Searching for Sugar Man BBC 4 9pm, director Malik Bendjelloul (R.I.P.)

Searching for Sugar Man BBC 4 9pm, director Malik Bendjelloul (R.I.P.)

This is one of those programmes that make you believe in Jesus. Jesus Rodriguez that is. He was a 1970s guitar playing, singer that wrote his own songs and was described by record producer as ‘way beyond a musical artist’ and above Bob Dylan. He brought out two albums in the early seventies. Both didn’t do as well at the producers hoped. His record company let him go and Jesus disappeared from this world.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b044z275

          A bootleg of his first album found its way to apartheid South Africa. Jesus became bigger than the Rolling Stones over there. Bigger than Elvis. Everyone had a copy of his first and then second album. A mythology grew around the singer. He was said to have blown his brains out on stage, died of an overdose, but nobody really knew. Steve ‘Sugar’ Sergemen and Craig Bartholmew tried following the money, but that lead to a dead-end in Detroit and the missing millions unaccounted for.

          What appeared in its place was far more interesting. Jesus’s daughter contacted them and said, hey, I know the guy you’re looking for, that’s my dad. Jesus lives and breathes. He returns from the dead, a man that has worked as a labourer on demolition for the last thirty years and goes to modern-day South Africa to front sell-out concerts. They love him. He’s the sound of their childhood. I love him too. He gives the money he makes from the concerts away. You’ve got to love him too. I believe in Jesus. A beautiful story from a musical agnostic that needs more sugar in his notes than a normal bloke.