David Letterman,' who raved about the film. Now 75, at least it proves talented artists can re-emerge from a tough, frustrated life, and rediscover the success they have always wanted.Perhaps because the documentary tells a real-life story, it poses as many questions as it answers about the uneasy relationship between creativity and popular success, about the enigmatic artist, and about possible skulduggery within the music industry.Д¬lues to the first can possibly be gleaned from the recent flood of publicity surrounding the documentary. Rodriguez is an intriguing character - certainly evasive and humble, but his songs have a burning anger, frustration and passion, always suggesting that вЂњI could have been a contenderвЂќ feeling, that he could have been a Donovan or a Bob Dylan, with a voice of great strength and authority. In a larger sense it is also a portent of his long period in obscurity, until, over two decades later, he was loved again by fans. The more piano-ballad Neil Diamondesque song, To Whom It May Concern, is about finding love instead of drugs (there are parallels), but is ambiguous whether the narrator is talking to himself, or someone else, perhaps, rather sadly, someone from whom he has parted. The folk-psychedelic Sugar Man, his best-known song, is about searching for a drug-dealer for escapism. It was rumoured that this passionate young man had killed himself in the early 70s, but the documentary, with a certain level of storytelling suspense, tells the story of his great comeback, including an emotional late-90s concert in South Africa. Unknown to him, his albums remained popular and sold well, especially in South Africa and Australia.

#Sugar man song manual#

He spent that time doing low-paid manual labour, bringing up children, and campaigning for human rights issues, including the anti-apartheid movement. Sixto Rodriguez, like Bunyan, released an album, Cold Fact in 1970, and a follow-up, Coming From Reality in 1971, but due to commericial failure, disappeared from the public eye for almost two decades. After yesterdayвЂ™s Vashti Bunyan, another inspirational story of obscurity to long-sought recognition fro the mysterious Detroit-born Mexican immigrant singer-songwriter, made famous in the documentary Searching For Sugar Man.