"Margaritaville" by Jimmy Buffett: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of My Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little loans, fascinating facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We are your heroes of the huff. That's pretty interesting. My name is Jordan Runt Talk and I'm Alex. That was pretty good. I ran out of gas on these, but you're still still trying. I'm gonna trying to keep this bit going as long as because well, it is the week of the fourth of July weekend, so it seems like the perfect time to discuss one of the sunniest, breeziest, booziest songs in existence. Yes, of course, we're talking about Jimmy Buffett's Immortal Margaritaville, which turns forty five this year. Now, even after all this time, I'm still not sure if this is the saddest happy song or the happiest sad song. It's kind of like Dancing Queen by Abbot, which you've also talked about, could go either way. I'm a hard press to name a song that's obstensively about delayed regret that's been so wholeheartedly embraced by college students on spring break. There's really two schools of thought on Margaritaville. On one hand, it's an escapist anthem that presents an idealized version of a tropical Shankar law. On the other, it's a song about self loathing, regret, and a nightmarish descent into alcoholism while your personal paradise becomes overrun with tourists and destroyed by capitalism. We will discuss both sides of this argument today, but capitalism certainly plays a big part in this episode. Bloomberg has called Margaritaville the most lucrative song and history, kicking off a business empire that pulls in nearly two billion dollars a year, not bad for a song that barely broke the top ten when it was released in nine. The song was responsible for jump starting a lifestyle brand that extends to restaurants, resorts, casitos, clothing record labels, radio stations, a Broadway production, food products, and even a retirement community. HIGL, what is your experience with Jimmy song sucks? I hate it so much. I hate it's so much. The beer is awful. I think land Shark awful awful, disgusting. I I don't like it. I went to school in Virginia, so like perilously close to the what they hashtag salt life like del Marva, Delaware, Maryland. Never heard that Virginia Panhandle Tidewater region, never heard the outer banks, just sunburnt, racist and jeep wranglers rolling around blasting fish. I hate it. This is the apotheosis of like boring white people music to me, and it's so atavistic capitalist greed disguised as well. I'm just taking the artist Rods book, Okay. Never the last episode. Well, Jimmy Buffett is famously the son of a son of a sale, as one of his songs goes, and I am the son of a parrot head or thereabouts. I actually recall being taken to several Jimmy Buffett shows growing up as a little boy, and um, I have two vivid memories. One of them is the site of a giant paper machee shark on the roof of the VW microbus next to us in the parking lot during the tailgate party. And the other memory is my father saying with what I believe to be jenuorine admiration Damn Jimmy Buffett. That guy made a ton of money by singing about doing nothing. Yeah, and that's stuck with me. And he's absolutely right. Oh man, I mean j B to j BS too. Hardest working man in show business are both j B. James Brown and Jimmy Buffett. You know you cannot like his music, but that guy he does, he hustles. Yeah, we will look at the colorful cast of characters that helped inspire the song, the real life rock and roll king that very nearly wound up recording it, the long Lost Verse, the unproduced Harrison Word, Robert Redford buddy movie inspired by the lyrics, and the and the multibillion dollar brand based on its title. Here's everything you didn't know about Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville. James William Buffett was born on December nineteen, truly a Christmas present to all humanity. He's got his childhood growing up in Mobile, Alabama. And as I said earlier, he's the son of a sailing ship captain, the son of a son of a sailor, as he'd later sing, And this would have a marked impact on the songs he'd write, which are chock full of the beach fishing and sailing. His earliest musical experiences were in the school bands playing trombone, which I find adorable. And his parents wanted him to become either a priest or naval officer. And he was enrolled in procreal school and an all male prep school, all of which makes me assume that this whole beach bump persona was a reaction against this sort of very regimented upbringing. He's not related to Warren Buffett. They took a twenty three in me test, did they really? Although they still call each other Uncle Warren and cousin Jimmy, and they're probably worth about the same amount of money. Jimmy Buffett. It's an estimated five fifty million, and I think Warren is eighty three billion. I wonder if he calls Warren Bufett for financial advice. Almost certainly, yes, I have to say. During my research of Jimmy Buffett, I discovered it. He gets kind of weird when it comes to talking about his past, or is just his life in general. When a reporter from the South Flora Sun Sentinel came to interview him, he was told by Jimmy, I can only give you an hour. I already told my life story. I never expected to live this long anyway. And he echoed this sentiment when the reporter asked him about his fans. He said, I got a good following in Boston, Ohio and Portland. I don't bother at forty trying to figure it out. I never figured I lived this long anyway. He keeps going back to that, and then the reporter adds, when Jimmy Buffett tells his life story, he doesn't like interruptions. This wasn't a conversation, it was a monologue. And in the nineties, a writer by the name of Steve Ang contacted Jimmy Buffett saying that he wanted to write his authorized biography. He received a letter back from Jimmy saying, in part, I'm more than capable of writing my own autobiography. I don't need any help or third person interpretations. It is my life. I live it. Live your own life, and stop trying to figure out mine. So that's interesting. I say that not to take shots at Jimmy Buffett, but I think it's interesting to get sort of the the steely underside of this this guy with this fund of the sun beach bump. That's interesting. I admire the kind of core of like resigned staring into the void of a margarita. You know, I admire that. I gotta say, that's that's the closest he and I get to kidship. No, I like that. That's the you know, I think of the great character actors, is I mean Marilyn mon Road, Jane Mansfield that the dumb blonde persona. When these women were incredibly well read, incredibly intelligent, you know, spoke multiple languages, that kind of thing. We're very aware of what they were doing. I think on some level he has that intelligence. Yeah, he has that intelligence. Anyway, this is the first of many instances where I will over intellectualize Jimmy Buffett. The hidden, darker meaning of cheeseburger in Paradise, the deep inner pain of math sucks. Um how many size? Somebody keeping track of my size and size count? Uh? Jimmy Buffett gett Back to Jimmy Buffett's early days. He discovered the guitar in college in the mid sixties when he noticed that his guitar playing friend got a lot of attention from the ladies due to his six strings. So Jimmy Buffett got one himself, and he learned to play, and before long he was so focused on his musical career that he quit focusing on his grades and funked out. And since substance during the Vietnam War, being in college was crucial to avoiding the draft, so he enrolled in another school in Mississippi, not far from New Orleans. And it was in New Orleans, and he cut his teeth as a performer. He played small clubs and it also was a regular street performer, playing on street corners for anyone who would listen. I guess there was a rich French quarter hippie scene in the late sixties in New Orleans. And I guess I'm just imagining the like acid flashback scene from Easy Rider when they filmed in that graveyard there in New Orleans. I can't imagine a hippie scene in New Orleans other than that. I think they're grateful dead, famously hated New Orleans. Yeah, isn't that where they got I think that's where they got arrested. Yeah, busted down on Bourbon Street in trucking. Famously did not have a good time in New Orleans. Jimmy Buffett did and hippies. So yeah, while we're talking about the early years, the rise to power and honing his sound. Yeah, so he's got an early countries influence. So rather than New Yorker, La moved to Nashville. And uh, it was also because he didn't have enough money to make it as far as New York or l A. Because yeah, you you draw the parallel between the Eagles and sort of that folk rocky adjacent Laurel Canyon. We'll get to Timothy B. Schmidt of the Eagles later. He's a lot of ties with the Eagles. Jimmy Buffett, Ye, same with you. Know what I just thought when you with the margharita thing, I thought of, um, Warren Zevon and all the salty margharite