Rodriguez plays Grand West on 21 February 2013

Sixto Rodriguez is one of the last lost legends of the past forty years, a truly legendary rock and roll story of creative passion stifled and almost killed by commercial disinterest, yet with a tiny flickering flame in a continent far  away from the man's homeland and also a country where this man would have been a second class citizen had he lived here, and then the miraculous rediscovery about 27 years after the release of his last album when a couple of fans from South Africa set out on the investigative journey chronicled in the Oscar winning documentary Searching for Sugarman and not only found the man but also brought him to South Africa to tour and to demonstrate that rumours of his death were greatly exaggerated. that first series of concerts in 1998 must have been spectacular, awe inspiring and downright unbelievable for the true believers who'd kept the faith when no-one else in the world even knew of Rodriguez the musician.

Of course, as the biography shows, Rodriguez was also known and appreciated in Australia and New Zealand, perhaps because of South African exiles, perhaps simply because the Southern Hemisphere was different and could make its own heroes.

Rodriguez arrived in South Africa as a legend and played his concerts like a messiah, then returned to obscurity in the USA. He returned for more shows in 2003, still under appreciated in his homeland. At the time in insightful documentary was shown on local television, at least partly telling the same tale as immortalised in Searching for Sugarman and this was the first time I took note of the story behind his return to the limited limelight provided by South African interest in his music. I owned a CD re-release of the Cold Fact album, as a memento of the kind of musical memory Searching for Sugarman celebrates, of an obscure American artist who somehow struck a chord in my country. I really liked the music on Cold Fact. it was not so much of a call to subversive arms as it seems to have been to the people who idolised the record back in the  Seventies.

I cannot even recall whether I took note of the Rodriguez shows in Cape Town in 1998. Not that I could have attended them out in the Northern Suburbs, as I had no transport. similarly I had little interest in attending any of the 2003 shows. In the first instance I still had no transport and in the second instance I was wary of a living legend returning to bless us with his favour. My cynicism convinced me that it would not be any good. I had also read press reports about his alleged drunkenness onstage and off and the general air of decrepitude around him, given that he was quite old and not in the best of health.

By  2012 my attitude had changed somewhat and when I heard that Rodriguez would be playing a couple of shows in Cape Town at the Grand West Arena in Good wood, I decided to go. The first Cape Town show sold out in record  time and I could get tickets only for what was then the second and last show of the 2013 tour. Subsequently  2 more Grand West performances were added and they became the first two shows of the tour.  I guess the unprecedented interest was piqued by the success of the Searching For Sugarman documentary as well as the belief that this tour might well be the last time any of us would have the privilege of seeing the man perform on stage.

During  2012 I had the benefit of finding a double CD pack release of Cold Fact and Coming From Reality, the two studio albums that form the canon.

The big hits are from Cold Fact and Coming From Reality is almost a different artist altogether. The record was recorded in England and has much more folk pop approach than the militant tunes of the first album and to a degree these tunes were kind of off putting. The sweetness and light of the love  songs did not really do it for me. The overdubbing on some tunes, like the strident, the out of place lead guitar on "Climb Up On My Music"  were disturbing. over time and with repeated listening even these second wave tunes have revealed their attraction but my guess is that Cold Fact will always be the iconic album.

 Bought the Searching for Sugarman DVD and must admit that while the story moved me and I was quite taken by the many views of Cape Town, that made it seem as if the Rodriguez legend and spirit was kept alive only here, but on the whole the story was the best thing. the documentary was limited. One still knew very little about Rodriguez even of the film makers managed to unearth a number of ghosts from the past, with a hilariously belligerent insert from Rodriguez's old label boss. of course the story is about the search and the triumphant concerts of 1998 but one would have liked to know what happened to the guy after that, when he returned to the States and obscurity.

As part of my psychological and emotional preparation for the Rodriguez concert on 21 February 2013 listened to the 2003 album Live Fact, culled from concert tour. My worst fears were realised. he band was accomplished and mostly got it right though it was not a note perfect replication of the stuff on the records. The downer was the very weak and colourless Rodriguez voice. He sounded ancient, decrepit and also disinterested. if this was how he was going to sound on the 2013 tour , I may well have wasted the price of two tickets.

