Rodriguez
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Rodriguez

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The film in question is Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul’s Searching For Sugar Man. The documentary traces the journey of South Africans Stephen Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom to determine what happened to the recording artist who made such a huge impact in their own country without ever really tasting success in America. It’s a powerful piece of art in its own right, that necessarily has its roots in the narrative of the boy from the Detroit suburbs who never dreamt of the impact his music would have in nations as diverse as the newly-sovereign Zimbabwe, Botswana and Australia.

Rodriguez was born in Motor City when it was booming, the sixth child of Mexican migrants who left their home country in the ’20s. The Detroit of his youth was a far different prospect to its current incarnation: automobile factories around the middle of the century were veritably bursting with industry, and new faces in the hundreds of thousands arrived from the southern states of America and Europe in search of a new beginning.

The lives and journeys of the working classes were always going to inform the music of the city’s son. Growing up in the neighbourhood meant he saw people of all races and backgrounds tasting success and failure in equal measures. “I don’t know of any other city in America that reflects what is happening at a national level so thoroughly. If it’s good for the country, then it’s good for Detroit. At the moment we’re experiencing tougher times, and you can really tell that across the city. I’m critical of Detroit,” he explains, “and I always have been. I’m born and bred there, and I love my city – you’ve got to be from somewhere, right? I’ve lived through it all, and I saw the Detroit that had unions who fought to give the people equal pay. I saw the Detroit that banned child labour, so I think there’s a lot of positive energy to the city. Nowadays the population has fallen, and it’s what they call a ‘post industrial’ age for the city… But things will change. Things always change.”

Things began for Rodriguez with the 1967 release of his single I’ll Slip Away on the small Detroit label Impact. The track incorrectly named the artist as Rod Riguez, and he didn’t end up releasing anything until 1970 when he was signed to Clarence Avant’s short-lived Sussex Records (then home to Bill Withers and soul group The Presidents). That same year Sussex released his debut LP Cold Fact to a critically and commercially uninterested American audience, yet it charted considerably well in both South Africa and Australia in 1971. His second and final studio album Coming from Reality was released in November 1971 to a similarly tepid response in America. Once again, however, South Africa and Australia lapped up the troubadour’s offering.

His popularity in both countries increased over the next decade, with the Australian response encouraging the then-retired musician to travel south to the antipodes on his first international tour. After the success of the 1979 tour with English group The Mark Gillespie Band he returned to Australia in 1981 to tour far and wide with Midnight Oil. “I first met those guys in ’81, and I got along with them straight away. We were playing at this festival in the country, halfway between Sydney and Melbourne, and the winds got so heavy that they had to collapse the stages. It was a pretty wild time – I was hanging out with Men At Work before they got their haircuts, and Split Enz before they became Crowded House… Wild times, and good times,” he chuckles at the memory.

The 1981 tour coincided with Rodriguez’s graduation from Wayne State University in Detroit with a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy. The alma mater of such luminaries as actors Lily Tomlin and Jeffrey Tambor was a stimulating intellectual haven for the musician in the years when he’d withdrawn from public life to work as a construction worker. “I got to research everything there, because there’s a whole lot you don’t learn in school,” he laughs. “I wanted to know all about logic and aesthetics. I wanted to know how and why things worked, and my education there helped me sort out a lot of those questions. But a student is always a student – it’s the cumulative effects of knowledge that matter most. I believe in a kind of embodied wealth and knowledge: that which you learn about and carry with you on the journey is what matters most. Those essential tenets of language and culture are always evolving, and it is the student’s job to keep changing too.”   

“I have to mention Midnight Oil, if you don’t mind, because they have been such wonderful friends,” he continues, changing tack. “We’ve known each other since those early days, and it does seem like such a long time. I didn’t always want to be in the media, and [I think] it’s hard for some artists to have a public self and a secret self. But Peter (Garrett) just walked away from the stage, and left that persona behind to be himself again. To be able to leave that kind of the thing behind… well, a lot of people just can’t do it. That transformation is fascinating. I’ve always found myself as a musical political person, because social issues are my thing. But Peter does the political for real now, and he’s a proven fact to the people. I remember being in Darwin with him years ago and being inspired by his dedication to the rights of Aboriginal people. The rights of the American indigenous people is an issue I care about a great deal; as the child of Mexican parents I’m very conscious of the struggle of indigenous peoples wherever they might be.”  

The next chapter of Rodriguez’s storied history with Australia and Midnight Oil will continue this March when he’ll play Bluesfest and sideshows with The Break. The instrumental surf rock group is comprised of the Oils founding members Martin Rotsey, Jim Moginie and Rob Hirst, as well as Violent Femmes bassist Brian Ritchie. “The guys actually contacted me and said ‘make sure you let us know if you’re planning on playing in Sydney again,'” he says. “Next thing I know they’re volunteering to be my band: I mean, it would be a powerful performance without me even there! We’ve got some real history, and it’s such an unusual opportunity, so I’m obviously very happy to be reuniting with colleagues and friends. Byron Bay is so special to me because it’s where I first heard birds singing and carrying complete songs; none of that little chirpy stuff.”

As much as he loves Byron, the harbour city and its people have particular significance to Rodriguez. “I consider Sydney the capital of the world, because there is such beauty there and there is such an exchange of ideas. That kind of thing is very important for a city and for life. And you realise its importance as you get older. I’ve been through the decades – the forties, the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s… I’ve done ‘em all. Right now, well, I’m just working on tomorrow because I know how lucky I am to still be doing what I love.”

BY BENJAMIN COOPER