Rodriguez has three albums in the Australian chart this week. The Rodriguez catalogue took an active run on the ARIA chart after his 2014 tour was announced last week.
Rodriguez was last in Australia only last year for Bluesfest and played a national tour with backing band The Break, featuring members of Midnight Oil and Violent Femmes.
The first Rodriguez album ‘Cold Fact’ (1970) is at 11, the ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ soundtrack is at 22 and his second and final album ‘Coming From Reality’ (1971) is at 25.
The Detroit singer songwriter Rodriguez has only ever recorded the two albums from the early ‘70s. Consider that at that time in Australia it was pre-FM radio, pre-Internet, pre-Cable and Digital TV. Australia was completely cut off culturally from the rest of the world at that time.
So when radio presenter Holger Brockman starting playing the music of Rodriguez on his program on Sydney AM radio station 2JJ, Rodriguez became a cult hero initially in Sydney which trickled through to other parts of Australia but kept him a secret from the rest of the world.
Meanwhile over in South Africa, Rodriguez was being worshipped with reverence as a dead rock star.
The story of Rodriguez from a South African perspective was told recently in the Oscar winning ‘Searching For Sugar Man’. The movie failed to address the one important cold fact … that Rodriguez was alive. “I wasn’t lost. I knew exactly where I was. Those rumours that persisted I didn’t have anything to do with,” Rodriguez tells Noise11.com.
The movie was made by Swedish documentary maker Malik Bendjelloul. Rodriguez says he did not get involved it in the production except for a brief appearance. “In explaining this film, I didn’t have anything to do with the making of that film,” he said. “I just want to make that point. I didn’t choose who he interviewed and what they said. I am in the film eight minutes”.
Rodriguez suggests that the directors of Searching For Sugar Man knew he was alive at the time of the story but chose not to include the fact. “That he omitted ‘79 and ‘81 of Australia is his choice. I did not get involved with the film,” Rodriguez says. “He knew about it. He didn’t want to put it in. He knows about other parts of that but he didn’t pursue any particular part of it. He gave the whole story in an hour and 26 minutes. He made the film”.
Watch The Noise11.com interview with Rodriguez
Rodriguez will tour Australia in October.
