‘A Story of Pure Hate, with Pictures Between’:
a Weird and Belated Appreciation of Rodriguez.


I.

Currently enjoying a general release in UK cinemas (at the time of writing anyway – it’ll probably be long gone by the time I actually finish/post this) is ‘Searching for Sugarman’, a documentary directed by Malik Bendjelloul, telling the story of Sixto Rodriguez, and the cult that has grown up around the few dozen songs he recorded at the dawn of the ‘70s.

If you’re already a Rodriguez fan, or have seen any publicity for the film, then you’ll probably know most of the story already, but for anyone else in the audience, I think it stands up to another retelling.

A too-cool-to-possibly-exist street-walkin’ beatnik poet from inner-city Detroit, Rodriguez was ‘discovered’ at the tail-end of the ‘60s by Motown producer/arrangers Dennis Coffey and Mike Theodore, who found him performing with his back to the audience in an aptly named biker bar called ‘The Sewer’. Startled by the strength of his unique song-writing, Coffey & Theodore got him a deal with A&M subsidiary Sussex Records, and helped him record one of the greatest albums of all-time (and you can quote me on that), 1970’s ‘Cold Fact’.

Unfortunately, whether too angry, too weird or just too Spanish lookin’, Rodriguez did no business whatsoever in America, with ‘Cold Fact’ and its somewhat milder follow-up ‘Coming from Reality’ selling “about six copies” in the USA before the label dropped him at the end of 1971.

Rather than disappearing into drugs and disillusionment the way that so many of his generation did though, Sixto seems to have shrugged off his failure to make it in the music industry and gone on to live a quietly noble life very much befitting the guy who wrote those songs – working solidly as a labourer on construction/renovation jobs, involving himself with community politics, tutoring his three daughters in the ways of righteousness, and even running for mayor on an anti-poverty ticket (a ballot result shown in the movie reveals that he came in 139th).

Meanwhile however, a copy of ‘Cold Fact’ somehow made its way to South Africa, where the record’s references to sex and drugs (and no doubt it’s cynical, anti-authoritarian tone in general) caused it to take off like a forest fire amongst left-wing Afrikaans youth, with innumerable bootleg copies soon competing with an official release licensed from Sussex, as the album’s songs became secret totems for conscripted soldiers, and frequent singalongs for anti-apartheid protesters. Despite the government’s practice of literally ‘scratching out’ offending songs (that being most of them) from vinyl copies of the album, by the time the apartheid regime began to collapse in the ‘80s, Rodriguez was estimated to be “bigger than the The Rolling Stones” in South Africa, a top-selling artist on a par with The Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel – a status that isolated South African music fans naturally assumed he also enjoyed in the rest of the world.

As the royalties disappeared into a black hole somewhere at A&M though, Rodriguez himself remained entirely unaware of his overseas popularity, and, with his South African fans still lacking any information whatsoever on who he was or where he came from, rumours circulated that he was dead – that he had in fact killed himself on stage in the early ‘70s, either setting himself on fire or blowing his brains out after performing a final rendition of his song ‘Forget It’. Rumour gradually became accepted as fact, and before long Rodriguez was firmly enshrined as a dead rebel icon, alongside all the more familiar t-shirt/teenage bedroom poster favourites.

As you can imagine, the story of how a few South African music fans began searching for information on Rodriguez, eventually discovering he was still alive and persuading him to cross the Atlantic and play a concert, is stirring stuff indeed – documentary gold, and beautifully presented in Bendjelloul’s film, which, despite skimming over some of the facts for the sake of a good story (failing to mention the fact that Rodriguez played some well received concerts in Australia in the late ‘70s for instance), is great viewing and well worth your time.

Primed with this back story, the footage of Rodriguez’ first South African concert in 1998 in particular is absolutely jaw-dropping – the kind of occasion that has probably never happened before or since in the field of popular music. By way of comparison, imagine how we’d react here if Jimi Hendrix or Kurt Cobain suddenly announced that that whole death thing had just been a misunderstanding, and booked a comeback gig at the Royal Albert Hall.

A supremely composed individual – still rocking his thick black hair and ever-present shades, like a perfectly poised, mysterioso folk hero with none of the accompanying ego – Rodriguez seems to take his sudden transformation from aging labourer to back-from-the-dead rock star in his stride. “Thanks for keeping me alive”, he announces, as the crowd simply stares at him, cheering and crying, for a good five minutes before they’ll let him start playing. As he clasps hands and pats shoulders with his South African backing band, they look like stunned Catholics who’ve just received a benediction from the pope. Crazy scenes. Hard to even imagine something quite that emotional ever transpiring in our own jaded rock/pop world.

