Searching for Sugar Man Page #2

and you used to go over

to Volkswagen Frank's.

You'd go in and get a little "sugar,"

if you know what I mean.

I got some photos here

that I'd like to show you

that I've kept since my days in England

with Rodriguez.

Let me see.

Possibly it's in this book,

I don't know where.

These are all my photos

from when I was acting.

That's me, and that's Jimmy Dean.

That was in 1955.

Hang on, I think I've found them.

Think they're in here.

Yeah, here they are.

Wow. Good Lord, here they are.

You know, I haven't seen these pictures

in almost 35 years.

He's my most memorable artist.

You know, I've produced

a lot of great ones, but...

he's my most memorable.

It's not just a talent.

He's like...

He's like a wise man, a prophet.

He's way beyond

just being a musical artist.

And he probably could have done

fantastically well

if he had have continued.

When I met him, they said,

"Rodriguez, this is Steve Rowland.

"He really likes your album."

And Rodriguez said to me,

"Well, did you like Cold Facts?"

I said, "Man, I thought

it was absolutely brilliant.

"Absolutely brilliant.

"I can't believe that this album

didn't do anything.

"It's just a fantastic album."

So he played me...

Well, his next album was on...

In those days you had cassettes.

He had demos of this next album that

he was gonna call Coming From Reality.

And I said, "Wow, man,

this has got to be a smash.

"These are great songs.

"Little bit... Little bit different from

the others," I said, "but great songs."

I said, "And a couple of them

were so sad." You know.

There's one in there

that's absolutely a killer.

It's one of the saddest songs that...

I'm laughing, but it's one of

the saddest songs that I've ever heard.

And it's a very simple song.

Hang on, I wanna play this. Hang on.

Okay, listen to these words.

Oh, man.

And it really makes me sad, because...

that was the last song that we recorded.

And that was the last song

that Rodriguez ever recorded.

And what makes it even sadder

was the album was released

in November of 1971,

and we expected big things.

And it did absolutely nothing.

And then, two weeks before Christmas,

Sussex dropped him off the label.

And the very first line in the song,

as if premonition,

was, "I lost my job

two weeks before Christmas."

Oh, man. I just think about that.

This guy deserves recognition.

Nobody in America had even heard of him.

Nobody...

Nobody even was interested

in listening to him.

How can that be? How can that be?

Guy that writes like this.

I mean...

It's still a bit of a mystery

how the first copy of Cold Fact

actually came to South Africa.

But one of the stories I've heard

is that there was an American girl

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