An Interview with Stephen Segerman of Searching For Sugar Man
(originally published at https://www.frontrowreviews.co.uk/)
Stephen Segerman, record shop owner and devoted music fan, was instrumental in the search for Rodriguez, the folk-rock artist who had been unwittingly influential to hundreds of thousands of South Africans for over 30 years. Front Row Reviews’ resident Saffer tracked him down and was lucky enough to score this exclusive interview with “Sugar”, the Indiana Jones of the terpsichorean muse.
Stephen Segerman and Rodriguez, or, Sugar and the Sugar Man
FRR: First off, Steve, most people who see Searching for Sugar Man internationally are coming in blind, without context. So what does Rodriguez mean to us South Africans?
SS: It’s so total to us. Trying to explain how ingrained Rodriguez was in our lives, the movie seems to overstate it but you could make a three-hour movie and still not convince people of how important this guy was to us, especially because of the army. The army was a big part of this, because the guys were all in the army and apart from Leonard Cohen, Rodriguez was very comforting to us, much like Jimi Hendrix and the Doors were to Americans in Vietnam. And the army is how his music moved around a lot, so he was everywhere.
I sneaked a peak at what reviewers were saying [about the film] and it was all really positive, and I’ve got to be honest, I’m not really surprised, because to watch as a South African is one thing but at Sundance they were mostly American audiences. There were 6 or 7 screenings. We took a drive out to Ogden, and to the Salt Lake City library, so we were taking the film to places where there were just American people, I swear to you, they’ve never heard of this oke* in their lives, not one person knows him… and the reaction of Americans to that movie, it’s a bit different to South Africans, who kind of “get the joke”, for the first half of the movie, but the Americans don’t know what’s going on, and it’s so powerful to them, that it’s true. They don’t believe it. I’ve had a lot of emails, people saying to me, “Did you make this up? It’s brilliant!” That’s what makes this so completely unique. It’s just too… beyond. It’s a story of rock music that is unique. Nothing like this has happened. Nothing else like this can happen, it’s like Ryan Giggs, the only footballer to have played in every Premier League season and to have scored in every season. Nobody else can do that. Because nobody else was there in the beginning.
FRR: A once in a lifetime thing?
SS: What, Rodriguez or Ryan?
FRR: So what was the catalyst that led to your going to find out more? How did you connect with [journalist] Craig [Bartholomew]?
SS: I was sitting on Camps Bay beach with a friend from Los Angeles, called Ronit, who asked me “Where can I buy Jesus Rodriguez?” I didn’t know what she was talking about because we didn’t call him that, we just called him Rodriguez. She said, “You know, Cold Fact?” Well, across from Camps Bay beach there’s a CNA**, so we went across and she bought it. I was intrigued that nobody she’d met had ever heard of it.
Rodriguez's first album, Cold Fact
I had never heard the second album, Coming From Reality; most people only know Cold Fact. A really good friend of mine, Andre Bakkes, said he had the album, and he gave it to me. I couldn’t believe I had found the missing Rodriguez album. Then I told another friend of mine called Andy Harrod, who’s in the music business, about it, and he said they were looking for a copy of the record because they wanted to release it on CD in South Africa for the first time, but they couldn’t because the record company didn’t even have tapes. So they took the record and that’s what they used to release the CD of Coming to Reality.
That’s not in the movie. There’s a whole part of the story that’s not in the movie, about me and Andy and all that, but that’s why the record company asked Andy and myself to write the liner notes for the CD release as a reward: for finding the album. In the movie I read those liner notes.
One thing you’ve got to understand: as this guy I’ve worked with on Rodriguez for many years, Brian Currin, said: “This is a story that just keeps on giving happy endings.” We just kept thinking this was the last thing that was going to happen… and here we are. It’s been, like, 15 years or something. It was a thrill just to release the CD, and to see my name in the liner notes. But as far as we were concerned he was dead.
Then Craig Bartholomew was in CD Wherehouse in Jo’burg and he found the CD and thought wow, cool. He read the liner notes and then went to the record company and said, “Who’s ‘Mad Andy’ and who is ‘Sugar’?” And he phoned me, we had a long conversation that ultimately lasted about nine months, about finding out what actually happened to Rodriguez, and I set up a website. Craig came down to Cape Town and we met in Greenmarket Square and had a lekker*** rap about Rodriguez, but we never had the vaguest idea what was going to happen, we were just on this quest. Who knows why you do what you do? There’s nothing mysterious about it, it was just this series of circumstances.
FRR: You went with the movie to the Sundance Film Festival. What was that like?