Stupid as it sounds, seeing all this had a powerful effect on me, simply because I’ve become a pretty big Rodriguez fan myself since I discovered his music a couple of years ago, but was only vaguely of the strange tale that goes with it. Although ‘Cold Fact’ easily tops my personal chart of shoulda-been-a-contender ‘60s/’70s lost masterpieces, he’s still a pretty obscure figure in Europe and the USA, even with his albums reissued and a movie about him in cinemas, and watching the footage of him performing in South Africa was a bit like seeing Exuma or The Twinkeyz or Michael Yonkers suddenly playing arena concerts to adoring fans. Unexpected, to say the least.

As with so many other things I like, I’ve mean meaning to find the words with which to write a proper appreciation of ‘Cold Fact’ for this blog, so maybe catching the film will finally give me the necessary impetus.

II.

Whilst you might have been seeing Sixto Rodriguez’ mug in broadsheets and multiplexes recently thanks to the success of the movie, you’ll be pleased to learn that my first exposure to the great man arrived through reassuringly underground channels – namely, a full page sketch and suitably enthusiastic write-up from Steve Krakow (aka Plastic Crimewave) in an issue of his indispensible Galactic Zoo Dossier zine. Curiosity duly piqued, it was a while later that I actually heard Rodriguez, again via the auspices of Mr . PCW, on a mix tape of his that was posted for download on (I think?) the largely defunct Silver Currant blog.

An anomalous fuzz-rocker on the otherwise largely acoustic ‘Cold Fact’, “Only Good For Conversation” was the featured tune, and it is an absolute mindblower, one that happily keeps the breeze circulating ‘round my skull to this day, hundreds of spins and dozens of mix CD appearances later.

Over one of the most certifiably bad-ass rhythm tracks ever recorded (sounds like James Brown was lurking in the shadows with a butterfly knife, ready to strike if they put a foot wrong), Dennis Coffey’s fuzzed-to-death guitar spits fire over Sixto’s verses, commandeering the space where a chorus would usually fit to instead plunge into the heaviest fucking riff you’d hear outside of a Black Sabbath record in 1970. Stunning.

What really sets it off though is Rodriguez’ vocals. Sprawling languidly atop the racket, he just radiates disdain here, like the testament of some sneering, sunglasses-after-dark street warrior who’d pass you by late at night in a Paul Pope comic. I could spend a lot of time trying to talk about how great Rodriguez’ vocal style is, but I probably wouldn’t get very far. You remember all those years ago when you heard Roky Erickson or Lou Reed for the first time, and thought ‘hello, this is a bit different’? Well it’s the same kind of deal. A really unique, un-placable voice, rising from nowhere, influenced by no one.

And as to what he’s saying with it, well…. I guess “Only Good For Conversation” is kind of a distant relative of the ubiquitous ‘bad woman dissing’ songs of the classic rock era, but the title alone clues us in to how unusual Rodriguez’ approach to this material is. I mean, it’s kind of a weird, back-handed compliment to call yr song that in an era when songs about women were generally based entirely on physical objectification, dontcha think..!? And furthermore, why would he name his song thus, when he makes it clear within that his problem with the woman in question is that she’s shallow, conventional, devoid of original thought…. and thus presumably not actually very good for conversation? Who knows; it’s all a bit unclear. What is clear however is that there’s some absolutely world class dissing going on here, as, having established in the first verse that his antagonist is “the coldest bitch I know”, Sixto really lays it on the line for his unfortunate lady;

“In the factory that you call your mind,
Graveyard thoughts are stone
A master thief, I wouldn’t enter there
You’ve nothing I can get on… SO HELP ME!”

Whoa, come back from that baby! None of that ‘she don’t answer my calls’ shit from Rodriguez.

Such plain spoken, baroquely formulated rage is the bread & butter of ‘Cold Fact’, which naturally I had to track down post-haste following this first exposure. And after getting over my initial disappointment that it didn’t offer much more in the way of way-out quasi-misogynist fuzz/funk carnage, the more subtle violence of Rodriquez’ worldview began to gradually seep into my consciousness, with every one of these songs offering something unique and spell-binding – something rising from the same troubled Detroit that gave us John Sinclair and the MC5, but at the same time wholly separate from it -a vision of a world where acoustic guitar folk really could reflect the fury of the slums, where psychedelic whimsy could stand up to tear gas and riot police.