is in Los Angeles. I'm gonna drink them up the line in Desperados under the Eaves. Also, a guy who had ties with the successfully alienated everyone in the Laurel Canyon folk rock scene. Did Jimmy Buffett more Zvon have any kind That's a great question. Oh my god, I think they might have. I know Warren Zevon was in them. He was in that weird band with Dave Barry and Stephen King remainders. Yeah, uh, here we go. Sure enough. They played Jackson Brown and Warren Zevon and Jimmy Buffett original triple header. Jimmy Buffett has in fact covered lawyer's guns and money. Oh that makes a lot of sense, and oh my god, this is insane. In two eleven interview with Bill Flannagan and The Huffy Didn't Post asked some of his favorite songwriters, Bob Dylan said, Jimmy Buffett. I guess, Gordon Lightfoot, Warren Zevon, Randy Newman, John Prin, Guy Clark. They all said, Jimmy Buffett. No, no, Dylan, That's that's who Dylan named. But the first thing out of his mouth was Buffett, I guess. Asked which Jimmy Buffett songs he likes, Dylan replied, Death of an unpopular poet, and there's another one called he went to Paris. Anyway, he lands in Nashville, he says, uh, he had a hard time fitting in because his songs were not quite country enough and he was an outsider. He would later say, I hated Nashville, I hated the Philippines, I hated Nashville. A little Ringo Star anthology talking had reference for you. Uh, it's too closed and incompetent, and there's a lot of nepotism. How dare you say that about some of the best musicians in the country, sunburnt garbage human. Uh. He looks like Joe Walsh in a lot of these archival photos, the kind of Prince Valiant and the dirt bag stag. Anyway, he takes his own. He takes really his only desk job. He was a reporter for Billboard Magazine as the Nashville Correspondent. His big scoop was breaking the news that bluegrass icons Flatt and Scrugs had broken up. One of the few music journalists who made the jump from pounding the keys to pounding the stage. Morrissey used to work for the Record Mirror before the Smiths, and wrote a short book about the New York Dolls. It's more basically a pamphlet. I think it's like twenty pages or something. Sure. Uh. Neil Tennant from the Pet Shop Boys was an editor at Marvel Comics. I think so, yeah, Lenny kay right, yeah, I almost think of them him doing the Patty Smith group and writing a kind of simultaneous. Sure. Anyway, back to Buffett, he's writing about these country icons during the day, which is funny because a very conservative world. But then he's going around at night in a fringe jacket singing at anti Vietnam rallies, which he said was risky business in those days. Conservative. Yeah, I mean, I did just look up his charities. He he has ocean preservation charities predicular, he loves manatees. That that was the big one, the man t charity. So eventually he does land a record deal and has to quit Billboard because it's a conflict of interest. Uh. Talking to The New York Times in eighteen, he said Billboard gave him a view of the record industry as indentured servitude, which is really just the perfect tone deaf boomer comparison to make. And uh, you know, also in that Time's interview is this hilarious anecdote which I did fact check later, about him agreeing to sit for a Rolling Stone interview over beers one night that would then take place the following afternoon, and getting around to the interview five years later, he would have treated a fellow reporter better exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But so we get signed to Barnaby Records, a label founded by Andy Williams. He's listening icon Andy Williams Holiday mainstay in my house, Andy Williams Christmas All yeah, that is bizarre. But a label home to Paul Anka Ray Stevens. Claudine Lunge. I don't know anything I know. I mean, I know Paul Anko, but the hell's Claudine Lunge. What's what's a Claudine Launge? Long? She was a she was like a French easy listening singer in the sixties, and she was an actress. She was in the part of the Peter Seller's movie The Party and uh saying some Hendry Man Sini songs and then she shot her skier Okay, okay, there you go. And she shot her skier husband I forget his name, I believe to death and got away with it. And then um SNL did a whole bit in the seventies about the Claudine Lunge a invitational and it just was a skiing, skiing competition basically married with like skeet shooting, like they go up off the jumps and then you'd hear a gunshot. All right, that's pretty good. That's pretty good. I'm happy we got there. He recorded his first album netteen seventy called Down to Earth, which has been disavowed by both him and his fans, as part of his can in folk rock again. Laurel Cannon stuff. Um, parrot heads, right, yes, Bassist Timothy B. Schmidt of the Eagles coined the term parrot head, which cements him as the most successful bird band boomer related musician of all time. Eagles and parrot heads. That's true. Well, he is in Jimmy Buffett's band, Yes, yes, yes, I mean I think that's an important distinction anyway, So he does re record the song The Captain and the Kid for the record Havannah Daydreaming. Um, I guess that this does kind of go down in the pantheon of first records disavowed by people. We've talked about Neil Young and Low Reid's Ands and Shania Twains. Yeah, I mean, it's the James Taylor example for me. James Taylor, his first record was when he went to England in nineteen and was signed to the Beatles record label Apple, and they recorded this album with him, which is wildly out of character from the kind of folky stuff that we know him as. It was this kind of like broke pop album with strings and like clarinets and stuff like it was, and a lot of the songs that he did on that album were like Carolina in My Mind and and something in the Way She Moves. I mean songs that became huge later on when he re recorded him. But this album, it kind of flopped and everyone ignored it. And then he released his second album, which became the kind of image defining one, Sweet Baby Jams. You see him with the long hair and the mustache and this is kind of like Folky Laurel Canyony guy, and that became the one that everyone thinks of as the first the first impression of him. Um but yeah. So Jimmy Buffett had a similar situation where he has a first album, which is this kind of folk rock type album from nine recorded in the ninety and fans and Jimmy alike both don't really consider it as part of his cannon sold as low as three d and twenty but possibly as high as four hundred copies. Wow. His follow up High Cumberland Jubilee, which just sounds like a mad libs of like stereotypical Bluegrass Terms wasn't released at the time because the label said that they lost the masters. Sorry, Jimmy, they're in a back office somewhere, we just can't be arsts to find them. Well, I have a theory about this. They eventually mysteriously found them in the mid seventies once Jimmy Buffett's career started taking off. So I think they were like, oh, we got this guy who sold three hundred copies of an album, wasn't even worth us to press them. How can we just get rid of him? Just tell him we lost it. Let's not bother with this. It's like the cash in thing when like an actor becomes famous and they suddenly like someone distributor like snaps up there early got off of movies and puts them out on DVD or whatever to make a quick book. Uh. Speaking of country rock icons, how did Jimmy make it to his home state of not his home state, but his adopted home state of Florida Jordan's Well, he acts he was brought there by another sort of Nashville country rock legend, a guy by the name of Jerry Jeff Walker, who is a start is own right, but most people would probably know him as the guy who wrote Mr. Bow Jangles, which was a hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt band in one y one, Take a journey back there with me. Jimmy Buffett is having a rough time. Is I'm so sad to think of Jimmy Bufett having a rough time. His first album was flopped, his second album was lost, his first marriage is breaking down. He hates Nashville, so he decided to skip town with his new friend Jerry Jeff Walker. They admit when Jimmy interviewed him when he was working at Billboard for a story, and according to Jimmy, uh, he said, yeah, I've done a story on him, And we actually wound up staying at my house and we got a little, well, we got very drunk that night. Um. Apparently Jerry put in a drunken call to his girlfriend which got so rude that the operator chastise him and cut off the call. So, naturally, this was a guy to Jimmy Buffet's own heart. They became tight and when he wanted to make a getaway from Nashville to somewhere uh a little warmer, little more sunny, a little more wet, a little more tropical. Jerry Jeff Walker, who at this point had money to burn because Mr bell Jangles it just become a hit with Nitty Green Dirt Band was happy to oblige and take him down there. So in November of two year old Jimmy Buffett and Jerry Jeff Walker hopped into Jerry's packard dubbed the Flying Lady, and headed down Highway