147. Rodriguez
London Palladium
23 July 2016
This working-class singer-songwriter from Detroit, releases a couple of albums in the early ‘70s; chief among them Cold Fact, a street-poet swirl of protest songs, narcotic lullabies and anti-establishment vibes. In the U.S. it bombs and Rodriguez disappears, presumably back to putting up drywall.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, in apartheid-era South Africa, Cold Fact spreads like contraband, banned by censors, passed around like revolutionary gospel. Rodriguez becomes massive. Like, Elvis-big. No one knows how his album got there. Rumours swirl: he’s dead; he shot himself on stage; he set himself on fire. Something tragic and suitably mythic.
Fast forward a few decades, and a pair of South African super-fans, armed with vinyl sleeves, internet dial-up, and blind optimism, start digging. What they find is not a ghost, but a living, breathing Rodriguez: older, humbler, and still blissfully unaware that he’s been a folk hero on the other side of the planet since Nixon resigned.
Enter the Oscar-winning documentary Searching for Sugar Man (2012), which tells the whole tale. Rodriguez goes from urban legend to living legend almost overnight, finally tours South Africa (to stadiums, no less), then the rest of the world. All while remaining maddeningly modest and continuing to live in the same Detroit house, like nothing ever happened.
It is why I am at the London Palladium with my South African wife and two South African friends. To them, this isn’t just a concert. It’s a pilgrimage.
I get it. To us, Sixto Rodriguez is a footnote, but to an entire generation of South Africans, Cold Fact wasn’t just an album, it was contraband scripture, passed around like a secret handshake in the dark days of apartheid. Rodriguez was the poet laureate of the oppressed, the man who wrote “I Wonder” whilst not knowing his words were lighting fires halfway across the world.
So, when he ambles onstage tonight, wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses, a little unsteady but unmistakably himself, there’s an audible exhale in the room. Part disbelief, given the myths that had surrounded him for years. But the myth is here. In the flesh.
Let’s be real: Rodriguez isn’t slick. The voice is ragged around the edges, the guitar occasionally meanders, and his between-song mutterings are often more cryptic than profound. But none of that matters, because every chord is loaded with meaning, every lyric has the weight of decades of misunderstanding and survival. He sings “Crucify Your Mind”, and it’s like a letter finally arriving 40 years late but still perfectly relevant.
The setlist pulls from both albums (Cold Fact and Coming from Reality), with the crowd hanging on every word. And then comes “Sugar Man”. The moment. That looping, woozy, almost otherworldly track that started all of this. It’s sung slowly, tenderly, like he knows full well it’s the closest thing to a hymn some of this crowd have. Time suspends itself for a few minutes.
There’s no encore theatre. No false ending. Just a slow shuffle offstage and a standing ovation that feels like a collective exorcism.