With the release of the 2012 documentary Searching for Sugar Man, the Detroit-born songwriter and performer Sixto Rodriguez became a star. The artist, who passed away earlier this year, was suddenly in the spotlight. His journey from unknown to celebrity, first in South Africa and then the world, was incredible.
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But with all that life experience, both as a well-known artist late in life and as a day laborer before that, one might wonder what Rodriguez had to say about his life, craft, love and the world around him. These are the 20 best Sixto Rodriguez quotes.
[RELATED: ‘Searching for Sugar Man’ Star Sixto Rodriguez Has Died at 81]
1. “I was ready for the world. I don’t think the world was ready for me.”
2. “There’s no shame in hard work.”
3. “There are beautiful songs people write about love and dancing. But it’s political issues that should be addressed.”
4. “My family, we’re indigenous people from San Luis Potosi in Central Mexico. My father moved to Detroit and brought all of us because the automobile companies were paying great wages.”
5. “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.”
6. “I just want to be treated like an ordinary legend.”
7. “My dad, he was my role model—my mom died when I was three—and the way we honor our parents is remembering their heritage.”
8. “I like to say that I do covers of my own songs. And I have about a dozen bands all over the world. That’s no exaggeration. I have a South African band, an Australian band, Swedish bands, English bands, American bands. They’re all notable musicians, too.”
9. “You either live under a rock or you walk in the sunshine. That’s pretty much how it goes.”
10. “Beware of current truths.”
11. “I don’t necessarily want a higher education, I want a wider education. I want to know everything and experience everything.”
12. “I sing about social issues, not the boy-girl stuff.”
13. “You want to know the secret of life? It is to breathe in and out. And the mystery of life? You never know when it is going to end.”
14. “All my life, I never gave up on music and though there was a lot of disappointment for some that the commercial thing never happened, it has never been a disappointment for me.”
15. “I love my country. It’s just the government I don’t trust.”
16. “I’ve always covered some Dylan songs. I do one or two. And I do them because they’re great songs. You know some people cover songs they wish they could have written, not me. I like to cover songs I know I could not have ever written.”
17. “Where other people live in an artificial world, I feel I live in the real world. And nothing beats reality.”
18. “I’m lucky. It’s okay that success has come later to me because I might have burned up if it had happened earlier.”
19. “Every 20 years or so, I feel that young people confront the same issues—a new war, new challenges.”
20. “Voice is the first instrument.”
Photo by Jeff Golden/Getty Images
