He died at age 35 with his girlfriend, Francoise Bardinet, when the apartment building in which he was living collapsed in the Mexico City earthquake of 19 September 1985.

[2] He studied psychology for a brief time at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa before moving to Mexico City in 1977 with the desire to make music.

[1][4] His songs could also be tender, such as "Metro Balderas," the ballad about a man who has lost his lover, and hijacks a subway train.

[1] In the early 1980s he and other musicians including Rafael Catana, Jaime Lopez, and Roberto Ponce founded the La Liga de Musicos Errantes y Cantantes Rupestres (The League of Wandering Musicians and Prehistoric Cavemen Singers) which became known as the Movimiento Rupestre, a folk music scene that strongly influenced Mexican rock for the next ten years or so.

[3] In 1983, novelist José Agustín said that Rockdrigo had "achieved what is, for me, an extraordinary accomplishment: making Spanish sound perfect, truly natural in rock'n'roll....From the beginning I thought that Rodrigo González was our version of Bob Dylan with a sense of humor.