two albums with Sussex, Cold Fact in 1970 and Coming from Reality in 1971. However, both sold few copies in the U.S. and he was quickly dropped by Sussex, which itself closed in 1975. At the time he was dropped, he was in the process of recording a third album which has never been released. Rodriguez quit his music career and in 1976 he purchased a derelict Detroit house in a government auction for $50 (US$ in dollars) in which he still lived as of 2013. He worked in demolition and production line work, always earning a low income. He remained politically active and motivated to improve the lives of the city's working-class inhabitants and has run unsuccessfully several times for public office: for the Detroit City Council in 1989, for Mayor of Detroit in 1981 and 1993 and for the Michigan House of Representatives in 2000. In 2013, it was announced that Rodriguez was in discussions with Steve Rowland, the producer of his Coming From Reality album. "I've written about thirty new songs," Rodriguez told Rolling Stone magazine. "He told me to send him a couple of tapes, so I'm gonna do that. I certainly want to look him up, because now he's full of ideas." Overseas fame Although Rodriguez remained relatively unknown in his home country, by the mid-1970s his albums were starting to gain significant airplay in Australia, Botswana, New Zealand, South Africa and Zimbabwe. When imported copies of his Sussex albums were sold out, an Australian record label, Blue Goose Music, bought the Australian rights to his recordings. Blue Goose released his two studio albums as well as a compilation album, At His Best, that featured unreleased recordings from 1973 – "Can't Get Away", "I'll Slip Away" (a re-recording of his first single), and "Street Boy". At His Best went platinum in South Africa, which at one stage was the major disc-press source of his music to the rest of the world. Rodriguez was compared to contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Cat Stevens. Many of his songs carry anti-establishment themes, and therefore boosted anti-apartheid protest culture in South Africa where his work influenced the music scene at the time and was also a considerable influence on a generation drafted, mostly unwillingly, to the then whites-only South African military. Reportedly, anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko was also a Rodriguez fan. Rodriguez was also successful in Australia and