One to Florida. And Jimmy, I guess, poor Jimmy, Jimmy Buffett in this era, I can't catch a break. He thought he had a gig at a club at Miami's Coffee Shop district in the Coconut Grove area. Turns out he got the days wrong. He had nowhere to stay. Uh. So they just kept driving until they hit the southernmost point in the continent of the United States, Key West, and they made a bee line to a place called the chart Room bar at the pier House Motel. And the bartender on duty was a good friend of Jerry Jeff's, and he gave Jimmy Buffett his first beer on the house as kind of a welcome to Florida gift, uh, And they became close friends. This bar, the chart Room basically became Jimmy Buffett's office, and he would go on to play there for drinks and tips, for drinks and TIFFs. That's Mr Bill Jangos. Yeah, it took me a second. Yeah, thank you, I'm just reading that. Jerry Jeff Walker was later called the Jimmy Buffett of Texas. No, there we go, which feels an unfortunately. Yeah, I mean they were friends. Yeah, uh so, Yeah, this place really becomes the second home, and he starts to meet and associate with a motley crew of smugglers, beach bums, and treasure hunters. Now, as you can probably imagine life in the Florida Keys in the early seventies, we're pretty great booze, sex, and lots of drugs. Jimmy would apparently hang out by Tennessee Williams Pool, playing Hank Williams songs, and he was a member of a local group of hell raisers who went by the name Love Mandible, which I don't even want to know. Their diet was mango dackris during the day, a little psychedelic LSD laced punch at home in the evenings, plus speed and coke for special occasions. So there you go, as one does it's good to have a routine. That's what keeps you regular. Everyone in the Keys knew someone in this period. He was a smuggler, or, as they were euphemistically known, gentleman of the ocean. Qus was a major port for illicit goods then and probably now, and during times when money was tight, Jimmy seriously considered becoming a smuggler a gentleman of the ocean himself. He says that drug runners actually recruited him and he's seriously considered going along with it, later saying, I was tempted occasionally to get into it because in those days they actually unloaded the illicit goods in the middle of the day down with the shrimp docks. So I guess this is like kind of an open secret in town. Uh. These drug runners told him that he could make twice what he'd made aid from his debut record with just a single run, which, given that his debut records sold at most four hundred copies, definitely not hyperbole. But Jimmy decided against becoming a drug runner and ultimately opted for a job as a mate on a fishing boat to pay the bills while he was working on his music. So Jimmy Buffett was ultimately not poised to become America's answer to Pablo Escobar. But I do have three stories that I like to share involving Jimmy Buffett and drugs. Story number one I called this one out to see. One night in Jimmy Buffett had anchored his sailboat in a cove to sleep off and especially raging hangover. Then he was approached by a cigarette boat, which is a boat that does drug runs. Um. I don't know how they got that name. Maybe it was from the weed. Maybe they called joint cigarettes as the ephemism. I don't know. I thought it was just because they were small and fast, so maybe that too. Anyway, this cigarette boat pulls up the Jimmy's boat and they say, hey, we need to use your radar. Ours is broke or whatever. So Jimmy said, yeah, go to use my radar, but you gotta let me go and drive your what he called go fast boat. That is the other name for him. I just googled, Okay, so there you go. Uh So they traded boats for a little bit. The smugglers used Jimmy's radar. He went fast and there go faster before parting company. Then the next day, Jimmy's partying with some folks in a code. He drinks a little too much. He goes back to his own boat and he falls asleep in the dinghy, which is the little like you know, raft sized boat that hangs off the bigger boat. Fortunately, the rope tying the small boat to the larger boat comes loose in the middle of the night, and when he comes to in the morning, he's floating adrift in the middle of the ocean. No idea where he is water in every direction. He's lost, he's screwed. He starts to panic, and then from out of nowhere, the same cigarette boat from earlier happened to cruise by, and they recognize him and pointed him in the direction of the land. And Jimmy says that if it hadn't been for these kind smugglers, he probably would have just kept drifting and most certainly would have died. That story number one. Story number two. This one's less interesting, but I included because it's so strange to me. In two thousand six, Jimmy Buffett was arrested by French custom officials in St. Trope for allegedly carrying over a hundred pills of ecstasy, which kind of seems like the least Jimmy Buffett drug I can imagine. I don't know. He's very laid back, and he seems to like coke or mentions coke a lot, so maybe that's that is surprising. I don't know. It depends on what it's cut with. His luggage was checked after his private jet landed at the local airport. He paid a three d dollar fine and was released shortly after. Jimmy spokesperson said that the pills were actually prescription drugs, and Jimmy himself later said that the so called ecstasy was actually a vitamin B supplement called Poltics. I do have to say, reading all this, there is a kind of idea of that kind of twisted admiration for him for this, Like Hunter S. Thompson asked, like disciplined regiment ruination exactly. I just I just read the Key West smugglers had police scanners so that they would hear in news of incoming bus whether they were still out on the water, and would dump all their and by one estimation, a hundred and fifty tons of bailed marijuana we're washing up on the shore is the Key West. I've I've heard that. Actually, yes, daily, I'm kind of surprising there perhaps is a song that Jimmy Buffett wrote about that. I wouldn't be surprised. I am perusing his song as a seaweed pun there. Yeah, Oh that's good. I am perusing his song toes in here. He's got some good ones. I gotta say, Living and Dying in three quarter Times is a pretty good one. I think it's an album title, right or is it a song title? I don't give either way, So I just said it was clever, don't get greedy? Um okay. And then my favorite Jimmy Buffett drugs related story of them all, and it's well known to most fans, but I really just want to revisit it huge thanks to our actual friend of the pod. Know we say that a lot about Jeffrey Katzenberg and Tom Hanks, but Andrew Bank, he's listening this episodes for you, the Stories for you. Thank you for reminding me of this incredible story. The Jamaica mistake a story. It's January. Jimmy Buffett's private seaplane, the Hemisphere Dancer, that he was piloting, was mistaken for a drug smuggling vehicle by Jamaican police, who then opened fire on the aircraft with Jimmy inside, along with his illustrious passengers Bonno, Bono's wife and two children, and Island Records co founder Chris Blackwell, and according to Jimmy Buffett's memoir, they were all having a jerk chicken lunch together, which I would like to have been a fly on the wall there. Thankfully, it seems like the Jamaican authorities had terrible aim. Of the one hundred shots they fired at Jimmy Buffett's plane, only seven made contact with the slow moving aircraft, cracking the windshield and only slightly damaging the fuselage. Bono later spoke of this herring event. He said, these boys were shooting all over the plate. Can you do a Botto accent? These boys were shooting all over the place. