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,

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

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