Von-Mari and I were at Grand West about 90 minutes before show time and could have a relaxing meal beforehand. Grand West was buzzing. many concert goers and the usual crowd of attendees who come to eat and to play. This is not a place I frequent. in fact I think I've been there a total of maybe four times and he crowd thee aren't exactly my type of people.

Just before the show started I had the opportunity of watching concert goers strolling towards the Arena and was amazed at the age profile. it seemed that the average  age was well beyond 50, possibly the generation who cherished Rodriguez in the first place, and then a smattering of a younger crowd. The hipster element was missing. Rodriguez must not be a legend to them.

The auditorium was packed. Our  seats were on an upper tier, just above one of the entrances to the room, facing the stage. I had an excellent view of one of the large video screens, always a bonus when the figures on the stage are so small to me that I cannot distinguish them. The seats and the sound quality were far better than at the recent Red Hot Chili Peppers show at the Cape Town Stadium.

Local band Newton's 2nd Law opened for Rodriguez and started playing promptly at 20h00 and finished off without encore about 25 minutes later. The band has, on paper, an interesting sound of big guitars, fiddle and keyboards backing a guy with a soulful R & B kind of voice. The arrangements are tight and the musicians proficient and obviously well-rehearsed and the vocalist sure can croon with warmth and coolness but the overall effect is less than memorable. There is no outstanding song or hook or moment of brilliance that sticks in the mind or makes one want to own the album they've already released.

I always wonder how bands  like this get onto an international tour as support. They must have ambitious management with some connections. Perhaps it is really true that the support band has to pay to be on the tour. in this case Newton's 2nd Law was the support band on all of the Rodriguez shows and the exposure must have been nice even if the band played to a less than full house and, as is usual for support bands, to an audience who are not here to see them. Maybe the exposure has helped them win over new fans and to sell more albums. I might buy the record simply to have a closer listen to the band but not because I thought of them as the biggest thing since colossus. If they last, they might fit into the niche currently occupied by Prime Circle and Watershed and perhaps Just Jinger, with the big anthemic rock sound and smooth emotional vocals without any distinguishing characteristics.

Between the end of the opening set and the arrival of the main event we had to wait about thirty minutes while a curtain was drawn across the stage. Quite dramatic.

Just before 21h00 the MC welcomed Rodriguez to the stage and the audience erupted with loud cheers and applause. The  messiah hath landed. One of the most emotional moments in the Searching for Sugarman movie is when Rodriguez walks on stage for the first South African concert at the Bellville Velodrome, to the distinctive bass figure that opens "I Wonder" and the audience are on their feet and holler and shout and stomped  for a very long time while the band vamps and the man just stands there, dumbfounded and  silent, allowing the waves of unexpected weird adulation to wash across his head. although the adoration at Grand West is palpable, it is nothing like that moment. I did feel a tinge of a similar emotion  though, seeing as how this is probably the  first and only tie I would in real life experience this kind of truly legendary event. I could not see the man except on the video screen but there he was, in real life  and still standing.

Nobody ever introduced the band but I guessed that Willem Moller was still the guitarist and perhaps had been for all of the Rodriguez shows.

The opening song was "Climb Up On My Music" which on record is a strange amalgam of basically quiet  folk song about the joys of music, with  a strident lead guitar overdub that is so out of place as to seem a deliberate attempt to be weird. this live version  is louder than the recorded version but the lead guitar bit is subdued and in the background. the sound is typically big, with keyboards and two drummers and percussionist to fill the room unlike the relatively sparse arrangements of the first album.

The Rodriguez voice is very weak and almost non-existent. He sounds like a resurrected legend rather than a living one. my first thought was, oh God, this is going to be a  long unhappy evening if he carried son like this. He wears  floppy hat that he sometimes takes off and keeps putting it back on his head, and dark sun glasses. I later read that he does not see that well anymore and the glasses must be a protection against the glare of the spotlights.