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you get calling. I felt as if we're in the middle of a James Bond movie. Honestly thought we're all going to die. You can't believe the relief I felt when I saw the kids were okay, oh no, sts trays, guitars, se you know what he said when he saw the cops. Hello, Hello, got too most you know. Fiona Apple says she decided she never wanted to do cocaine after spending an evening with a gacked up Quentin Tarantino and p t A. I just saw that clip. That clip was on Twitter. I would rather eat a bullet and then be stuck on a private plane between Jimmy Buffett and Bono. I'm sorry. Uh. The Jamaican government acknowledged the mistake a mistake, but an intificial and an official official statement um, and they apologize to Jimmy Buffett, who immortalized the incident in the song Jamaica Mistake recorded for the album but not a Wind. And this plane is now on display in front of the Orlando Margaritaville Cafe at the Universal CityWalk at Universal Studios. Not quite as good as a museum, but I'll allow it. Have you folks been here before? No? Well, it's basically like if the cafe was Margaritaville. As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages, Jimmy's Big God. Longtime listeners to the podcast will know that I love jim Croachy so so dearly and uh, you know, in a lot of ways, you can say that jim Croachy died so that Jimmy Buffett could live back to the seventies Key West, a home of smugglers, surprising mid century literary figures. Uh. Anyway, and Tennessee williams um So this is the climate of seventies Key West. And as biographer Ryan White writes in his book, Jimmy Beffett a good life all the way. Had he left Nashville for New Yorker Los Angeles, he'd have been just another folk singer working the song mines. But Key West didn't have a Jimmy Buffett. Key West gave Buffett a canvas. No other songwriter had all that and a hammock from which to work a place in the shade to think. Sure, I guess it wasn't quite. It wasn't all fun in the sun. Some of the bars where he played had the chicken wire barrier from Blues Brothers surrounding the stage to protect people from getting pelted with beer bottles. But you know, he had kind of this outsider's perspective, so he was well positioned to turn all this into grist for the mill and Jimmy actually cites a turning point in his career as September nine when Jim Crowcey and then his accompanyist Yeah It's Good guitarist also died died in the plane crash act. She had been signed to ABC Dunhill Records, and they when he died, as the music industry callously does, they wanted to just get another version of him to fill that slot, and they picked Jimmy Buffett to promote as the next Jim Crouchy. And you know, Buffett says he didn't think he would have stayed in the music business or become successful if Croachy hadn't died. And you said, you've pinned down some anecdotal evidence that they were they were pals. Yeah, I've been having a real hard time finding anything concrete. A lot of like Jimmy Buffett fans site message boards of which there are many, Yeah, have talked about this. I'm saying in old interviews that like kind of pre Internet era interviews. And I did watch clips from the Jim Croachy Behind the Music episode which is on YouTube, and they do talk about Jimmy Buffett visiting the Croachy family farm in Pennsylvania. So I believe they were friends in some capacity. Mortifying. Uh, but you can kind of see I think the comparis. I mean, if you see kindly finally sketched portrait of niche American regional figures with a delightfully quirky turn of phrase and short story writer's went sure whatever and Buffett can't hold a candle to coach you monster, Sorry, ABC Dunhill sends a film crew down to Key West to make an introductory short literally called Introducing Jimmy Buffett, in which Jimmy talks about life in the area and smuggling weed. Uh. In four he had a minor hit with Come Monday, a wistful ode to the Keys set in places that are not the Keys. But sadly, this golden era of lackadaisical, drunk weirdos and the Florida Keys was changing. Tourists were beginning to flood into the area, perhaps spurred by the ghost of Hemingway or the hundred and fifty tons of weed washing up on the shores daily. It's interesting to me that torres started flocking to the Florida Keys just basically off the fantasies that they saw presented to them in beach party movies, you know, the Frankie and that, My beloved Frankie and net movies. And I think it is interesting because jimm Buffett's whole output is really the next chapter of the whole early sixties fund on the sun California myth thing, the mythical American paradise that doesn't actually exist on the map, but exists in the popular consciousness or the hangover developed after all of those beach parties. Think it's interesting that this early sixties California myth helped inspire tourists to go to Florida, which they inspired Jimmy Buffett just kind of revamp that for the whole Margariteaville brands. I just think that's interesting to me. But these tourists started to change the vibe of the town, and this kind of started to bum Jimmy out. You know, when you've been in a place for a long time and then tourists start coming in and droves and changes the environment. Your special place is no longer just yours anymore, gets built up, it changes, and you know, this bum Jimmy Buffett out, But it gave him the idea for a new song. Yes, I'm talking about Margharitaville, and it's interesting to me because it's become so indelibly linked with the keys and the tropical locale. I was shocked to learn that Jimmy Buffett started writing Margharitaville while in Texas. He was visiting friends in Austin in nineteen seventy six, a woman by the name of Victoria Reid who would mc at a gig that Jimmy had played in San Antonio the year before. And this was great for Jimmy. He could save money on hotel expenses by staying with a friend and just hang out. And during his visit they ate at a Mexican restaurant called Lungs Coachina del Sur, which is sadly no longer in existence. And it's here that, according to Parrot Head legend, Jimmy Buffett sampled a margarita for the very first time the group of the Sistine Chapel. The waiter handing the margarita down to him the two fingers, and Jimmy, I guess it's suffice it to say, enjoyed it. Later that night, he sat out on his friend victoria Reads deck and started working on this new song. We mentioned author Ryan White's biography of Jimmy Buffett and opens the book and really an incredible way. Opens the book with a transcript of a hearing before Nevada Gaming Council board in which the authorities are asking Jimmy Buffett for some reason, uh you when you wrote that song? Did you have any idea what it would become? And Jimmy replies, it's been a pretty good song. No. It was written in five minutes about a hot day in Austin, Texas with a margharita and a beautiful woman. And Victoria Rita said over the years that Jimmy would often joke to her, I guess I you some royalties, which, considering it's the most lucrative song in history, which spawned a billion dollar a year business, I'd say yes. Uh. No word on whether or not Jimmy Buffett actually paid her, but he did shout out Victoria on Instagram in March by posting a picture of the two of them together with the caption Victoria made many of the margharita's that inspired the song, so at least he publicly acknowledged her as the muse of the song. Why was Jimmy Buffett testifying in front of the Nevada Game and Control Board, probably to open because the Margaritaville Ventures or whatever has casinos and they were opening. They do have a Margaritaville. The Flamingo. They granted him a gambling license in the in two thousand twelve. Oh so yeah, that's when the transcript was, Yeah, what a great opening for a book. I mean, what an incredible scene setting. Jimmy Buffett, laid back leisure mogul, testifying to get a campling licensed in Las Vegas, being asked about his biggest hit, unanimously approved the license. Commissioned chairman Peter Bernhard said Buffett had been investigated as much or even more than any license applicants, but tremendous. Jimmy Buffett did not finish the lyrics of Margharitaville that day. He actually finished, and when he arrived back in Florida short time later, he was driving down to his home and the keys back. He later said he got caught traffic because of a car accident and finished the song on the seven Mile Bridge, which I must imagine is some kind of spot of pilgrimage to parrot heads everywhere the spot that Jimmy Buffett finished writing margharita Ville. Jimmy said that the moment he realized he had something special was when he slipped Margharitaville into his very covers heavy set list at a local bar, and he said that everyone responded to that song immediately, and I thought, well, this will work good in my set list. But that's pretty much all we thought about it. Um Interestingly, the fact that it took him several days to write was unusual. His longtime producer Norbert Putnam has said that it wasn't unusual for Jimmy to write a song in the morning and record it in the afternoon. Uh nort Putnam, we gotta give props to him. He produced Margharitaville in addition to many of Jimmy's other songs and albums. He's a very big deal. He was part of the whole muscle shoals scene in the mid the late sixties, and he worked with Joan Bayaz for her version of the Night They Oh of Old Dixie Down, and he also worked with New Riders at the Purple Sage. He's got a very very lengthy discography Jimmy met him cover where she turns Robert E. Lee into a steamboat. Oh yeah, it's in the original version, he said, literally says, there goes Robert E Lee and she misheard it, and so there goes the Robert E Lee on the steamboat. I didn't like at least favorite covers. Oh yeah, I love Johnny. Jimmy met Norbert in Nashville, where he pitched him an idea of doing an album of songs about his laid back lifestyle and the keys, and Norbert wisely suggested that they should be near the water to do these kinds of songs for maximum authenticity. So they chose Criterious studios in Miami, which I mean incredibly famous studios where the Eagles were working on Hotel California probably around that same period actually, but it was also home to the Bgs who recorded there, as did Eric Clapton when he recorded Layla, So this place had a lot of history. So Jimmy and Rbert went down