Rock ‘n’ roll is full of lost albums and unrecognized masters. The could’ve- and should’ve-been success stories are miles deep. On rare occasions, performers get their due before it’s too late.
Detroit native Sixto Rodriguez qualifies. He made two brilliant albums, “Cold Fact” in 1970 and “Coming From Reality” in 1971. They contained searing commentary on street life and explored the politics of relationships both personal and social. The music embraced orchestral textures, folk-punk directness, and classic-rock guitar solos, a Motown response to the incendiary ambition of Love’s Arthur Lee. His producers included Steve Rowland, who would go on to work with the Cure, and his studio bandmates included ace British guitarist Chris Spedding.
But the albums didn’t sell, and Rodriguez dropped out of the music business. Remarkably, his hard-knock tales found an enthusiastic audience decades later in South Africa, and he toured there in the ’90s, playing in 5,000-capacity theaters. A documentary was made of his comeback, “Dead Men Don’t Tour: Rodriguez in South Africa 1998,” and aired on South African television.
In recent months, Seattle-based Light in the Attic Records has re-released “Cold Fact” and “Coming from Reality” domestically, the first time they have been available in America in more than 30 years. The positive response from fans and critics has prompted a U.S. tour that brings Rodriguez to Schubas on Friday. Now 66, the singer finds himself in demand for the first time, and he’s as stunned as anyone.
“It’s getting busy, and I’m not worthy,” he says. “But I’m going for it. Rock ‘n’ roll is a crazy world, and it’s how things work out you can’t predict.”
Rodriguez was the child of Mexican immigrants, born during World War II in Detroit. His background is sketchy, and he does little to fill in the blanks. He says his father was in the Army — “He was kind of a spirit who ran away from home when he was 9.” He grew up in the inner city and learned how to scrap for a living at an early age. He was playing guitar seriously at 16.
“I loved Jimmy Reed, the chord changes, the lyrics,” he says. “I started writing lyrics and got away from the boy-girl thing pretty early. I’m a musical political, I tend to stick to what I see happening outside my front door. And, man, there was no shortage of things to write about.”
The songs blend harsh reality with poetic flights. “Cause I lost my job two weeks before Christmas/And I talked to Jesus at the sewer,” is how one of his best songs, “Cause,” begins. It’s a stark folk song that blossoms into a surreal meditation on salvation. “Cause my heart’s become a crooked hotel full of rumors,” he sings without a trace of self-pity, “But it’s I who pays the rent for these fingered-face out-of-tuners.”
“Fingered-face out-of-tuners”? Yes, Detroit must’ve been a harsh and twisted place.
“We have the same kind of situations today,” Rodriguez says. “The environment just shook. You can’t get around certain stuff, whether it’s in Darfur or on your block at home. What makes us political is your home turf, your family, your life space. You walk down the street, and automatically a human being is territorial, and political happens in that. We just got rid of a mayor who ended up in jail, you had a governor who is going there in Illinois. The times change but the same questions keep getting asked: ‘Is this the best we can do?'”
Rodriguez could’ve said the same of the music business that discarded him in the early ’70s, but he has no regrets.
“The current economic situation keeps people in classes, so when you hear a song like ‘Cause’ it applies,” he says. “I’m surfacing in a unique space for a lot of reasons. But people created these problems, and people can fix them. I don’t know if my music is going to help at all, but those are the things that have always been in my music. I only wrote about 29, 30 songs, but they still seem to hit people. That means a lot.”
When: 10:30 p.m. Friday
Where: Schubas, 3159 N. Southport Ave.
Price: $20; 773-525-2508
———–
greg@gregkot.com
Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 8 p.m. Fridays and 11 a.m. Saturdays on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
chicagotribune.com/turnitup
![Today’s Highlight in History: On April 24, 1995, the final bomb linked to the Unabomber exploded inside the Sacramento, California, offices of a lobbying group for the wood products industry, killing chief lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray. (Theodore Kaczynski was later sentenced to four lifetimes in prison for a series of bombings that killed three people and injured 29 others.) On this date: In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South. In 1915, in what’s considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/migration/2023/06/12/5LTPEE42BQ2O25ECG7SKBN4RV4.jpg?w=535 "Today’s Highlight in History: On April 24, 1995, the final bomb linked to the Unabomber exploded inside the Sacramento, California, offices of a lobbying group for the wood products industry, killing chief lobbyist Gilbert B. Murray. (Theodore Kaczynski was later sentenced to four lifetimes in prison for a series of bombings that killed three people and injured 29 others.) On this date: In 1877, federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South. In 1915, in what’s considered the start of the Armenian genocide, the Ottoman Empire began rounding up Armenian political […]")