The next couple of numbers are in the same vein as the first. The band plays strongly and competently  and the vocals are wispy and almost ephemeral. The rumours started to ring true, that he cannot do it anymore and has been wheeled out solely for a bunch of people to make money out of the deal. then the opening bass notes of "I Wonder" start rolling out and the crowd goes nuts. Rodriguez had been swigging out of a water bottle after every song and then started drinking something else from a cup. whatever this combination was,  or  perhaps it was the song, but from here  on in the voice returned with strength and purity and if one closes one's eyes one could almost be listening to the record. All of us  sang along. it was a great moment of magic coming alive at Grand West.

for the rest of the set Rodriguez is in good voice with the  years falling of like mist burning away in the mid-morning.  He performs all the best known tunes from the two albums and then threw in a couple of cover versions, from "Sea of Heartbreak" to “Fever" to a rocking "Blue Suede Shoes."  Perhaps his Fifties roots.

"I like to do songs by American songwriters," he explains.

Rodriguez has lots of onstage business. He starts off each tune by strumming his amplified acoustic guitar (quite a sexy little number) with the  volume knob turned way down, before he turns up the volume and one can hear the rhythmic playing. At first, I thought he was simply forgetting time all the time, to adjust the volume but because he was doing it or every song I started thinking that he was first making sure he was playing the correct chords and rhythm before he kicked in the volume. At the end of the song the guitar falls away from his body, hangs loose and he drinks something, perhaps says something and then he takes up the ax to start the next tune. this means that there is a break of a couple of minutes between each song which kind of breaks the flow, unlike Newton's 2nd law, whose songs segued into each other with the minimum of interruption, but this method could also be deliberate, to give the old guy a chance to have a rest and to catch his breath before launching into the next tune.

the audience is loud and vocal and there were several declarations of love for the  legend, to which he deadpanned "I love you back" much to the general delight. He tells  a risqué Micky Mouse joke, makes a somewhat unintelligible speech about how wrong violence against women is, suggests that there should now be a female pope and asked us to regard him and treat him as an "ordinary legend." the patter is broken and mumbled but the crowd loves it. In the breaks between songs there is an ongoing dialogue with the man on the stage. They are his friends. This is so unlike the extremely cool that is the usual Cape Town audience.

the big highlight of the evening is "Sugarman" where the audience loudly sings along and when the song comes to an end a section of the audience takes up the chorus and sings it back to Rodriguez and then the entire crowd, me included, sings the chorus. I do not know whether Rodriguez became emotional at this but it was pretty damn awesome from where I sat. This is true dedication and devotion and love for this guy who is revered in South African and nowhere else.

The version of "Blue Suede Shoes" was pretty great. I would not have thought Rodriguez  had this kind of rocking in him anymore but he may well have played the  in many bars before where doing the  human jukebox ting is required. The  tune also have the crack band a great opportunity to rock out with gusto.

According to Rodriguez he not only makes music to get girls, to make money or be famous, he also does it because he enjoys it. Obviously, as the rewards have been a long time coming.

Some in the crowd called out for "A Most Disgusting Song" but it was not forthcoming. I  wondered whether Rodriguez would want to sing a song with  the referral to "faggot bars" and had perhaps decided that it would not be politically correct. he also did not do "Heikki's Suburbia Bus Tour" another favourite of mine off Coming From Reality.  the main set lasted about  75 minutes and with the mandatory encore the whole performance lasted 90 minutes. Had Rodriguez not played the cover versions he could have done more of his own tunes, but never mind. the finale was a sterling, striking version of "Like A Rolling Stone."  By this time the voice was strong and I could not help but contrast hoe Rodriguez sounded with how ruined and creaky  Bob Dylan's voice currently is. they are more or less the same age and in a way Rodriguez must have been influenced by Dylan, particularly on the debut album,  and tonight Rodriguez probably did Dylan's most famous song more justice than Dylan can do these days.

the last few international acts I've seen have performed at Cape town Stadium and the atmosphere and sound were quite different to the relative intimacy of Grand West Arena. The space is by no means small and intimate but compared to a stadium  it is kind  of. Rodriguez's music probably would not have done well in the large open stadium space and the other great thing is that the palpable  love  in the room and the audible shouts made the experience something more special than a tiny group of musicians in the distance of a huge stadium space with the concomitant extremely loud sound system that often kills the music because all and any subtlety is lost.