to the studio in Miami, fell into an easy routine while making the album that will become Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes In November and December, least favorite terms of phrase get there eleven in the morning out by five pm, and then they go on the Jimmy Buffett's three three ft sail boat to listen to that day's work on cassette, and Norbert would later say, for that album, we were trying to get the rhythms and the vibe to match the rhythm of the ocean waves against the boat. We were going for a vibe on that record. And we'd be remiss not to mention Jimmy's crack backing group, the Legendary Coral Reefer Band. You're just pausing from my size, stopped throwing to me for the reactions. This is one of the many times I wish we had a visual of this podcast, eyes rolling into the back of my skull. The Legendary Coral Reefer Band was an amorphous collective that had been with Jimmy and at various times. It featured big ish names including, as you mentioned, Timothy Bee Schmidt of the Eagles, John Hyatt, Kenny Butchery, Nashville session player played on Neil Young's Harvest, among many, many, many many every big blond blonde and self portrait, Big Big Deal, Russ Kunkel and Jerry Jeff Walker. I guess did time in the Coral Reefer Band too, But there have been many, many special guests, including Paul McCartney, Cheryl Crow, Brian Wilson, Roy Orbison, and Harrison Ford. But in Harrison Ford play, Washboard Size and the Coral Roofer Band were crucial creating the sound that Jimmy dubbed golf and Western, which it's not only very evocative name, you know, sound of the golf shore mixed with you know, country and Western. It's a clever punt on the old Gulf and Western conglomerate. And as you might imagine, it's a style that combines American country and rock with cribby immodalities and instruments like the steel drum and the rimbas on electric pianos. But as writer J. S. Succina wrote and her tremendous piece and eater Marguerite de Ville in the Myth of American Leisure, well, his songs are full of steel drums. Lyrically, they are mostly about being a white American man dreaming of the Bahamas without Bohemians. Yes, accurate. Do you know what I just found? You will never be able to guess. Why are you searching? Harrison Ford's role in the Jimmy Buffett Band. I found it possibly apocryphal citation that he is credited with bull whip sounds on a song called Desperation, Samba, Halloween and Tijuana. This thing about these grade school asked rhymes more importantly in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walter in Uh, that's right, Barbara Walters, folks, in two thousand eight, Harrison Ford revealed that he got drunk in celebration of either Jimmy Buffett or Ed Bradley's birthday, and he got quote enthusiastic about Jimmy and Ed's ear rings and went out and got one right after lunch. There was a period when he had ear rings. Yes, you heard it here first, folks. Maybe not first, but you heard it here recently. Harrison Ford's ear ring is directly traceable to getting day drunk with Jimmy Buffett. The whip sound of course, I mean Indiana Jones. Yeah, so I'm a bit wow amazing. So one day back in six Jimmy Buffett comes into Criterion Studios and tells producer Norbert Putnam then he wants to record a new song about a day in his life and Norbert recalls thinking, oh, like the Beatles a day in a life. Not really. Well, I guess they both kind of have existential dread. But um, I'll let Norbert take it from here. Here's a quote from an interview that he gave to Sound on Sound in two thousand three. Jimmy comes in and starts telling me about a day he had in Key West. He was coming on from a bar and he lost one of his flip flow so he stepped on a beer can top and he couldn't find salt for his Margharita. He says he's writing lyrics to it, and I say that's a terrible idea for a song. He comes back in a few days later with Waste It Away again in Margharitaville and plays it, and right then everyone knows it's a hit song. Hell, it wasn't a song. It was a movie. That's a various suit point about margharita Ville. The song, yes, And they recorded it with Nashville level efficiency, and within half an hour the basic track was complete, classically dry. Wikipedia description of the lyrics quote. The three verses describe his day to day activities. In the first verse, he passes his time playing guitar in his front porch and watching tourists sunbathe all while eating sponge cake and waiting for a pot of shrimp to boil. In the second verse, he has nothing to show for his time except the tattoo of a woman that he cannot remember. In the third and final voice, he blew out his flip flop stepped on a pop top, cuts his heel, and cruises on back home to ease his pain with a fresh batch of argaritas. That is some genius dot Com level annotation. Thank you Wiki editors. But there is a long loss Bargaritaville verse not dissimilar to the Dead Sea scrolls, and it touches on what you said about how the wonderful dirt bag Aura of the Key West was becoming distilled with I don't know, not pure of heart tourists. Uh. And it's a little you know, it's a little pointed, little nasty, and you expect from old Jimmy. And it has been supposedly edited out to make this song more radio friendly, although he does sometimes sing it live. Uh. And that verse reads as such, old men in tank tops cruising the gift shops, checking out Chakda's down by the shore. They dream about weight loss, which they could be their own boss. Those three day vacations can be or become such a bore. I don't know. If you're in like kind of a relatively sleepy town somewhere, and then it becomes a tourist destination, that's that's gotta be tough, man. But like, what do you what do you like? It's hypocritical, It's like all the it's like people being like Williamsburg was so much better before all these people, when I was the only one gentrifying it. Okay, yeah, yeah, Well, well while you're in a mood, um, this is probably a great time for you to touch on the hidden darkness of Margaritaville's lyrics. I'll let you dig into this. Yeah, I mean, I have to say that I don't dislike some of the better like some of these parts of his songwriting. I really love the uh, the verse progression that course, sorry, the chorus progression that the point of view narration takes um and it's nobody's fault, could be my fault. It is my fault, yes, um. And you draw the parallel to Dancing Queen at the beginning and yeah, it's you know, these quintessentially up songs that mask a much darker underside. Uh. There's a site called Mike Drop. Music writer named Daniel Rosen wrote for a piece called a way too Detailed analysis of Margaritaville by Jimmy Buffett, which I say, Rosen, listen to this show. We'll give you a way too detailed adation is his quote. At its core, bargharita Ville is about falling into a pit of self loathing and self destruction. Take a look at the lyrics of the chorus. Notice how Buffett is wasting away again in Margaritaville. Not only is that supposedly relaxing lifestyle taking its toll on Buffett, it's also something he can escape. Perpetually living the tropical vacation lifestyle and drinking all the alcohol that goes along with it is breaking Buffett down. At the end of the chorus, he's left with a question of how he ended up in Margaritaville. Buffett is lost, really making this in a cough gasque nightmare. Rosen cites the changing lines at the end of the chorus, which we just talked about. He says, our narrator is starting to realize that he has a problem with living perpetually in Marguaritaville, and he wants to change it, but he doesn't know how, and he thinks it's too late to change his lifestyle. Finally, Buffett is admitted to himself that the cycle of destructive vaca ation, NG relaxing and alcoholism is a cycle of his own creation. He's fully admitted to himself that he got himself into this mess and only he can get himself out. So do we think that Jimmy escapes or the character that he's portraying, does he get himself out of this? As I said earlier, cough esque nightmare of his own creation? God, what what are you seeing? Mm hmm, Well, I'm just thinking about this song. I'm thinking about you know, fine whatever the song is fine. I guess it's the parrot heads I detest. You mentioned the eater piece are earlier. It's a threat. Also in that piece, uh jr Writes this is not a song about someone who rejects the pressures of workaday life in order to pursue radical pleasure. This is about a man who is depressed and perhaps on the run from the law for whom shrimp and sea and tattoos provide no peace, and who needs blended drinks to hang on to whatever semblance of a life he has left. It is not escaping, it's fleeing. So in that same piece, Sexina goes to make a really interesting point about the American preoccupation with work that essentially gives rise to this whole perma vacation, margharita Ville culture, the industrial margharita Ville complex. How did I not make that joke? Yeah, it's a great piece. It is incredible piece. You should all check it out. And she writes, in