SS: Sundance was such a trip! I’m not a movie person at all; this was all new to me. I’ve been working on this with Malik for about five years; three years was actually making the movie. He’s been to South Africa a few times. We shot a trailer, about one and a half minutes, that won at a festival where you pitch your documentaries. So it’s taken a long time. We never really knew what we were going to do with it, but we always had Sundance in mind – Malik really wanted to go to Sundance. So when we sent it to them, we got an email back saying that we were the opening film. That was a life-changing moment. I couldn’t believe that – not that they’d accepted it but that they were opening the festival with it. We kept hearing from them how much they liked it, how they were punting it, and we were just amazed. They flew us all there, everybody was at Sundance: Sandra, Rodriguez’s eldest daughter, and Regan, his youngest (Eva was still in South Africa), Craig, Malik, me, Rodriguez was there – we were kind of like this entourage. We went around to about six or seven screenings of the film, and we’d sneak Rodriguez into the movie house, so no one knew he was there.
So Malik would introduce the movie, say, “I’m not going to tell you anything, just enjoy the movie and we’ll talk afterwards. We’ll have some guests.” So we’d show the Americans the movie, and afterwards the movie house was just a different place. It was emotional; people were giving it standing ovations and crying – it was unbelievable.
FRR: Well, it is a deeply moving film.
SS: You know, I’ve seen it a lot of times now, and it gets me every time. And I know it. It’s not just the story, it’s the way [director] Malik [Bendjelloul] made it, the way he constructed it. It’s like a journey. You’d have to be in a really vrot**** mood not to love this movie. And I can say this because I didn’t make the movie. Malik made it. He sat with his laptop at his kitchen table and put this movie together. When he met up with [producers] Simon Chinn and John Battsek and they got involved, he said, “Cool, give me some bucks and I’ll go and redo the animation and re-edit it,” and they said, “No. This is the movie. We’re not changing a single thing.”
FRR: If anything there aren’t enough of those animations. They’re stunning.
SS: They’re expensive! Those animations cost about half the budget. Do you know how much was spent on this movie? It was little. Most Sundance movies cost minimum $1 million, $2 million, $3 million, but this was nowhere near that. This is hard work, this is not money. Malik believed in it so strongly. We all did.
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FRR: How did you get together with Malik in the first place?
SS: I set up the first Rodriguez website, it was called The Great Rodriguez Hunt, and then we found him and it became The Great Rodriguez Website and my partner Brian Currin had set up Climb Up On My Music, which was the factual Rodriguez website and then we joined the two together to make Sugarman.org, which is still the only Rodriguez website on the web. It’s comprehensive. Anything and everything that’s ever happened is there. The forum goes back years and we’ve recently got a Facebook page.
The point is, anyone who wanted to contact or find out anything about Rodriguez had to come to us. There have been a lot of tours. He’s come to South Africa many times, we took him to London in 2005 and 2008 – he played Kentish Town Forum – so there’s been a lot of publicity. Matt Sullivan from Light in the Attic Records, nice little indie label, came to us through the website looking to release Rodriguez in America. There’ve been two beautiful releases in America on CD. So we are the filter because we’re in contact with the family. Not with Rodriguez – in fact he pulled his phone out of the wall once because his number got out and everyone was calling. He’s a very private guy. So we pass on what’s important and we don’t what isn’t.
Rodriguez in London
Then I got this email from this weird Swedish dude who was a journalist. I’d already had a lot of emails about movies – I’d been talking to a well-known Australian director who was looking to make a feature about Rodriguez, this was before Malik came on the scene so now he’s really keen. But so Malik came to Cape Town and walked into my record shop, and this was the coolest dude I’ve ever met in my life, the most wonderful guy. To make this movie you’ve got to be a real charmer (and he is), and he got everyone on board because he is just that nice a guy.
So he came into the record shop and said hello, and I told him the story and his mouth just hung open. He couldn’t believe it. He worked for a Swedish company called Kobra, who made little ten-, 15-minute doccies about, like, Kraftwerk and Madonna and Rod Stewart, Bj?rk – anyone who was important who came to Sweden. They gave him a round-the-world ticket and said to him – he’s like Tintin – “Here you go, Malik, go and find ten good stories.” He picked up an Alex Petrides article that was in the Guardian from when we took Rodriguez to London in 2005, and that was how the whole thing started. I think Alex would be really chuffed to know that it was his story that started this.
