Like many South Africans in the seventies and eighties, Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom were obsessed with the music of Rodriguez but the man himself was a mystery. After years of searching, they found the singer living in seclusion in Detroit. In 2006, Swedish film-maker Malik Bendjelloul stumbled on this remarkable tale. He tracked down Segerman and Strydom, and so began his four-year-long quest to make the Oscar-winning documentary,Searching for Sugar Man. Sugar Man: The Life, Death and Resurrection of Sixto Rodriguez outlines three separate journeys and the obstacles and triumphs that each presented: Rodriguez’s struggle to make a life from music; the odyssey of two fans to find out what had happened to their hero and Bendjelloul’s efforts to bring the story to celluloid.
In early 1998, South Africans woke up to the news that a man most thought had died in some fantastical way was in fact now planning to tour South Africa. The immediate feeling by many was that this was perhaps a tribute band.
The job of arranging Rodriguez’s first tour to South Africa went to an old business associate of his, tour promoter Zev Eizik, and a Swede by the name of Magnus Erickson. The proposed tour was to be a quick one, with just six performances in March 1998. The biggest fear among those who knew Rodriguez, his family included, was whether he would still be able to perform live gigs and cope with the rigours of touring a foreign country at age fifty-seven. He had not played live for nearly twenty years! Did he even own a professional guitar, for that matter? It turned out he didn’t, so, according to Magnus Erickson, tour management had to buy Rodriguez a guitar before the tour started.
In spite of some initial scepticism, fans flocked to buy tickets to see the artist who had added colour to their dreams. Many of them had not even been born when Rodriguez recorded his first album. It was no exaggeration to say that a large percentage of white South Africans knew his lyrics by heart, so the interest in his concerts came as no surprise.
The next challenge on the tour promoters’ list was to find Rodriguez a suitable band, and one that actually believed he was alive. Guitarist Willem Möller was one of the first musicians recruited. In an interview with YOU magazine, Möller recalls getting a phone call from fellow Big Sky band member Steve Louw. ‘Willem,’ said Steve. ‘You remember Rodriguez?’
‘Of course I remember him. Why?’
‘He’s coming to tour and they want Big Sky to open for him. You in?’
‘Sure,’ said Willem. ‘But isn’t he dead?’
‘Apparently not. Can you get the musicians together?’
Willem made a few calls, and the reaction he got was the same: ‘Opening for Rodriguez? You sure he’s not dead?’ The line-up was Steve on vocals, Willem on electric guitar, Russel Taylor on keyboards, Reuben Samuels on drums, Tonia Selley on percussion and backing vocals, and Graeme Currie on bass.
A few days later Steve phoned again. ‘It seems Rodriguez doesn’t have a band,’ he said. ‘Do you think you guys could also be his backing band?’
‘Not a problem,’ Willem recalls. ‘As it turned out, not only were we all Rodriguez fans, we’d all played his songs in cover bands. The tour was on, but just one question remained: was Rodriguez really alive?’
The band started rehearsing without Rodriguez. They knew the songs and, as seasoned session musicians, it took no time to perfect them.
* * *
A world away in Detroit, the fifty-seven-year-old singer put away his work gear. Leaving the cold behind, Rodriguez, his wife Konny and his daughters took a taxi to the airport for the twenty-plus-hour flight to sunny South Africa. It is not known what Rodriguez told his colleagues, if he told them anything at all, but one thing’s for sure: it probably wasn’t ‘I’m off to play six sold-out shows in South Africa.’ That would have seemed certifiably insane coming from a man who didn’t even own a professional guitar.
The Rodriguezes landed in Cape Town and were put up in an ultra-luxurious guesthouse in the scenic suburb of Camps Bay. So taken was Rodriguez with the level of extravagance that he invited the band to come and see the bidet, which was not something he had seen before. Craig took the next flight to Cape Town, where he met up with his friend David Viljoen, who had introduced him to Rodriguez’s music in the first place, and Brian Currin, a music fanatic who had the previous October built a Rodriguez memorial website. Little did he know at the time that Rodriguez had just been found alive.