America, leisure only exists in relation to work, and we are culture that fetishizes work, even leisure, that nonproductive time is spoken of through its value to production. We all need time off so we can be better workers when we return. And yeah, and you know, American workers take fewer vacation than almost any other country. We work far more hours each week. You know. Again a really sharp piece of cultural analysis. She uh talks about how Dolly Parton re recorded a Super Bowl ad that essentially recasts the dissatisfaction of nine to five as part of quote unquote hustle culture. Uh, and she writes culture of hustle and greed disguised as effortless relaxation created Jimmy Buffett and Margueritaville. Many of his songs and now his resorts and restaurants and the entire aura he projects are about escape from your life, which assumes your life is something you want to escape. If the inspiration from Margarita Ville is a song that a man who has left it all behind to do nothing, the resort may as well be a theme park for conspicuous leisure. You two can leave it all behind and then come back and brag about how you left it all behind to assure yourself you indeed did that. Tremendous leisure becomes an exercise in labor. You have this rare opportunity for nonproductive time, something to be scrimped and saved for, so you must chill out. You cannot waste this. That's very insightful, man, I mean, especially when you consider how much it actually costs. I mean, you know there's a margarite of a retirement complex. Right. He's essentially created relaxing. He's essentially created a system in which people spend their entire working lives saving up to pay him to relax, buy into this notion of forever leisure built off of a very specific tenure window of lawlessness and decrepitude in the Florida Keys. In a lot of interviews, he describes his concerts as cheap vacations for people in the Cold States, and he's been very I think we touched on this later, but he's been very open about what he does as escapism. Uh, and you know, everybody needs to kind of like let go and chill out. I mean it's tough to take. I get back to what my dad said years ago about Wow, Jimmy Buffett made a boatload of money by singing about doing nothing. It's almost like, on one hand, he seems to approach it from a genuine ployees of like, yeah, everybody's just chill out and kick back and relax, which we as a culture do. But it's very hard to take that seriously when you think of this guy who's the head of a multi billion dollar international corporation built on that very ethos. So yeah, it gets tricky. And again it's like it's all built on such a fleeting investant moment. I mean, in a way, it's admirable. How much hey, he's spun out of I don't know how long was this? Five years I was down there? How long would you say, Jimmy Beffitts period in which he has capitalized was in relation to his career. Oh, you mean like the golden era of the Smugglers and the beach Bob three years got there in November seventy one and record of this in November December seventy six. Yeah, five years. Tremendous. What a ratio we'll think about. I mean like the you know, go down to Greenwich Village now and you see the cafe wall and you see all the remnants of the beat poet era, which absolutely you know, at the bitter end they ripped me off. Go to the you know you live out in the Bay area and go to hate Ashbury and the whole era that was really only like a place for actual social change for like eighteen months, maybe two years in the mid sixties. By the time in nineteen sixty seven the whole Summer love thing happens, it was already gone, Like the whole movement was already moved elsewhere. So, yeah, it's interesting to see people who make a career, be it in songs, in movies and books, whatever, out of a very fleeting social movement that they then just replay over and over and over again sold it back to This is really the story of American capitalism, right, you said, create a moment, destroy the moment through the inevitable machine of capitalism, and then sell the moment back to the very people you robbed it from. Didn't you say that? That was one of the theories of the meaning of the Truman show them. There was a paper, Oh yeah, no, um hegemony, Yes, the cultural theory of hegemony about how media exists to sell your dissatisfaction with it back to you. Antonio ets. That would be uh, Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio gramsc about how film and television co opts your enchantment and disenchantment with themselves and sell it back to us deep in this all right, Buffett, Fine, we're making hay out of this, out of this thing I hate. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment. Well, given that insightful yet thoroughly depressing read on the song, it makes a certain amount of sense that it was nearly recorded by another artist who was famously crushed under the weight of the excesses of the American dream. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about Elvis. Aaron Pressley. Jimmy Buffett claimed while taping episode of CMT Crossroads that Elvis was on deck to record Margaritaville. You know what, that makes perfect sense. But then he died in August, a few months after Jimmy himself released the song, and he never got around to it or refaked his own death to get out of it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I could actually see that. I mean the cribba I can't picture. Well, we did Blue Hawaii see, Yeah, yeah exactly. I mean really like, if country music is rock and roll with all traces of black people removed, then Jimmy Buffett is is sort of dark universe Elvis, right. The only thing remotely black in any of his music is steel pans, which were probably played by white guys and a backbeat, you know, mm hmm, yeah, No, that's interesting. So that's a As we continue tunneling into the dark, cancerous heart of Margaritaville. Sadly, America did not content to it upon its release. It sort of did. Margheritaville was released on Valentine's Day ninety seven, a welcome dose of tropical sunshine that brightened up the winter doldrums up north. It peaked at number eight on Billboard and became the fourteenth biggest selling song of the year. And Margaritaville is really Jimmy Buffett's only true chart hit, as evidenced by the name of his Greatest Hits collection Songs You Know by Heart Jimmy Buffett's Greatest Hits, and the essen Hits is in parentheses, so it was. He cops to it as a modo Cooma soft awareness that him. He says that Margharitaville is on his list of the fifteen songs we have to Play or Get Killed, which I enjoy. The sales were respectable, but nothing astronomical. According to the BBC documentary The Richest Songs in the World, Margaritaville is not in the top ten. The two highest ranking pop songs are You've Lost That Love and Feeling by the Righteous Brothers and Yesterday by the Beatles. Happy Birthday was number one, of course. Uh. It was famously a copy written song until I think very recently and it would pulling upwards of fifty million dollars a year. They're also whopping three Christmas songs on the Richest Songs in the World list. White Christmas Gotta be one of them. Still give that his first record had sold no more than forwdard copies. Getting number eight on Billboard from Agaritaville was a big deal of a Jimmy and he found out that the song was a success in sort of a cute way. Uh. Just before the song was released, he went on a sailing trip to the Bohamian island of stan O k exactly you say that, And sailing was always very important to Jimmy, and that was really what he spent his first real record industry money on this thirty three ft sail boat. And he called this boat his insurance policy. And I can sing, and I can write, and I can sail, So if this all goes to hell, at least I can see the rest of the world. I got a boat. That was him talking about his beloved boat. I think it was called Euphoria or Euphoric, I forget what it was. So he's walking around this Bohemian island and he saw the only telephone on the island, and he decided to call his record company to see if, in his words, he still had a job. And that's when he learned that the record was a success and he needed to get back to the mainlands immediately and start touring, and and and yet another Eagles connection. The changes in Latitude's album really started to take off when Jimmy Buffett started opening for the Eagles during a series of dates during their Hotel California tour that same year in nineteen I can't believe you didn't read the heading for this, which is the Eagles make life Worse. I found a very sweet tribute Jimmy wrote when Glen Fry died, and he very pointedly does not mention Don Henley. He thinks almost everyone else in the Eagles not Don Henley, which makes sense. Can you think of any more anyone more? Tight asked and diametrically opposed to Jimmy Buffett and Don Henley, James Brown, I can almost see them being so far like opposite ends of the circle that they're almost sure close, which is probably why they don't like each other. Yeah, I mean, I I