
Searching for Sugar Man
I got my nickname from this song.
When I was in the Army they used to
mispronounce Segerman as Sugar Man.
And then they just started calling me
Sugar and that became my nickname.
It's 40 years since this LP called
Cold Fact by Rodriguez was released.
And in South Africa
it was a very popular album.
It was one of the biggest albums
of the day.
But the thing was,
we didn't know who this guy was.
All our other rock stars,
we had all the information we needed.
But this guy? There was nothing.
And then we found out
that he had committed suicide.
He set himself alight on stage and
burnt to death in front of the audience.
It was the most incredible thing.
It wasn't just a suicide.
It was probably the most
grotesque suicide in rock history.
The first time that I remember
actually recognizing him is
on the phone one day and said,
"I have this artist
I want you to come see with me.
"This guy's name is Rodriguez,
"he's working down by the Detroit River.
"There's a bar down there,
"down by the wharf riverside district.
"Let's go see him tonight.
"I think you'll really like him."
So that night, I remember,
we pull up...
away in this kinda isolated
part of Detroit
right on the side of the Detroit River,
and you could see the mist in the air
coming off the river. We could feel it.
And we went inside there,
and as we walked in the door,
the sound of the freighters
as they're going down the river,
and so it's like you're walking out
You walk out of the mist
and you go into this place,
and inside the place,
it's all full of smoke,
so there's a mist inside there.
Boom, hey, you know,
it's a wall of smoke.
Beer all over the place. Peanut shells.
It was just a mess.
And then you hear this strumming sound.
Strumming and batting the guitar.
And then you hear this voice.
Strange voice.
Finally, we walked
through the smoke, and I looked,
and there in the far corner I saw...
I could see the shadow of a man
and I couldn't see his face.
I said, "What's the deal?"
So we got a little closer...
And you see this guy
with his back to you.
So all you see is his back
and he's in a corner, singing.
It was an ethereal scene, if you will.
Foggy night, foghorns, smoke so thick
you couldn't see through it.
And here's this voice.
Maybe it forced you
to listen to the lyrics
'cause you couldn't see the guy's face.
That's when we talked to him and figured
we needed to do an album on him.
The only writer that I had heard of,
of that time period,
was maybe Bob Dylan,
that was writing that well.
He was this wandering spirit
around the city.
And, uh, sometimes
I might catch him in the corner.
You know, Detroit's got its share of,
uh, burned-out, desolate areas
and I would occasionally see him, um,
far away from The Brewery,
and I wondered,
and it just added
to this mythology of him.
Like, what is he doing?
What is he doing? What does he do?
I heard he did a little roofing,
some construction work.
Um, I think that's how he got his money
at the time.
He just was, you know,
and I say this with love,
I say this with respect, but,
I thought he was just a...
just not much more than a kind of
a homeless person, you know?
He just was a drifter.
He was just... Um...
I didn't know if he had a home,
you know?
He'd look like maybe he'd go
from shelter to shelter or something.
Detroit in the '70s was a hard place.
Well, it's still a hard place.
Lot of decay, lots of ruined houses.
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"Searching for Sugar Man" Scripts.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2021. Web. 5 Mar. 2021. <https://www.scripts.com/script/searching_for_sugar_man_17680>.