Every rock musician wants to become famous. Rodriguez for decades didn't know how popular he was in South Africa. With his songs, people in Botswana, Zimbabve, and South Africa made a revolution, anti-Apartheid movement. He was as popular there as Bob Dylan.
It was in 70-80' when he gave up an idea to become a musician and worked in demolition and badly paid jobs being always under the edge. This guy had a mysterious reputation and didn't know how famous he was in that countries until his daughter told him that she found a website about him. His fans in Africa thought that he committed suicide. Actually, it was in the pre-Internet era. Some years later two film-directors (Simon Chinn and John Battsek) decided to find him and shot a documentary with a self-explanatory name "Searching for Sugar Man". The movie was warmly accepted at Sundance film festival, won the Oscar, the BAFTA etc.
But what I wanted to say that this kind of shift amazes me and of course gives some hope. Imagine what would happen to him if he continued with music...And I really love Rodriguez's "Sugar man", it helps in hard times.
I can't wait to share it with you:
Thank you for your upvotes and comments! :)