don't know that they don't like each other. I'm just I'm just saying that, based on what you're implying, you're libelous statement twenty three out of seventy four for this episode, and so began the tour that basically hasn't stopped. He's had over forty of them over the years. He makes way more money from touring than he ever did records. As I said earlier, Margaritaville is only top ten song. Between his concerts grossed over four hundred million, and that puts Jimmy Buffett alongside people like the Rolling Stones and You two and Elton John and his ferocious road dogging rivals. Bob Dylan's never ending tour and caters to a fan base is really only rivaled by the Deadheads in terms of intensity. Yes, of course, I'm talking about the parrot Heads. As you mentioned earlier, coins by ex Eagles member and Coral Reefer band mate Timothy B. Schmidt. Famous parrot Heads include Harrison Ford, Al Gore, Don Johnson, Jay Leno, General, Norman Schwartz, Cough apparently Christ Michael Douglas, Bill Murray makes a lot of sense, Brian gumble Less, Angelica Houston, John Elway. Too many to mention but we have to give special mention to Bill Clinton. He was such a fan of Jimmy Buffett. That is, Chief of Staff John Podesta arranged for a surprise Jimmy Buffett performance on the White House lawn in August two thousand as a belated birthday present for Bill. And this was, I guess the end of a second term, and the gig was kind of an affectionate nod to the time that Jimmy Buffett sang for him on the campaign trail back in, which was sort of a highlight of very you know, early campaign. So this was all a surprise, and Jimmy Buffett and the Coral reefirst had to be smuggled in to the White House grounds with stealth and secrecy, and press were excluded from the event, which had an audience of two hundred White House staffers and one presidential aid complained that the younger members of the administration only recognized Margaret Fretaville. How dare they not know his deeper cuts? Hey, Jimmy, you know I got you guys. Uh got you guys in through the Kennedy sex tunnels. Uh. Now we have to extend into what I like to call the Margharitaville cinematic or the Margarite of extended universe. You know, I gotta be grudgingly give it to him. He's a medium, funny guy, good storyteller, good storyteller, does sketch uh good scenes. He's apparently been three New York Times bestsellers, which is Jesus in Christ. Sorry you have to cut all my profanity or bleep it whatever. But what are his books about? Probably the same stuff as songs are about. Or is Adventures in Key West before five years? Five years of his life paving the way for the next gets better? He has number one best sellers on both the fiction and nonfiction lists. Last I checked, only seven other authors have achieved this level of success, So it puts him in a camp with Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, and Dr Seuss? Does It get better? Jordan's? Is it really become old and decrepit it? Our bodies fall apart, our loved ones leave us, and then we're alone, and then we die in a way, we're all wasting a wig and Margaritaville part of darkness. We're gonna do a couple of style a documentary about this podcast, where we both have heart attacks. By the end of it wasted away again. You should cut a trailer of this, of me naked, like I said in the hotel room, just looking out through the Venetian blind. Its Margharita Vill Buffett, speaking of classic cinema, Jimmy's tried to branch into other forms of media, Not content with his domination on the wax and the page. He called a movie, of course, he called it Margharita Ville. Colan. The movie subtitled a love triangle adrift in the Bermuda Triangle. That's not bad. Yeah, it was just startic. How boy and an ex smuggler who would join forces. Synopsis reads his follows. Margherita Ville is about two guys from different worlds who become great buddies as they won travel from island to island in the Caribbean, having adventures and meeting various eccentrics. And two resolved their comic love triangle with a beautiful girl, and three save the island of Margharitaville and the way of life it symbolizes from the forces of greed and hypocrisy as opposed to turning the island of Margharitaville into something that symbolizes greed and hypocrisy, so they basically he pitched Pushing Sun Dance and he wanted to get Robert Redford as one of the roles. There you go. This stay in development all throughout the eighties with a host of drafts. Mike Nesmith of The Monkeys was signed on to produce and direct. Only if this would have had the bizarre energy of that acid movie that the head, but Mike Dosmuth was like a big Basically this came out more when he died like a Sine east Well invented MTV basically invent the music videos, which obviously from experience on The Monkeys makes a lot of sense, although the televisual elements Tue Tue Tu true can't say the same about Jimmy Uh. He sent the script to Harrison Ford of Day Drinking and Getting Ears Pierced Fame and Robert Redford who played Cowboys. Harrison Ford, you will remember Han Solo was a space smuggler. Oh yeah, wow, yep yep, yep, yep, yep um. But apparently they both passed, so sad never made it out of development. Hell but Jimmy did get his moment on screens both big and small. He has made cameos and several movies and TV shows, including Repo Man. He's in feaking Repo Man. Ye Alex Cox movie. What he's in some incredible Yeah, Repo Man. Additional blonde agent, Holy Cow. That is that is something Congo, the Michael Crichton movie about cyborg guerrillas. This gets better and better. He must have a relationship with Michael Crichton because he was also in Jurassic World when which was the novels. Really he was long dead by them though, Yeah, but maybe it was some kind of like deathbed Like I like the idea that his agent is like his manager is just like has their figure on the pulse of like semifringe sci fi movies going through Hollywood anyway. Yeah, he plays a bartender fleeing a Tyrannosaurus attack, carrying away to Margarita's. Bizarrely enough, he turned down the opportunity to appear in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie the first one two thousand three. He had played a pirate and hook, which I think I neglected to mention earlier, So it would have been a return to four of him and yeah, and you know Keith Richards turns up in that, And which one is Paul McCartney. Hand, he's in the one from I think seven team over the most recent one, probably most likely the last one. Um oh wait, there's a sixth one coming. But not content with only movies, Jimmy also extended his his octopus like arms to the stage, to the gray white way, treading the boards and I'm running out of Broadway cliches. He and the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Herman Wouk WOWK, I think wow. He did mutiny on the Bounty too. I think no, the Caine Mutiny. Yeah. They collaborated on a musical in based on Wow's novel Don't Stop the Carnival. The book is about a Manhattan press agent having a midlife crisis who leaves New York for the Caribbean. It played Miami and was panned by the Orlando Sentinel, and then went to the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas, where it played until two thousand one. Sadly never made it to Broadway. Uh. He had other Broadway offers to theater guys tried to pitch him a sort of Bruce Springsteen esque one man show thing where he kind of played his kind of played his hits. This is hilarious. He turned it down because it wouldn't have made him enough money because of the cost of hiring crew members, which tracks well again his stories he stars are making you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. He doesn't need this, Yeah, and then he finally uh succeeds in I guess this is two thousand eighteen with his uh escape to Margharitaville. I'd like to see escape from Margharita Ville. Unsurprisingly, it's about a bunch of beach guys in the Caribbean. Ah. That is astounding to me. He turned down a run on Broadway because it wouldn't have made him enough money because the tech people were all Union. Anyway, while we're on the topic of savage, unfettered greed, Jordan's tell us about his ascendency into one of the richest musicians of all time. Yes, the elephant in the room during this whole episode is the fact that Jimmy Buffett turned this anthem of lazy down with the man headenism into a billion dollar empire. How did he do that? You ask, well, like all good business people, he sued the restaurant train cheat cheese. Let's take it back a bit. Jimmy Oh has had his eye on merch, just like many gigging musicians who make most of their money on touring. You know, musicians who don't have a lot of hit records who can pull in a big audience know that merch is a crucial way to make a lot of money on tour. I mean you're a touring musician, yeah, baby, you make money on T shirts? ID I knew a guy in a metal band who had a bunch of those, like really graphic, like beautifully illustrated T shirts for his band at the Mercht like ten different T shirts designed at their