Again and again in ‘Searching For Sugar Man’, interviewees express disbelief that an album as strong as ‘Cold Fact’ could flop so catastrophically in the USA, but to be honest, you don’t have to get far into it to understand how such failure came about. Opening cut, signature tune and potential single ‘Sugar Man’ may sound a fairly easy-going festival rocker these days, but… seriously? You guys thought it was gonna be a hit? I know that far weirder songs DID become hits in that strange era, from ‘White Rabbit’ to ‘Some Velvet Morning’, but was the American media ever really going to embrace this scary-lookin’ Hispanic guy, cruising in from the Detroit ghettos on some kinda mutant Tropicalia groove, promising us “silver, magic ships you carry / jumpers, coke… sweet mary jane” (because there’s nothing a street-walkin’ rebel poet likes better than a fucking good jumper)? This uneasy, meandering song that seems to disappear down a black hole of shrieking echo and dub-style abstraction halfway through? No, I just don’t think that was ever gonna fly.

And the album cover probably didn’t help either. I mean, let’s be blunt – you could give it points maybe for being unusual, ahead of its time etc, but basically this is a terrible album cover. Just look at those bloody trousers he’s wearing for christsake! Would you buy this if you saw it sitting in the ‘new release’ racks? I know I wouldn’t. To modern eyes, it looks a bit like some kinda bad euro-dance/hippie techno record, so god knows what anyone thought back in 1970.


In South Africa though, the potential audience had no such commercially-minded hang-ups. Purely on its musical merits, ‘Cold Fact’ is a powerful record in any time or place, but it wasn’t until I watched the documentary that it struck me how perfectly it must have chimed with the concerns of the embattled left-wing youth of a culturally isolated racist police state. From an American or European POV, some of Rodriguez’ revolutionary pronouncements might sound a little florid, provoking little more than a bit of happy nostalgia for the ideals and tensions of the post-’68 counter-culture. But listening to the songs again, imagining how South African kids might have experienced them, you’re hit again and again with lines that must have been right on the fucking money – “cos papa don’t allow no new ideas here / now he sees the news but the picture’s not too clear”; “curfew’s set for eight / will it ever all be straight? / I doubt it”. When Rodriquez sings “this system’s gonna fall soon / to an angry young tune / and that’s a concrete cold fact”, it’s amazing to think that for the older fans who came to his concert in 1998, that wasn’t just some vague refusenik bitching, it was a prophesy fulfilled. A concrete cold fact indeed.

‘Cold Fact’ is a perfect name for the album. Clearly a phrase that found particular resonance with Rodriguez (he uses it several times over in the lyrics), it’s a great two word encapsulation of his style here – clear, concise, authoritative. However fanciful and bizarre his lyrics might get, when this guy says something, you do NOT doubt him. Spat out in Rodriguez’ style, these couplets quoted above are devastating – this is not the sound of a guy who’s messing around.

Searching for contemporary comparisons, you may be tempted to draw a line between ‘Cold Fact’s pitch black cynicism and the post-Summer of Love disillusionment of Arthur Lee on ‘Forever Changes’ or Skip Spence on ‘Oar’, but the difference is, if those guys were disillusioned, Rodriguez never bought the illusion in the first place – in fact it sounds like he was calling shit on it from day one, straining at the leash waiting for some kind of radical punkoid psychedelic socialist overthrow that never materialised. Just the angriest, most eloquent hippie in the land.

And speaking of quote-unquote eloquence, Bob Dylan is another unavoidable reference point, with Rodriguez’ “mocking court jesters” and such certainly bespeaking the influence of ol’ Zimmerframe. But really they’re coming from opposite ends of the spectrum. I don’t want to get too down on Dylan (my mixed feelings about his work are the subject for a whole other post that I’d advise you to skip for the sake of yr sanity), but lining him up with Rodriguez puts his failings into sharp relief. A middle-class suburban kid obsessed with trying to harness some kind of working class American authenticity, Bob can honk and wheeze and blow for seven, eight, nine minutes and not communicate to us to the kind of politico-mystical COLD FACT that Rodriguez can spit out in a few carefully measured syllables. “Go on now and leave here / and never look behind / for I was born for the purpose / that crucifies your mind”. Rising from the real streets of industrial America circa 1970, Rodriguez is The Anti-Dylan. He’s the guy who should’ve knifed Bob Dylan in an alleyway and taken his place, mounting the stage and turning corrupt politicos to ash in 1 minute 57 seconds, dancing on their unquiet graves to a funk back-beat.

But that didn’t happen, because these things never do.

I could keep on writing this post pretty much indefinitely. I haven’t talked yet about the warmth that underlies the cynicism of Rodriquez songs, the amazing hammer blow poetry of some of his more personal lines, and I haven’t gotten ‘round to talking about ‘Coming From Reality’ at all (it’s a very different beast from ‘Cold Fact’, but definitely has its virtues). But hopefully I’ve said enough to at least get you interested, and that’s kinda the point… we can save the rest for another day. That’s it…. bag it man… forget it...

Labels: Rodriguez