So Malik brought his hand-held camera and we went up Table Mountain Road, shot a bit of footage and that was it. Nothing happened for about six months. But when he went back to Sweden, that’s all that was on his mind. He started showing people the footage and interest grew intensely. He believed it couldn’t be a ten-minute film – you can’t even tell the story in ten minutes – and it’s incredible, it’s just grown. He did it all himself. He was travelling around with Camilla [Skagerstr?m], who shot the movie, and it’s beautifully shot. I met a projectionist at Sundance who showed our premiere, and he agreed: it’s just a beautifully shot movie. For me, it’s just lekker to see it up on a screen, but this guy who knows film says those shots of Chapman’s Peak, when you see it on a movie screen you get vertigo!
Searching for Sugar Man poster
FRR: Cape Town has seldom looked so beautiful.
SS: Ja, they stayed in the Cape Sun, by the station, and that’s where they got a lot of good shots, from the lifts and so on. But it was just Malik and Camilla. I was driving them around, but we’d just walk around Cape Town and shoot.
FRR: So when did you actually first meet Rodriguez? What’s the relationship you have with him now?
SS: Over the years, since we found him, I’ve stayed in contact with him. I spoke to him that first night the way I tell it in the film, that literally happened. Then he came to South Africa and I took Alex McCrindle, who developed the website with me. We were driving down Camps Bay Drive and Rodriguez was staying in a little townhouse/hotel thing at the bottom of Camps Bay. For me it was weird, because this whole thing had started on Camps Bay Beach and now I was driving back into Camps Bay to meet this incredible human being. In the movie there’s this shot – where Willem says, “What if he’s just some guy?” – and Rodriguez is just standing there, at the top of the stairs, in this beige suit. And that’s how I’ll always remember him. The band was there, (Rodriguez’s middle daughter) Eva was there… we all met that first night he was in Cape Town.
Rodriguez in concert
Over the years he toured South Africa quite often. When September 11th happened in 2001 he was here. I was travelling around with him – he did about 30 gigs in South Africa – and then we took him to London. I went to Detroit one year and stayed in his house for a day or two. He still lives in the same house. I walked around Detroit with him and met his friends, who all thought he was delusional, because he was telling them this weird story and they thought he was bullshitting them. Everybody knows him in Detroit; he’s this tall, dark stranger who walks around with a guitar, the Lone Groover. He carries his guitar around with him because in Detroit people break into places and steal a lot of stuff, so what he has he keeps with him. The coolest thing for him is that now his contemporaries, his peers, his friends, the people at the Brewery, they know he is who he says he is. Never mind acceptance in South Africa. Acceptance in your home town, that’s key. And that’s happening now, in America and definitely in Detroit.
FRR: What really strikes one is his extraordinary lack of bitterness at never having got what should have come to him. He’s almost like a mystic.
SS: He’s different to anyone you’ve ever met, that I can promise you. He’s got a degree in philosophy – he’s an incredibly smart guy. And whenever people interview him, I say, “Look, just ask a question and then sit quietly for however long it takes him to answer it. And write it down and later you’ll figure out what he’s talking about.” He’s truly very deep, very quiet, very calm; thinks a lot. At Sundance, when we’d bring him in after the movie for the Q&As and he’d stand there and they’d give him a microphone, and the crowd would ask him questions, within a few answers they’d realise that this was the real deal. In Ogden, they asked him all kinds of questions and he just said, “What’s more important is what’s happening in Ogden. Last week the police shot some guys,” (or something like that); he started talking about the Arab Spring and the protests on Wall Street. He was talking to the audience about that; that’s what was on his mind and that’s what’s important, and that’s what he wants to talk about at Sundance – not, “Well, this is when I wrote my first song and this is my CD…” None of that.
I promise you, he’s just the most genuine, humble, wonderful human being. To him, money is not as important as recognition, that people love his music – and audiences got that. And that’s why, for us, whatever is happening around this movie, it’s about him. The key thing is him. I love that line, in the movie. It wasn’t in one of the final edits, and I said to Malik, “I would never tell you what to put in your movie, but please, put this in your movie;” the thing about the butterfly. Emmerson said, “He could take all this pain and make it into something beautiful and transcendent… What have you done with your life?”
That’s the whole thing. What do we learn from this? He didn’t get the money? He doesn’t care. What’s important is what he did with his life, and for me (and I know him reasonably well), I try to incorporate that into my life as well. Because it’s not all about the bucks. It’s about achievement, about trying. And people are going to meet him, because he’s travelling around with Malik for about two months now – the movie’s opening in about 85 US cities and 15 countries or something ridiculous, so they’re on the bus – and people are going to find out he’s the real deal.
* Saffer slang – “bloke”
** Central News Agents. Think WH Smith.
*** More Saffer slang – “cool”
**** Afrikaans – literally, “rotten”