[ad_1]
One could expect that Sixto 'Sugar Man' Rodriguez says he loves Australia, since he has just announced a tour here, but the acclaimed singer-songwriter is able to wax poetic
"The luster of Sydney, the C horizon was really the last time I was there," tells AFR Weekend in the kitchen of his home in Detroit
a home remedy for glaucoma – eating a lot of kiwis and blueberries.
"It helped me a lot," he says, playing a joyful guitar flush and playing with his guitar. harmonica on the phone to emphasize the point
Provided
Rodriguez has more than aesthetic reasons to love Australia, which he will visit for the fifth time next February for nine shows, supported at most by the local singer Sarah Blasko.
Advertisement
Australia was the first country to fall in love with Rodriguez's first album, 1970 Facts after it sank without a trace in his homeland. Festival Records still made some copies, one of which was purchased unannounced by a 2SM radio deejay, Holger Brockman.
He began playing Rodriguez 's ode to a drug dealer in Detroit, Sugar Man on his midnight show – a brave move given 2SM was the property of L & D. Catholic church at the time. Encouraged by the demands of the listeners for his fiercely orchestrated tales in the wicked streets of America, Brockman regularly shot the entire LP when he spent a few years later on government-owned Double-J radio
. Rodriguez explains.
The first that this child of Mexican immigrant parents heard about his popularity in Australia was when Zev Eizik, the Melbourne-based promoter. followed him in 1979, organizing a tour of 16 dates pretty successful to be repeated in 1981.
Rodriguez is apologetic that all this was omitted from Searching For Sugar Man l \ u0026; Oscar's 2012 documentary that focused on his simultaneous popularity in South Africa, where his socially conscious songs became hymns for whites opposed to apartheid.
"I was only there for eight minutes and I had nothing to do with how they told the story," Rodriguez says.
"But this movie has helped me a lot, it's never too late and it's never too early, man, he's sent me global at 70 years old."
The world could soon hear a new Rodriguez album. He reveals that he will soon be entering the studio with Los Angeles-based Steve Rowland, producer of his second and last album, 1971 Coming From Reality .
Rodriguez says that the songs will maintain the political line of classics such as Cold Establishment Establishment Blues which, with lines like "the audience gets angry but forgets the date of the vote," could have been written yesterday.
"Some people want it to make pretty songs about pretty people, but it's not me," he says.
Rodriguez still lives in the house that he saved from the demolition in 1976 buying it from the Michigan Government for US $ 100. He is three blocks from Wayne State University, where he earned a BA in Philosophy in the 1970s after finishing his musical career.
Rodriguez maintains this spartan lifestyle despite his new tour income – he will play at London's Royal Albert Hall before he leaves for Australia – but that does not mean he's not interested by the author's rights of which he claims to have been cheated while, unbeknownst to him, his records were selling like hotcakes in South Africa and Australia in the 1970s.
"Clarence Avant [theSussexRecordsownerwhopublished Cold Fact and Coming From R eality ] did not pay me a penny, "says Rodriguez, sounding less happy for the first time
" He's negotiating with Universal for my material right now, and he's trying to make me sign an agreement "we can have it" – so we're in court on it, "he says. 19659002] Rodriguez begins his national tour on February 5, January 2019 in Sydney. Tickets are on sale August 7th.
[ad_2]
Source link