The only other gig of similar nature that I recall is Crowded House’s show in the Good Hope  Centre in 1993. The crowd was probably smaller and there was q lot more standing room in front of the stage in the days when the concept of golden circle had not yet been afforded the status, and financial reward, now accorded it. I could get close to the stage and could therefore see the guys and secondly the crows sang along to many of the songs which  were well known, particularly the hits. Not that Crowded House was of similarly legendary status as Rodriguez but it was awesome that  they wold come to South African to play when they were still going strong.

This was the first rock gig I'd attended at Grand West, which has become the second venue of choice for big acts, other than the mega shows at Cape Town Stadium.  have never been to any rock concert at the Bellville Velodrome which was once the main venue for smaller shows because the general perception was that the Good Hope Centre was a bad place for gigs though it once was the  premier indoor  venue in Cape Town,  Bad acoustics were always blamed. at the Crowded House show I could not fault the sound. at Grand West the sound was superb.

When rock was young most of its practitioners had no concept of doing it a long career. They did not expect the rock lark to last longer than 5 years and certainly did not think that it could be done once you were past 30. Today the rock generation that made the breakthrough all in or very near their seventies and yet they are still performing and recording if they can. The Stones  have taken long breaks between albums and tours but have never stopped. Bob   Dylan had kept  on touring and recording. Leonard Cohen was forced to tour again at a ripe old age  because of financial pressure. IN a way, therefore, it is not strange or Rodriguez to be  touring at his age even if he has never had a rock career. in this way he is very much like many of the old bluesmen who were rediscovered in the early Sixties, after long lives spent in some menial job or another, after an initial burst of recording activity when they were very young, because the music thing did not provide enough income to sustain a family.  Who knows how good or bad Rodriguez's life might have, working construction raising a family and the rest. Right now his career has taken off with exposure in the USA even if this is not his core audience and maybe will never be. There is talk of recording a brand new album. In a sense it is almost superfluous for him to give us more music. the legend rests on the 2 albums from the dim distant past that never had an audience larger than the few thousand people in the Southern Hemisphere.  Any new recording might be of curiosity value because it would be by Him but it could not really achieve legendary status. It will no doubt immediately be snapped up and be hyped to death. Cold Fact became known  through word of mouth and sold steadily over many  years, it was never a massive popular success and that is part of the magic and the attraction, that one was part of a movement that was not a movement and not just a member of the kind of mass hysteria that greeted albums like Thriller or Born in the USA.

The one fact that emerged from the Searching for Sugarman documentary is that Rodriguez probably saw very little of the revenue  or royalties from record sales. Creative accounting was rife and the music industry in the Seventies and for a small label and a performer who sold diddley squat in the States, his home market, the accounting would have become more creative than ever. One could imagine that Rodriguez was in effect repaying the recording  costs from every bit of record  sales income for as long as the records sold.

My expectation is that Rodriguez will not tour here again. This tour in the wake of the documentary was a  last hurrah, a last visit to the country of his legend. even if the man somehow now or posthumously becomes famous in the USA it will never have the same resonance as his fame in South Africa which grew from an organic grassroots knowledge of something special to a grand obsession.  It never happened in the States and cannot happen now. When I bought my first sets of rock encyclopaedias I looked up the name Rodriguez, because I was intrigued about this guy whose record was so popular here but of whom I did not know much. There was not a single mention of the guy in any of the books I consulted. The closest was a country singer called Johnny Rodriguez who was completely obscure and unknown toe me before I saw his name in an encyclopaedia, yet he was considered well known enough to merit inclusion where Sixto Rodriguez, though I did not know the first name then, had no such claim.

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