Searching for Sugar Man
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,
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
And he probably could have done
fantastically well
if he had have continued.
When I met him, they said,
"Rodriguez, this is Steve Rowland.
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
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