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Storyteller Jimmy Buffett may well be the nation's longest serving civil servant with a three-decade mantra of fun, frolic and adventure delivered to millions of devoted "Parrotheads" through cheerful, escapist anthems.
'Margaritaville' master Buffett's
back for another round of
storytelling music
By Tim Ryan
Star-BulletinSome 24 summers have come and gone since Buffett scored his only Top 10 single -- "Margaritaville" -- but every year fans -- and now their kids -- flock to hear his tropical-themed pop tunes, drawn from 30 albums, all played pretty much the the same way concert after concert, year after year.
Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band are bringing their "Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday" tour to Blaisdell Arena on Saturday. Oct. 7 at 8 p.m.
"What a great place to end our tour," Buffett says from a Sag Harbor, N.Y., surf shop where he's buying a travel case for the surfboards he's hauling to Hawaii in his new Falcon 50 jet. "We've got six days to have fun in Hawaii and I'm plannin' to enjoy every minute of it."
Buffett is best known for Top-40 hits "Margaritaville," "Cheeseburger in Paradise," "Volcano," "Come Monday" and "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes;" three books, including the New York Times best-seller "A Pirate Looks At Fifty;" and his disarming, friendly demeanor on and off the stage.
He's clearly one of those rare artists who checks his ego at the door, whether on stage, backstage, in the surf, bone fishing on Christmas Island, or discussing in detail his three airplanes, including two seaplanes that have cargo areas for surfboards and fishing equipment.
"I've always told my fans that I spend their money foolishly," he says.
Those fans spend about $50 million a year on Buffett concert tickets, albums and merchandise like T-shirts, caps, margarita mix, salt shakers, Margaritaville tequila, and at his Margaritaville Cafes in Key West and New Orleans.
"I guess I have become a sort of industry, but I honestly don't know how it all happened," he says. "I just make it up as I go along."
Buffett prefers talking about his hobbies, his latest adventure or an upcoming trip to Africa with two of his children than his music or financial acumen. But back him into a corner, and Buffett confesses gleefully that "I'm just a saloon singer who got lucky."
Buffett likes to talk about what ifs. "If" music hadn't worked for him professionally, the musician would have been a pilot.
"If I could have lived in any other time it would be during the flying boat era of the Pan Am Clippers," he says. "I love the romanticism of the old flying boats, their history of flying through the Pacific and the Caribbean."
His love of flying nearly killed him a few years back. Buffett barely survived a crash when his Grumman Widgeon flying boat hit a wake on takeoff in Nantucket Harbor and crumbled nose first, trapping him underwater.
"What the hell; I was very lucky just like I've been in my musical career; just another notch on the experience ladder," he says.
Buffett's family history is packed with "seafarers" though his father, J.D., served as a crew chief on C-47 transports in China for the Army Air Corps during World War II. Buffett didn't serve in Vietnam though his dad wanted him to become a naval officer. By the time J.D. was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, father and son had made "peace," Buffett said.
In a departure from Buffett's stereotypical music, in 1996 he wrote the touching "False Echoes" about a man who "fades like a flare." Buffett's never performed the song live.
But the song provides a glimpse of Buffett's untapped offerings. His enormous success with the likes of "Margaritaville" and the aura that followed that music may be the deal Buffett made with the devil for success.
In the gentle lyrics of "Little Miss Magic," Buffett describes his love and amazement for his infant daughter. In "African Friend" he talks sensitively about an overnight encounter with a Haitian prostitute. In "One Particular Harbor" he sings about a mythical place of peace and easy living where he hopes to arrive when his "hair turns gray."
Buffett co-wrote "One Particular Harbor" with Hawaii-born Bobby "Huahini" Holcomb in Tahiti in 1982 where promoter Tom Moffatt took the unknown singer for a concert.
Buffett's popularity is more astounding when you realize he's never been on MTV, won an award or gotten consistent radio play.
"I'm not a very good singer and I'm not a very good guitar player, but I know how to pace a show," he explains. "I learned how to perform in saloons and strip joints in New Orleans where you had to do whatever you could to survive."
Though the essence of a single solo guitar player on stage remains the same, the magnitude of a Buffett show has changed tremendously, transforming audiences into pirates, with his songs of youth and freedom and life lived for the moment. Audiences bounce beachballs and inflatable sharks around the venue. Otherwise respectable people often don full tropical regalia: foam parrot hats, grass skirts and coconut-shell bras. And that's just the men.
"The funny thing is I never really encouraged this image," Buffett said. "It just caught on."
But there's serious business behind the music.
"I learned a long time ago that if you didn't take care of your own business that any success you obtained becomes harder to keep than the road that got you there," Buffett said.
Buffett puts out his own records on the Internet through his Web site, www.margaritaville.com; has his own Internet radio station (radiomargaritaville.com) and is personally negotiating his own movie deal for his novel, "Where Is Joe Merchant?"
The musician is not under contract to any company.
"Don't owe nobody nothin'," he says with a laugh. "I pretty much do what I want when I want. And we keep breaking rules, causing people grief and I like that. I'll always be a bit of a rebel."
His badge of rebelliousness has caused Buffett a bit of trouble.
Buffett wrote glowingly about life in the Florida Keys, hinting that he had smuggled pot. When Rolling Stone repeated the stories in a '70s article, Buffett was detained by the authorities in St. Barts, where he was living.
"Me and my big mouth," he says, laughing. "I was never a dope dealer, and never ever a smuggler, or a damn pirate."
Buffett's longevity has made him a target for music critics.
"I have a whole bunch of people who hate everything I did after 1978," Buffett says. "But they still come to the shows which is the important thing.
"I'm sure not gonna try to be the Jimmy before '78, the Jimmy when he had hair, the skinny Jimmy," he says. "I just want to write a good story, a good song."
Buffett's working on a new album tentatively titled "Stranger than Fishin' ", and another book, "South 'til the Butter Melts."
He's also finalizing plans on having another sailboat built with that special JB touch. The boat builder also is helping to design with Martin Guitar a guitar that can travel easily on a boat without a lot of care.
Buffett toiled for years before he could afford a Martin guitar. When he got it he treated it "very badly."
"If I go to jail it'll be for guitar abuse," Buffett says, adding. "What the hell, you can't yearn for the wave that passes by, you just gotta go look for the next one."
On stage
Who: Jimmy Buffett and the Coral Reefer Band
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