The backing band, now pretty tight, was rehearsing to the CD of Cold Fact at Milestone Studios in Cape Town when Rodriguez walked in. Indicating for them to continue, he went over to the CD player, turned it off and picked up the microphone, and began to sing along with them. ‘I could not believe my ears,’ Tonia recalls, ‘his voice was exactly as it had been when I first heard it in the seventies.’
In the midst of these rehearsals, on Wednesday 4 March 1998, Rodriguez flew up to Johannesburg. His first stop was an appearance on SABC 2’s The Breakfast Club TV show, where, for the first time, South Africans got to see that he was actually the real deal and not an imposter.
The next day Craig met up with Rodriguez’s daughters Eva and Regan. Eva struck Craig as being deeply serious and as sharp-minded as Rodriguez. Regan, at nineteen, was good-humoured and clearly excited to be touring with her musician father. Craig travelled with them to Cape Town International Airport to meet Rodriguez’s flight from Johannesburg. Seeing the singer at arrivals was unforgettable, especially after all the hours he had spent poring over the man’s lyrics and their meaning.
On the afternoon of the first show, the complete entourage arrived at the concert venue. The band was already doing a soundcheck when it was discovered that Rodriguez couldn’t remember the words to ‘A Most Disgusting Song’. And who could blame him? It had been seventeen years, after all. Viljoen and Currin scrambled to make photocopies of the lyrics.
As the sun started to set, fans descended on the Bellville Velodrome. There was very little difference in the levels of enthusiasm between those older fans who remembered Rodriguez from the seventies and the younger ones who had only recently discovered him. Many of the fans in the audience still believed that when Rodriguez came on stage they would discover someone else, a lookalike perhaps.
Finally, the moment arrived. The crowd began to chant, ‘Rodriguez … Rodriguez … Rodriguez …’ Bassist Graeme Currie began the bassline that each and every person in the audience knew by heart. The crowd, already coiled to breaking point, sprang loose as one when they recognised the beguiling line from ‘I Wonder’. A wave of energy rippled through the audience. Magnus Erickson and Zev Eizik stood in the wings, worried sick. It was their investment after all. Where was Rodriguez? What was taking him so long? And then, finally, with the repetitive bass riff now on permanent loop and smoke filling the air, the ghost-like form of Rodriguez appeared, dressed in a black waistcoat and hat. Five thousand sets of eyes drilled into him. He couldn’t screw up now. This was the moment of truth. For Rodriguez and all involved, it was like a perilous dream; they just had to wake up. But this was not a dream. In a state of severe stage fright, Rodriguez was half cowering behind the drums. Tour management was now in full panic mode. ‘Get him to play,’ someone in the audience shouted. Ever the level-headed individual, Graeme Currie walked over to Rodriguez and escorted him to the microphone. He had to find a way to snap the singer out of his stage fright. ‘They’ve all come to see you,’ he said, gesturing to the mass of people that was fast becoming hysterical. Then he leant over and whispered something into Rodriguez’s ear. The singer burst out laughing. The spell was broken. The bassline kicked in once more, Rodriguez walked up to the microphone, strummed his first official chords in a concert on South African soil, and began to sing, ‘I wonder, how many times you’ve been had?’ At that moment, the entire audience joined in. This wasn’t going to be a concert after all; it was going to be a mass karaoke. And the words whispered by Currie into the sage’s ear? ‘Leaning over I smelled that he had washed his hair and I simply said, “Your shampoo smells good.”’
Tonia recalls being nearly too overwhelmed to play. She spent most of the evening trying to see through her tears. At some point during the show it struck her that apart from Rodriguez’s wife Konny’s small, non-professional video camera, the show was not being recorded. How could this be – a historically significant event such as this, after years of being in the dark about Rodriguez’s fate? After the show Tonia called Georgina Parkin, the producer from the production company where she worked when not touring. ‘We have to do something about this,’ she said. Georgina agreed and leapt into action. By the time Rodriguez and the band were setting up for the soundcheck for the second show, Georgina had presented a hastily drawn-up contract to Zev Eizik, who in turn presented it to the Rodriguez family, and an agreement to film the remaining concerts was in place, without which director Malik Bendjelloul would not have had the climax to his film, Searching for Sugar Man.
This is an extract from Sugar Man: The Life, Death and Resurrection of Sixto Rodriguez by Craig Bartholomew Strydom and Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman published by Penguin at a recommended retail price of R230.