‘Sugar Man’ hits sweet spot

Bay fans set for nostalgic trip down memory lane with US folk icon Sixto Rodriguez, writes Cornelia le Roux

FORTY years after falling for the melodic charms of a mysterious urban philosopher, South Africa has still not lost its sweet tooth for “Sugar Man”.

At 73 and with failing eyesight, Sixto Rodriguez has been wowing sold-out audiences in Johannesburg and Durban this week and, on Wednesday, it is finally Port Elizabeth fans’ turn to see the man behind the music perform live.

Back in the ’70s, the Hispanic-American folk soul singer’s debut album, Cold Fact, became the anti-establishment anthem of those South Africans opposed to apartheid, in cities, towns and dorps up and down the country.

To quote from the CD sleeve of the 1996 re-issue of this iconic album: “From the utterly stoned Sugar Man to the hard-core cynicism of I Wonder, the songs were blasted out in motels in Trompsburg, on secluded beaches on the south coast and in schools and varsities around the country.

“Housewives would iron to lines like: ‘jumpers, coke and sweet Mary Jane’ and presumably think the song was about jerseys, Coca-Cola and the cousin from Port Elizabeth.”

In the rest of the world – through some inexplicable twist of fate – the album sank without a trace, along with Rodriguez for almost four decades.

Rumours among fans had it that their star was dead, on heroin, in prison after having shot his wife, or had set himself on fire on stage.

Try running for mayor (the county spelled his name wrong on the ballot papers) and getting a degree in philosophy, while working as demolition man instead.

Neither word of his popularity in then-isolated South Africa nor royalties from hundreds of thousands of his albums sold, trickled back to the US.

“I gave it up after ’74, thinking it was not going anywhere,” Rodriguez explained, regarding his return to the daily grind of dusty construction and demolition jobs, in one of the many internet interviews about his rags-to-riches tale on:

“I was too disappointed to be disappointed.”

Enter two die-hard Cape Town fans – Stephen “Sugar” Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom – who spent years looking for any clues that would shed light on the whereabouts of the legendary “Sugar Man”.

Their relentless search paid off when in 1996, one of Rodriguez’s three daughters, Eva, came across a website set up by Segerman.

She contacted him via the site’s message board, notified him that her father was alive and well, and, within hours, connected the two by telephone.

Shortly thereafter, Segerman visited Rodriguez at his humble home in Detroit in the US in which he still lives – without a television or computer.

Rodriguez recalled: “He came, and showed me the [bootlegged] CD, and described this fanbase I had”.

And could he believe it? “Seeing is believing, you know?”

Two years later, in 1998, Rodriguez and his daughters flew to South Africa, where he was greeted like the rock star he was meant to be.

“I toured to 5 000-seaters and sold out these places,” he said. “It blew my mind.”

Of course, most Americans would still not know Rodriguez’s story, if it was not for the 2012 Oscar-winning music biopic Searching for Sugar Man followed by worldwide concert tours.

Rodriguez’s last tour to South Africa in 2005 sold out in minutes, as he performed to more than 40 000 fans across nine shows in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

And now, with his first Port Elizabeth concert coming up on Wednesday, I couldn’t help but take a trip down memory lane – and all the times Rodriguez gave me some sugar. And the icing on the cake? Seeing him perform live in 2005.

I spent many a night as a student at the feet of the Detroit master, his counterculture chanson a marriage between Lou Reed and Bob Dylan – the nonchalance of the mean streets of Reed’s underworld and the gritty grind of Dylan’s protest. Add to this some Nick Drake awesomeness. I was completely hooked. So when I had the opportunity in 2005 to see the man whose music was the soundtrack to so many South Africans’ lives, I bolted to the then Independent Armchair Theatre in Observatory, Cape Town.

Outside a gray drizzle veiled the evening, but inside the crammed little venue nothing could dampen the sheer excitement of a crowd awaiting poetic justice to be played out on stage.

And Rodriguez did not disappoint.

A slight figure clad in black leather pants and trademark hat, he sneered his way through his signature song, Sugar Man.

Hearing: Sugar Man, won’t you hurry, cause I’m tired of these scenes was like closing your eyes, clicking your heels together and zooming off back to the day when one would listen and listen and listen to his sweet but vitriolic folk songs about drugs and big-city misery.

The crowd cheered and grown men hugged each other, when the spiraling intro of the ’60s psych-pop inspired I Wonder engulfed us.

Memories came flooding back, with the humble “Dylan of Detroit” setting the mood.

Of course there were other highlights – the shuffling blues rock of Dead End Street, the bite of the unforgiving reality of Establishment Blues, the insistent drama of Can’t Get Away and the accusatory Rich Folks.

Crucify Your Mind, and the beautiful I Think of You also went down a long-awaited treat. But then again – everything did. It was Rodriguez. ý Tickets for An Evening with Rodriguez at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium Outer Fields are available from Computicket at R480.

Gates open at 6pm and supporting act Alice Phoebe Lou will be opening the show at 8pm.