Description
Like many South Africans in the seventies and eighties, Stephen ‘Sugar’ Segerman and Craig Bartholomew Strydom were obsessed with the music of Rodriguez, but the man himself was once a mystery. Only his name was once known, and the truth that he had killed himself on stage. After years of searching in a pre-web age, the two men found the singer living in seclusion in Detroit. Remarkably, the blue-collar worker had no idea that he had been famous for over twenty-five years in this remote pariah of the world.
In 2006, Swedish filmmaker Malik Bendjelloul got down to find ‘the most productive story on the earth’ and stumbled on this remarkable tale in the Guardian newspaper. He tracked down Segerman and Strydom, and so started his four-year long quest to make the Oscar-winning documentary, On the lookout for Sugar Man. Sugar Man: The Life, Death and Resurrection of Sixto Rodriguez outlines three separate journeys and the obstacles and triumphs that every presented: Rodriguez’s struggle to make a life from music; the odyssey of two fans to find out what had happened to their hero; and Bendjelloul’s pursuit to bring the story to celluloid. The book is packed with information not included in the film, about Rodriguez’s background, relationships and political activities, his tours to Australia, and the recognition that has in the end come to him after the film’s success.