birth standing. He was like, Man, I don't play music, I should I sell shirts? I mean yeah. Jimmy took a similar approach to this, a similar mentality to this, most of the ground zero for his desire to make his own shirts, but seeing his name misspelled on bootlegs Jimmy Buffett, Yeah, he saw it spelled with one T, and he said, I'll make my own I love okay that I respect that I like a lot. Yeah. Um so, Jimmy Bubit opened his first Margaritaville store and Key West in five and he explained this rationale in interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel. He said, quote, I know I'm just a mediocre singer and writer, but I'm a great performer, and that's what counts. I'm one of the few living legends left. But I try not to think how long I will last. I just try to remember to duck, because it might all go to hell in a moment's notice. That's why I started my store. I figured if I couldn't have my music career anymore, I could still capitalize on my audience. I don't just sell them T shirts. I sell them a Jimmy Buffett lifestyle, cookbooks, music books I like to read, so at least these very not only aware of this, but also fine. We've been talking about it, but things got weird in the early eighties when the restaurant chain Cheat Cheese attempted to trademark Margaritaville as a drink special, and this got Jimmy Piste. And although you can't legally trademark a song title, his lawyers argue that Margueritaville had become indelibly link with Jimmy Buffett himself and Chechees responded to this claim with a bit of catty legally ease, saying, quote, if a nexus exists between songs and restaurants, the opposer could claim and equal next is exists between songs and the tangible items of the universe. There being sarcastic, but this was kind of a light bulb idea for Jimmy Buffett and his organization. Why not brand everything the tangible items of the universe? And as soon as the court ruled in his favor against Chee Cheese, making Jimmy Buffett and Margharitaville basically one and the same in the eyes of the law, that's exactly what he did. Casinos, restaurants, resorts, jewelry, clothes, beer and alcohol, a serious XM radio network, a record label, even a retirement community called Latitude Margharitaville for parrot heads, quote fifty five or better. There are now sixty Margharitaville bars and restaurants across the United States, Mexico, Canada, in the Caribbean. I would continue with all this Margaritaville branded stuff, but frankly, I am bored. Everything you can imagine it exists. It's like the what was rule forty three of the Internet? Yeah, so the rest assured. All this Margharita Ville merch has made Jimmy Buffett a very rich man. Margharita Ville Holdings, which is owned solely by Buffett and his business partner, has recently brought in two billion dollars annually, and you better believe Jimmy gets a cut of that. He ranked thirteen on Forbes list of wealthiest American celebrities, with a net worth of five hundred and fifty million, and other musicians rank higher. You've got your Sean Combs, You've got your jay z S, you've got your Dr Dre's. But Jimmy Buffett basically did this on the back of a single song. And that's what makes him and his story unique. Margaritaville has seven chords, it has two d and eight words, is written in just a few hours, max. But it is kick started a multibillion dollar empire. As I said at the top of the episode, Bloomberg has called Marguerita Ville the most lucrative song and history, and for an article published a couple of years back, I think. They interviewed a man named Robert brown Eyes, who is a professor of intellectual property at the George Washington University Law School, and he said, if there's anything on the same scales Marguerita Ville, it's not a song, it's a motion picture, which is what producer nor Putnam actually described the song as initially way back when they recorded it. Um getting back to this law professor, he says, when you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, you have to think in terms of Star Wars or Winnie the Pooh or Transformers. That's probably in the same order of magnitude. When you're talking about valuable songs that normally depends on royalties. You like said earlier, White Christmas, you've lost that Love and Field and Yesterday or Happy Birthday. But Margaritaville is different in that it's a secured trademark. The title is a secured trademark, uh, making it no longer a songwriting copyright, but a whole multinational business empire. And this law professor continues from a larger business perspective when you combine the two and look at what the song stands for as a lifestyle and there's a branding vehicle. It's worth far more than Happy Birthday. I can't think of another example of a song that has had that total impact. Jimmy Buffett really was, in a lot of ways miles ahead of the curve when it came to building a brand, setting the stage for people like Dr Dre with Beats or Dolly Parton with Dollywood, or many other examples that I can't think of. Offhands, yeah, and like greedy Crest commercialization of just like trying to trademark every single thing under the side, like Taylor Swift trying to file a trademark for the phrase shake it off for like Highlie Jenner trying to trademark rise and shine, like my god, yeah, talking about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers, like the English language is now just like another thing you can buy. Didn't Some college recently copyright the word yes Ohio State ah oh boy, and they won. Oh my god, that was just like two weeks ago. The has been a rallying cry in the Ohio State community for many years, and Buckeye fans Jesus Christ, oh God, should we let this cup for you? A corn area. Sure, whatever man um the Margariteville lifestyles brain worms have infiltrated me. I feel myself becoming more relaxed the moment I could go for margharita, perhaps the largest one ever. Appropriately enough, the Guinness World Record for the largest margharita ever was broken on October eleven in Vegas, Baby Margaritaville locations. Of course, do you think he was going to let that happen on? Not on his watch? Probably would have descended with the margharita Ville Gestapo black bag to the bartenders. He would to hire the Jamaican authorities that shot at his plan? What's the holding cell at Margharitaville resorts? Like? How terrible do you have to be to get you have to get arrested in a Margaritaville Oh my god. Okay, eight five hundred gallons in a tank that measured one in short of seventeen feet tall ten ft in diameter, approximately three hundred man hours, divided across sixty people, and named Lucky Rita. That was the name of the record breaking margharita. Lucky Rita. It's a lovely rita. Oh maybe I was just thinking Las Vegas. But yeah, it feels half as to me that should have gone back to the board, uh and celebrating the inauguration of said margharita Ville casino at the Flamingo in Las Vegas. All right, wrapping up, Yes, this feels like an appropriate note to go out on an ostentatious bordering on grotesque display of excess in the tackiest city of America. But you know, it's impossible to ignore the joy that this song and the lifestyle around that brings to people on a mass scale. As a little boy, I saw it up close with my own two eyes, with my father and his friends. You can't take that away from people. Jimmy himself describes the song Margharitaville as quote pure escapism. I was just lucky enough to have my thumb on the pulse. My concerts are a party, a cheap vacation for people in cold climates, and as writer J. S. Seccina observes, an incredible eater piece I keep referencing. Margharitaville has been completely recontextualized. After decades of serving as an anthem for burnt out yuppies, hedonistic kids, or idealists of every stripe. It's no longer a song about a man whose life is obviously a mess. It's a song about defiance in the face of this existential despair. To use her words, it's a song about quote insisting, despite all evidence of the contrary, that you're having a good time. Delusional maybe, but choosing to be happy counts for something, right. That's what my therapist says. At least, we'll give the last word to Jimmy himself. Last year, he told Arizona Central, I think it's really part of the human condition that you've got to have some fun. You've got to get away from whatever you do to make a living or other parts of life that stress you out. I think that was jim Jones pitch Well, Heigel, We've wasted the way in Margaritaville for long enough. I've found my shaker of salt, so I think it's time to cruise on back home. Folks, thank you for listening. We hope you'll tune in next time for our ninety minute exploration of Jimmy Buffet song math Sucks. Until then, I'm Jordan run Tog, I'm Alex Tagel. We'll catch you next time. Too much Information was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written, and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Punk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. 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